My environmental illness is better, but I'm still not working or dating. Before bed, I try to list some safety rules that would let me sustain a relationship without getting sick again (I'll worry about a job later--love first!) But when I try, all I come up with are the rules I have NOW--and written out, they're deadly.

1. Only hurt yourself.
2. You're male, a potential abuser, so restrain your desire, strength, pride, and brains. Women are all fragile, with abuse-memories waiting to pop out, like yours. They'll panic if you're you.
3. Never initiate sex, just respond.
4. Don't go for anyone too attractive--you won't have a chance.

THAT NIGHT

I'm back at Psychodrama. Nancy is in the center, on stage. She's a dancer in her late twenties, gorgeous, small, dark blonde, with the raw fierce eyes and hurt face of a James Dean teen. She often comes across as a sex kitten, a little butterfly--she's good at hiding both her brains and volcanic feelings. She's been fighting uterine cancer, and we all suspect it's linked to her ultra-femme style. She picks lovers who treat her like a girl. Daddies. I have rescue fantasies about her.

Nancy does a scene in which she takes on her little-girl spirit fully, back before all her boyfriends convinced her she was mere entertainment. She lets her hair down, flowing to her waist, and tears her clothes off and dances round the theater. Suddenly beauty and sex and play and dancing her feelings come alive as the most important things in the world, innocent and powerful again, before the boys made it all about THEM.

Nancy spins and leaps in spirals...

...and then a hulking man leaps into the charmed circle and grabs her and won't let go. Everyone freezes. She struggles to escape him, crying in fear, flashing back to childhood abuse. He shakes her in anger--he wants her, wants the sexy magic, and she's rejecting him! She shrieks in terror. He pulls his arm back and hits her in the face, hard, a roundhouse swing.

He's broken the safety rules. Several men stand up. Yet they fear to provoke him more: Kit's rages are notorious. No one steps in. He hits her again. One man finally tries to wrestle Kit away. One blow throws him across the room. Kit's stronger than any of us.

I get up. Scared, but I have to divert his attention. Squeeze between them, tears streaking my face, and yell "Kit, Kit, don't, I can't fight you, you're too strong, don't hit her, Kit."

He looks at me, steaming and gasping, so on fire he can't speak. He gestures at his throat, strangely: drawing a diagonal line. Repeats it. Confused, I echo his gesture, and find blood on my hand. My eyes widen and I touch it again. Bleeding. He still can't talk, the fit is still pounding through him, but his eyes have changed. He thinks he did this to me!

But we hardly even scuffled. He didn't injure me: it's just a boil that popped or a small cut that re-opened.

Later, I realize I was so scared, I almost called Kit by the wrong name--I nearly called him George. If I'd misnamed him... who knows what he'd have done?

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• Psychodrama = inner games. I was part of a psychodrama circle with Nancy, Kit and George, but I haven't seen them in years--they have to be symbolic!
• Nancy = (1) the fear that makes me flee sex. I flash back to abuse! (2) I want to be attractive, but when anyone responds, I flee, fearing the stress will cause a relapse of my illness. So I've become a tease without meaning to!
• Naked = baring taboo issues (incest, anorexia, pedophilia etc). I showed some dream-tales with heavy themes like these to a friend and asked what she thought of my showing art this personal. She saw it as high-risk: like public nudity. Yet in my dream, when Nancy dances naked, it's joyful, magic.
• Kit = my anger at the years of rejection I faced--understandable since I looked ill, but it still hurt.
• So mad I can't talk = I do have trouble asking for help, even in therapy.
• Hit in face = I've had a headache for two days.
• George = a friend who'd run over a kid who ran out into the street--not his fault, no time to brake, but he was haunted by guilt.
• So George = fear I'll hurt a girl and I'll be blamed, even if it was a situation where pain was unavoidable.
• I nearly call Kit "George" = I'm prone to mislabel angry, inarticulate sexuality as GUILT.
• Looks like I cut my own throat = I look like I'm self-sabotaging; but it's minor, just a side effect of the struggle.
• My inner Kit choked me a few days ago. My therapist had asked who I'm attracted to. I couldn't say "Girls who are sexy, smart and playful." Kit inside me was mad that some of my so-called friends label my standards unrealistic--or sexist. But it's NOT a double standard! I like being sexy, smart and playful too. And my inner Nancy IS... but Kit--anger--stifles her. Me. I need to recognize when Kit chokes Nancy--and talk him down. Because he doesn't want to hurt her. Me. Anyone. Because Kit's not mayhem. Just rage. Not the same thing.

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