What I'd have to say, if I could ever say it, feels too big for my mouth. Like trying to move a gigantic chest of drawers through a doorway half as big. You wonder how the hell the thing ever got into the room in the first place. It must have been built inside the room! That's the only thing that makes sense. To get out what's inside, I'd need a bigger mouth, a gaping unhinged mouth as big as a whale's mouth or a tunnel entrance, a cartoon mouth as big as the whole world, and it would be perpetually screaming.  

As a child, I was never allowed to say "no." Ever. About virtually anything. I was terrified to say what I did or didn't want. Even for Christmas. Even when I was asked what I wanted it got to the point where I was afraid to say, unable to say. It got to the point where I was afraid even to be asked what I wanted. From early on I learned that the reaction to any "disobedience" or "self-assertion," any kind of "rebellion" would have been so over-the-top, so extreme that keeping my mouth shut was always the best alternative, that there was no "alternative," that keeping my mouth shut was tantamount to survival. And, unfortunately, that's how it's been the rest of my life. 

Ive never been able to assert myself with others—to say what I want & even more importantly what I don't want. Easier to just avoid people altogether than to say "no" to them, easier to be alone than to erect the sorts of boundaries that other people find it natural to erect in even casual relationships. Every time Im near people I feel I'm in imminent danger of being steamrolled, invaded, occupied. There aren't enough hours in a day that I can be alone. It's the only time I feel safe. Of course, the obvious exception to the rule is Daddy. I feel safe with him, even safer with him than being alone. 

In a sense, Daddy is my "NO!" And what a "NO!" he is! A big, strong, muscled, tattooed "NO!" that must be respected. That no one can pretend not to hear. I don't even have to open my mouth. Actually, he doesn't either! He's a visual "NO!" Tread lightly, keep your distance, don't trespass, don't take advantage, be respectful—when I'm with Daddy I feel like I now have the voice I was robbed of in childhood; I have everything I needed to stand up for myself in life. Everything I won't ever have on my own no matter how much "therapy" I go through. It's just missing, like an amputated limb or a lost eye. It can be compensated for, but it won't grow back no matter what. I'll always be a gimp. I'll always be half-blind.

What I resent the most are my parents who had children in the first place—had them for no good reason it often seems than to stomp on their spirits, grind them under their heels. No, I don't really believe they did this intentionally, but out of ignorance and indifference, wrapped up in their own clumsy dance of marital dissatisfaction, depression and life-disappointment, their own neuroses & damage. 

Of course, it does no good to resent them. And I've forgiven them, if by forgiveness means accepting the fact that they, too, were flawed human beings with their own insoluble problems, who did their best & failed. I understand all that. But, I never had children specifically because I didn't want to damage them even inadvertently the way I was damaged. Why couldn't they have at least seen that much? 

I guess that's what I still have left to forgive. The fact that they passed their problems on to me. And I haven't passed them on to anyone else. I've decided the problems and the pain STOP with me. It was my decision and it was an honorable and correct decision. But goddamnit, I do resent that I'm left holding the bag!