I can't know how much of what you write is true, particularly because *you* don't even know how much of it is true -- as you've mentioned. But it is intense, to say the least... and it brings me back, to a lot of things I haven't thought about in so long. I was 93 lbs when I started anti depressants, which a year later made me 125 lbs., and still increasing. The pills were barely helping me, so I stopped them on my own, which gave me surreal experiences as I was withdrawing. A reassuring talk with a pharmacist saved me, on the most unsettling night, when somehow I was able to drive to the pharmacy through the haze of paranoia I was feeling. Years later I would go through ECT -- a regrettable decision -- but I wasn't presented with any other option at the time, and I had a what-the-hell attitude, of thinking that I couldn't go any lower. Much of that feeling resulted from so many of the men I'd dated abusing me -- the mirror image of what you've written about, in your autobiography. I remember, with incredible clarity, waking up my boyfriend, every time he fell asleep -- his only escape from the searing pain from a shoulder injury -- waking him up to have sex, because I thought he might buy that -- he might believe that I was waking him up for sex, rather than my real reason: to interrupt his only escape from his pain, which he found in slumber. And he did indeed, buy it. Knowing he was in no shape to have sex, but I could try to get him aroused in a show of sincerity, made this an effortless and safe endeavor. It was an incredibly satisfying thing to watch him try, but unable to have sex -- but still it came nowhere close to "causing" him just a drop, of the pain that he had inflicted on me, for years. I was amazed that he didn't catch on to what I was doing -- but it assuaged any guilt I may even have potentially felt -- because he didn't think I was smart enough, or had enough power in the relationship, to even try to pay him back for all that he had done to me for years. If there is any power women have in living with the near constant abuse by men, and the life endured as second class citizens - it's that they never think we're smart enough, capable enough or fed-up enough (because we're not actually human beings, not really people, we are simply devoted servants) to cause them pain. It doesn't come close to inflicting the amt of pain that they casually and routinely cause us -- still, I'll take the win.
I can't know how much of what you write is true, particularly because *you* don't even know how much of it is true -- as you've mentioned. But it is intense, to say the least... and it brings me back, to a lot of things I haven't thought about in so long. I was 93 lbs when I started anti depressants, which a year later made me 125 lbs., and still increasing. The pills were barely helping me, so I stopped them on my own, which gave me surreal experiences as I was withdrawing. A reassuring talk with a pharmacist saved me, on the most unsettling night, when somehow I was able to drive to the pharmacy through the haze of paranoia I was feeling. Years later I would go through ECT -- a regrettable decision -- but I wasn't presented with any other option at the time, and I had a what-the-hell attitude, of thinking that I couldn't go any lower. Much of that feeling resulted from so many of the men I'd dated abusing me -- the mirror image of what you've written about, in your autobiography. I remember, with incredible clarity, waking up my boyfriend, every time he fell asleep -- his only escape from the searing pain from a shoulder injury -- waking him up to have sex, because I thought he might buy that -- he might believe that I was waking him up for sex, rather than my real reason: to interrupt his only escape from his pain, which he found in slumber. And he did indeed, buy it. Knowing he was in no shape to have sex, but I could try to get him aroused in a show of sincerity, made this an effortless and safe endeavor. It was an incredibly satisfying thing to watch him try, but unable to have sex -- but still it came nowhere close to "causing" him just a drop, of the pain that he had inflicted on me, for years. I was amazed that he didn't catch on to what I was doing -- but it assuaged any guilt I may even have potentially felt -- because he didn't think I was smart enough, or had enough power in the relationship, to even try to pay him back for all that he had done to me for years. If there is any power women have in living with the near constant abuse by men, and the life endured as second class citizens - it's that they never think we're smart enough, capable enough or fed-up enough (because we're not actually human beings, not really people, we are simply devoted servants) to cause them pain. It doesn't come close to inflicting the amt of pain that they casually and routinely cause us -- still, I'll take the win.