Scheherazade in Blue Jeans

Decelerating now, don't worry. :)

Wednesday I met with the DA, the detective investigating my case, and the DA's office's victim witness advocate. Got to go through the whole story again, whee? Talked about everything that happened during the rape and the assault & battery, and went back into Judah's prior patterns of emotional abuse, et cetera. That... will never be a good time or in any way easy. In fact, I had an adrenaline crash pretty much as soon as I got home.

But the good news is that the DA is proceeding with a full and thorough investigation of all of the charges. I knew they'd continue with the assault & battery charge, since he confessed to that in court in front of the detective. But they are also continuing with the rape charge. All systems go.

Phew.

Thursday was all about copyediting and packing for my trip! And Friday morning I flew out to Chicago. <3 Got to have lunch and see Pacific Rim with Adam, michaeldthomas, rarelylynne, and Caitlin! Pacific Rim was so exactly what we wanted it to be. Hell yes. :)

There is a tinge of... something to this trip, because it had been planned for months, and Judah was supposed to be here with me. Part of the point of the trip was for Judah to come with me, to get to spend more time with Michael and Lynne, to see his brother, sister-in-law, and nephew/godson.

But everything changed, and now this is a recovery-from-what-Judah-did trip.

So when I was on the plane, I had pangs of first-trip-without-Judah; I have been having that, that first-time-after feeling.

But then Friday was my first movie with Michael and Lynne. And Saturday was my first concert with Michael.

Saying goodbye/saying hello. There are wonderful firsts too.

Yesterday was mostly a rest day; today Michael and I will be finishing up Flying Higher and both doing editing. The week will include rest, writing, playing with puppies, and more. Part of the new and revised point of this trip is to not have me keeping up the intense and punishing pace that I've been keeping since Judah assaulted me. This is my first real chance in seven week to just be.

And so. Recovery is.

Still having revelations about how deliberately horrible Judah was to me, but I do seem to have gotten past all the big ones. I was reminded the other day of the time in... early May? Late April? When he went out for drinks with his new friends group, the one that's all "fuck everything that moves without any regard for safer sex or people's relationships". But I didn't know that about them at the time, and the group was being presented as fun new people who have events we might like to attend. But this time they were going to an Allston bar I hate, so I said "I really don't wanna get puked on by drunk frat boys - but let me know if you end up going somewhere else instead, because I'd like to hang out with you and meet people!"

So they went somewhere else, he didn't tell me, and he picked up a random illiterate 19-year-old (don't know how far that went - he said nowhere, but I don't automatically believe him anymore) and was uncommunicative and lied about when he'd be home. Said he "forgot" I'd asked to be informed of a change of venue. But in context, yeah, he was keeping me from meeting these people so he could fuck his way through them with me unawares; his main entry point to that group pimped him out to at least three women while I was at Wiscon.

He knew when I got back that there was no way of coming back from that. Because I found out, of course. And also re: the woman he had unprotected sex with who has high-risk HPV, who refused to divulge test results, whose results he lied about - he knew that I'd have to make a call about whether I could ever have sex with him again, and with a solid week of cheating on me under his belt, maybe he felt like he had nothing left to lose.

I don't know why he thought I wouldn't report the rape. I don't know why he was surprised when I called the cops after he beat me up.

But yeah. This was all very deliberate and premeditated on his part.

***

I had a hard time at parts of the Beginning of Summer party.

My experience this year was different than it's been at the last few parties. I'm used to having days-long arguments about parties, and then being sometimes literally stuck in the corner so he can run off and Be the Prettiest and sparkle at women and get hit on and dry-humped. Which I got used to. Have folding chair, will hold court.

I circulated more at this one. At the last party, I wore navy blue; at this one, I wore white and bright green and was visible. I got to talk to people. I didn't have to keep track of him and keep limiting myself to keep the spotlight on him. That felt good.

But I had to keep my phone on me at all times and keep scanning the perimeter in case he showed up. No one in his situation in their right mind would. But he's clearly not in his right mind. So I had to keep watch, had to have a constant tension level and readiness for response.

And it's not fair that he raped and beat me and I have to be going through that. I want the science-fiction future where we can accelerate my healing and put the fear and shame on the person who inflicted it.

The part that was actively hard was the fire-spinning. Judah spins staff, and has been fire marshal the last few parties. He used to fly out here just to spin at these parties. So I went from circulating and having fun like not-usual to sitting down to watch firespinning - like usual. Every year, twice a year, I would sit right there and watch him, and admire him.

And this year he was not there, where he always is. Because he raped me and beat me up.

Tears came, and I stepped away and called michaeldthomas, then pulled mangosteen aside to cry it out and probably get mascara all over his shirt. I was devastated. Because I have so many things going on in my head simultaneously.

Because he was my future, my forever.

And yet the minute he hit me, that future was impossible.

The person I went on a date with Tuesday described the moment he knew he and his wife were getting a divorce. A future where the continued to be married was suddenly impossible. And in that moment, everything became remote. Just - could not see them with each other anymore.

And there's that. It's been less than a month. But, especially because the Judah I talked myself into believing in never existed, because now I see the long pattern of gaslighting and abuse - it is remote. There is no future that includes him even as a friend, and everything feels so very remote.

But I did believe in him. For so long. To part of my brain, that Judah was real and I loved him. And that doesn't instantly vanish. My Judah would never/my Judah was a mask/my Judah never existed. Cycles.

***

I am a control freak. I have my reasons. I am a control freak who is not in control at this time. I am a catlike person in that I do not like to show my pain, and yet here I am. The very act of speaking out to protect my community means that my pain is on public display. Line up and poke Shira's wounds. This is hard. This makes me angry. And so I swing through anger, fear, distress, loss, all in the same day sometimes.

And I understand why people walk away sometimes, why they don't prosecute, why they try to pretend it didn't happen. Because this is hard. It is incredibly hard. Even for someone who knows their resources. It is an emotionally wrenching and grinding thing to have to go through.

But this is Judah Sher's true face. This is a nine-year pattern of emotional abuse and domestic violence - oh, I have put together a lot of history there.

And if I shut up and shut him out and walk away like nothing happened?

He'll do it again.

I never blame anyone who doesn't want to press charges. See above about THIS IS FUCKING HARD. You have to take care of yourself first. If that means you can't do this, you can't do this.

But I have family and partner and community support in a way that not enough survivors of rape and domestic violence have.

And I will stay the course, so he will not be able to do this to anyone else.

Yes, still uncovering stuff about Judah.

Bringing together scattered thoughts from elsenet:

Premeditation:
The morning after Judah Sher raped me, he packed up his laptop, clothes, and insulin before he left the house. Yeah, he knew. I noticed that the entire stash of insulin was gone from the fridge that Friday afternoon, post assault-and-battery. 100% premeditated. He planned to do things that would preclude him returning to the house. (He wasn't in the kitchen the day of the assault & battery. Had to have taken the insulin the previous day.)

I've been trying to figure out why the escalation to assault and battery when he had to know that would be the end - he could have kept emotionally abusing me for god knows how long, but the minute it got physical, boom. What I've arrived at is that it was the police report of the rape that triggered it. Once he knew I'd reported, that he'd failed to play it off, that I'd realized what he'd done - he knew that the minute I said the words aloud to a cop, it was all over. I e-mailed him after I made the report. He came over the next morning, lured me to the smallest room in the house (because it didn't make sense for him to go there - he only had two things in that room, neither of which he ever used), and beat me up. He knew he'd lost my trust for good, and he knew I was going to end it.

So he decided to get a few punches in on the way out.

And then he was surprised when I called the cops. I think he thought he'd leave me in a puddle of fear and shame, triggered and alone. It's remarkable how well he copied a domestic violence scene I wrote in my novel-in-progress, actually. He studied. But I am not my novel's protagonist. So he did not get the desired result.

( Trigger warning for animal abuse (Judah broke Victoria's leg, is what actually happened). )

I know I said she fell. I know I never lie. My code is that I can lie only to protect others. I was protecting him. There have been a lot of omissions to protect him, but I believe this was the only outright lie.

The vet knew. And probably also knew that I was in a DV situation before I did. "She fell" sounds a lot like "I walked into a door" or "I fell down the stairs".

There are so many little things. Like he wouldn't let me go to dinner with mangosteen alone when we were in a rough patch, he insisted on accompanying us. Like changing his mind on driving me to ConBust and to an October writer event last-minute, leaving me breaking professional commitments. So many things.

My parents are on their way home as we speak. Phew. Everyone was here Thursday through this morning, and that gets clusterfucky at the best of times. I did the smartest thing I could do for myself and pled (legitimate) exhaustion instead of accompanying them on yesterday's full-day tourism spree.

Other self-care: went to a lovely party Saturday night, then out dancing. Judah never would go dancing, you see. It's one of my big three grounding things, and I was trying to write a book that needed me to be going out dancing, but he wouldn't. Except for the few times he would, then get pissy at me and make me go home when I was only two, three songs in. So. I went out dancing. Took me a while to get into dancing headspace, but I got there. Going out again on Wednesday, if I can find anything to wear.

I am waiting for phone calls: the DA, the lawyer.

I sent out my resume and am meeting someone about a job opportunity tomorrow. I will be copyediting this afternoon.

I have requested copies of the police reports. I have a copy of the lease.

There is much to do. I am breathing through it. I am eating three meals a day, taking one long walk a day, and dancing.

* He came over last night to grab some of his stuff. What was supposed to be a 5-10 minute visit started late and stretched, of course. Highlights: He lied to the person he'd scheduled to help, telling him he wasn't allowed to have help. (I think this was an attempt to make me sound unreasonable. In fact, I specifically told the police that the person in question and several other people would be just fine, forbidding only the people who are actively harassing me.) And he decided that, despite being told that everything of his was in his room, he needed to get into the craft room - a room where he has never stored anything and has rarely set foot in, but the room that I happened to be standing in front of. Took a lot of raised voices, et cetera, to get him to stop storming in my direction with the steely death glares that have become his everyday face. I am... slightly grateful that he is doing the worst things to me at every available opportunity, I guess, because it reinforces that this is the real Judah, and it strengthens my resolve. I have not had that what-if-I-did-something-wrong feeling since.

* Didn't sleep much last night, but got a solid midmorning nap.

* Went to Target with my parents; finally got the curtain hardware he'd been promising to get/install since December, plus a full-length mirror ("ours" is his). Getting a drill tomorrow and finally hanging the curtains in my bedroom, which should be a good alteration.

* Elayna is graduating tonight! We leave for the school in about an hour.

* Still feeling overloaded. Too much to do. I'm in the place beyond kernel-thrash, though. I cannot brain.

* Some people have been sending me, at my request, their observations of his behavior patterns. If you have observations, please do that. It helps to have corroborating evidence of his behaviors. Because gaslighting. I am also speaking to some people who've known him far longer than I, with interesting results. If you've had this sort of issue with Judah in the past, please let me know; I want your story. I am creating a map here.

* My mood is all over the place. I get what I call "a creepy feeling" that's not easy for me do describe, other than me feeling horribly unsafe. It passes eventually. But also I still feel guilty for speaking up sometimes, because it is All the Everything, and... I don't know. I'm tired. I did not want any of this.

* But, of course, one of the reasons I had to speak up is that he's shown that he's very good at manipulating me into believing that he wants to change and get better and that he really needs my help. I'm vulnerable to that. I need the evidence and I need the witnessing to keep myself from going back to him. I knew once I posted the words, I never could. If I hadn't, I still might have found some brain-twisty way to take him back.

* I was reminded last night that he'd followed the fuck a stranger/bully me/have an epiphany about how wrong he was and promise to be a better man pattern as far back as May 2011. So there's that. He did it days before moving to Boston to be with me. At the time, I wrote it off as "he must not have understood my boundaries and our agreements", but in retrospect - it matches behaviors since too precisely, and yes, I had been clear.

ANYWAY.

* My parents, sister and brother-in-law, and birthfamily will all be here this weekend for Elayna's graduation! They all fly in tomorrow, and will be here when Judah comes to collect some of his stuff.

* This means that today is a serious housecleaning day! None of them are staying here, but, y'know. Perhaps I will finish the laundry cycle that started with my Wiscon clothes and has expanded to include the sheets he did that to me on, the duvet cover, the towels rescued from his room, et cetera. I really should, because Elayna needs to do her laundry. Cleaning is good for this sort of thing anyway.

* I'm looking to change my webhosting - Dreamhost is being weird about letting me change from a $190 two-year lump sum (I do not have that money right now) to a $10.95 monthly payment. Anyone have recommendations? Can anyone talk me through the process of switching? Also, all my domains are still registered through GoDaddy, and in for a penny, in for a pound - what are to good domain registrars, and how do I switch that?

Now I will sit down and make the great big list of all the stuff I gotta do. Whee?

Michael has been marvelous at keeping me busy and getting me through this, but he is leaving this morning, and soon I will just be back to bleakly figuring this out.

Where the practicalities stand:

Thursday at 6, Judah is coming with the police to pick some of his stuff up. This is supposed to be a 5-10 minute trip to grab essentials. In order to pack up all of his stuff and get it out, he needs to hire a police escort for several hours - off-duty cops at time and a half. I expect he's weighing the costs of just leaving everything here and continuing to pay rent vs. paying for the police escort. Obviously having the rent paid up is good for us, but I want this to be over. I want his stuff out.

To answer the question many people have asked: I think us packing his stuff up for him is a bad idea. He's already shown that he's a liar, and I don't put it past him to claim that things are missing, or to break things himself and tell people we did it. I believe it's in everyone's best interest to not give him the opportunity to do that.

One of the problems with the pickup: "He's going to bring some friends with him." I told the police wait, no, because his "friends", the ones who goaded him into that hideous spiral of behavior the week I was gone, the ones who continue to harass me - those people cannot be here. I gave a list, and I'll be talking to the detective investigating the sexual assault portion of this today regarding the harassment (I told her about it as part of the history leading up to the rape and assault, but there's new stuff). The cops were very interested in that.

So they said I can refuse to let in anyone I'm not comfortable with. But I'm pretty sure they're still planning to show up as a cheap intimidation tactic - but my entire family will be here. And my tough-guy BARCC colleague Bobby. And if other people want to be here, we can do a dinner party later.

So there's that. That's Thursday. And we've already swept the house and put everything he owns into his room, so he shouldn't need to be here too long, and Adam will accompany him and the police to make sure he doesn't try to steal anything from my room while he's upstairs.

So otherwise.

Today I'll be talking to the SA detective about the harassment and about my decision to push forward with this case. It will be a tough one to prosecute - intimate partner violence always is. But I actually have video of me sleeping while on Lunesta - sleep study last year. Near-comatose. Immobile. His "she wanted it" defense will not stand in the sight of the video of drugged, immobile me, a doctor testifying as to what effect Lunesta has on a person, and a parade of character witnesses who've slept beside me or been told when sleeping in the same house how I am on Lunesta.

I'll also be doing my phone intake with the Victim Rights Law Center. And looking into organizations that do domestic violence counseling - I haven't been in this situation in 13 years, and what happened with my ex-husband was barely anything compared to this. I have no frame of reference.

Accompanying Michael to the airport soon via T (unless a last-minute ride materializes). Then a lot of terrible phone calls, after which I may need some Gchat, and I'll try to deal with backlogged comments and e-mails on the topic. Then I don't know. I don't know how to relax anymore. The horrible rapid escalation of May took that from me. I will have to learn again.

I will have to learn how to not live in crisis.

Again.

Because this has brought up a *lot* of the worst stuff from my past, stuff I fought through and conquered, and now I have to do it again.

For now, coffee and breakfast. One thing at a time.

I have had it clarified for me that Judah's behavior is actually not new. That it did not suddenly emerge. That it had been in evidence since at least September; that this was merely the first two eruptions of violence, but that he's already established a classic domestic violence cycle.

( descriptions of domestic abuse cycle )

In our case, the tension was about his inability to launch his business or find any way to stay afloat financially (thus owing us thousands of dollars in back utilities), and he lashed out by stomping on my boundaries.

"September," people reminded me. Yes, there was September.

The backstory there is that Judah cheated on me in September while I was in Florida visiting my dying grandmother.

He made out with someone he knew I didn't want in my world, repeatedly, and did not tell me. Didn't tell me at the time, despite the fact that we were talking daily. Didn't tell me when I got back. How did I find out? She grabbed him and started making out with him at my Autumn Solstice party. This is why I had to disappear upstairs. This is why my boundaries were stomped. This is why I was exiled at my own party, because I found out that Judah had been cheating on me.

That, and everything after, followed a pattern.

1. Cheat on me
2. Get angry and try to bully or intimidate me
3. "Have an epiphany" about how wrong he was and how he understands now why I was hurt and he'll never do it again, he swears.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

"The fake epiphany is part of the abuse cycle", I was reminded. >.< Yes. Yes, it is. Each time I allowed myself to be convinced that he really meant it. He was good at that.

So it's not just medical. It was an existing pattern that escalated. His flipping over into violence was sudden and awful, and could have had some medical trigger, BUT. Numerous people who have diabetes and depression have assured me that even on the worst days, they still knew where the lines where. Even on their worst days, they would not have been capable of anything like this.

He was already on a textbook DV path.

I've been struggling because I didn't understand how this happened. I didn't see the pattern. I didn't realize that the pattern of boundary violation and bullying was what led to this, and now I do. I was looking for more data - because I actually was able to step back and take action after the second episode of violence.

But I've been hearing some stories and putting things together. And so far, it's looking like the lying, the cheating, and the vicious cold nastiness when called on it is a pattern that stretches back at least eight years. I just got to be the first person he raped and the first person he hit.

This is what this is. It is very clear now.

Okay so here is the beginning of the story.

Judah and I have been dating for two and a half years. We've been living together for a year and three months. (We can't afford the rent here without him. This is a thing on the List to deal with.)

Last year, he became depressed over financial/work stuff, and then the depression continued when he was sick and didn't have the diabetes diagnosis yet. During that time, everything was totally okay with us.

About a month ago, that changed. The following things cascaded:

May 13: Judah cheated on me - engaged in sexual activity below the waist with someone before she'd gotten STI tests run. (Her tests were 5 years old.) He initially lied about the extent of the cheating. This was amazingly painful. I spent the following week trying to counsel him through this, especially because the person he cheated with decided to be childish and irresponsible and hurt him. I worked hard on this, because I was going on a weeklong trip 5/21-5/28 and needed us to be stable before I left. We worked out a very specific agreement of what we wanted and the rules we were operating under.

I left on my trip 5/21. On 5/22, Judah violated the agreement by making out with a stranger. I was upset about this, but tried to deal with it quietly - until it turned out that he then spent the entire evening with the stranger Saturday 5/26 whilst texting me that he was with two other people, deliberately not mentioning his makeout buddy.

This was the point at which I asked him about the HPV test results of the person he'd full-on cheated with, to the degree that if she did have HPV, he could have it and pass it to me. He claimed that she had not gotten her results back. I expressed that this was improbable, given that she was tested on 5/17. He insisted. He also slipped up at this time and admitted that the two of them had been texting all week, despite previously telling me that he'd had no contact with her.

I was squeamish about him going to a deliberately-hedonistic party on 5/26, given all this. He swore I could trust him. He engaged in sexual activity with multiple people at the party. He then texted me to say he was sad that he couldn't make out with people. This, Wisconners, is when I had to walk out of Genderfloomp. I talked to him and gave him permission to make out with a particular person.

Because at that point I didn't know that he'd already been sexual with people and he'd lied about those test results. The woman I gave him permission to make out with? She knew. So that's shitty.

On Monday 5/27, he told me all about the sex stuff he hadn't told me about previously. And when I was upset, he dropped the bomb that he had those HPV results, and that the person he cheated on me with did in fact have high-risk, cancer-causing HPV.

So Monday was a horrible night. Not just because of that. But because my Judah had become a stranger, a monster. He spat out vicious sadistic nastiness. He shot to wound, he shot to maim. He said and did things I hadn't thought he was capable of.

And - desperate, horrified, confused - I was still trying to make it work. Because this wasn't him. I didn't understand. I still don't understand. I can blame the new friends he'd spent the week with for part of it maybe? I don't know. I genuinely don't know.

I flew home Tuesday still hoping that this could work. We talked. Talked past each other, mostly - when Judah is wound up, he is incapable of listening. I thought if we just kept trying, he'd hear me. He'd listen.

And on Wednesday afternoon, I thought he had. We had what I thought was a breakthrough. We cried, we held each other. He promised to go to therapy.

And then Wednesday evening, his mood turned. He became Judah the Sadist again, this monster wearing my love's face. He attacked viciously. For hours.

And eventually we went to bed, when I thought we were as stable as we were going to be.

This is where it could get triggery.

For the past six years, I have taken Lunesta to sleep every night. I literally cannot sleep without it, and stress and sleep dep are my two big seizure triggers. So I take the maximum legal dose of a strong sedative.

When I am on Lunesta, I am so unconscious that it takes half an hour to even partially revive me. It is worse than being blackout drunk. I am 100% incapacitated. Everyone I sleep in the same bed with knows that. Everyone.

I slowly gradually Lunesta-woke to find Judah's fingers inside me.

This continued for a bit, because I was too incapacitated to react. I was aware, but I couldn't make my body respond or my voice work. He may tell you I wanted it because my unconscious body responded in an encouraging way. Key phrase there: My unconscious body.

I communicated a no. He withdrew. I conked back to sleep because Lunesta.

He was in a Mood the next morning. I decided to wait to address it til he got home. But then I took a nap, and had a nightmare about his friend who's been encouraging him to cheat and lie doing the exact same thing to me. So I knew my brain needed to deal with this, and I Gchatted him.

His response was along the lines of "sorry you feel that way".

We talked about other things. He later told me that everything following that statement was a lie, but at the time, I believed that he was negotiating with me in good faith.

And then he surprise did not come home. He'd fled to a mutual friend's and gotten drunk, and he became Judah the Sadist on the phone and in chat. I thought he was going to come home and talk about what must surely have been a horrible misunderstanding.

But he excorciated me. Vicious. Cruel. The nightmare wearing my lover's face.

And I hadn't been talking about any of what he'd been doing, and the trauma I'd been going through - because I didn't want to make him seem like a monster. I was protecting him. This whole time. I was scared and confused and fucked over and fucked up and protecting him.

But he hung up on me, and wouldn't respond, and I was triggered and traumatized and terrified.

So I called michaeldthomas, who is my Person and also has crisis-line experience. And he reminded me that if anyone told me what I was telling him, I'd be saying "Yes, that's rape. That was not a misunderstanding. It was rape, and you know your options."

And I would. But augh, people. He broke me. Judah. Broke. Me. Shattered. I was curled up on the kitchen floor weeping and desperate and begging for there to be some way Judah was not doing these things to me on purpose.

But we can't find a way. We can't.

I called and made a police report.

And then told him via e-mail that I'd done so.

And I actually had to keep myself from typing "I'm sorry."

Actually had to do that.

Is how much I love him and how much he broke me.

So just so you know what it takes to make me give up on you if I love you? Apparently rape is not enough. I don't know what this says about me and I can't really think about it right now.

Judah came over today, ostensibly to talk and work on things but really to grab stuff and rub. When he cold-voice told me this, I was upset; I followed him downstairs asking him why and what happened. I followed him into the storage room, where he then decided he didn't like me being between him and the door.

And so he grabbed my left arm and threw me against the wall.

I got up - he was looming, yelling, too close, and I pushed at his chest with my open hands, and he did it again. He twisted my wrist. He stomped on my foot. I don't know what else. It's a blur. I know those because those were the parts there were reddened or had abrasions. When he was done, he went upstairs.

I followed, grabbed the phone, and called the police.

They arrived almost instantly and interviewed us both, and I got to talk to the Sexual Assault Unit sergeant. I decided to file for a restraining order. So did Judah. Just because? I don't know. We went to the courthouse. There was a long interview process with multiple people. They finally found us a judge, and we told our stores. I told the truth. He claimed a bunch of physically impossible stuff.

The judge believed me. He granted me a three-month restraining order against Judah. Because I am genuinely afraid. This monster wearing his face is not the person I know. I don't know what happened, and I cannot predict his actions, and I am afraid.

He did not grant Judah a restraining order against me. He deemed the potential threat of violence from me to Judah highly unlikely.

So this is where we are. Judah will come to the house accompanied by police at a time that's convenient for me to retrieve the rest of his belongings. He said this morning, before he hit me, that he would keep paying rent; I'm not assuming that he will, and we can't afford this house on our own, so I don't know what we're going to do. I've called Case Management at BARCC and will be working with them to figure out my options. Locks need to be changed. Rent needs to be covered. Judah owes us several thousand dollars for his share of utilities and groceries for the past ~8 months; I'm assuming a civil suit will be what I'll have to do to get that. I'm losing my mobility here, too. I'm losing a lot. I'm losing almost everything.

I didn't want any of this. I just want my partner back. I don't understand anything. I don't know what happened. I don't understand. That's what I keep saying, "I don't understand." And "I'm so sorry."

Everyone we know says the same thing - this isn't Judah. Something is very wrong. Very horribly wrong. And the hell is I want to help. Yes. Still. But I can't. I can't take any more.

This is where we are.

I appreciate all of the offers of help and crashspace and phone calls. I can't respond to them all individually at this time, but I'm reading them all, and I thank you.

What I need:
* To be in my house and start making it feel safe again.
* Social interaction when I'm ready - the events of recent months had me hermitting hard because I was scared and uncertain. Small-group social to start with.
* I don't do telephones if I can possibly avoid it. I do Gchat and Twitter and e-mail, but I'm pretty overwhelmed right now and I won't respond quickly and may not have the spoons to respond at that time.

Um, I don't know what else. I am dazed. I have emilytheslayer with me now. Tonight is Elayna's prom. Emily's doing her nails. Tomorrow I will go to a party. I don't know what then.

But hey. I can finally blog about my life again.