Today's word

rodomontade /rah-duh-mun-TAYD/ - 1. a bragging speech 2. vain boasting or bluster : rant

Yes, I believe her

Everyone acknowledges she was sexually assaulted.

If they think it's reasonable that she might not accurately remember who her assailant was, they should get on their knees and thank God that they don't know shit about sexual assault/abuse.

finding emo?

there's someone who's supposed to be my first resource for emotional support. but even though i'm doing a better job than ever of looking to her first, that often doesn't work for us. then i end up feeling more alone and hopeless than before, in addition to whatever i was already dealing with.

When they say . . .

. . . that "it's okay to not be okay," what they mean is that it's okay to know that you need help and go get it. 

I've really no idea what they'd say about someone who knows he could benefit from help but won't go get it. 

But they also say that doing the same thing and expecting different results is a definition of insanity. I don't expect any different results if I get help again, from any of the half dozen counselors I've worked with in the past or from someone new. And I don't expect any different results if I simply carry on, either. 

Thank you, God, for my grandchildren.

This is my normal

It isn't my new normal; it has been my normal for a really long time now. The thing is, the things that could change it don't appear to be options for me. I will keep trusting in God and letting Him remind me to be thankful rather than resentful. There is so much to appreciate.

"This" is still an anagram.

Today's word

lenitive /LEN-uh-tiv/ - alleviating pain or harshness : soothing

It seems like it's around this time each year, for about a month, that whoever's turn it is in the rotation for providing Word of the Day columns stretches my vocabulary with more new words than I get from the feature during the rest of the year. I love new words.

Some friends are this way for each other. I often try to be, especially with truths that people have heard harshly all their lives. But I find that my best efforts to be a lenitive influence often end up being exacerbative (which apparently isn't a word, but ought to be), instead.

Today's word

chiliad /KILL-ee-ad / - 1. a group of 1000  2. a period of 1000 years; especially : one reckoned from the beginning of the Christian era

Totally new word for me, which I mispronounced and mistook for a new and unnecessary replacement for a pair of perfectly suitable existing words.

SSDY

Two inanimate objects speak truth

On one post and one comment. 

I think my friend's phone was meaner to me than mine was. 

The Yearning

This song we've used in choir before and are practicing again is an interesting piece for me emotionally. We pull it out, and the empty yearning within my heart threatens to rip away my mask and let my tears flow. But its resolution in the refrain reminds me that every heart is yearning for our Savior, no matter what else we posit as the object of our yearning.

Today's words

From the Dictionary Devil:

botryoidal /ˌbä-trē-ˈȯi-dᵊl/ - having the form of a bunch of grapes

monocarpic /ˌmä-nō-ˈkär-pik / - bearing fruit but once and then dying

At least the second one was recognizable?

No particular reason

This is my fifth night in a row of being awake during the night. But it's the first one in which i haven't had a particular reason for not falling back to sleep.

That's kind of nice, actually. Thanks, God!

F* ptsd

YOU PROBABLY DON'T WANT TO READ THIS.



in my nightmare, i am my current age. my stepfather is here, in my house. i am alone with him, but i know he is now too old and senile to be a threat anymore. i am showering downstairs when he shockingly pulls open the shower curtain and starts to climb in with me. how did i not hear him open the bathroom door? he isn't nearly his current physical age, and he reacts to my shock and my insistence that he leave by brandishing his tiny erection and clear intentions, cackling his fucking abusive amused cackle. i somehow flee the bathroom and run upstairs while he continues showering and calling out to me to come back. i consider calling 911, knowing now as i didn't then that this is how to respond to his abusive actions. but i imagine them dismissing the threat, chalking the incident up to his senility and advanced age. still naked, i grab the chef's knife and go back down the stairs, where he is still showering in the closed bathroom, but decide that probably won't go well. "why hadn't i locked the door?" i excoriate myself, again piling guilt on myself that has always rightly belonged to him, just as he'd always taught me to do.

i know, i think, i'll just leave and figure it out from a safe place. i rush back into my bedroom and grab my jeans to pull onto my not-quite dry body. (how did it get that way? i hadn't toweled off. dream weirdness.) i have them not quite secured when i hear him approaching down the hallway. oh shit! i left the door open again! wtf was i thinking? (more self blaming). i rush to close and lock it, but before i can turn the lock he is turning the knob and pushing against the door, and i am still not as physically strong as him. i never was. he is overpowering me again, forcing the door open. i know what is coming next, no matter how much i resist.

this is when i woke up, bolting upright but not shouting out loud, somehow not waking my wife.

and it wasn't until i left my bedroom, awake, with no hope of returning back to sleep until my racing heart calms back down, that i realized my granddaughters are here. and it wasn't until just now that I realized it isn't a work day.



he can't hurt me anymore. this is just a dream. i am safe.

again i choose to forgive him, even though it isn't what i want to do and even though he doesn't deserve it for what he did to me over and over again. i pray that he will be well, and heal from his own brokenness, and live in God's love. it is still true that he doesn't understand his sin. and i will not pay the price that hating him will cost me. that isn't self-love, and i will not give up the freedom Jesus has won for me over him. yes, i hate what he did to me. but i refuse to hate him.

Lord, heal my mind, and please heal my step-father, too.

The Sound of Silence

Hello Darkness, my old friend . . . 

This turns out to be a very different post from any I'd have expected to write that would start with those words.

I heard a Paul Simon interview on the radio this morning, in which he discussed his current album while in the midst of his farewell tour. The album consists of new treatments of older songs that he'd decided he wanted to do something different with. Of course, during the interview they played this song, which is not on his new album, because he mentioned it as one of only a relative few that he's never really wished he'd done anything different with. I agree with him that it's amazing he could've composed this at 22 or 23 years old. I've always had an affinity for it, too. But this morning, something important dawns on me.

The darkness is not, and has never been, my friend.

It is more akin to a secret lifelong lover, to whom I clandestinely steal away on a regular basis, in the vain hope of experiencing a deeper and more mysteriously noble version of myself.

That is an empty promise, a vapor, a mirage. All it really has ever done is to suck the joy out of the life to which I am called.

Goodbye, darkness . . . 

When you realize . . .

. . . the sad, painful truth about every relationship in your life.