...and I need to explain why.

I've been fighting a possibly losing war with my own mind for years. Decades, actually. It had gotten to the point where I thought feeling miserable the way I did was normal. But I hated it. I wanted it to stop, to go away, even if it meant I had to do something drastic.

I have long bouts of vicious depression that leave me withdrawn and suicidal. I avoid people. I can't have fun. Even my usual distractions can't always keep me from ruminating and endlessly going over and over old tape. I've been going to therapists for the last three years or so (more than a decade, actually--one was for over eight years), and I've been put on a regimen of drugs that actually seem to help. Great. But, they don't help enough. I still feel like shit most of the time. I want to cry over the stupidest crap. I mentally cringe (I don't do that physically much, any more) whenever anyone even raises their voice to me or sounds even mildly annoyed, because in my world, when those signs pop up, it usually meant I'd get bruises later. I've been a hell of buzz-kill to be around, some days, and I feel guilty as fuck that my husband,  kanis has had to see this crap in the woman he loves.

A couple of years ago, I outed my Step-father for his abuse of me when I was a kid. His family pretty much turned their backs on me. I effectively lost a brother over it, and I may lose a second--I don't know yet. Fine. I'm trying not to give a fuck (failing). I'd had enough of feeling like I had to live under a fucking rock, feeling ashamed to be alive. So I came out and said it: their relation is a rapist and a child-beater who thought his wants were the same as "needs" and that my needs were not anywhere near as important as his wants. Soon after, I travelled up to my hometown and reported the scum-sucker to the police.

Three hours later, I was sweaty, wrung out and hungry enough to eat anything that didn't get out of my way fast enough. I was also scared shitless. I'd finally done it! I'd finally given him to the cops and he was finally arrested a few weeks later, after my living in fucking MISERY and a slowly-dying, inward-turning, self-isolation for thirty years.

Absorb that number. 30 fucking years ago, this creep raped an eleven year old girl and continued to rape her routinely for the next five fucking years. I'm not even gonna go into the violent bits--let's just say I have both physical and mental scars.

Fast forward two years to the end of last month, or really, to the couple of months just before: I'm noticing a trend... I'm getting panic-attacks again. Nightmares. I'm gloomy, nervous and worrying. I'm scared. I'm even losing weight--still losing, actually. I've lost nearly thirty pounds in the last year alone and the number on the scale just keeps doing this weirdly-pendulum-like creeping downward: swing one-gain two lbs, swing two, lose three and half, swing back, gain a pound, lose two... wash, rinse, repeat. Not a real problem, I hope, since I need to lose about eighty more pounds anyway, but still, all my earlier efforts to lose weight had failed, and now I find that all it takes is for me to be under constant fucking stress. Joy.

I have trouble with sleep: I can't fall asleep for hours and when I finally do kick-off, I can't stay asleep. I often wake up in the middle of the night, only to have my stupid fucking head blast me with more hours-long ruminations or panic-attacks and I lay there, trying desperately to relax, and my old meditation techniques no longer work. I take melatonin, benedryl and Xanax to knock me out. It really does take that much, and I'm afraid to get addicted to my "sleep-cocktail", but it's the only fucking thing that works, right now, and I NEED to sleep. I've had chronic insomnia for more than twenty years... I'm finally getting the zzz's I've been needing for so long...

But, other shit's been going wrong...

I had a little scare back last Fall: pain blazing through my mid-section like something with knives for claws was ripping it's way out. I couldn't stand. Hell, I could hardly breathe. So, it's off to the emergency-room to find out what's with this and I learn I have something called GERD: "Gastro-Esophogeal Reflux Disease". I'd been having a LOT of acid-stomach, lately, burping foul-tasting and -smelling gas and almost puking, and long, painful coughing-fits that actually did make me barf. Painful, tastes horrible and I was eating antacids like candy... and it wasn't helping. Then this. In other words, I have to be careful with my diet and other habits, now, because I'm that close to possibly developing a fucking ulcer.

WTF? I thought I was going to be RELIEVED at finally getting this bastard in front of a judge. Nope. My health was taking a nose-dive, my sanity along with it. My therapists--fuck, I have TWO, right now, one to prescribe the damned drugs I need to stay away from the knife-drawer, and the other to talk to--are telling me that this whole process, while necessary, is re-activating the damned Complex PTSD. Oh, lovely.

I'm on Depakote, Wellbutrin and fucking Xanax, of all awful things.

I used to joke that "I stopped taking drugs to save my sanity, now I have to take drugs to keep what's left of it." It's not funny anymore.

But, I finally had to travel back up to my "wonderful" hometown (Yay, memories. Fuck) and finally face the judge, the Creep, the Creep's lawyer (another breed of nasty, it turns out) and the Crown Prosecution in something called a preliminary trial. It's a "trial" trial. Oy. *bangs her head on something hard to stop the stupid that causes* Ok, I'm back. It's all good. The judge has my info, the lawyers have theirs after asking me a shitload of questions that literally took all fucking day, I was tired, feeling sick, furious, wiped out, tired and totally empty. Now, it's time to wait... Again.

I'm finally allowed to talk about it, now. I wasn't before, because they were still putting their materials together.

So, I have to wait for the judge to decide whether or not there's enough to bring this thing to a full-on, real trial, and I'll have to go through it all, all over again... Only in more detail, possibly for days.

Aftermath: I'm gloomy. I feel sick most of the time, numb the rest. The nightmares are still there, as are the panic-attacks. I've already gone through one bottle of Xanax for the panics, and I'm onto the second. I can't work--I honestly haven't been able to do shit-fuck-all this last year, and it's because of this: I had a "loving" family that thought beatings and rape were a great way to raise a kid.

I know you guys have waited and waited... and fucking WAITED for your commissions to be done and I've been hedging, retreating, trying not to complain about my life and the things that are going on, but I can't let you guys sit anymore without at least telling you why I've been so terrible an artist that I take so long to finish anything.

This isn't whining, nor is it for butt-pats. NO BUTT-PATS. I MEAN it.

Seriously. I'm letting you folks know why I've been so out of touch and slacking in the work department: I'm sick. Really sick. In the head, not to mention seemingly everywhere else. My body is very reactionary to stress--anything that happens to me that sets me off gets reflected in what my body does, and this puts a halt on EVERYTHING.

Fuck rapists and child-abusers. Fuck the shitheads who screen them from scrutiny (that includes me, BTW). Fuck those who make apologies for them. Fuck a culture that victim-blames and slut-shames any female, kid or male that had the temerity to be raped at all, let alone repeatedly. I was raped the first time when I was six. Then again when I was seven. A few years go by, then the long, five-year stint with the Step-Monster...

No one should ever be raped, should have ever been put through that, and here I was, a bizarre fucking statistic that had me being raped by three different, hell more, people over a course of years, only one of which was actually put in jail...

And the Step-Monster is the only other one I might have a chance at getting justice from.

I'm pissed off. At the people who hurt me over and over and over again, for fun, for their pleasure, because they were bored, frustrated with their own miserable lives, or because I was odd. At the people who knew something was wrong in my life and never did a Fucking. Thing. About. It. At this rape-culture (yes, it really IS a "thing"). Sexism in movies, TV-shows, magazines and everything else that puts women into the tight-skirts and slutty make-up, telling them that their only role in life, other than to be a baby-momma, is to be "sexy" and appeal to the men who then turn around and blame them when they get raped by some fucking pervert with self-control issues. I'm pissed at myself for not reporting the little fuck earlier, when it might have mattered more. He's sixty-one years-old, for fuck's sakes! What kind of jail-sentence is gonna be put on this guy at that age? I'm also pissed off at the fact that abuse changes things so fundamentally in the brain that it can be tracked on an MRI scanner. The changes are not only physical, they're fucking permanent because it all happened during the formative years when my body, brain and psyche were still plastic.

I'm screwed for what's left of my life, all because we give rapists a free pass, even pat them on the back and call them studs, while women (and kids, and other men) have to suck up the double-standard where we blame the victim and because this sort of thing is so common, it's fucking NORMAL.

I'm sorry. I am. I don't know what to do, but I'm gonna keep on keepin' on, because it's all I know to do. I'm stubborn that way, I guess. That fucking lawyer tried so hard to wind me up and get me to screw up, to trip over my words, to make me out to be the bully, to be a liar, or to just simply be so bat-shit crazy that I either made it all up or I'm just delusional. But he FAILED. HARD. I kept my cool, even though my handler had to take me out of the room several times so I could decompress. Even though the judge himself had to step on the Defense a fuck-ton for being a jerk with the way he phrased his questions, even though His Honour had to chastise me a couple of times for growling, and even asked me to leave once so I could calm down and get myself back together. I did yoga poses, and when that wasn't enough, did pushups until I could do no more.

My youngest brother was there, and I'm certain he was seeing how I was reacting every time I came out of that courtroom (he wasn't allowed in because he's the Step-Monster's kid), and oddly, he was gone shortly afterwards, along with the SM's girlfriend. I had friends and my hubby in the court-room. Step-Monster had nobody. Not a fucking soul, just those two out in the hall, and they never got to hear what I had to say about their loved-one.

In the end, I saw him sitting lonely out in the cold, sipping a coffee, fiddling with his phone, waiting for something, I dunno, and he had no one there for him. I had a nice, warm taxi, with me,  kanis and three of my friends riding with me. He... had nothing.

Just a lonely old man with secrets he'd tried to keep buried in the distant past and who failed at everything in his life. And me? He did everything possible to make me fall, to make me out to be a nut, bad-mouthed me and my mother to our family and his friends and now he has to face what he did in a court of law, and he's got nuthin'. He's got fuck all.

I have everything, you bastard, and you're gonna take your lumps.

Because I'm tired of taking 'em for you and people like you.

{UPDATE: I SAID NO BUTT PATS..


....

LOL

Thanks anyway, everyone. You all rock in immeasurable ways. /UPDATE}