Chicken Cacciatora

As I said, cooking and cleaning the kitchen gives me a feeling of accomplishment. Today I couldn't do much about healing. I made a few phone calls, talked to a therapist from AMANECER, a community counseling service. It's very hard to find a therapy service that doesn't cost a lot of money and at the same time provides good therapy. Private therapy sessions can cost up to $200 and I don't have that kind of money. Support groups are formed by people absorbed by their own pain, not so able to help you with yours.
Today is one of those days when the hours go by and time becomes irrelevant and I have nothing to show for myself at the end of it.
I decided I'm going to make Chicken Cacciatora for dinner.
Bought 2 somewhat organic chicken thighs from Whole Foods. Put them in a frying pan with some olive oil, to get some color.
I minced 1 onion, 2 medium carrots, celery, a handful of parsley.
After the chicken got some color, I put it on the cutting board and cut it into smaller pieces.
I sauteed the minced veggies in fresh olive oil. I added oregano, salt, pepper, ground nutmeg, 1 garlic clove. When the veggies were done, I added the cut chicken, poured a glass of white wine over it, let it simmer. When the alcohol has evaporated, add one can of organic tomato juice. Let cook for about 15-20 minutes.
I bought the veggies from the farmers market and there is a difference in taste.
I will have a glass of wine and watch Notting Hill, while eating dinner.

Pain and Anger

I never drank outside of a social setting, never did more drugs than the average college student. I was so proud of being addiction free. It was my strength.
Although, during college I would go home to visit and get my fix of pain and daily humiliation from my abusive family.
My father has been an alcoholic for as long as I can remember him. He's a deeply disturbed individual, a recreational sadist yet a functional member of a respectable society. My mother, his victim, aside from living a highly codependent relationship with him, has destroyed any resemblance to a human being. She has no feelings, although she displays outbursts of anger any chance you'll give her. Together they form a picture perfect family who learned how to guard their dark little secrets no matter what it takes.
The amount of abuse physical and emotional I had to suffer as a kid, I won't even mention anymore, because I thought that's what everybody had to go through to deserve a chance in life. It was like a test: the more I endured, the stronger I thought I would turn out to be. I was afraid of dying many times a day. I thought I was inherently bad and had to pay for something I must of done in a previous life. I also thought I helped my mother cope with her own misery, stemmed from the same alcoholic father, who raped/beat/abused her.
Pain was something I thought was a must, if I wanted to live. I purposely sabotaged myself when I felt I would get lucky, or close to winning. I didn't know how to live without pain. I didn't know I had the right to be happy, without being in pain.
Through college, before memories surfaced, I would go visit my parents and they would give me the pain that allowed me to unleash some more built up anger into the world. I lived angrily for the entirety of my 20's. Anger was the fuel for my actions. Anger was how I related to people. Anger was how I graduated Cum Laude. Anger was the basis for the stripper who had to work the pole to pay for her tuition and living expenses.
After I remembered the abuse, I cut contact with my family. I also felt devoid. Had no more reasons to be angry. Where would I get my pain fix? Where would I get anger to propel me into life's struggles?
I felt compelled to miss my family. I realized I miss the pain. I did have an addiction, after all.

sorting out emotions

As I already mentioned, my emotional life is a gray mesh. I can't really distinguish love from joy, from sex, from optimism, from anticipation, from acceptance.
Since I'm being assaulted by all these memories, not all of them bad, I'll try to categorize them by emotions, clean up my emotional department, better known as Limbic System and/or Primitive Brain, that I have kept closed for centuries. For years, I literally had a recurring dream of pitch black darkness. I was floating through this darkness and I saw a tiny door, with light all around it, but before I could reach and open it, I would wake up.
The door has finally opened after the ominous death of my pedophile uncle. Emotions that I thought I wouldn't have to feel ever again flooded me like a river of fire. They were all locked behind the tiny door and eager to escape into my conscious mind.
After the initial shock, I started recognizing certain emotions that I never knew existed. The first and most important one was SAFETY. I never had a safe spot. I never knew where my mind should go when I was in danger.
I remember the first time I felt safe: I was taking a nap with my grandma. We were spooning and she felt enormous, fat, warm. Her giant body was like a fortress and nothing bad could happen to me if she was around me. That is safety. The feeling of safety should be made of acceptance, cause grandma accepted me for what I was. To her, I was perfect. She was teaching me day by day how to function, without yelling, without scaring me, without judgement. There was also Joy in knowing I was being accepted, therefore valuable to someone. And Joy + Acceptance = Love. I have experienced LOVE, which is the single, most important feeling in the whole human experience.

Cooking

Ever since memories of the incest resurfaced, I gained about 20 pounds. Moments of empty desperation I filled with food.
I'm learning how to cook, to keep myself from gaining more weight and to make my diet all organic. I refuse to eat out, except for special events.
Some recipes bring me comfort not only when I eat the final product, but even when I start thinking about them, or cooking. I find repetitive actions, like washing dishes, to be soothing. They allow me to free my mind and my thoughts will go just about anywhere.
I go to the farmer's market once a week, to buy fresh produce. Organic, grass fed meats I either buy at Whole Foods or at the Santa Monica Farmers Market. I even found a few places where I could order meat online. The point is: I like to know where my food is coming from.

Movie watching

I watch a lot of films and many of them influence the way I think and view things. Also I find watching movies a good exercise in the emotion versus reason debate. A good film will make me feel or think about a wide range of emotions. There are films that make me cry, there are films that make me roll with laughter.
As an incest survivor, I have trouble distinguishing emotions and naming them. My emotional life is a confusing gray mesh. Sometimes, when watching films, I can experience certain emotions in the safety of my living room and without endangering myself. It happens through empathy, I guess.

Old life, new life

I have been a stripper for a long time. Before memories of the incest resurfaced, I really enjoyed teasing men for a living. I would get drunk on power and I would make them repeat to me: "You're beautiful". I didn't know why it felt good, until I started remembering all of those times my father and my uncle told me I was ugly and good for nothing, but please men.
The incest hurt twice: once when it happened, the second time when I finally remembered it. I won't count the numerous times I unknowingly hurt myself, as a reenactment of hurts from the past.
I've decided my life can't be just about the incest. I am more than that. I am a human being with small but steady accomplishments. My life is an infinite playground, much like the universe.

New problems, new solutions

I called the RAINN hotline and told a complete stranger how my father and my uncle abused me, starting with the age of 3. It was the first time I was speaking out loud about the abuse and bringing it to light after a roughly 28 years of amnesia.
The minute memories resurfaced, I put my life on hold, curled up into a ball and wanted to sleep a lot. Many people call this depression, although I don't think I was really depressed, I was just overwhelmed.
I stopped working, I stopped functioning. Taking a shower was a complex activity that I couldn't wrap my mind around. At times I would eat enormous quantities of food, just to bring myself back into reality when I would feel the stomach ache. I was on a different planet: the abuse planet, reliving every goddamn detail of every lost memory I ever managed to somehow forget.

The Gordian Knot

My uncle died of liver cancer, having been a drunk for most of his life. I got pregnant with the help of a man I hardly knew and had an abortion that left me emotionally crippled.
The news of my uncle's death, together with the shame and guilt of the abortion, brought up a number of dreams and flashbacks of the incest. I could finally remember, but I was not ready to process.
Of course, throughout my life I felt like an alien, an intruder to people's lives. I felt like a weirdo, so painfully different, yet I couldn't put my finger on what the difference between me and others really was. I was a girl, with two eyes, one nose, two arms, two legs. I had reasonable moral standards, only lying occasionally and to the purpose of self defense. I never purposely hurt anybody and yet I could never make friends. People seemed to take me either for a doormat, or an arrogant bitch. No one has ever found a redeeming quality about me, or something they could really care about. Consequently, I turned to sex, to fill the void and feel less lonely.
I could never explain these things about me, until I finally remembered. And oh, did I remember! Everything sprung upon me like a jack in the box, everywhere I would turn, every little action I would do, would trigger a new and more painful memory. At times I wished I could forget again. I wished it to stop. I remembered and relived the pain of the incest a thousand times over.

Hello

Hi, I'm Leah and I'm an incest survivor.
Today is my birthday and I'm starting this blog as a gift to myself. The goal is healing, hence the name: Thirty Percent Soul, cause that's all I'm left with after 30 years of living with my memories.
I read many books, I've been in therapy, I tried self help groups and I can't say they failed or anything, they just didn't help me as much as I had hoped.
A custom healing process, that will have at its focal point my spiritual evolution, would be the best thing to do, since I don't really trust anyone with my well being. I am a damaged soul, after all and trust is a delicate issue for me.
I know many years could pass until I will actually see results, but time is all I got. One day at a time, one post at a time, I will put the pieces of the puzzle together, to recreate me. No procrastination!