Weekend again. I have so many things to do and I just can't seem to start any of it. Small steps. I'll take small steps.

When it gets really bad, I sit here in my apartment and the thought flits through my head that I really want to go home. Only, I can't figure out where that is. I couldn't wait to get the fuck out of Appalachia. I spent my entire first twenty years longing to get away. After the farm, I lived in DC for four years and it was huge and so expensive and heartless and did I mention HUGE? I never felt at ease there, especially after the plane hit the Pentagon. So my ex and I moved back to Appalachia. Roanoke. I told myself that since it wasn't West Virginia, it would be okay. And it wasn't. It was West Virginia and poverty and I was desperate to get the fuck out of there, too. So I moved to another big city and I hoped and hoped it would be home. Only, it's not. I don't feel safe or at ease or like I can let my guard down. I'm glad my apartment is small. As it is, I rattle around in it like a marble in a jar. It's empty and overwhelming.

A long time ago, I had a close-knit group of friends, including someone I had known since I was twelve. His name is J. I felt safer with them than I'd ever felt before. When I met my first husband, I introduced him to my friends and he proceeded to systematically isolate me from them all. When we lived on the compound, he started refusing to take me with him when he went to visit them. He told me that they were all sick of me, angry with me, enraged over how badly I treated him. It never occurred to me that he was making anything up. I guess he was telling them I didn't want to see them, or something like that. I don't know. He drove the wedge deep, though. We split up for many reasons, but the breaking point was when he assaulted me. He moved off the farm and into J's house. When he told my friends I was accusing him of rape, that was it. They said I was at best crazy from having been subjected to childhood abuse, at worst I was a vengeful liar. I lost them all. I needed them so badly to believe me. I needed J to listen to me. They all closed ranks around him, instead.

I have some really good friends. I do. But it's never been the same. I don't get so close. The Hare Krishnas teach you to use people. Everyone is a potential convert or a demon. And even amongst the cultists, relationships are tenuous. People up and leave in the middle of the night, sometimes. Or they say they are going to visit their family and you never, ever see them again. And I've never forgotten what being abandoned felt like. There has only been one person who has ever really known me, and he's gone now. But J was the one person before that who I felt had tried.

Over the years since, I've contacted J here and there. Sometimes in anger, sometimes pleading. Always with the same result: "I believe you are in distress, but I don't believe he did what you said." And then, a couple of years ago, he contacted me. This time he believed me. I think I cried for a week. Relief that he finally believed me. Regret that it was just too fucking late. They sheltered my abuser for a decade.

It got really bad a couple of nights ago and I called J. He's in Seattle now, living with people who were my friends, once. I sat with the phone in my hand for an hour and a half before I finally made the call. He said I could come live there, be with all of them and that they cared about me.

Why couldn't he have said that ten years ago? I can't leave where I am now for a lot of reasons, but all of that aside, I don't trust him anymore. So why did I call him and cry to him? Can this be repaired, eleven years later? What the fuck am I doing? I have no idea. Is it good to reach out or am I just grasping for anything I can try to hold onto? I'm this ball of need and want and everything is so raw. The only goal I have at this point is to reach a point where everything doesn't hurt quite so much.

I think I need my anti-depressant dosage upped.