Teeth

(While listening to Teeth by Lisa Hannigan. If you really want to get in a mood for this post, maybe you should listen to it.) :)

On New Year's Eve, I wrote this entry.

I'm searching myself again. Analyzing. Mirror-checking. Who am I? Am I still the same from what I was raised?
No.
That's why my parents are freaking out. I'm not their Scottsville-raised, blunt-mouthed Baptist anymore.
I'm changing, everyone in my life knows that. But there are still things from my childhood, from life in general that are buried and still try to surface. Things that, for some reason, I keep from my parents and from a lot of people in my life. It's not really an ashamed thing, but a privacy thing, I guess.

I still wake up sometimes in a panic. When I was little, I'd wake up in a panic, either trying to pull out my teeth or crush them in a painfully-clenched bite.
I try to destroy my mouth and I don't know why.
Now, I wake up a lot scratching and clawing at my skin like there are bugs wriggling inside me. I scrape my face, my legs, my back, my hands, my neck. I have to wear my hair in a ponytail now. The hair makes the itching much worse.

I think Mom suspicions my sexual abuse from my new involvement in Hope Harbor. But I can't tell her. A lot of me is afraid it would be way too much information in one year. I became a democrat, voted for Obama, went to Europe, left the church AND now I tell her I've been abused? Don't think so. It seems a bit overkill and I'm better now, thank you. Or at least I can deal with it now.

It's odd, isn't it? This entry is a bit of a confessional. I've wondered if I would ever mention sexual abuse in my blog, and it's not just clawing to get itself out... but I feel placid right now, so I think it would be nice to air out a little emotional baggage I have.
I think I'm scared of the parental reaction. Sexual abuse is a big deal, and luckily, I endured a very mild form of it. Part of me is afraid of the tears--I've experienced too many of them. And the questions. Part of me is even afraid that I won't be believed. It's heinous, I know, to fear your parents disbelief when you tell them something so drastic.
But this whole year has been drastic and way too complicated.

Sometimes I consider pulling my teeth. It wouldn't solve anything...I might look a tad goofy, but it would seem to relieve some pressure. Sometimes I imagine my teeth as sharpened bones lodged into my head...I dream about it, and I suppose that's why I want them crushed to powdery whiteness or replaced with a bloody, gaping hole.