Pleasing Master

i just asked v if i could blog rather than going to SL.  i was about to blog about kalli.  Before i got more than a title and opening sentence written, kalli asked me to read her blog.  It was about me.  i told kalli that i was going to write it anyway because i know i'll express myself more cogently if i'm not anticipating anyone's immediate reaction or limited to the space in a buffer.  Writing also clarifies my own thoughts for me.  i promised i'd be willing to discuss it with her afterwards.

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This morning Master told me to apologize to kalli.  my very first thought was to say "yes, my Master" and i was pleased with that.  i very seldom even stop to consider a serious order any longer.  i am but to obey.  i know that most of the time lately.  It is reassuring.  He commands.  i obey.  Period.  

Despite the fact that i had every intention of obeying, it wasn't long before i started to feel annoyed and having to issue an apology i didn't feel i owed.  i immediately started tossing around phrasing in my mind which would pass muster as an acceptable apology to Master but still convey the reality that it was forced and not genuine to kalli.  

Yeah, i am but to obey... in my own damn way with my own bitchy twist when i feel like it.  This needs work.  Instead of arguing with Master, i try to manipulate conditions in more subtle ways to better fit my liking.  Normally this is where it ends.  i do this and either i get away with it or i don't.

Today was different.  Today i said to myself that i would just go ahead and issue the apology because it would please Master.  It was like a lightbulb went on.  i don't have to like it or agree with it in order to do it without an attitude.  All i have to do is remind myself why i am doing it.  i want Master to be pleased and my obedience will please Him.  This isn't new information but this morning it clicked in a new way.  It wasn't enough before to get me to set aside my own irrelevant thoughts but, in this moment of clarity, it became enough.

Unfortunately, my serenity of surrender to pleasing Master turned out to be short-lived.  It should be enough motivation.  i know that.  i want it to be.  And when i reread old blog entries, i am always disgusted with how much they are about what i want and how little they are about serving Master.  i keep telling myself "Do not ask what your Master can do for you but what you can do for your Master".  i'm trying to make it my new mantra.  

i don't want to be so self-centered when it comes to Him.  i don't want to be needy.  As upset as i was last night, as much as i cried, i was angry with myself for adding stress on Him and taking Him away from either other things that needed to be dealt with or from leisure time.  i want to be an asset to Him not a liability.  i want to give more than i take and i haven't been lately.  i don't quite know how to do that with the club yet.

In any case, i started thinking about kalli during the day and getting mad at her.  i was annoyed that she had gone to Master before talking to me directly.  she had every right to though, i know, and i was a wreck last night and signed off SL early so she didn't even have a good opportunity.  i wouldn't have answered her on Yahoo even if she had tried.  i was too freaked out in my panic attack.

Then i was mad that she had seemingly lied to Him.  Master was under the impression that i had told her to return from the mall which i never did.  i never told her to do ANYTHING, or rau either for that matter.  i never gave anyone any orders.  While i was inclined to feel as if her giving Him that mis-impression was malicious, i had to admit that there was a lot of confusion during the time of that conversation and also that i was out of it enough to have possibly missed or misheard things that were said.  Today kalli said that she hadn't been able to convey her message clearly to Master last night and has since clarified it with Him.

Beyond that, i was mad about kalli's seeming betrayal because i had defended her to someone in IM just yesterday.  i had explained in ambiguous enough terms so as not to share any private information that she has been through a great deal both financially and personally of late and really is a good person who has been there for me in the past.  i had explained to this someone that i felt bad because she and i had been fairly close before she lost internet access and that i felt like she came back expecting nothing to have changed but that things HAD changed.  Things moved forward as they inevitably do and dynamics and relationships and people themselves evolved.  Not only did i change, but she has too.  Nevertheless, i had chided myself to this someone for not being more patient with her and not making more of an effort.  And, though it had become my tendency to remain off SL if she was the only other one on the sims, i had purposely spent some time there with her yesterday making what i thought was an effort to be nicer.  In light of all that, her going to Master with untruths about me was all the more upsetting.

i spent a good deal of time today considering the apology.  i didn't want to deal with her directly because i didn't trust myself not to get into a conflict with her.  i was afraid that if i was in text and she was on voice that she would manipulate the conversation to appear as if i had been out of line in some way.  i decided that if i owed her an apology then i must owe one to rau too since the one statement i had made had been addressed to both of them.  

i wrote an apology that explained things honestly and gave her the benefit of the doubt.  Master believed that i hadn't acted wrongly but still said i needed to apologize for making her feel bad.  i included that along with some things that i truly did feel i should say.  i offer praise which was legitimately due her and rau too.  i apologized for the state of mind i was in yesterday, for which i feel genuinely disappointed in myself for being unable to keep in perspective and function in spite of.

i'm not sure exactly what to say as a more direct response to kalli's blog.  i'm not likely to ever be that person who gives off warm fuzzies.  It's not me.  i guess we need to meet somewhere in the middle.  There's got to be a middle ground between the person who has been telling Master for the past couple of days what a great job kalli is doing as well as defending her privately and the bitch she is usually confronted with on SL.  

The flip side of that is that she needs to make an effort too.  she has absolutely no idea as to most of what i'm dealing with and i feel no need to make her aware.  But she needs to realize that she doesn't have the monopoly on tribulations.  Also, a lot of what she takes as personal attack is probably just my personality and largely the way i treat everyone.  While i need to work on taking the edge off of it in her case, she needs to make an effort to be less sensitive.  My sarcasm is rarely personal.

i don't harbor any grudges or bad feelings toward kalli and hope that things can move forward certainly peacefully and ideally in friendship.

Confusion

It is one of those days when my mind is racing with a million half-formed thoughts and i'm constantly on the verge of tears.  Every thought i have gives way to more confusion.

-Why is Master THIS mad at me?

-Should i have a better idea of why but i'm just in denial?

-Will He still be mad tonight?

-How long will He stay mad?

-Can i handle it this time?

-How do i avoid it next time if i don't even fully understand it?

-What if He doesn't believe i don't understand?

-Will He punish me and how?

-Why didn't He believe i expected Him to punish me last night?

i checked my phone every ten seconds today hoping for a text that never came, except ones from my former friend-turned-judge.  It has been excruciating.  There was a faculty meeting at work so i had to stay an extra hour totally unable to focus on a typically useless meeting.  i cancelled plans after work to go straight home, in the futile expectation that there might be an online message from Master.  There was nothing.

It's not that Master hasn't been furious with me before.  He has.  But i've usually had a much clearer idea of why and He hasn't left things on SUCH a bad note and then had no communication for twenty-four hours.  As much as i fear and loathe the whip, i'd rather He had whipped me mercilessly a million times over and then told me He loved me.  i keep seeing the words from His yahoo message in front of my eyes.  i saw them all day, everywhere i looked.

kennel

I am going to bed

And that was it.  Nothing else.  No "goodnight".  No "mine".  No "sleep well".  No "I love you".  Not even "I love you but I'm disappointed in you."   All there was to taper the signs of His anger was the fact that all His screaming had finally reduced itself lowercase letters.   

So i spent today cranky and upset and teary and having only some idea why Master is mad and not knowing how mad He will be when i see Him next.  i don't even know if i have a word to give how i am feeling.  i guess empty describes it best.  And i feel lost.  i feel as if my foundation was kicked out from under me.  

i was starting to get angry which was probably more of a defense mechanism than anything else.  When i finally got home from work i reread the slave creed.  i knew i needed to.  What i came away with is that Master usually treats me so well that when He doesn't, whether intentionally or inadvertently, i feel a loss.  i'm not entitled to hear that i am loved but i do, nearly every day.  i hope today turns out to be one of those days.

Perspectives

It's amazing to me how different people can have such different perspectives on the same things.  All through my life others have tried to push me in the direction of making the decisions they thought best for me.  When i was small it was family members and sometimes teachers.  As i grew it became friends and colleagues.  Yet two things have held true over the years.  

The first is that i ultimately tend to do what i believe i should.  i do consider advice and input and pertinent information but there's usually a part of my gut that relentlessly steers me where i am to go.  It doesn't necessarily steer me down the easiest path or the most mainstream one but i do believe it's the one meant for me, the one on which i belong.  It's not as much a matter of weighing evidence as knowing which way i feel i should be headed.

The second is that i surround myself with the people who are going to support my choices.  For better or worse they are mine to make and i'm not going to waste effort in justifying or explaining myself to people over and over again.  There are very few people in my life i believe are even entitled to such explanation and, of those, most either don't need one or don't feel any better having received one anyhow.  

i said goodbye to a friend today because he refuses to support the path i am following.  i have explained it to him and tolerated more intrusion on his part that i would have from most people, recognizing that his intentions are to help me.  i have also told him point blank several times that i heard his protests and don't welcome more.  i thought he had understood and agreed to try to be a friend and not inflict his ideas upon me any longer.

Today at work, i was intermittently in tears.  i was so upset about Master being mad at me and confused about exactly what happened last night.  The ironic thing is that, had my friend actually stopped being so damn judgmental, i probably would have felt safe enough to share some of my fears with him.

Instead he texted me repeatedly about what he considers acceptable options of life changes i can make with his approval.  Who the hell does he think he is?  i'd have a hard time naming a handful of people who express more dissatisfaction with their own lives than he does with his.  He even said recently that his reticence at my new path was in part due to his own jealousy.  Why should what he thinks i should do outweigh what i think?  Why should i give more credence to his opinions than my own?  

i'm hurt and frustrated by his actions.  i'd never treat him or another friend with such pompous disregard for their own choices.  i can't count the number of times i've offered a friend input then backed off to support what i expected to be a disastrous decision.  Often it was and i was there to pick up the pieces.  Sometimes i was wrong and didn't realize it until afterwards.  Either way, my role as friend was not to dictate action but to support it.  i am disappointed that he can't or won't or doesn't see things this way.  

i don't know when he and i became friends but it has to have been at least eight or nine years ago.  This is the first time i really feel disappointed in him.  i'm not angry at him, just sad that he's not letting there be a role for him in the path my life is going to follow.  That he can't see i have every right to make my own mistakes, even if that is what i am doing, is so much less than i would have expected of him and so much less than i feel i have given of myself to him.  

i know that moving to Master will result in the severing of some ties and the erecting of some boundaries i likely wouldn't have had to deal with otherwise.  i'm prepared for that.  i just hadn't expected this particular friendship to be one of them and maybe that's why i'm finding it as painful as i am.  It hurts that his agenda for me trumps my own and, in his mind, gives him grounds to act as he has been.  There was no choice to make.  It was a no brainer.  i told him that i don't want to hear from him and to leave me alone.  

To end on a positive note, i've connected with many new people lately and they do accept me.  They don't all share gor or slavery or any one commonality necessarily but my support system is expanding and there are people in my life who will hear me and know where it is coming from.  They will tell me when i'm full of shit but they will let me be so if that's the direction i need to take.  They will support my victories or pick me up if i get knocked on my ass.  

Thanks to Master, i've gotten better at letting the newest of them in.  i still have a long way to go but i am grateful for the progress.  i have more people i would call true friends today than i have in a long time, maybe ever.  i know i have a long way to go in terms of letting them get close and reciprocate the caring i give them but i also know that no friendship is ever going to involve anyone undermining my own decisions in favor of theirs.  So it is with sorrow but not regret that i leave behind someone i used to call my friend.

Patterns

The thing about patterns is that i can't always see them until either someone points them out to me or they are so far extended that i am feeling like crap and in deep trouble already.  My patterns of response to many situations have changed so much lately that i am amazed.  But then other patterns linger and those need work.

Master is right about Him not needing to know every good thing i do.  i haven't felt a need to point them out to Him so much lately either.  But He said that i should be doing them because they are the right thing.  i have to admit that i don't care in the least what the right thing is.  i do them because it is what Master wants and it would please Him.  

That's true on SL especially because i wear His collar there.  In rl i don't, not yet anyhow.  my job and home require a huge degree of aggression and dominance on my part and i don't know how to filter that out at certain times but not others.  i'm scared to.  i'm scared to have the vulnerability of forfeiting that aggression without the security of Master's rl collar to back it up.  my personality has long been a defense mechanism and i know that shield needs to be let down.  i just don't know how to do it in rl, away from Master, and i don't feel safe trying.

Master said that i know He wouldn't talk about punishing me if He was going to and that He would just do it.  That's not a pattern i've noticed though, now that He has pointed it out, it is the case.  Still, Master's talking about punishing me is frightening.  i always wish He would just do it instead of leaving me to wait and wonder.  i didn't take it lightly that He was just talking about it and therefore wouldn't really punish me and i don't think that's a bad thing.  i have no doubt that the second i get a cavalier attitude about being punished, i'm headed for a BIG punishment.

The other major pattern i see here is that the further i get from a punishment, the less fine-tuned my behavior gets.  i am highly aware of this pattern and i see it coming and do everything i think i can to prevent it from repeating but it inevitably does.  It's been a week since i've been punished in any way.  

Some part of me gets anxious and insecure.  i live for the moments when Master scolds or warns me and then says "good girl" when i respond "yes, Master".  And some piece of me wants and needs to feel the safely of being knocked on my ass and reminded in no uncertain terms that i am slave and Master's.  i know this but i need it demonstrated.  

That's not a good thing.  It makes Master's life more arduous.  i know how much stress He is under and i don't want to add to it.  i thought i'd been very careful this time to be conscious of this pattern and not allow myself to do things to provoke Him.  i've thought that before.  i always screw it up.  

At the risk of whining, i'm also under a lot of stress and am feeling it acutely right now.  i think Master knows this and i think His desire to be sensitive to it is actually what makes it harder for me.  Right before i asked again to kennel, i had returned to the SL window and He said it was my choice whether Sonya showed the pictures in public.  i just COULDN'T make a decision at that moment.  i have no doubt that it was Master's intent to be sensitive to me but all i wanted was for Him to tell me what to do.  And i was too frazzled to say that just then.  So i asked to kennel.  

i guess if i'm to put a positive spin on this blog it would be that all the things i want and need and fear, and all the patterns i see, build a picture of kajira.  It's hard to reread that and doubt that i am slave.  They also bring to mind another pattern, one on which i do feel i've made significant progress.  It used to be that when Master got angry, so did i.  And any time i got angry, i was egregiously disrespectful to Master.  

i'm definitely not perfect on this front but i've reread old notecards and i can't ever imagine speaking to Master as i had.  Even angry or upset today, i think i stay on the right side of the line in terms of how i speak to Him.  It took the whip to drive that home home but i got the point, finally.  It wasn't easy to get but at least i've retained it and, staying conscious of it, hope to continue to do so.

My List of "What Ifs"

What if...

-Master hates me

-i can't handle being kajira

-Master hates me

-i regret leaving j

-Master hates me

-i regret leaving my job

-Master hates me

-my depression gets worse

-Master hates me

-i do something really stupid and Master uncollars me

-Master hates me

-there's not enough money to live on

-i get jealous of v

-Master hates me

-we never have sex

-Master hates me

-i freak out entirely

-Master hates me

-we have sex but it's terrible

-Master hates me

-i get claustrophobic in a cell

-Master hates me

-there's only ramen noodles and microwave burritos

-Master hates me

-i want to leave and have nowhere to go

-Master hates me

-v and i don't get along irl

-Master hates me

-i can't be what Master wants and needs and deserves

-Master hates me

-i find hard limits i hadn't anticipated

-Master hates me

-there's not enough of Master to go around

-Master hates me

-i can't get my medications

-Master hates me

-i'm allergic to something Master or v wear

-Master hates me

-v hates me

-Master hates me

-i can't handle their smoking

-Master hates me

-eve comes back

-Master hates me

-i hate the physical aspect of wearing a collar

-Master hates me

-i can't handle the initiatory whipping

-Master hates me

-my crappy housekeeping skills are inadequate

-Master hates me

-i can't control my sarcastic mouth

-Master hates me

-i don't get enough intellectual stimulation and my brain shrivels

-Master hates me

-i can't handle the hot weather

-Master hates me

-there's only spicy food

-Master hates me

-i can't ever nadu for long

-Master hates me

-Master collars more girls irl

-Master hates me

-Master won't accept a hard limit

-Master hates me

-Master decides He isn't Master

-Master hates me

-i find it unbearably boring

-Master hates me

-i am mean to Master

-Master hates me

-i am mean to v

-Master hates me

-i am mean to Free

-Master hates me

-i can't handle Master's traveling

-Master hates me

-i disappoint Master

-Master hates me

-i'm too self-centered

-Master hates me

-Master dies

-Master hates me

Or what if:

Many of my worries don't come to fruition and those that do i cope with as they arise.  i actually allow myself to be loved and come to believe myself worthy of it.  i find the happiness that has always been so elusive and depression finally ceases to cripple me.  

Suicide

Master wants me to write about nailah and i do NOT want to nor do i have a choice.  So here i am writing.  As much as i do not want to write, the assignment weighed on my mind all day and i'd as soon put it behind me as spend a second day dwelling on it.  Master says i have a need to write on this even though i don't think i do.  Maybe so.  Or maybe He believes i'll conclude that suicide sucks and i'll have an epiphany as to the error of my ways.  Not fucking likely!  Master says that His only demand is my honesty and that i am not writing this for Him to like or dislike what i say.  So be it.

Master asked how i felt in dealing with nailah the other night.  There's not one simple answer to that.  A big part of me was on auto-pilot and just going through the motions and doing what needed to be done.  i've always been good in crises, level headed and able to exercise sound judgment rather than panicking.  So, i simply responded instinctively.  i kept nailah talking, fished for information which might be helpful when emergency help was contacted, and did my best to reassure her.  At that level, there wasn't much feeling at all other than a bit of an adrenaline rush.

Another part of me was numb.  It was surreal.  It felt like the situation couldn't possibly be happening.  The last time i remember feeling that way to that degree was when i received word that my brother had died.  It was almost as if i was outside myself watching what was happening, what i was doing, as if i was watching another person.  It wasn't quite to that extent with nailah, but it certainly brought back that general feeling. 

A part of me was also skeptical.  Right down to my core,  i am loathe to believe anything is actually what it seems or that anyone is genuine.  i considered that nailah was faking it, that she and eve had concocted some elaborate scheme to fake her death and not have to deal with Master.  When her husband came on i was even more dubious.  Would he really react that way?  Would 911 not have kept him on the line?  The cop served only to increase my lack of trust with his not offering his last name and some of how he conducted himself.  When Master told me nailah had already been released from the hospital i was even more doubtful.  It seemed too quick.  i'm not entirely convinced even now that the experience was real but i think it was.

Then there was the part of me that was increasingly terrified.  What if it was real?  What if nailah died?  What if i was the last one to communicate with her and i screwed up my end of things, resulting in her death?  There were definite parallels to my feelings about my father's death.  i felt responsible for nailah's fate, guilty without being able to pinpoint any wrongdoing on my part.  i felt utterly helpless.

And there was another part of me as well, the one that felt jealous of nailah.  She had the guts to do it.  She didn't chicken out like i always have.  Her problems were over.  Everyone would contemplate how wonderful she had been, how much she had been loved, and she would be blissfully ignorant of it all.  The world would go on without her and all her tribulations would either cease or continue in her absence.  She was living my dream!

But i immediately recognized that her methodology was lacking.  It was unfair to leave people wondering as to her fate.  If i was going to kill myself, i'd make damn sure i maximized the likelihood of my death and also that no one knew about it until i was fully dead.  None of this waiting around for news and praying crap.  nou's dead?  Oh well.  Let's move on.

That plan does have it's loopholes though.  There's no guarantee of death and being left alive and in some state of impairment is a gruesome thought.  The options would either be to do it at home and, unless the plan was unrealistically elaborate, to be found by a family member or, as Master pointed out, to do it elsewhere and have a family member have to come identify my body.  Either way, that's a REALLY crappy thing to put on them.

Master wanted me to write about how i think others would feel if i killed myself.  At first i guess they'd be surprised, some more than others.  They'd probably go through all the usual cliches of my being so young and having so much to live for and all that other bullshit.  As i had with nailah, they would probably feel responsible and guilty even though they would NOT be.  i would at least leave a note telling them they were not and that there was nothing they could have done and that they were the reason i stuck it out for as long as i did.  Who knows?  Maybe some of them would be jealous just as i was.

But time would pass and, for them, life would go on.  Master once said that the reason He said what He did after He first whipped me with the slave whip was so i would realize i was expendable.  His words didn't bother me because they catapulted me into this new realization.  i know damn well every second of every day that i am expendable and i've known it all my life.  It was the fact that Master knew it which upset me so much.  If He knows then He can release me.  If He knows, then others know.  It made my downfall feel all the more imminent.

i think that's also what made losing first girl status so hard to take.  It took away my niche.  It made whatever purpose i may serve... or at least appear to serve... all the more elusive.  It made me all the more expendable and blatantly so.  At other times, aside from when i was new, i always had some sort of foothold.  Well, i thought i did anyhow.  When amina was first and i was second, she was never there and i was needed.  When kimmy was kennel mistress and i was first, we each had our jurisdiction of sorts.  

No matter how the roles played out, mine always seemed to matter enough to make it more perspicacious for Master to keep me than not.  It's not that i thought He couldn't or wouldn't uncollar me with good reason but i invariably thought He would need substantial cause to do it.  That feeling has changed with me as second again.

i shouldn't even say again.  In effect, i was never second before.  When i was second to amina she literally was never there at all.  Without a first, i really wasn't in the role of second.  Now i am for the first time.  It's actually a better fit in most ways, despite Master's prediction to the contrary.  i never felt worthy of respect as first and never demanded it be given to me except by the noobs who were obnoxious idiots.  With v as first, i make sure everyone shows her appropriate respect.  i'm comfortable deferring to her and i love and trust her.  she doesn't have a fraction of my moodiness.  And she is proving to be a strong first which i never doubted she could be.  

The only downfall of that from my point of view, and it's selfish to view it as one, is that it makes me feel not only expendable but absolutely useless and somewhat superfluous.  There was a time when the functioning of the sims would have had to adjust quite a bit if i had suddenly vanished or, to keep to the topic, died.  Master probably would have had to adjust as well.  

That is not so now.  v is totally capable and doing a great job.  If i killed myself, others would go through all the standard phases of response but then everyone's lives could go on without any substantive changes.  Both the sims and Master Himself would be fine.  How would everyone feel?  i don't know.  There are things about me they might miss and things they'd likely be glad to be rid of.  Someone else would come along with different qualities and everything would find a new balance.  Life for those remaining would carry on just fine.

i'm not suicidal right now and i don't know that i could bring myself to kill myself.  i do realize that doing so would cause pain to the people i would least want to hurt.  i'm sure that's what Master wanted me to get at.  But i'm also realistic enough to know that, except for my mother, they would go on leading essentially unchanged lives.  i don't know that i ever mattered enough for that not to be so but i certainly don't now.

The Missing Assignment

i still don't want to write this which probably means i really need to.  It usually works that way.  i hadn't realized how much i had wanted to dodge this assignment.  That is further proof that Master knows what i need better than i do.  What i want and what i need are two entirely different things.  Master can tell which is which far better than i can.

Okay...

Other than all the usual things that have me perpetually upset, which may be encapsulated as feeling trapped in a life i hate, i was upset about an incident with my son.  He was angry that, in his opinion, there was nothing to eat for dinner and, still more so, that i refused to give him money for take-out.  That there were tons of dinner options was irrelevant.  That our budget is especially tight with the new mortgage payments on the house was of equally little interest to him.  

When s was small, he experienced deprivation in Ethiopia.  He came to us as a hoarder.  His tiny backpack, sent by us to him in Africa, was his only possession.  He arrived with it stuffed with everything he had been able to get his hands on in his travels to America.  It was packed with a variety or airline items, everything from magazines to a somehow purloined single shot sized bottle of vodka.  It contained hotel items from his journey including toilet paper.  

For weeks after he arrived, scared and skinny and without a word of English, he took that backpack and all he could fit in it everywhere he went.  If we left the house, that bag went with him stuffed with whatever he valued most at that moment.  He slept beside it.  It was his link to never again being without.  

He had learned in the children's center just how survival of the fittest works.  Those who were bigger and stronger took what they wanted from the little ones.  At six, he was one of the little ones still.  His first full day in America, we went to the park.  He marched up to a toddler, yanked a lollypop from the toddler's hand, and popped it into his own mouth entirely unaware he had done anything wrong.  He was simply behaving in the only way he knew, using the skills to survive that he had honed back in Africa.

For years and even still today at times, he has hoarded food.  At first we would find any food items at all in and under his bed, stolen and hidden in case he was ever left orphaned and starving again.  Over time, he became more selective in what he hoarded but the underlying emotion was always the same.  Now fifteen and with more of his life spent here in the United States than in his home country, some part of him still can not believe that food truly will be available to him always.

The rational and empathetic part of me knows all these things and aches for what s endured.  i love him and wish i could heal him.  i wish even more that i could have spared him the many traumas he endured, deprivation being only one of them.  i despise myself to the core for overestimating myself and my own abilities to cope.  

i am a horrible parent, one that doesn't deserve children and should never have adopted them.  My intentions were good.  i never set out to hurt them.  But i have.  And i hate myself for it daily.  i took two children who had been traumatized and added to their trauma.  In my inability to parent, i victimized them all over again.  The inward directed anger i feel settles here.  There's a place for me in hell that awaits, a place for those who mean well but act out evil.  After all, Hitler believed he was helping too.

It is with that background that i move forward in explaining my anger on the night Master wanted me to write about.  S was angry and his slightest irritation terrifies and, yes, infuriates me.  In his nine years in the Unites States, he has destroyed any semblance of sanity i had and any possible normalcy in my life.  i have spent so many hours, sometimes days on end, planning my own demise and, though fleetingly, envisioning his as well.  Evil.

i can't rationalize my adult experiences in comparison to those of a child, orphaned in a third world country, one who watched his father gunned down in cold blood in the streets, one who hid with his little brother under a bed in fear for his own life, one who was abandoned by other relatives and believes it was because he was bad, one who suffered atrocities that i am only now coming to know and many that i will likely never know.  What he experienced is beyond my imaginings.  His suffering as a small boy, while i understand it intellectually, will embed itself in my soul as it has in his.  i can hurt for him, and i do, but i can never fully comprehend the magnitude of his wounds.

So it is with great guilt that i go about describing my own wounds, seemingly inconsequential pittances next to his.  Since s has been my son, he has stripped a lamp of its shade and burned me with the bare light bulb.  He has lunged at my husband behind the wheel of our car and run us off the road, grabbing the wheel and gaining temporary control of the vehicle.  He has held a knife in his hand and threatened to kill me in my sleep.  He has hit and punched and kicked and bitten me.  One of his punches to j, ruptured j's eardrum.  He has grown from tiny and easily restrained to far larger and stronger than i am.  He has hurt people and destroyed property.

Today, when s gets angry, i don't think about that terrified little boy hiding his little brother under a bed, hungry and confused.  My own body reacts with automaticity.  My muscles tense and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.  i tremble and play out scenarios in my head, sure that this will be the time it escalates too quickly for help to arrive, that this will be the day i die at his hands.  i grab a phone in my shaking hand, sometimes dialing the nine and the first one and waiting, just waiting for ample cause to finish the emergency call.

i hide in my room, not even a room for it has no actual walls or door.  i don't leave because leaving would mean crossing his path and i don't dare risk it.  i may need to use the bathroom.  i don't.  i may be hungry.  i stay where i am.  i just wait for the storm to pass or to escalate, wondering if this will be the final one, the one that kills me.

And no one understands this.  j says afterward that s stayed in physical control, shouting and cursing but doing little more than that.  This time.  It makes no difference to me any longer.  Any time s gets angry ---ANY time--- i am absolutely petrified of what route his anger will take and what will happen before it either subsides or he is again dragged off me, handcuffed, and taken to the hospital.  What state will i be in if he does get his hands on me again, now stronger than the last time?  Instead of just bruises, will i have broken bones?  Will i even be alive?

But no one wants to hear that i can't live with s.  They tell me how well he is doing.  How can we have him removed from the house for getting angry.  Everyone gets angry, don't they?  And they do.  i know this.  It's normal.  Yet very little about s or my learned response to him is normal.  

i made a promise to be his mother, to care for him, to love him unconditionally and always... i broke it.  i can't do any more.  i resent that he has taken nearly a decade of my life.  i hate him as much as i love him and sometimes more.  i fail to see that tiny traumatized child and see only the monstrous side of him.  And i hate myself for being able to do not better.

THAT is why i was angry the other night.