Failures

Today I'm tormented by my many failures. In the past, in every area of my life I have failed. Not an hour goes by when, no matter what I am doing, something reminds me of an experience from way back, where I had let myself, and others down.
These days, sometimes I wonder if I imagine my inadequacies due to echoes from the past, especially when I say to a friend 'I hope I didn't say a wrong thing last night.', or 'Was I bad last night drinking three glasses of wine?' The friend always looks at me and says 'You were fine.' Then one of them might even suggest, 'You have low self esteem and no confidence.'
I try to be perfect. I am always kind, friendly, calm and mostly quiet when required, or vivacious when required. I always fall short in my eyes, then severely tell myself to be kind to me.
My anguish rubs raw when I try to understand how I am perceived by others. I'm probably falling short in areas I'm not even aware of. All I really want is to be treated with respect and accepted for what I am. I think I am treated with respect as a successful, self-sufficient, well-adjusted mother, who doesn't need friends, so nobody rings me. I could be imagining that too.

I put my anguish down to 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder'. Two symptoms are, by some accounts, cold extremities and nervous fidgeting. I learnt that yesterday in my course. I have those symptoms.
Aah, my course!
I have been parking my eldest son's old car that I bought for him, even though he is away, down at a shopping centre a kilometre from my home. I walk across a flat, cleared block of land big enough to build a factory on, up a steep embankment to a road. The sandy, damp soil of the embankment has been compacted smooth between the exposed rocks from the many people other than myself who trek that way because the rail station's car park is always full. I cross a busy intersection at the lights, walk up the slightly inclined footpath next to the parked buses and the people getting on and off, including school kids, at eight-forty in the morning. I place my card briefly on the scanner and the red, plastic-looking gates let me through. I go down the escalator and wait in the open on Platform One for my train. I stand, swaying on the crowded train which dips underground just before the city. I alight, queue for the first escalator, queue for the second escalator, tag out with my card, then walk briskly to keep pace with the crowd stepping out into Murray St Mall. I walk to the road and stand at the 'Cat' bus stop; a free service. The bus is crowded. I stand, getting jolted by the stop start movements of the bus, for twelve blocks until I can get off at the front of my building. The course in conducted on the first floor. I cross the road from the bus stop, walk along through a short shopping mall to the Food Court, ascend a curved staircase. I can look down on the tables and food counters from the mezzanine floor, and up to a domed, frosted skylight. My door is on the right, at the corner of a corridor leading into the lifts, toilets and others offices. I push open a glass door covered in signage, go up to a counter, voice a greeting to the lady there and sign in. When I leave I sign out. This week I have been to classes three times.

I believe that the reason for my stress and anguish, due to trauma, is that, from the age of sixteen until I married at twenty-six, I had sex without really wanting to with more than a hundred men. A handful of those incidences were while I was unconscious due to drink or I was forced against my will. The majority were due to my inability to understand normal human interactions. I didn't know how to say no, whether I should say no, when to stop foreplay, whether I should get into foreplay in the first place. My mind had no idea; all it wanted was to find acceptance.
Sixteen was when my periods started. I at last became a woman. My Mum took us up to Newcastle on the train from Melbourne, an overnight journey sitting up in a box of four people facing four people and the luggage high on racks with a corridor running along the side. From Sydney another train took us through the beautiful scenery to Newcastle where we stayed with relatives. One friend of that family took me for a sightseeing tour in his panel van. We stopped by Newcastle beach, climbed over onto his mattress in the back and drank cans of bourbon and coke. We 'did it' and I didn't feel anything. Nothing. Looking back with what I know now, maybe he didn't actually penetrate, or did slightly then orgasm-ed.
Not many weeks after we returned to Melbourne I found myself in the floor-mattress bed of a man ten years older than me. I told him I wasn't sure whether I had been deflowered or not. I explained my experience in Newcastle and he stated "Well you are not a virgin then are you."
He played with me until I orgasm-ed. I tried to keep still and not say anything or move. He became frustrated with me and pressed so hard down on my nipples that I felt some little clicks, like tears. Many years later a lump was removed from that area where he pressed, and years after that another lump was removed. Both benign thankfully. I couldn't help but twitch when I orgasm-ed. Then his rubbing became painful so I asked him to stop. He stopped doing that, raised and parted my legs and penetrated me. He pounded, moving me as he willed, for a long time until his orgasm. I found the whole incident painful, unpleasant, uncomfortable.
That incident happened during a festival and the next day I saw him in the audience at a hall and embarrassed him by going and giving him back the small amount of money he had given me to get home. I remember feeling his semen still on my legs where it had run down under my calf-length dress with the shirred bodice.
Many similar experiences happened with his peers and those men in that set, over the next period of time. One of them had just taken off my pants and turned his head away saying 'whoo' in disgust at the smell. He still had sex with me though.
One time while I was still at school, I was standing on Ringwood railway station in a pair of homemade hot pants of the 'Austrian yodelers' style; braces over the shoulders that crossed over at the back; in olive corduroy. I had made them and felt ashamed to be seen in something that I had made. One of the popular tough boys from school saw me. I really wanted the earth to swallow me up. I looked down at my hot pants, flushed bright red, looked at him then away repeatedly. He continued to stare at me, also red in the face, with a tragic 'I feel sorry for you' look on it. Now I see that my hot pants were OK. I could have worn them with panache if I was me now.
Another time while still at school we were grudgingly allowed, at Mum's urging, to go along with Sebastion on an overnight 'Uni' camp in a house away in the Blackwood Mountains. Sebastion had uni friends. Stephen and I lay down in the lounge-room to fall asleep with the rest of the crowd. One couple sitting up on the floor behind my head were looking at me as I looked up at them . The guy said to his girl 'Poor Kid.' I looked up at them again but they ignored me. I had imaginings of being a 'peace, love, flower child'.
Another beautiful, blonde uni student took me to the beach, had sex with me in his car and then his house. As he dropped me at a tram stop I said, 'I really hate it when nobody rings me.' I gave him my number, telling him not to ring at a certain time because I wouldn't be home then. That young man rang at the time when I was out; I received the message; and he never rang back again. We were still living at the Box Hill house. I must have been seventeen then eighteen. Another man going out with someone I knew had sex with me in his car and whenever else he encountered me at gatherings or at peoples houses.