It also gives me super crazy dreams.

My dreams have always been very vivid, and have never made much sense (when held to the standards, of say, viable fiction or the waking world), but this is getting… ridiculous.

Thursday night, I had a dream that I woke up and there was a cheetah in my living room. It had baby kitten cheetahs. My house cats were carrying baby cheetahs around in their mouths. I was the only one who was bewildered- they were all “yeah, we have a cheetah now, and it has babies. get with it, already.” I fed the house cats, and the cheetah wandered into the kitchen and started head-butting me in the thigh, so I pulled a steak out of the fridge (I don’t generally *keep* steak on hand, but I had one in my dream), and hand-fed her. She rubbed her big cat cheetah muzzle against my hand, and I was worried about what might happen if she served up a love bite, the way the house cats do when they’re being snuzzled on. Before I could find out, I woke up.

Last night? Last night takes the cake.

My Dad stole a baby for me.

I was in bed, fast asleep, when my Dad let himself into my house. He put a baby in my bed, and I tried to question him, and he said we would discuss it when he’d had some sleep. I moved some pillows around, moved to the middle of the bed, and went back to sleep. Holding a baby.

When we woke up in the morning, I asked Daddy if he had anything to feed the baby, and he jumped up.

“Yeah, I stole the diaper bag too. I know about babies. There’s some formula in there.”

“Okay, Dad? Why did you steal me a baby?”

“You said that I couldn’t give you babies, but I figured out how. It’s gonna be great- the Mom looks a lot like you.”

“But, Dad, what I said was that you can’t be the only man I need because I would like to have a family someday. Someday, Dad, with a husband. What the hell am I going to do with a baby? Do you know how hard it’s going to be to raise a baby on my own? And this is going to make dating awkward, to say the very least…”

“Well, you can’t return a stolen baby.”

“Dad, how am I going to afford this kid? Babies need stuff. Tons and tons of stuff, and I have to work, and I can’t take a baby to work.”

“I’ll give you some money, but you can’t return a stolen baby.”

Then I realized the the formula he was talking about had been premixed and sat out in the car all night, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t good anymore. My father then suggested that if I tried hard enough to nurse the baby that “nature would take its course”.

I woke up in a cold sweat.

Part of me wants to stop drinking the tea, and the other part can’t wait to find out what weirdo dream it will give me next.

** there is not even the slightest possibility that I am pregnant. this was suggested to me by a coworker, who now sports a bruise on his shin. **

“It needs to be burned, and when that’s done, I’m pulling the ivy that’s taking over my screened-in porch out of the front bed and giving it a place to do what ivy does- go wild and choke everything else out.”

He shook his head.

“I can’t do that. I mean, I could, but I won’t. Something could go wrong, and I don’t want to be responsible for burning your house down.”

He didn’t know it, but he was the third man in as many weeks to deliver such a message. Metaphorically, anyway.

I choose to see the refusals- all of them- as an overture of respect. There’s a certain amount of trust involved in setting fires; if someone doesn’t trust themselves or the fire or their fellow fire-setters, the kind and responsible thing to do is bow out before the match is lit. There is honor in admitting that you’re not willing to take responsibility.

My therapist once asked me why the ambivalence of others towards me provoked my legendary impatience and irritation.

“Well, what’s so difficult about it? Either you like me enough to see what happens, or you don’t. What is there to ponder on?”

He giggled softly (yes, he’s quite feminine and quite married, and it is these two things that allow him to patch up my weak spots without my falling in love with him).

“You don’t think that someone might need time to decide whether or not to take on an involvement with you?”

My irritation turned towards him and his smug humor.

“You make deciding to dating me sound like deciding to enter a religion. Seriously, am I that damn difficult?”

Now he openly roared with laughter, and this made me so angry I could feel my cheeks reddening.

“Dating you is an entirely worthy pursuit, sure, but not one to be taken lightly. You are a formidable woman, and your ignorance of it is amusing as it is surprising. You are just too much for some men, who might prefer a wife happy to fetch their slippers and keep a cold beer in their hand. You are willing to do that, I know, but the price they pay for the privilege might be outside of their emotional and intellectual capacities.”

I couldn’t be angry with him anymore, because I know exactly what he means.

On Friday, I read this:

“I have had many, many great teachers in my life. A super abundance. No one and nothing comes close to the woman who is now asleep in the bedroom. My marriage has become the guru, the salvation, the muse, the crack through which the divine shines through.”

Really, as far as dating and marriage and family go, I’m not very interested in anything less than that ideal as the objective. I’ve seen the misery of love that falls short of it, and I’d rather be alone.

I’ll wait for the guy who asks me to get him a beer while he hooks up the hose, and strikes the match with a twinkle in his eye.

Truthfully, I do not share everything. There are details, facets, situations, realities that I do not reveal in this public space. A girl has to keep some secrets, especially when she’s dating, working for a corporation, and facing the very real possibility of building a business clientele.

Why, then, do I choose to share things others would keep private?

I could tell you that my parents prized honesty above nearly all else. To the extent that my punishments were doubled for lying about my transgressions. I could tell you that sharing helps me to let go, that in telling you these stories I am better able to put them in perspective. I could say that I’m kind of an attention-whore. I might tell you that one of my favorite quotes is: “A story untold could be the one that kills you.” - Pat Conroy. All of those things would be true.

They are all secondary to the biggest truth.

I need to be seen and heard, that I might be understood.

I need to reclaim the pride I have in who I am, what I’ve seen, and where I come from.

If I hide these things from you, from the world, I also hide them from myself.

My three o’ clock in the morning voices tell me that these stories, these hurts, these shames are the reason I will never be truly loved. They whisper that these stories are proof of my unworthiness, of my brokenness, of my failure. They remind me that the people who love and appreciate me do so because they don’t know yet- they haven’t seen me as I am. They convince me that these stories are my fault, my doing, the result of being defective somehow.

So I lay there in the twilight, in the dark darkness and let them torture me. I believe them. I cry and gasp and let myself become convinced that no one could ever love me properly if they really knew me. I take the blame and the shame as my blankets- warm and comforting with their familiar weight. I believe their story, those awful voices, and I cry myself to sleep.

I wake up with puffy red rimmed eyes and an overwhelming urge to construct an insurmountable wall between myself and the world around me. To insulate myself from more disappointment, rejection, pain and sorrow.

There is, for me,  only one way to survive that, to avoid falling down a rabbit hole of anxiety, depression and paranoia.

I have to hold that story up to the light. I have to write it out, write it down, release it to the scrutiny of theme and sensation and narrative. I have to give it to you, to myself, to the collective. Shame can’t survive the light. It dissolves, it melts away. As soon as I hit publish, the shame is gone.

Then you read it, and you comment, you email me, you tweet me, you send me messages on Facebook. You empathize, sympathize, encourage, confess. I kill the shame, and then you fill that space with love, insight, solidarity, support and encouragement.

When I get a little disclosure remorse, which does happen from time to time, I only have to think of one of the emails I’ve received from complete strangers who take a moment out of their own busy and complicated lives to share their feelings, their reactions, their own stories. It mattered to them, and that is worth whatever disadvantage being so open brings.

Thanks for helping me set my secrets free.

The Parkway is one of my favorite places in the world. So simple, so beautiful- in a world of double-tandem semi-trucks and seventy miles per hour speed limits, the Parkway is a haven, a refuge. My parents don’t call me their “little ridge-runner” for no reason.

I regretted my route once; when I found myself behind a car with Iowa plates on a steep decent with more than a few descending decreasing radius curves- a fancy engineering term for a bitch of a curve. A descending radius curve is where the road changes elevation in the curve- you’re not just turning, you’re also going downhill. A decreasing radius curve is where the turn gets harder as you go through it.  So, of course, a declining decreasing radius curve is one that combines a drop in elevation with a tightening of the curve once you’re in it.

What makes these curves so treacherous? The grade of the decent causes your car to accelerate, which makes you want to hit your brakes to slow back down, but that makes it almost impossible to steer into the apex of the curve. You pick up speed when it is the last thing you need.

After you’ve driven in the mountains for awhile, you get the hang of these nasty little curves. You learn to start into them slower than you would a level turn. The car sets itself a line as you start the curve and pick up speed, and your job is to interfere as little as possible with that natural line, steering only as much as necessary, and only braking very lightly just before the apex if absolutely necessary.

People from Iowa are perhaps not familiar with this technique. So they fight the line. They ride their brakes or hit their brakes hard in the apex, which makes steering much harder. I feel for them- they’re scared, they’re getting a lesson in vehicle physics that isn’t had in Iowa, they are white-knuckled and full of fear. (Not to mention that they’re melting their brake pads and running the risk of losing braking power altogether). It’s frustrating and irritating for me to ride behind them; they ruin my line when they fight their own, but I’m irritated while they are scared for their lives.

I wish I could tell them not to fight the line. To slow down a little more coming in, if they’re nervous, but once the curve starts, take your foot off the pedals and just steer. Fighting the line is actually more dangerous.

I’ve been stressed, scared, frustrated, angry and unsure of myself. The life I dream of is on the horizon, and the life I once cherished is ending slowly but surely, like the passing of mileposts. I cannot see what the road looks like from where I’m at to where I’m surely headed, and that element of uncertainty is what makes me crazy. I drive myself crazy trying to plan and plot and scheme and prepare for every possible outcome or pitfall or obstacle, drafting plans A through ZZ in a attempt to find some security in life-changing situations that are well beyond my control.

I’ve been fighting the line. I’ve been braking and freaking out and over-steering like a flatlander. I’m making things much, much harder than they have to be, and more dangerous too, in the sense that my health and emotional stability have suffered, are suffering, and that means that I’m not bringing my best self to anything I’m involved in.

Time to take my foot off the brake, loosen my grip on the wheel and trust the road.

“Feel the wind
And set yourself the bolder course
Keep your heart
As open as a shrine
You’ll sail the perfect line..”

-bob seger “in your time”

Small Business Resolution: The invoice comes into the payables clerk, who matches it to the packing slip and purchase order, identifies it as an inventory purchase and enters the invoice in the accounting system to be paid without the sales tax. When she cuts the check, she encloses a copy of the certificate. The supplier reverses the sales tax charge and marks our account or the particular items as exempt for future orders.

The Corporate Resolution: The invoice comes to the payables clerk in Mexico, who matches it using the three way system described above. She doesn’t pay the sales tax, but she doesn’t provide an exempt certificate. The supplier gets a short check and calls the buyer to resolve the situation. The buyer doesn’t have an exemption certificate, so she asks the Accounting Manager (yours truly) for a copy of it. Except I don’t have it either, because I don’t really run the department. I only do the month and year end closing and reconcile balance sheet accounts. So I ask the senior accountants in Chicago (who I’ve worked with on sales tax issues before) for the certificate or who else to ask. They respond that they don’t have it either, and forward my request to the payables clerk. She responds that she doesn’t have it, that it is the buyer’s responsibility to provide it to the supplier.

I point out the futility of this exercise, but by this time, we’re in the midst of the month-end closing, so we’re all too busy meeting deadlines to fix it.

By this time, my manager the controller gets involved. He asks me for the information I have about the issue, and I forward the emails to a coworker in our Arizona office so she can put everything together for him. He schedules a conference call. The tax department is involved and aware of the issue now, but they refuse to provide the certificate until my manager identifies the items that we’re purchasing. My manager forwards this request to me, but again, I don’t have that information. So, I request it from the buyer who asked me for the certificate.

*********************************************************

I don’t know how this little fairy tale ends yet. I only know that since we got swallowed by the Borg, it now takes at least seven people, a dozen emails, one conference call and three months to send a sales tax exemption certificate.

Maybe that’s why they offer such stellar mental health coverage…

So I packed my favorite stuffed animals and sweaters into my Strawberry Shortcake suitcase, strapped on my roller skates and broke the news to my Mom….

…who promptly fixed me a sandwich, patted me on the ass and wished me good luck.

I don’t remember how long I stayed away. I remember finding a place to eat my sandwich and throwing myself a pity party.

Apparently, I go through this every twenty four years.

I’m planning an escape. Just for a few days.

Twenty four years later, I have a much nicer suitcase and a car in lieu of roller skates.

Also, there will be no pity party. Just some general hiding out, picture-taking and writing and maybe some wine drinking. Also, air conditioning.

Anyone wanna make me a sandwich and pat me on the ass? 

That doesn’t prevent me from being surprised and scared when I realize I’m getting my ass kicked.

Everything is okay in the larger sense. I know where I’m going, and I know how to get there. This is just the part of the trip that always fucks me up. Like night time construction. The road is all bumpy, the lanes shift, traffic moves too fast for comfort but too slow for my taste. The bright lights that make work safer for the crews blind me, so that I navigate the mess half blind, heart racing, white-knuckled at ten and two, praying for smooth open road up ahead.

My frustration with the uncertainty at work boiled over yesterday. I had a very frank and frantic discussion with a Human Resources executive, and he was kind and concerned and helpful- as he always is- but he doesn’t have the key to my chains. If it is rattling around in his pocket, he still has to pretend that all that clinking is spare change.

I called the doctor’s office and told the PA about Friday’s incident. As I predicted, I got my lecture on skipping meals. In a more unpredictable move, she wrote me a prescription for a blood sugar meter, asked me if I was still living alone, and directed me to give instructions to my friends and coworkers should they find me unconscious. Which reminded me yet again that despite the kindness of strangers, despite my overwhelming number of blessings in the form of loving friends, I am no one’s responsibility. If some how, some way, I should have another episode like Friday’s while I’m home alone, I could die. And just when I was chiding myself for being overly dramatic, the pharmacist who very sweetly took the time to show me how to use the meter, said just that. This is very serious, you need to pay close attention to your body, to your meals, to your test results when you are home alone. Because you could die. Which I still think is awfully melodramatic.

The third person to remind me how much sugar is in alcohol got the defensiveness and fear in the form of anger that the first two helped build. These people are worried about me, they’re worried about me getting sick if I drink. I’m worried about me too, it’s just that I’m more worried about going completely fucking insane if I don’t do something to calm my frayed nerves. Sadly, it is my doctor’s concern that I not rely too heavily on anxiety meds when I’m anxious that leads me down the path of least resistance. Still. I hardly think that a few drinks a few times a week constitutes a lecture or any concern, and as far as the sugar? I’m being very careful to eat at least a little something every four hours, per the PA’s instructions. And if I normally enjoy a few drinks, don’t I need to understand how that affects my blood sugar?

The last straw, the very last straw yesterday was the mail. I stayed late at the bar, both because I was enjoying myself and because I have to be able to drive myself home safely and legally, because I can’t just not go home. Because there isn’t anyone to drive me home. I pulled up to my mailbox in the wee hours of the morning and pulled out a postcard with a picture of a beautiful German Shepherd on the front. Adicus is due for his rabies booster. The dam broke, and I sat at the mailbox,  in the opposing lane of traffic in a small break between switchbacks, laid my head on my steering wheel and let my wracking sobs pierce the cool night air.

In one small part of my life, someone else took the wheel yesterday. I turned over the file, put all the information in their hands, and they decided for me, and I let them. The relief washed over me. All the wondering and pondering and doubting and guessing- gone. In one instant. It isn’t that I’m relieved of owning the decision- you are never relieved of ownership- but the removal of power was better than heroin.

I am okay. I will be okay. I know where I’m going. I know how to get there. I know that if I concentrate, I can navigate this current construction zone.

In the same breath, though, I am beyond exhausted. I’m tired of driving. I passed the sign yesterday that says “no more rest stops for 75 miles”, and my limbs felt like lead and my eyes hurt and I could only put the windows down and turn the radio up loud and trust in my own ability to push ahead.

I wonder if I will ever stop missing that sweet loving dog, who, in his own dog way, protected me and looked out for me, who always came to me at the height of my desperation and laid his chin on my thigh with a deep whiny sigh and let my tears wet his fur while he nuzzled me in an attempt to comfort me. I’m here, I know you hurt, I love you, I see you and I hurt, I want to help.

I wonder if I will ever stop feeling cheated for being on my own. I wonder if I will ever find anyone that I can develop enough mutual trust and love with to let them take over when I’m so tired I can’t see straight. I wonder if I’ll ever again have someone to drive me home.

Who’s gonna tell you when
It’s too late
Who’s gonna tell you things
Aren’t so great
You can’t go on
Thinking nothing’s wrong
Who’s gonna drive you home tonight

You can’t go on
Thinking nothing’s wrong
Who’s gonna drive you home tonight
“drive” – the cars

While I was waiting for the counter lady to finish with another customer, I absentmindedly picked an apple Jolly Rancher out of the candy dish. I do believe that little piece of candy is to blame for the rest of the story.

When I was done in Belk, I headed down the road for a pedicure.

The water was stupid hot when they were filling the tub, so I asked them to chill a little on the hot water and turn the cold up just a tad. They did.

Somewhere between removing the old toenail polish and trimming the talons I had been passing off as toenails, I started to feel dizzy.

It’s happened before. I have borderline hypoglycemia. Which means that when I was a teenager, I had an eight hour glucose tolerance test, passed with flying colors, and then fainted in the IHOP parking lot. Our family doctor said that meant that I had barely-there low blood sugar. Or something. My grandma was hypoglycemic until she was older, then she developed diabetes. My Mom is hypoglycemic. They have both spent most of their adult lives struggling with obesity. The message was clear to me: get fat, get diabetes. All that to say- I’ve had dizzy spells before. You’re standing up, and you start to feel weak, so you sit down. It would happen when I was cooking dinner, and the wasbund would bring me a cold rag. Most of the time, I could get up in a few minutes and finish the meal.

This was different. I was sitting. I was also sweating like a whore in Sunday school. Instead of feeling distinctly like I was losing my balance, my hearing was fuzzy. My vision was fuzzy. My stomach hurt. It felt like the heat was on in the chair. A sea of black dots washed over my already blurry vision, like someone was shaking pepper onto my face. My hands were numb and tingly. I tried to play it cool…

The pedicurist working on the lady next to me asked me if I was okay. I told her I felt a little woozy. It was then that everyone stopped to stare at me. I told myself it was just me being self-conscious; we always think people are paying more attention than they are. I also told myself that I needed to pull it together.

you’re alone, no one knows you here, you’re on the wrong side of town to call a friend, you’re all alone and you better figure this out and get over it. you have no other choice. two of your emergency contacts are at the beach and other can’t drive. quit being a drama queen and snap out of it.

What I didn’t know was that my face was as white as freshly fallen snow, and my lips were a lovely shade of blue, and I was now soaking wet with sweat.

The next thing I knew, a lady was holding my feet up over my head.  I was being handed a glass of Coke and a handful of chocolate. Someone put my sweaty mop of curls up into a loose bun, and someone else put a cold rag on my forehead.

The lady sitting next to me asked me when I ate last. I told her I had an early breakfast, and hadn’t eaten anything since, but that this had never happened before.  Not like this, anyway. The lady holding my legs was a nurse, and she said that it was probably low blood pressure. That my low blood sugar caused me to react to the heat of the foot bath.

When my color came back, the poor guy who was working on filing away all of my well earned callouses finished my pedicure. I sat there, horrified at the spectacle I made of myself.

Everyone- even and especially the other customers, asked repeatedly if I was okay, if I felt better. The lady next to me told me about the time that she passed out while making a sales call to one of her best clients. She suggested keeping candy in my purse at all times from now on. Oh, and, you know, eating. Like three times a day or something. The lady across from me warned me to get something to eat as soon as I felt like I could drive- she said the Coke and candy only give you about an hour to eat something decent before it happens all over again.

My pedicurist joked that he was just so damn good, he made me pass out. He also told me to eat more and take the vitamins. (I did not take my vitamins yesterday, because I take them when I eat a full meal. Heh.)

When I left the salon, I went straight home, ate dinner and consulted Dr. Google. Dr. Google and I decided that the Jolly Rancher was probably just enough sugar to trigger reactive hypoglycemia- when your body releases a little too much insulin and drives your blood sugar too low. Maybe the hot water had something to do with it. Dr. Google and I also decided that we should probably call Dr. Anderson on Monday, even though I will likely just get a lecture on eating more regularly.

What was one of the most frightening moments of my single life became an incredible example of how we are never truly alone, as long as there are good and kind people in the world.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go have breakfast. 

When I was five years old, my Mom got pregnant.

On October 25th, 1985, during morning recess, I noticed our next door neighbor walking pointedly towards me.

She told me that the baby was coming, that Mom and Dad were at the hospital. I wanted her to take me there. She explained that there was a problem, Mom was okay, the baby was okay, but I couldn’t go. Because there was a problem.

I found out later that they thought she had spinal meningitis. She was born three weeks early. My sister spent the first few days of her life in an incubator.

When they brought her home, I instantly fell in love.

If she cried in the wee hours of the morning, my Mom would inevitably find me over her bassinet in the living room.

Like any young love affair, mine was short lived.

If memory serves, she was two years old when we started fighting.

Mom would ask me “What do you want me to do, lock her in the basement?”, and at some point I worked up the nerve to give her an honest answer. “Yes. Put her in the storm shelter. I’ll slip pancakes under the door. We can give her a water dish, like the dog.”

(Apparently I cannot blame my sometimes heartless nature on the influence of a hardened world. )

It was around this same time that my parents left us alone together all day over the summer. Sometimes my Dad would be sleeping soundly after working a midnight shift. Sometimes they paid a worthless babysitter to watch me feed her and change her diapers. Sometimes, though, it was just her and I.

On one of those occasions, the neighbors invited me across the street to swim in their pool. She was too young, though, they said. So I found the carrier we used to take our Labrador/German Shepherd mix to the vet. I gave her a water dish and some sticks to play with, crated her ass and parked the carrier under the shade tree in the side yard.

My Mom got home from work before I got home from the pool, and her head exploded. (and rightfully so, but I still wonder if the neighbors knew I was responsible for my two year old sister when they invited me but not her.)

For the next fifteen years, my sister and I waged war against each other. Truces were called for the handling of schoolyard bullies, joining forces against our parents to run a mutually beneficial agenda, or if one of us was sad, sick, or hurt enough to garner the other’s temporary sympathy.

She stabbed me in the shin with a steak knife under the dinner table (I still have a scar). I tied her to an arm chair. She threw a roller skate at my head. I locked her in the pantry. She would hit me and then tell Mom I hit her. I would ask her to play hide and go seek, and then not look for her. She hid fake snakes in my bedroom, or left them outside my door.

Still, when Mom made a habit of working late and calling me after dark in the dead of winter to go get my sister from daycare, I started picking her up on my way home from school. We both hated walking the two blocks in the dark, in the cold, in what felt to us like the wee hours of the night. So I got off the bus in front of her school and took her home with me.

She took care of me too, in her own way. She killed bees, and committed other countless acts of bravery so that I didn’t have to. She was the best and most reliable member of my wedding party, the greatest maid of honor I could ask for, even though Mom pushed me into giving her that title, and we had a huge fight about my refusal to allow her to wear a tiara. When my sweet orange tabby got stuck in a tree, I pulled Dad’s truck underneath that tree and propped a ten foot ladder against its trunk. The lowest branch was a good five feet from the top of the ladder. I was working up the nerve when she came out of the house. She climbed the ladder, pulled herself up onto that branch, shimmied up a little further and sweet talked the cat into her arms. I should note here that the cat always hated her before that- he would hiss and spit if she looked at him the wrong way.

That same year we got into a violent screaming match over a pot of macaroni and cheese.

Some months later, she was in trouble with Dad. They were arguing in the hallway outside of our room. The wasbund and I sat in silence while I listened to my father’s rage build. When that rage hit its tipping point, when I started to squirm in my chair, anticipating the beating she would receive, the wasbund silently stood up, opened the bedroom door and walked out into that hallway, standing between them. He stared my Dad down, and without a word or a movement, forced his retreat.

When my Dad and the wasbund had their fight, the fight that found me kicked out of my own parents’ house, my Dad roared at my sister in a fit of anger that it was her fault. All her fault. When he wasn’t around, I assured her that it was not her fault, not one bit, and that I didn’t blame her for it.

She and her boyfriend helped the wasbund and I move to Asheville. There was nothing to fight about anymore. No more competing for resources and attention. No more jealousies and resentments. It was then that our friendship blossomed. They were here when we closed on our house. We took a vacation together. We spent holidays together, the four of us.

Then, last spring, “we” became the three of us. The summer was in full swing when “we” became the just the two of us, again.

I picked her up from the airport Tuesday afternoon. She was here for thirty six hours. I bought dinner. She built shelves. I showed her around. She had coffee ready when I got home from work. We shared a bottle of Riesling and ate ice cream straight out of the carton, side by side on the couch, with two spoons.

She said it felt like home. Before the leaves turn, it will be her home.

I haven’t told her yet that for the first time in years, it felt like home to me, too.

On the 5th of every month, bloggers from around the world are open to write about rights and issues concerning women. First started by Shine and Marie, we’re hoping to bring a variety of women’s issues to the forefront to make people aware of what’s going on. For the month of August, we’ve chosen to write about Physical and Mental Abuse. Please join us in telling us your stories, thoughts, and ideas on a monthly basis.

I was in the break room, pouring my first cup of coffee when she opened the door. Behind a thick layer of well applied make up, a rail thin girl looked back at me with two black eyes. I asked her what happened to her, even though I already knew the answer. She told me that she ran into a door. The silence between us was thick and heavy, until I locked eyes with her.

“Just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s good for you.”

The door hardly closed behind me before I choked back my own tears.

Because I couldn’t take my own advice.

As horrible as physical abuse is, it’s easier in a way. You can see a black eye. You can see the flinch that comes with a quick movement, a raised hand. There is no question about physical abuse- lay hands on me in anger, and that’s an easy problem to identify and solve. I swore a long time ago that I would never tolerate being hit ever again. I thought I broke the cycle.

I was so very wrong.

Mental and emotional abuse is a gray area. It’s fluid. Easier to take the blame for. I have a temper and a sharp tongue of my own. I can’t say I’m not sometimes cruel or ugly. I’m difficult. Demanding. Pushy. Impatient.

It wasn’t until I got out that I let myself realize how bad it was.

I still hear those words when I look in the mirror. When I get stood up for a date. When I have a bad day.

“At least I don’t beat you like your father did…”

“You repulse me.”

“You’re crazy. You’re fucking insane.”

“If you weren’t so needy…”

“You’re just being melodramatic and hypersensitive.”

Of course, there were good times. He was very charming and loving when he wanted to be. Manipulators always are. That was what he did. He whittled away at my self esteem, at my judgment. He kept me so busy worrying about and struggling to earn his affection, attention and approval that I didn’t often take the time to consider whether or not he was worthy of my affection, attention and approval. When I did take the time and he fell short, it was always my fault. I didn’t inspire him to treat me well. I expected too much. I was too needy. I put too much pressure on him to make me happy. I needed a life of my own.

So I got one. I made friends. I started writing. I caught a huge break in my career. I started college.

Things got worse and not better. Now I loved my friends, my “screwing around on the internet”, my “corporate jet set lifestyle” and my schoolwork more than I loved him. He was suffering from neglect because of this life he asked me to build. My outside interests were proof that I didn’t care about him.

I was the selfish one. I was the foolish one. We couldn’t pay our bills because he couldn’t keep a job, but I was selfish and foolish for spending $30 at Planned Parenthood on my birth control patches instead of $5 pills. The fight that ensued was horrific, and he said something that broke my heart, something so horrible and cruel and ugly that I cannot and will not make it public.

It was my fault he wasn’t attracted to me. I was unattractive, repulsive. I didn’t take care of myself. Never mind that I stopped taking care of myself because he quit paying any attention to my appearance, because I was exhausted, because there was no time, money or energy for makeup and cute outfits while I was struggling to support both of us.

That’s all behind me now, and I’ve linked to an article that I’ve memorized to keep it from ever happening again.

If your boyfriend or husband makes you feel worse about yourself, if you find yourself walking on eggshells, if you find yourself lying (even by omission, which was my specialty) to the other people who love you, you are being abused.

Love doesn’t have to hurt.