hurt

I don't know where to start. Firstly let me say there will be no editing of this post as per normal. After all this is a place for my thoughts to really roam and anything and everything that crosses my mind seems to find its way into my fingers and out onto this electric screen. This is my place where nothing I say is wrong because it is for me and me alone. but then would I have gone into that entire explanation if I had not pictured someone else reading this? The person that seems to be in my thoughts almost every waking moment perhaps? I do not know if having him read this or telling him myself would be easier inviting him to this place is intimidating because I am candid here; knowing that nothing I write will ever truly see the light of day of be read by any that might know me. Granted of course that my last entry was almost a year ago. My journal still sees more use then this high tech space because focusing on the act of writing controls part of myself where as typing id much more free and quicker as well allowing for a more natural flow.

This post is a darkness in me something I have been fighting my whole life to control. And the reason I want him to read this or hear it from me is quite simply because I want him to understand as much of me as I can show him. It would be easier for him to reads this because crying while I type and where he can't hear me sob is easier and while I may be trying to not repress these emotions I would still rather not break in front of him yet. I would normally be mentioning how such displays are weakness and must be squashed and how strong I am. This is no longer the person I wish to be. When I am sad I want to be sad when I am happy I want to truly be happy unabashedly so and when I am morose I want to be happy! The following will be a sad story about a little girl who I am/am not, and will be very much the real me. The person whom no one knows not the nearest or dearest to my heart. That is the person I want him to see and judge because it is not fair to ask someone to love me without seeing the worst or best part of me (after all it is open to interpretation). I will not be apologizing for any of this because it is already done and there is nothing to apologize for not even the crying!

To begin with I'll describe the person who has made me who I am for better or for worse. My father was born Charles Arthur Pitt, he was the 3rd of 4 boys. There is a temper on my fathers side of the family that varies very much from person to person. My fathers anger was sharp but controlled I was never spanked for anything I did not deserve. In tandem with my grandmother he was the one who taught me control over crying his favorite saying on the subject as far as I can recall was always "if you don't stop crying I will give you something to cry about". It was because of this I earned to cry in private when no one was around. I shared a room with my sister while we were living with my grandmother and when I was sad because I missed my mother or upset because I was picked on that day or any other reason she was the only one who could possibly hear me cry myself to sleep. Tears in private do not hurt anyone and they cannot be used to hurt others, they are silent racking sobs that never find a voice. This does not paint a solid picture of my father I am afraid. He was a good man who truly loved his daughters and would do anything for them. He spent countless hours teaching me math or writing or any number of things. There was no one he would not help if they needed it and people genuinely respected him and he had a good many friends though he was careful to bring them home. I loved my father more then I have every loved anyone I was always trying to impress him even if there were times I was afraid of him. He saw me truly and honestly and he never treated my sister better then he treated me. There was never a time that I felt I couldn't rely on him being there.

When I was 10 I missed my mother enough to ask him if we could spend the summer up north with her because in the 2 years we had been in the pass I had seen my mother for a month or so and he could not say no. When that school year started I asked if we could stay for the year since we had spent two with him. My parents were gearing up for a large custody battle over us. My grandmother had told me this and she had told me that my father was saving money for a lawyer so he could be our custodial guardian she used that and his love for us to try to guilt me into living with him before we moved up north.

I don't remember the night very well when we got the call. I heard the phone ring and my mom pick it up but I promptly fell back asleep. It was close to three in the morning I think when she came into the room and told me that my father had been in an accident and that he had died. The next thing I remember is my mother, sister and I sitting in a circle on her bed passing my cat around as we cried. Everything after that until we got to the night before the funeral is a blur. I remember my mother playing the role of the grief stricken widow to a man to which a week before she would have yelled at over the phone. Her attention was entirely diverted from me at least, her baby was the one whom received most of her crying hugs while I watched wide eyed and startled. I was hurt and confused and when they wanted us to go in for the viewing I refused to go fearing that if I saw him lying there it would become real and not just a story they were telling me. No one seemed to really care except for my uncle Tim who I will always be eternally grateful. He argued with coerced and generally would not give up on me and he convinced me to go.

My sister and I both wrote letters to him that we gave to a friend of the family to place in his coffin. I remember looking in and seeing him. It didn't seem to really be him it didn't look like he was just sleeping it looked like someone had made a TV show prop and placed it where my father was suppose to be. The likeness seemed uncanny but it didn't feel real. The following morning was the funeral. I sat in the front row my body was there but I was floating in a sea of comforting fog. For a while I even convinced myself that I hadn't cried at all though every time I looked at his picture in front of the coffin tears slid down my face in an impossibly long cascade. I did not hear the words that were said or see the people around me. I did not sob my shoulders did not shake I sat still an 11year old porcelain doll with tears streaming down her face. Looking back as hard as this was for me I can't remember what my sister was doing, and that guilt might be with me until I die. That I was so lost in my own grief that I might have forgotten to comfort my own 9year old sister.

I tried to use words and poetry to let go of the hurt I was feeling but the right words never seemed to be there and it was useless so instead I started drawing I think in the week or two that we were down there I must have gone through about a 100 pages or drawings of my dad and horses and anything else. I was terrified that if I stopped drawing him I would forget his face, and then I would forget him and I would loose a part of me. The fog that had enveloped me the first and last time I saw his body permeated to my core until I could barely fee anything and even the strongest grief was muted and distant though it still hurt and was a hollow ache that would never fill.

I lived in the "zombie" mind for far too long it persisted for almost a year blinding me and saving me, broken apart by fierce bouts of anger that were unpredictable as fierce squalls. I could barely see people or things as my days came and went. My mother started seeing a psychiatrist and started taking me so that I would have one less day a week in school because I was barely there at all to begin with. I would sit outside the office and watch Disney movies while my mom talked to her doctor. I only talked with that lady a couple times for brief periods I could never tell you what I told her it might have been about my mother but I don't think I could handle talking about my father broaching the subject ed to complete and utter shut down. The same year my mother lost her job because the mine was shutting down. We were forced to move to a city I was born in but had never lived. I made a friend and then before I knew it I had a group of friends and we were tight and they were a place to be free from it all because they didn't know. I started to emerge from the barren wasteland that had held my mind in silence and deep darkness. I had always looked out for my sister, riding on the bus with her, playing with her and the like but I had never really had to take care of her before and with my mom working it became my job to be her second mother.

I took her to school made sure she did her homework helped her out as much as I could and basically spent almost all of my time with her. When my mom met Rod (who had two girls) I started taking time for myself I would walk them home throw on my backpack and just ride my bike for a few hours, come home make dinner do homework go to bed and do it all over again. The library was one of my favorite refuges. That is where I started to be the person I am today my father gave me the two greatest pleasures in my life. He was the one who was stubborn enough to make me read until I loved it and he sang almost more then I do and with his inspiration I learned to play the trumpet (which he had played in high school) and then when it was needed I learned the french horn which became a major part of my life for a good while.

Since his death I have always kept people at a distance. No one has really been close to me since his death, people are more comfortable with a bubbly happy go lucky Alison that jokes and has a deft had at turning away the more intimate questions. It is not my nature to lie to people but conveniently directing a conversation in another direction is a different skill all together or answering a question without truly answering it. I have not been to his grave since he was buried and no one has cared enough to do more then mention it. I did not express my grief for his loss I buried it deep so much so that I would never have to let someone see me cry for him again. I feel like I was alone in my grieving for him and when people used to tell me they were sorry for my loss the insincerity of it all would leave a foul taste in my mouth. I was not shown how to grieve properly and it did not feel as if there was anyone to comfort me. I became a tougher person for it.

When we moved again I lost the friends that I had grown attached to, I kept my head down and let the days pass me by. I met people who seemed interchangeable and when someone got too close I would push them away knowing that they would not be in my life forever and feeling that if I drove them away it would save me from being hurt later. When I met someone who I started seeing a future with he mentally started abusing me and ended up leaving me for someone who we had been fighting about for two months. I was concerned about her interest in him and he used my insecurities to say that I did not trust him and then he would send her love e-mails behind my back and spend "personal" time with her while I was at work. I will never know if he cheated on me nor would it bother me now. After we broke up he went to extensive lengths to continue to hurt me. My self esteem was lost and being with him had buried most of the identity I had found. Thoughts turned dark and if I had not felt that it was purely selfish suicide would have been a good option. One that I had considered quite thoroughly before rejecting.

I see myself in pieces not unlike shiny baubles in a mucky stream, when I write I feel an inane connection with my mind and the soft person at my core. When I hold a pencil I feel an exacting nature but work almost freely by feel. If I see something beautiful if its the mountains or the light hitting something in just the right way I am surrounded by an inner calm and my heart sings. When those moments recede I'm lost again. You cannot love someone you cannot find. Sometimes if I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror I'm shocked at a fleeting beauty but when I look closely all I see are flaws and what could be changed. It is easier to give my love to someone else, they seemingly have less flaws. I don't know where to start, if I do the things I enjoy will it make me love myself or will it just make me feel better for a short while like a band-aid? There needs to be a way for me to start believing compliments instead of shrugging them off. Perhaps being the one to give them will make them seem more sincere?