Need I say more?

Way to go CA- highs about times you open your freaking eyes! Reading this article and what the victims had to say... Ugh... it reminded me of all I had to say at my own trial. The devastating after math of rape and the toll it takes on anyone close to them. I can't help this time of year and being haunted by all the phone calls, the screaming and the crying, and helplessness of my family as to what to do to calm me, all worried sick not only about my fragile mental state, but for my safety.

This article aint pretty....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090901/ap_en_ce/us_fashion_designer

I don't like August 30th

Today just Royally sucks. And I mean it as it in today- now 12:01 August 30th, 2009. Yes- I know my blog clock is off and I have no desire to fix it, nor do I posses the technical skill to know how to or care.

The summer season is just the worst for me to cope with. There’s body image and lighter clothes, then there’s the two days from June-September where two separate unrelated incidents of Sexual Assault sent my world spinning inside out and upside down.

All the bad news this week with child abduction/rape cases has not sat well with me. It makes me sick to my stomach, especially when today is such a hard day for me.

But I will try to breathe- and imagine pleasant things.

I Just don't get it...I try, but I don't

Two of my friends alerted me to this story today.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/08/27/california.kidnap.shed/index.html

Had I not been on vacation, I probably would have seen it and commented on it.

But after reading about it, I have few words. I just don’t understand how this is possible… Like Josef Fritzl (infamous Austrian Incest Dad) how no one could have seen anything? How do you raise an abducted girl who bears two of your children from rape in a shed, live there for what I can’t even comprehend to calculate for how many years and neighbors not notice something array?

At the time frame of the anniversary of when my own rape surrounds me, this just eats at my heart and raises my awareness of just how flawed our system is, and that we live in a society of denial. Until one is caught. Then law enforcement decides to pay attention and do something. In my view, while I wish this amazing woman for surviving what must have been pure hell hope and healing, the legal action comes too little, too late.

Next to Normal

As a belated 35th birthday present, one of my former roommates and best friends took me to see the Broadway Hit “Next to Normal” in which the lovely and fantastically talented actress, Alice Ripley, won the Tony and plays the lead character.

The play takes the audience on a journey of watching a middle class family battle, grapple and struggle with a house wife and mother’s debilitating mental illness of Bi Polar Disorder- a condition we learn later in the play that was brought on by a devastating traumatic event in her life in early adulthood. I laughed. I cried. I laughed, then cried again. It was one of the most poignant and riveting musicals I have seen since Spring Awakening.

While this musical is not for everyone, I would highly recommend seeing it. It especially hit home for me. I don’t have bipolar disorder- but having had Anorexia for so much of my life, this musical really made me stop and think. Surely- everyone’s family has their skeleton’s in their closets. No one’s family is “Normal.” But when you have a sick parent or as in the case of my family, a sick child, this play for the first time in my life made me see things from a very different perspective; the affect that the person afflicted with a mental illness has on their loved ones around them.

Be it an eating disorder, substance abuse, depression or any other mental ailment, such illnesses often take a powerful hold over the person suffering from them. The person becomes so wrapped up in their illness that they don’t know who they are anymore. It becomes their identity and while they know it’s upsetting to their family and friends, they lack the mental capacity to truly grasp that those close to them are suffering too watching their son/daughter/friend go through this.

As I watched this performance, I could for the first time recognize and appreciate after all the years of my family seeing me suffer from an eating disorder, what they must have felt and probably still feel like. What do we do? She’s been to every Doctor, been on every freaking drug, even tube fed. We’ve exhausted our finances, the insurance is running out. God damn it and exasperated… WHAT CAN WE DO TO MAKE HER EAT?

The hardest message in this play for me to walk away with was that my family and friends can not answer this question. I can’t answer the question either- but I know that ultimately, the solution and the answer only lies within me. Recovery is not always a smooth process. You are not going to sit on a couch for an hour and walk out cured. Sometimes, it often gets worse before it gets better. I’ve fallen, gotten back up, fallen, and gotten back up again. Not giving the whole plot away, but there is a scene in this play where this mother’s frustration with her illness has hit its breaking point and she says to the therapist she’s ready to flat out give up. He says… “Stay with me. Try again.” I don’t think I have ever walked out of a Broadway play with a line like that replaying in my head over and over again…. not even from Spring Awakening which is now tied for first place with Next to Normal as the best pieces of Modern theatre I have ever seen.

WHY?

There are a lot of things in this world that I just don’t understand. My biggest one on this list is why do people rape? Another big one after this God-awful just gut and heart wrenching story is how could a mother driving five kids in a car drive drunk and stoned? 2 of the children were her own. The other three were her brother’s three little girls. The only one that survived this senseless, reckless and tragic car crash was her first born son. She killed herself, the remaining four children and three others in another vehicle on a Westchester Highway returning from a family camping trip. See link below on Diane Shuler.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/nyregion/05crash.html?_r=1&hpw

I try not to be judgmental because not all the facts have come out yet, but it makes me very very angry. I mean the facts are that she was drunk and stoned. Toxicology reports don’t lie. What’s even more wacked is that all friends who knew her for years and observed her that weekend said she was fine- that they have never ever seen evidence of a drug or alcohol problem- never even seen her pick up a drink or a ciggie. Even the camp owner who knows her because the family stayed there often said she was very physically close to her when they said goodbye to depart home and didn’t smell a thing. So when exactly did she drink this alcohol? We will never know because the husband left in a separate car going on a fishing trip. Were the kids screaming and it all just got too much for her to deal with so she pulled over and had cocktail hour? Did she have a fight with her husband that morning?

All we know is that she was drinking and puffing the magic dragon based on the blood tests and the Absolute Vodka bottle found at the crash scene. How any Mother could put her own children and her sibling’s children in this kind of situation is enraging and unspeakable. In my view, it makes it worse that she’s dead because now the families of the victims will probably never see any justice.

Something about this story isn’t right and doesn’t add up. Why does a person who never drinks just randomly chug a bottle of Vodka? Something tells me the husband knows more to this story than he’s saying about what was bothering her or knows of a possible substance abuse problem. Unless the boogie man pulled this woman over, forced to her to drink booze and smoke weed, something was very wrong with her that morning. I am hoping her little son once he recovers from his injuries can shed some light to this story.

This is a horrific and devastating tragedy. Please keep all the victims and their surviving family members in your prayers.