I must shed my family

The way a snake sheds its skin
Like a rocket ship, its first stage dropping away behind it

I had some fabulous image earlier today of - something crumbling? Falling to dust? that was perfect. Can't recall it now.

Maybe all the bad patterns can drop away too, now?

***
Keep thinking of little brother and betrayal, the Lucy/Charlie Brown/football thing. What do I feed THAT demon to satiate it?

First, define the demon.

I must not ask for help.
Why?
Because if I ask for help, they'll promise to help me, and the - NOT help me.

So I'll feel let down, sad, lonely.

AND, most of all, worst of all: Eventually (and it doesn't actually take long to get to this point) I begin to feel that I don't DESERVE help.

That I am intrinsically, inherently, BAD, WRONG, NO GOOD.

It's amazing how many flavors, how many variants of this particular poison there are. Like a giant candy shop, only every sugary treat is designed to KILL you.

An image comes to mind of a giant Halloween party, I'm in a new town, no friends yet, sitting alone in my costume. The eternal feeling of yawning, gaping, open-a-hole-in-the-floor-to-swallow-me-up-so-I-don't-feel-so-EXPOSED, achingly PAINFUL loneliness. I imagine every face that comes floating near me as TAUNTING me, aware of my loneliness and pain and MOCKING me for it.

This is my mother.
My father.
My middle brother.

My youngest brother didn't do it only because I was eight years older than he was.

Why did *I* get to be the scapegoat, the punching bag, the NOBODY, the UNIMPORTANT one?

This comes back to the previous post, where what I was leading up to was the idea of sibling rivalry, and my middle brother needs to CONQUER me, to DEFEAT me.

He saw me, at some point, as his ENEMY, who must be VANQUISHED.

He didn't win, but he did succeed in driving me into hiding.

Flash: Just like my mother! This is EXACTLY what mom would do when confronted with bad behavior: She'd CHECK OUT! Leave the scene, disappear, mentally and emotionally at least, and physically as well, if possible. No WONDER she's in hardly any of my early childhood memories: She WASN'T THERE.

***
I am cold; I am tired. I am hungry. I am physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually DRAINED and EXHAUSTED.

It seems to never stop, to go on and on and on, this race against time and the giant sucking sound of my precious resources - money, time, life - draining away.

I cannot seem to rest, my EYEBALLS hurt from looking at this computer screen. My throat burns from the words I cannot speak for lack of anyone to LISTEN to or HEAR them.

I am trying to PURGE all this shit out of my system before it KILLS me, before it SUCKS ME DRY. Like some cross between a giant spiritual BOIL and a PARASITE.