Absence

~ KJ ~ 8 Comments

My father’s service was last night. I did not attend.

I know that, in many people’s eyes, that makes me a horrible daughter. I’ve already heard it. But that’s okay. I did what was best for me. I made a decision that was in my own best interests, for once in my life.

What would going to a service do? My father is already dead. I know that. I don’t need to go there to confirm it. I don’t need to go there and talk to people and pretend that he was a great person, when he was not at all what he should have been. Other people can attend and mourn for who they knew him to be. I mourned for who I knew him to be long ago.

I could not go and see my mother. There would have been no avoiding it. While I may not be scared of her in the moment, I have younger parts that are still terrified of her. Why would I expose them to that? Why would I expose myself to that? It wouldn’t be fair for any of us. It is too much of a risk.

And honestly, I don’t trust my mother at all. I can’t say with any amount of certainty that she would not try to hurt me. It doesn’t matter that she said she wouldn’t do anything. The fact that people even had to ask her that question says a lot. She is predictably unpredictable.

I’ve made too much progress to throw that all into jeopardy for a few hours of faked grief. I am not grieving. I am not mourning. I’m not sad that he’s gone. I am relieved.

My absence doesn’t make me a horrible daughter. My absence doesn’t make me a bad person. My absence proves that I have grown enough to realize that I have choices.

 

Wishes don’t come true (The loss of my father)

~ KJ ~ 12 Comments

Last Thursday, I told my therapist about how I kept seeing my father in random strangers.

It turned into talking about all of the things I wanted in a father, but never got. My therapist mentioned something about my wish for a real father, and I told her that my wishes never mattered, because wishes don’t come true. In that moment, I thought about all of the wishes I made that never came true: my wish to be dead, my childhood wish for someone to help me, my wish for decent parents, my wish for the pain to stop, my wishes for my parents to die. All wishes left ungranted.

Just 24 hours after that therapy session, I received word that my father was in the hospital, on life support, dying. My immediate reaction was guilt. All of those times I wished for his death, now he’s going to die. This was all my fault. I shouldn’t have wished for him to die. I shouldn’t have complained that my wishes never come true.

I didn’t know how to feel. Sadness, anger, relief, guilt, fear…they were all running through my head. 

My father had been sick for nearly a decade, but he seemed to go on forever. But this was it. His heart stopped and he wasn’t coming back from it. He passed away Monday night, July 4th, 2016.

When I found out he had passed away, I didn’t even cry. I just…went on with life. I went to sleep, woke up and went to work. I had moments of inner confusion, but I wasn’t heartbroken. I wasn’t distraught. I was okay.

Perhaps I prepared myself for his death in the days before. I went to therapy Monday morning knowing that my father would be gone in the next few days. But in talking about it in session, I didn’t even cry then. I cried more on Father’s Day than I did on the day he died.

That’s because I already lost my father, well before he died. I have been grieving his loss for awhile now. I grieved it when I ran away. I grieved it when I wrote him that card just a few weeks ago.

I can’t help but wonder about the timing of all of this. I have been muddling through so many emotions and such concerning my father, especially during the last month. My view of my father has changed considerably. I used to view him as a fellow victim of my mother, but I learned that he made his own choices, and those choices included hurting his children. My mother didn’t force him to do that. She didn’t force him to help her destroy me. He had the option to be a good parent and he chose not to.

If I hadn’t realized who my father really was in these last several weeks, I would be grieving a fantasy right now. I would be grieving a person that never existed. I would be grieving the person I hoped my father was.

At first, I was angry at myself. I didn’t have a chance to confront my father. I never got any closure. In reality, I know I would have never confronted him anyway. But at least while he was alive, it was always a possibility I could hold on to. Now I’ve lost that. That is what I grieve the most.

Independence

~ KJ ~ 7 Comments

Today is July 4th, the day America celebrates the anniversary of its independence. In less than one week, on July 10th, I will be celebrating the anniversary of my own independence.

This coming Sunday will be one year since I ran away from home. One year of independence. One year of…freedom (and I use that term loosely, because in many ways, I am still not free).

I don’t think many people in my life understand the importance of that day for me. I didn’t just run away from home. I escaped hell. I escaped a life of pain, a life of hurt, and a life of abuse. I escaped a life I will hopefully never have to experience again.

I didn’t expect to make it this far.

I’m in a weird place right now, for this and other reasons. I need to write, but can’t find the words.

I’ll be okay.

Hold on, let go

~ KJ ~ 19 Comments

I’ve still been struggling with the reality that I am without a family. Which is weird, because on some level, I know I never had a family to begin with.

Did I have a mother? Sure. Half of my DNA comes from her. She gave birth to me. But that’s where her mother-ness ends.

Did I have a father? I guess. It’s questionable where I share his DNA, but he was a man who identified himself as my father, so I guess he was. He provided financially for the family. And that’s where his father-ness ends.

Was I a member of that family? No. I was an involuntary member of my mother’s cult. I was a pawn in my mother’s chess game. I was a servant to the almighty queen. But I was never a real part of that family.

Yet for some reason, I am still holding on to the emotional connection to that family. In the absence of my mother, I have taken on her criticisms and her hatred and continue to punish myself, just as she would do when she was there next to me.

I give in to the voice inside of me that tells me I am nothing without her. I listen as she tells me I am worthless, that I will never amount to anything, that I can’t do anything right. I believe her when she says I will never survive without her.

It doesn’t matter that she is no longer with me, because her voice is still inside of me, programmed into my brain, telling me all of the things I’ve heard all of my life, continuing to poison my thoughts, continuing to destroy my sense of self.

So why do I keep listening? Why do I keep holding on to something so toxic and so damaging? Because it’s all that remains of what I knew to be my family. That toxicity is all I have left. In a sick way, I keep my family alive by continuing to act on my mother’s toxic legacy.

I find comfort in familiarity. I find validation for my mother’s truths in my current life circumstances. When something doesn’t work out, when I’m struggling financially, when I can’t handle my life, I tell myself “See, my mother was right. I can’t live without her.”

I’m so afraid of losing that last connection. As damaging as it is, I keep holding on. I keep giving in.

My therapist showed me this meme in session today. She said it reminded her of me. At first, the person is holding on to the rope, as it tears and cuts into his hand. Then, as he starts to let go of the rope, his hand starts to get better. When he lets go completely, his hand is no longer being damaged by the rope at all; he is free from harm.

therapymeme

I’m still holding on to that rope, so very tightly. I’m holding on to all the shit my mother programmed into me, even though it’s hurting me and causing me pain. My therapist is trying to pull me away from that rope, telling me I don’t need to hold on to that anymore, trying to stop the emotional bleeding I am putting myself through. But I pull away from her and instead keep holding on to the rope.

I need to let go.

He’s not there

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

Many times over the past few weeks, I’ve seen my father.

It’s not really him, of course. He doesn’t know where I am. But my mind seems to be playing tricks on me to make me think that it is him. I’ve seen him on the bus, at the mall, and on the street. Different men, each strikingly similar in appearance to my father.

It happened earlier today, as I was walking through the mall to get to the bus stop. I could have sworn I saw my father sitting in a chair in the middle of the mall. The man had the same hair cut and color as my father, the same weird slouch, the same sunglasses. I scurried past and continued to look over my shoulder, making sure he wasn’t following me. The man, a total stranger, but in my mind, he was my father.

Each time it happens, I go through a weird back-and-forth reaction process. I  panic on the inside. At first, I let myself get lost in the panic and let it simmer, leading to inner chaos and unsafe feelings. Now, I try to immediately reassure myself that it is not him, that we are safe here and no one can find us. It’s not a cure, that’s for sure, but it keeps me from totally withdrawing or dissociating out of fear.

On the other end of that fear, is the desire to run up to these men and ask them if they are my father. It is something I have (thankfully) not managed to give in to doing, but the want is still there.

It doesn’t make much sense to me, simultaneously fearing someone and wanting to approach them. I don’t understand where that impulse is coming from. It feels like a confused child’s way of reaching out to her father. And I am a rational, 30 year-old adult who does not want to speak to her father ever again. What a contradiction.

Is it paranoia? I don’t know. Maybe there are just a lot of men that look like my father. He’s not atypical in the least, so it’s not a stretch to say there are many other similar men out there. But why haven’t I noticed them before? Why is this happening now, all of a sudden? And why do my reactions have to be so complicated?

Drunk

~ KJ ~ 6 Comments

I give up. I concede.

A night I can finally get to sleep, and I’m startled awake by a bunch of drunk and probably high strangers coming into my house. Barreling in like it’s nothing. Coming upstairs. Things breaking. Glass falling on the floor.

Someone tried repeatedly to get into my bedroom.

I cried. I laid in bed and cried.

Afraid to leave my room. Afraid to leave my bed.

And she has the nerve to call out my name to ask if I came out and took the cat. I can’t even leave my room to piss.

Still, I am laying here, in my own urine, afraid to be in my own place, trying to gather the courage to clean up and leave and go to any place that isn’t here.

I am angry. This situation isn’t right.

I am hopeless. Because I have nowhere else to go.

No safety. No family. No money. No home. No reason.

Compliments

~ KJ ~ 7 Comments

I have a hard time accepting compliments.

When I say I have a hard time, I mean I have a really, really hard time.

The topic came up in therapy on Thursday. My therapist gave me a compliment and I just started deflecting it in any way I could. I had just done the same to a friend earlier that day. I told my therapist about it, and of course she wanted to delve deeper into why I had so much trouble with them.

It’s not that I’m not used to receiving compliments. I’ve received them all of my life, for varying reasons. It was something else entirely.

As my therapist started questioning, I started thinking back and connecting the dots. I started remembering things I thought I had pushed down deep and far away. Things I did not want to remember.

So much was going on in my mind, and it must have shown on the outside. My therapist asked what was going on; my whole demeanor had changed. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to say all of the shit that was going on in my head. I wanted to feel, but I didn’t even know what to feel.

“My mother gets mad when people say nice things about me. She yells a lot.”

It’s something I dealt with my whole life. If it was something she couldn’t take credit for, or if it was something that took the attention off of her, my mother would get angry and I would end up in trouble. When someone would compliment my hair or my looks, my mother did what she could to make me ugly. When someone pointed out how smart I was, I was accused of thinking I was smarter and better than her, and I’d get knocked back into place.

As I sat there, muddling through the shit going on in my head, I started to dig my nail into the skin between my thumb and forefinger. I didn’t even realize I was doing it at first. After a few minutes, my therapist noticed and asked me to stop. But I couldn’t. I had the strongest urge to hurt. I needed to feel pain.

Eventually I pried my hands apart and sat on them, hoping it would stop the urge. I told my therapist that I needed to hurt. It was almost instinctive.

I sat there, awkwardly sitting on my hands, half listening to my therapist and half talking to myself in my head. I couldn’t focus. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to hurt something.

I tried to listen as my therapist talked about why I could have been needing to hurt. But nothing she said was making sense. I didn’t need to hurt because I felt like I deserved it. I needed to hurt because that’s what I associated with compliments. I needed to hurt because that’s what my mother did to me.

I finally found the strength to mutter out the words “mom hurts.” My therapist asked if I meant what I meant, that my mother hurt me, and I told her yes. I told her some of what happened. And then I started to cry, because I realized just how much the shit my mother had done had affected me.

Of all the things my mother had already taken away from me as a child, she took away the good words people had offered me. She took away any opportunity I had to take in others’ positivity. She turned what should have been happiness into pain.

Pain became a conditioned response. I experienced my mother’s narcissistic rage so often that I just automatically associated compliments and positive comments with the pain and hurt that she inflicted on me. Even in her absence, I am continuing the same response I’ve always had. Except now I am the one inflicting the pain.

I tried to pull myself back together and stop crying. I felt ashamed for crying over something I should have known better about. But I wasn’t crying entirely because of that. I was crying out of grief. Just when I thought my mother couldn’t take any more from me than she already had, she struck again.

I was crying for the little girl who couldn’t feel good about anything. I was crying for the little girl who had to shy away and not be noticed for fear that she would be hurt.

I was crying for me.

Support me, but don’t support me

~ KJ ~ 9 Comments

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the waiting room of my therapist’s office, admittedly a little fearful and pensive. I had just withdrawn from graduate school the day before and I was still dealing with new memories about my father.

The other therapist came out and talked to me for a bit, and offered to give me a hug. I accepted. Within seconds, I started to cry. She continued to hold on to me and comfort me, but I couldn’t stop crying and I pushed her away. In that moment, I needed that comfort and support and warmth and love. But I pushed it away.

I always push it away.

I lived for so long without any support, without any comfort, without any love. I managed to survive because I never knew what support was. You can’t miss something you never knew to begin with.

Now I have sources of support and I don’t know what to do with them. It doesn’t feel right. I want it, but it still feels so foreign to me. And I don’t know how to ask for it, either. It feels so wrong just to want it, let alone to ask for it.

After I read my Father’s Day card out loud to my therapist in our session on Monday, I found myself crying uncontrollably. My therapist assured me that it was okay to cry, so I did. But I couldn’t stop. My therapist asked what she could do to support me, and I just went blank.

“I’m okay.”

Yea. Really, self? You’re okay? I’m sitting there, nearly blinded by tears, with snot running out of my nose, and I still feel the need to say I’m okay. I don’t know if I’m trying to convince myself when I say it, or trying to convince everyone else.

My therapist told me again she was there for me, and asked what she could do to support me.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Inside, I did know. I wanted a hug. I wanted her to sit next to me. I wanted her to hold me. I wanted that comfort so badly. But all I could say was “I don’t know.”

I was afraid to ask for what I needed. I was afraid of being rejected. It’s easier to not ask at all, then to ask and be turned down.

It bothers me that I still can’t ask for what I need.

It bothers me that I still have trouble acknowledging that I have needs.

Come back to me, sleep.

~ KJ ~ 7 Comments

I’ve been out of it the last few days. I’ve been able to function (somehow) on very little sleep.

I had a weird experience Monday night. I don’t really know if it was a nightmare, or a flashback, or something else. I don’t remember many details about it; I have a feeling I blocked it out of my mind. I do remember being confused between what I was seeing and where I was in the moment.

I remember someone coming through my door. This was the moment I “woke up” and was stuck between the vision and reality. I felt like I was actually there in my mind, yet consciously aware that I was actually not there at all, if that makes any sense. When I saw someone coming through my door, I told myself that was impossible because I had locked my bedroom door and no one could get in.

Then I felt everything shaking. I thought my room was shaking. Is this an earthquake? Is there a truck outside? What is happening? Then I looked at my hands and realized that I was the one shaking. My whole body had been trembling.

I looked at the clock. I checked my phone for the date. I tried to remind myself that I was safe. Eventually, the shaking stopped, but that was the end of my sleep. I stayed in bed the rest of the night staring at the ceiling, trying not to jump at every little noise.

I got up and went to work, and somehow made it through the day. I fought through the exhaustion. As I rode the bus home, I felt myself wanting to just go to sleep right there. I told myself I would try to go to bed early. Even though I had some tasks that needed to be done, I couldn’t do them successfully on such little sleep.

By 6 o’clock, I was in bed. I was so exhausted, I could barely keep my eyes open. I thought for sure I would easily fall asleep. But I didn’t. Hours and hours flew by. I could not get myself to sleep. I felt constantly on edge, jumping at every little noise outside, wanting to hide at every noise inside.

I sat in my closet, hoping I would feel safe enough to fall asleep there. That didn’t work. Nothing worked. I think I was afraid to go back to sleep for a reason, something connected to what I experienced the night before.

Two days now, I was running on empty. I filled up with coffee and sugar, hoping the rush would be enough to get me through the long day. I couldn’t wait to get home and just melt into bed. I got home, settled down, and tried once again to go sleep. A few hours went by before I finally nodded off. And then I woke up an hour later. I calmed myself back into sleep and woke up after an hour (again).

This cycle continued throughout the night, and I never got more than an hour of sleep at a time. But at least I got sleep. It was something.

I’m still feeling the effects. I’m still exhausted. I have a lot to write about, but no energy to write. I am hoping tonight will be better for me.

I remind myself I am safe dozens of times in hopes that it will just sink in. It hasn’t yet.