I want good memories.

Okay, I’m back. I’ve had a really hard time the last few days.

It’s really sinking for me that I don’t have any happy memories. They’re very few. All my memories are tainted. Every good memory is linked to 20 bad ones. That’s why I can’t get any relief in my mind. I can’t go to anyone for true comfort.

I realized that my threshold for pain is so high, that I’ve been hurting people around me without even realizing it. It’s like giving someone a paper cut. They tell me it hurt, and I’m like, “Yeah right. Try getting shot with a shotgun. That paper cut isn’t shit.” The traumas that I’ve gone through desensitized me. I consider myself a very sensitive person, but I’m seeing ways that I’ve been very insensitive and it’s very painful.

I’ve had enough truly traumatic experiences to fill 10 lifetimes, and that’s not an exaggeration at all.

Exploring these traumas the last few years has brought up so much pain. So much terrible, terrible pain. Sometimes it physically knocks me to my knees and I have to go outside and hold onto the grass and wait for it to pass. With that, I’m starting to feel the little things. I’d made myself so numb.

I feel pathetic. I feel like a waste of space. I feel like a failure. I feel unlovable.

I’ve been hurting Michael.

When we first got together, I tried so hard to push him away. I was trying to save him from me. But he persisted. He kept coming back. So I resigned myself to the fact that any hurt he gets, he asked for it. God that’s so fucked up.

I remember thinking I’m going to absolutely destroy this guy.

Not intentionally, of course. The last conversation I had with my ex husband, he said, “I truly wish I had never met you.” I hadn’t yet processed leaving him, and then my breakup with Lindsey, if you can call it that–it was more of a get-away, an escape. One of the last things Lindsey said to me was, “You are so fucked in the head.”

I see now that I act out for negative attention. Being neglected as a child, that was the only way I could get my mom’s attention, was to throw a fit basically. When I was angry, she looked at me. When I was yelling, she heard me…kind of. I didn’t know that I could just separate myself from people who treat me badly, who neglect me. I didn’t know I could talk about it calmly, and if it wasn’t received, I could just move on. Happiness became something I had to steal.

I’ve been caught in the same emotional cycle for three and a half decades. Step 1: Fawn. Sacrifice myself to try to earn love. Hurt myself to try to earn love. Be passive and go along with whatever the other person to earn love. Step 2: Freak out. Freak the fuck out. Let all the pain of hurting myself and making myself small out in one huge damaging explosion. Step 3: Punish myself. Repair work. The doghouse. Once out of the doghouse, start Step 1 all over again.

I’ll have to write an entry all about The Doghouse, because that’s where I’ve lived most of my life. Even when I’m not in The Doghouse, I self-sabotage to prove to myself and those around me that I really am bad just like I’ve been told since I was little. Katy Lee, you are a bad girl!

I was mean to Michael the first year we were together. Like a foster child who acts out in a new house hold, pushing boundaries to see where it starts to crack and crumble–to prove that I’m unlovable. It’s interesting that I would use that as an example. When I was in the foster homes, I didn’t push boundaries. I was always on my very best behavior.

When we met I was in a absolutely tremendous amount of pain. My father had just died, the only person who understood me and loved me. I had left my husband a year ago abruptly to enter into a new relationship with a domestically violent abuser. I was very open and honest about all that, thinking Michael would be like, no thanks! But he didn’t. And in my backwards way of thinking, I punished him for that.

I didn’t really understand it, but now I do. Or at least I’m starting to.

I would act badly, and I knew I was acting badly, but I justified it in my mind thinking, you signed up for this, buddy.

Anyhow, I hope that I can recover. I hope that I can fix it. He deserves it.

I want good memories.