late

Strangely, the nausea abates at night.  The nausea is getting so fierce that I will probably ask my doctor for some sort of anti-nausea agent tomorrow.  I hate to add another pill to the regime, but it is getting debilitating again.  My tummy feels really trashed.  My hair is staying in, though it is not as thick as I would like.  I consider myself lucky to be in this good shape, overall.  I start a new ATS (American Tribal Style) dance class tomorrow.  I am probably going to be one of the older students in the class, but am beyond caring about that.  I have been bellydancing for 12 years now and am getting pretty good at it.  I had a wonderful, WONDERFUL class tonight with my troupe, Dancers of the Crescent Moon.  We are a family, truly.

I think tonight I am considering how much I want to be part of a family, a family that loves and claims me beyond the one I created--I am definitely the matriarch, but my own family of origin is broken to pieces and scattered.  I am close to my younger brother, but I don't have the love and consolidation I wish I had.  In the last almost-five years, I felt I was part of a circle of real love and family that nourished me in ways that were so good for me...I felt accepted in a way I had never been, anywhere and at any time. I felt I had the promise of perhaps a place I could feel safe in.  I am still reeling from all the loss.  I know it will take a long, long time before I really feel normal again, though I know I am still moving forward.  There are millions of people in the world with greater losses, but this one is mine.  I realize I may never get over it fully, that the scars will be very wide and deep...but I try to carry my scars gracefully.

I think, too, having reflected on the last few days of the home study, that I recently just re-enacted some parts of my childhood and adolescence again, and my marriage--moving from being under the illusion that I was loved to being the outcast, the "crazy" one, the insignificant one, the castoff who doesn't merit a thought or a word except to be gossiped about. Those were all of my roles in both my family of origin and my marriage, and have recycled in each and every relationship I have ever experienced.  I also resonated with Michelle Knight (one of the women who was kidnapped by Ariel Castro) that she was his "punching bag"--that was absolutely my role at various times in my life until I rejected that completely (I have not been hit in many, many years).

Resisting these things, with a background like mine, takes time and conscious effort, and honestly, the true change for me comes from looking these things in the eye, as it were, and making conscious efforts to defeat the self-defeating behavior.  You can't wish away a childhood like the one I had.  It takes strength and conscious effort to remain a step or two ahead of it, always.

Well, late-night ruminations are understandable, but not always fruitful, so I bid my faithful readers goodnight, all of you who come to my little pocket of the universe.  I appreciate you all.