(Written in April 2008)
I wondered if I were to just do writing practice if it would help with the toxicity — just keep the pen moving. This is the fourth time this month… A lot of tension in my shoulders & neck and in my stomach. Hard to breathe. What comes up? Frustration. I don’t know what’s causing it and none of the things I know how to do seems to help. … And I haven’t made any art. … and nothing to say. But I can feel relaxation happening as I write. Something’s draining out of every cell. Even the breathing is easier. … Mind wandering off to people’s affairs — am I jealous? Not really, I’m glad to be out of the fray. Just reading in old journal 77 or 78 — “the sexual history of Jenny the bird” — what a shambles. How I blamed myself for not being easy & open and then would get angry on my own behalf for allowing men to mistreat me because I believed I didn’t deserve any better. All the longing and the fantasies.
What would I tell that girl now? That it was not her fault — that she didn’t get good enough loving in infancy so she was desperate for physical contact — but she had been traumatized so her body couldn’t relax enough for sex to be easy — that she never found a man who knew how to be gentle and patient — and she was molested at age 12 by the father who made it clear that he found her unattractive — so what kind of message was that? What she learned was that she didn’t deserve to be loved by a good man but only to be the plaything of men who couldn’t get a better woman. God! That’s what I believed about myself for so long. And I have to forgive myself for not having done better in the sexual war zone. I never had a chance, really, never had the luck to find the right man. It’s a bad time to be a woman — a highly sensitive and very intelligent woman who was also traumatized. Finding an equally sensitive, equally intelligent man who also had the sexual confidence and the skills to help her — just wasn’t possible. And now I don’t care any more!! Really free at last.