Men and their presence

[CardinalRose]

I had a hard time getting to sleep. I started thinking about why I have forgive and strength tatted on my wrists. They both serve a dual purpose: forgive is for myself for all the negative things I've done to myself and also as a reminder to forgive those who have harmed me. Strength reminds me to be strong even when I'm at my weakest and also to bring to light all the strength I've had thru everything I've been through. This lead to an incident with my father where we were rough housing in a hotel room with mom present (we were heading back to cali) and he wouldn't head my requests to stop and let me up. My fear and instinct kicked in and I screamed. He proceeded to cover my mouth so the other guests wouldn't get the wrong idea. This lead to a memory of my fourth grade teacher always putting his hands on my shoulders in class to the point where I complained to my parents and something was done. The other memory was of a guy trying to touch me during a fire drill. It wasn't sexual, but it wasn't wanted either. My father was called and when I withdrew the issue with the principal bc of how embarrassing my father was acting, he made me feel guilty. My father was also the one that administered punishment and then a thought occurred to me-I've never had a positive experience with men in my life. Besides punishment, he always put me down and made me question my confidence in things. He also pinned my mother's failed suicide attempt as my fault because i wasnt there to stop her. Ive recently forgave him and i guess now am trying to process the remainder of the equation of where do i go from here. I had to write this down and maybe I can sleep now.