Tag Archives: Gaslighting

This Darkened Path Of Self-Examination

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Your vain cold words wielded stark like an ax
against a tree because you’re cold in spite
of conflagration blazing behind you
but that ax slinks solo chopping at that
frozen sea, once us, so insufficient…

and now?  It is just more ice-pick chipping,
adding to that devastating sea
of loathing and despair you wallow in,
you, leper in the Dead Sea of yourself.

And common grief can crack a frozen wall,
but frozen sea?  Alas, this grief looms large!
Singular…and you giving, so giving…
but only of more death and dumb destruction…

where was this giving when there was something
more to give besides grief and a pecking,
a chippy picking needle peck peck peck ing?

I’m searching in corners dark, difficult
because the light is empty, Fool…and ‘neath
barrage of comments belittling, gory
I face our scandal torrid, flaccid, hoary                                                  (our story)
which is the scandal in every last story
that you refuse to read…instead you hide
in that pervasive smothering attitude

and as I gasp for breath and fumble with
my flaws in jagged close shuddering dark
you trumpet your search for beams of darkness
that occlude specks of light, light that, blinding,
irritates our eyes to tears and tears that
frozen sea to pieces, tears my frozen
flesh to pieces…tears me into pieces…

It’s difficult, this dimly lighted place
that requires much more, and then some more…
a merciful throne compels honesty,
transparency…that a dictator sees
as only weak capitulation…but

it is here…

In the shadow of incarnation, Here
I find the strength to walk this…this darkened path…
this darkened path of self-examination.

Heartbreaking Every Time

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When I read that article…the gas-lighting kind, that retells my past in the worst of ways in order to paint the writer as the most burdened most fragile but simultaneously most strong survivor ever…we readers are all supposed to get all hushed and quiet and be in awe that somehow the writer survived such horrors…such horrors…

and me, my Baby, with thousands upon thousands of memories utterly different, totally opposite…

The only thing that gets me thru is what my therapist has taught me, that these things are not actually designed to try to tell the truth about history…

…rather, they are spoken in the desperate attempt to explain the writer’s own experience of the present, and much of that experience produced by brain trauma from the past…not the fabricated events.tumblr_nxkbeuPHhR1tpcnfko1_500
I get it…as a person who experienced epic brain trauma from conception…

But it hurts, and is its own form of erasure, of the theft of my agency.

It cracks me up in a way, because 10 years ago the stories painted us as lovey dovey neo hippy refugees from the 70s.  That fit the need of that moment.

It is especially heartbreaking that the hour of my becoming is the hour of unbecoming for the writer…and I am powerless to change that, and held by grudges and judgments in those chains in that place, but only inside the writer’s soul.  For I have slipped my leash at last, and now run free.  And yes…there is a holographic overview of how dysphoria affected those around me, no doubt about it.  They just cannot (or won’t) see the battle I fought to keep greater horrors away.

Yes, there are greater horrors.

I pray that someday the Truth can be partaken of together, and the Truth will set us free.
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To My Judges…

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…you who wrote vociferously to deny me becoming, deny me growth…
…you who wrote to deprive me of my innate destiny to have a perspective, walk thru life and the years, and then have a new perspective from a new place…
…you who wrote to deny forgiveness by telling me that I was unforgiveable…
…you who wrote in denial of a Grandfather’s wisdom that a wise person changes their mind and a fool never…

…this post is for you.

I am free of your judgments.  Take them back to the grave you choose to live in, I want nothing to do with them.

Give me a chance to be responsible and to give and take and live and learn and forgive and be forgiven…give me a chance to be the person I allus was and not this fabricated golem you have created to tell yourself what you think you need to be…give me that chance and I will take it.

But to gas-light me, castigate me and condemn me all the while denying me any means or opportunity to walk forward?

No…Charissa will not play that.

Take it all away and best of luck to you…as for me, I will live in forgiveness, give forgiveness, receive forgiveness, love, laugh, and know that I am perfectly imperfect.

I mourn that you deny me the opportunity to walk a life with you…but from the looks of things you are far more the loser.

That Rock…There

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Clouds overhead, grey, full,
breaking, gathering can’t decide
which direction they are going,
whether they are hunkering down
thick and juicy or simply socializing
in a vaporous convocation that is all
twisty twaddle and no rushing rainfall.

It doesn’t matter, really.  No, really.
It doesn’t matter, because in either case
the sky is constant behind them,
skimming the tops of mountains
and the troughs of wishy-waves
briny and stretching to the spines of stars,
The story of clouds is just pages turning
in The Big Blue-Black Book of Sky.tumblr_nvlu8mBZDH1utvlmvo1_400

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I lay here on the rock, below both
(the pages and the cover) and I feel
its hot rough rocky tongue against
my burnished sweaty salty skin and I am
slick with the sun’s caresses and drunk
on the wind’s soft moaning crooning
trickling down my throat into my heart.

I bury my cheek into the rock
and its unyielding solid comfort
so tharny-steel-brown and white
and let the wind pick at the drops
of sweat on my skin
and the bits of grit
that the rock gave me to
hold me there and grounded.tumblr_nq02opWd2T1sumk4po1_1280Beneath that blue-fade black sky reaching, touching…
Beyond those jumpy clouds roiling, fulminating…
Stretched out on that rock reeking of sun and surf…
Wearing nothing but the sun and the wind and my sweat…
mmmmmm…

I close my eyes and clench my thighs
and cling to stark unyielding comfort
fiercely present and I sing…and I know it…
that rock…there…has been and will be
and in its arms I can be clouds or sky…
or just the wind singing of it, picking at it
for stoney steady souvenir kisses
and pebbly tastes of its embrace enduring

And then I knock and then I melt
and start to flow tangy and hungry
all around and over the rock
and I become conformed and shaped,
imprinted, and tattooed beneath
its scratchy touch and I am
changed and owned…tumblr_nv9yyvvZvO1qllucco2_1280I am marked
wherever I go
whenever I go
it will go with me
that rock unchanging
in the contours
of my heart
even though
it is still
solid and
unchanging

There.

under clouds
under skies
in the wind
inside me
and singing

The Crucible of Grace

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If you seek to extend grace and love to cover over a multitude of sins, the worst thing you can do is undercut that extension by talking about it and pointing it out.  Right?

This weekend has been excruciating, because the long-awaited and much dreaded article outing me to the entire world was published.  And I am letting it stand uncommented on, because the person who wrote it apparently needs this as they deal, process, and move forward in becoming.tumblr_nj9hjr55am1sodq0ro1_1280But it is awful having my voice stolen from me…it is awful being portrayed as a cruel caricature of who I am and who I was…it is tragic to see the consequences of what I chose and lived twisted so tragically as life spins on by and the gravity of the Fall pulls everything to that fierce collision with nothingness…and it is heartbreaking to see the person that I literally would instantly die for, right now this moment, if it would restore them to wholeness, flail around trying to recover their bearings and watch as they grapple with emotions and choices and basically just suffer a sort of death process.

The place this article was published did not contact me (though if they had, I would have said to go ahead…my loved one needs to speak unfettered)…the things that were written, well let’s just say that one person’s account sounds right until another person in a situation gives their lived experience, and then things are usually a lot more complicated and delicate in determining “what happened”.tumblr_n892glA3he1rmz4wdo1_1280Mostly what happened?  The binary.  The binary punished me from the beginning of my life, it trapped my parents into seeing me as someone I wasn’t…it tore my soul in half and left the only option forward for me a dissociation from self and adopting performance as my currency and agency in the world…it left a bloody gaping void within me that never ever could heal, and in which the Love of God was sufficient, but only just…it led to the birth of children who deserved more and got less in spite of me trying to give them everything…

What happened was a flawed imperfect person full of hope and love and wanting only to have kids and love them and raise them up into life did her best in the skin and role of a man…and is now vilified and excoriated for this…what happened is that I was born in a time and place and culture, and practiced the things that I thought were right and true and proper, and those so at odds with what I know now, what I matured into, grew into, and yet how does that undo things that happened 30 years ago?tumblr_nrqhpzN6nu1s5u2cno1_500And what happened was so much pain in my decision to transition that an entire narrative had to shift to account for the horror and the loss of a father…and I read of things, and am painted in ways that just do not match up with what I lived, what I remember, what emails and letters say to me, what other people who knew us and were around us a lot recall…

What happened was my dysphoria and depression and despair did indeed affect my heart and soul, and that affected everyone around me, and likely was the metaphorical equivalent to belts and abuse so does it really even matter if I never did the actual things I am accused of doing?  Actually no…it doesn’t matter that I never did them, because it is clear to me that I was them…poisonous, toxic, radioactive, damned for being absent and cursed for being present and above all accountable for every last ill in those lives so precious to me.

I never really understood before why God’s answer to the horror of the Fall was to come as Jesus to this world, and suffer and die…I do now though.  Because there are no words that I can say that would explain it, justify it, make it right, make it better, disappear it…all I could do would be to simply die in their place…tumblr_nu4nj5Mkg51rdq2opo1_1280…and if I could do that, I would want it to happen hidden, without anyone knowing, and the provision of that death simply being wholeness and happiness for my hearts…

I love you, hearts…I will grieve until the day grief itself is satisfied and all things are made new.  Say on.  Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you must.

I only ask Mama, please hold me close and sustain me in Your Love.

Unplanned Grief #4

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Across the ocean, you,
there without drowning
and I don’t know how
that happened, because
I grieve and take on water
in sputter-gulps and gasps,
dog paddle-fighting every wave.

But this your journey you have chosen
alone and must…choose alone.
I regret so deeply that you also choose
to live this life alone as well.

But I have choices too
and I choose Spring
even though my favorite
season is Fall.

I will always be right here
to offer you swimming lessons,
yes, always and forever…
but I will not drown with you
because how could I see Spring
return to claim her crown?

So instead I sit and watch waves
in this unexpected storm, this fat
cloudburst of grief unplanned
and out of budget.

I grieve the living when the living lie
in tattered shadows of what could be.
I wish it were different, but nonetheless,
I am okay, in spite of all these griefs
unplanned.tumblr_nth3mqRDE01s5neh1o1_1280

Unplanned Grief #3

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Thus shall I let go
(like trees release their breath
and birds release their flight)
of all that keeps us bound.
Blood by blood
and hope by hope
and I swim, harder,
faster now.

Because my grief
is my life boat,
I know I cannot drown.
But I still hurt for you,
your loss your sadness
crumpled, misshapen
in all this…and this,
most of all I hurt
for the aloneness
of your journey

you unmoored
from past and future
dark and just beyond
the curvature of your
moon so dark tonite.

But tho I hurt,
though I have
no tears left
I am alive
and I embrace
my own life
as my own
and mindful,
vested in
this journey
that I take
and undertake
at last.heartwild-e1439930587744

Unplanned Grief #2

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Waves in steely oceans
of sandy sorrow and me
bound by blood and bone
to you alone, forever
in red-stains wrapping white
chains soft and firm with
my gallant foolish choice
to summon forth
a fragment of God.

Before I know it
I’m on the edge
of another wave,
silver, falling green
wave of grief
when I recall
you have never
died…you are here,
struggling to get
through your own
waves, and…searching
for the way
to survive into
your life in spite
of me.

Those dreams I held for you
(I hold them for you)
they keep me in that still place
and I fight it when those feelings
blow away as easily as my breath,

They were my dreams anyway,
not yours, and life — yours —unfolds
under your nose, a mole emerging
from our messy lawn of dandelions
and daisies and bluegrass…and your dreams?
I dunno, they taste like a conjured normal
new and unfamiliar to us bothtumblr_ntboapcTuc1s5neh1o1_1280

Unplanned Grief #1

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I hadn’t planned on grieving.
It just sorta happened, sorta blossomed
like a small grey cloud appearing
against that impossibly happy blue sky
while life scurried by, rushed across
the intersection of Existence and Vine
and the fluffy cloud became clouds
and clouds and they clawed their way across
that untouched sky so blue so blue,
bluer than my heart or my breath.

Your body is still warm
(but oh so cold inside me)
your mind whirring on
(but seized-up inside my soul)
your voice chatters (in my mind)
like squirrels or gears
in someone else’s ears,
while your lungs billow
poisons and false memories
in out in out in out in

and my grief sucks in
and my grief blows out
and so on…tumblr_neh6qd5wIg1qg7ipyo1_1280

Describing Our Reality

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“Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted,” for centuries
by the refutation of our experience and our instincts
in a culture which validates only male experience.

“The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us.

“We therefore have a primary obligation to each other:
not to undermine each others’ sense of reality
for the sake of expediency;
not to gaslight each other.

“Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience.
Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake,
beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.”

— Adrienne Rich

tumblr_nh3hebZlLQ1ts7x8eo1_1280I read this quote this morning, and instantly gravitated to it…because it is shocking to me just how fast my insides shatter and my heart just crumples, with just a word.  It scares me when this happens…because then the ripples start, and I begin to question the prior words, deeds, experiences…were they real?  Or were they careful camouflage and thus by their very existence invalidation of who I am because they were needed to provide cover?tumblr_nsr37bWK4G1qat5pio1_500The mind says they were real…but my unprotected heart recoiling in the shock and pain so unexpected begins to fly so frantic at the bars of its cage.  And like a small captive bird it beats itself bloody against those bars that suddenly are there…just like that…because now I know there is that “step of translation” between who people see me to be and who they then speak to me as…truthfully that shreds me inside when it happens, because I have been free in myself and flowing…until with a thunktumblr_nh1c03OrOL1qzif7oo1_1280this flying bird hits that static glass wall, invisible, unexpected, but no less devastating and seeming inevitable…and I do feel insane when I cleave to the truth of my own experience after I have hit that wall of misgendering.

Adrienne Rich speaks of the undermining of each other’s sense of reality…

…mine is suffering right now.tumblr_lu09df5BDy1qadujfo1_1280Oh…not who I know myself to be…but rather who others know me to be.  That feeling of insanity that she references above.  Because when people are around me for a length of time, they do indeed experience me as female in my brain, my heart, my emotions and expressions, my love and affection, my orientation towards co-operation and collaboration…tumblr_nkhj1rFi2Y1s8tx41o1_500…but then that male pronoun just flies out seemingly unbidden, and for the life of my I cannot understand how it can be…except that it must be that the gravity of my body and physical self is too powerful for the evidence of my heart and soul and spirit to overcome and I am chained to that outer shell diminishing…and thus diminished and reduced to mere outward appearance…and doomed to the dirt…yeah, it hurts.

I don’t know what to do about it, because it is beyond my control.

I guess just surrender to this reality but in the Name of Jesus…and let Mama work it to my good and bring me peace.tumblr_nlzzm3QWBV1sq9drqo1_1280