abuse survivor

Lies

~ KJ ~ 13 Comments

I’ve been struggling with a memory for the last couple of days. It came up inadvertently in therapy on Monday.

My therapist asked if I could smell anything. I have issues with smell, due largely in part to a deviated septum I got as a child when a classmate accidentally kicked me upside the face. I never went to the hospital; my mother insisted I was fine. I just sat in the office with ice packs covering my bloody nose and face.

I found the need to justify my mother’s inaction. She cares. She’s taken me to the hospital before. I recalled several visits to the ER to have Lego blocks removed from my nostrils (my mother wasn’t happy about those incidents). Then I recalled the major hospital incident of my youth: the time I walked into the wall.

My brother was playing a video game. Super Mario Bros. 3 on Nintendo. I can remember that part.

Then I remember sitting in the backseat of the car, surrounded by bloody wash cloths and towels. Don’t look. Just keep holding it there. We were driving for a long time. We lived just minutes from the hospital, but that’s not where my father went. He drove all the way to a hospital in the next county.

I remember laying in the hospital bed, staring at the lights above me. I couldn’t feel anything, but I knew what was going on. I just focused on the lights as the doctor stitched up my face. No more bleeding.

What I can’t remember is what happened in between. How did my face get like that? My parents always told the story that I walked into a wall. I was just being clumsy and careless and smacked my face right into the bedroom wall. I never really questioned it as a child. What child would?

Saying it out loud the other day made me realize how bizarre the incident was. How I could have walked into a wall and caused that type of damage? How could a little girl walk into anything with that much force to cause a deep cut across her lip like that? How was my nose spared? Wouldn’t that have hit the wall first? And why did we drive so far away to get help? I have all these questions that I don’t have the answers to.

I still have the scar (thankfully less prominent) 20+ years later. What I don’t have is the memory of how I got it. All I have to go on is a story.

The last couple of days have been full of memory flashes of what happened after, but nothing of what caused the damage. It’s frustrating for me. I want to know. Why can’t I know the truth?

Maybe I did walk into the wall. But why can’t I remember doing that?

Maybe I did walk into the wall. Because why would my parents lie?

I ask myself that last question and realize that my parents have lied most of their lives. They’ve lied to themselves. They’ve lied to their family. And they’ve lied to their children.

There’s been so many lies, that I can’t even figure out what was truth. Even the most insignificant things were lies. My mother lied about where I was born. I didn’t find out until I went to get a Social Security card after I ran away, and ended up giving what I found out to be inaccurate information. My birthplace was wrong. My mother’s name on my birth record did not match what I knew her name to be. I haven’t been able to get my birth certificate because I don’t have the right information to verify who I am. As if I didn’t struggle with figuring out who I am enough, I can’t even figure out the most basic components of my identity. I know my name is the truth. That’s about it.

I was a child who believed what my parents said because that’s what children are taught to do. Trust your parents. They don’t lie to their children to hurt them. Sure, parents lie about Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. But they don’t lie about birthplaces and bleeding faces.

Maybe I’m just overanalyzing. Maybe it wasn’t a lie. Maybe I did just walk into the wall in just the right way. But how the hell can I know truths when so much has been lies?

Failed dreams and a graduation

~ KJ ~ 6 Comments

I technically graduated college in December of 2015, in the middle of the academic year. There was no celebration. I got my degree and award in the mail and that was that; I didn’t think much of it. In many ways, I still felt unworthy. I felt like I didn’t truly earn it.

At that time, I had no intentions of attending the graduation ceremony that would be held in the Fall. It wasn’t local, it was nearly a year after I finished, and I’d have to go alone, because I had no family. The whole thing seemed like more of a burden than anything.

It also wasn’t how I dreamed I would graduate.

Growing up, my academic prowess was the only good thing I had. I was intelligent, and it was consistently recognized. While in high school, I had dreams of going to an Ivy League school. I dreamed I was going to graduate as valedictorian. I dreamed of finally being free.

Going to college was supposed to be my ticket out. I applied to colleges all over the country. I got accepted into some of the best schools. I had full scholarships. Any reasonable parents would have been thrilled at their child’s achievements, and thankful that scholarships would relieve the financial burden.

But my parents weren’t reasonable. They took my achievement as an insult, that in some way the acceptances and awards made me think I was better than them. I never said or acted like I was, but that didn’t matter. Nothing I ever did was good to them, even when it was good to everyone else.

My college dreams fizzled away.

My mother started hiding my acceptance letters. I found a collection of them after I had graduated from HS, mysteriously “lost” in a convenient, hidden away pile. Every letter was an acceptance. Every school I applied to was ready to welcome me. Yet I ended up at a school I never wanted to be in.

I was disillusioned to think that my parents would ever let me go away to college. I couldn’t even leave the house. I didn’t have any choices. My mother decided my college career for me. I had to go to a local university, one that I could still be within my parents’ control. My father drove me to class, and picked me up as soon as I was done. I didn’t have any freedom, but I should have known that was going to be the case. I was foolish to think otherwise.

Even though I hated that school, I made the most out of it. I excelled once again. In my second year there, I was already receiving honors. I was top-ranked. My picture was in the papers. I was on track to be valedictorian. A part of my dream started to come back. I can still be something.

And then I lost that dream again. I forfeited my scholarship and gave up my academic achievements when I dropped out of school with a 4.0 GPA. My father was sick, and it was selfish of me to think of my education when my family was struggling. It was just another failed dream.

Whenever I thought about this recent graduation, all I could think about were those failed dreams. I should have been graduating at 22. I should have been up on stage, making my valedictorian speech. I should have been surrounded by family and friends who were just as proud of me as I was of myself.

Instead, I’m graduating at 30 years old. I won’t be making any speeches, and there won’t be any family in the audience cheering for me. I am alone. Why would I want to celebrate that?

But part of me did want to celebrate. Part of me knew all it took for me to get my degree.

Through it all, I finished with a 3.9 GPA. And when I say all, I mean it: several long-term hospital visits for pneumonia, a surgery, and four psychiatric inpatient hospitalizations. I had no breaks. I couldn’t take any sick leave. I had to get it done. I wrote my thesis in the midst of my escape to freedom. Through the chaos, I still did it.

I earned that degree just like I earned my freedom.

But I didn’t want to celebrate alone. I had no family. My new friends were too new. My old acquanitances were distant. I didn’t think it was possible, so I gave up my plans. Then, just weeks before, I decided I needed to do something positive for me, and this was my chance. I (hesitantly) asked my best friend from my old life if he would like to go, and to my surprise, he said he would. So I spent the last two or three weeks scrambling to get everything together.

This Saturday, my friend and I traveled to my graduation ceremony. It was overwhelming at first. Within minutes of entering the arena, I started to panic. There were hundreds of people around. I was in a new place, and the noise was so loud I couldn’t even hear myself think. I had to calm myself. I tried to find a spot away from all of the people. I wanted to put on my headphones and drown everyone and everything out, but I couldn’t. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. It took everything in me not to have a meltdown right then and there.

But I got through it. I put on my cap and gown, and my honor cords, and walked out to the arena. I tried to look down at the floor instead of up at all of the people. It was the only way I could stay calm. I thought about what name I should use. Do I use my old name, or my new name? I hate my old name, but it’s still my legal name and the name I went to school with. I can’t just go up and give an alias. 

I debated with myself for an hour. I finally got up on stage, walked up to the microphone, and announced both of my names. It felt right that way, recognizing both who I was and who I am becoming. I shook a few hands and made my exit off of the stage. It was done.

I sat and waited for the other graduates to finish, not really feeling anything at all. Then the president of the university made his final speech. He took time out to acknowledge and thank students’ families for helping the students get to where they were today. I watched the audience as mothers and fathers stood up to be applauded. Then spouses, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, etc.

In that moment, I realized I had no family out there for me. Not just at graduation, but in the years leading up to that very day. My family didn’t help me get an education; they took it away from me. My family didn’t push me to succeed; they wished for my failure. Everything I did was on my own. I never had support.

I started crying because I realized what I had lost. I thought about all the shit I went through getting to this point. I thought about all the slaps to the face, all of the put-downs and the insults my mother threw at me just because I was trying to be a better human being. I remembered how my mother used to always tell me, “You think you’re better than me? You think you’re smarter than me because you went to college? You’re nothing.”

Her voice replayed in my head just as if she were there, sitting in the chair next to me. I stopped crying. I wanted to yell, but I knew well enough that my mother wasn’t actually there to hear me. Her voice wasn’t going away; it was like a broken record repeating the same part over and over. I couldn’t take it any more. I wasn’t going to let her ruin the moment.

As I stood up to take the final walk down the aisle, I closed my eyes and answered my mother’s voice back, in a way I could never answer her back before. I am better than you. I am a better person. I am a better human being.

I always was.

Dear Brother Explained

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

The other day, I posted a letter I had written to my brother: Dear Brother.

It wasn’t very well thought out. It was Sunday afternoon, and I found myself still struggling with my emotions about the situation that happened on Friday. I felt paralyzed by them, in a way. I couldn’t get anything done because my mind was set on thoughts about my brother. I needed a way to get my feelings out, because they weren’t serving me well by being bottled up inside.

I walked to the card store, still not set on what I was going to write. I walked through the card aisles, and came to the sympathy section. Loss. That is exactly what this felt like. My brother was still very much alive, but everything else about him was gone. My image of him: gone. My hope for him: gone. I lost him. He died in my heart.

There were only five or six cards dedicated to the loss of a brother. I picked up each one and read it. Unfortunately, none of them captured the type of loss this was. Then there was this card, describing the brother I always wanted: a brother I could depend on, a brother I could share good memories with, a brother I could love.

I started to cry as I looked through the card. I knew this was the right one. I put it in the envelope, wiped my face, and went to the register to purchase it. I left it in the bag until I got home, because I didn’t want to get emotional in public. Even so, I was already going through some of the things I wanted to write in my head. It wasn’t until later that afternoon that I sat at my desk, pulled out the card, got my pen, and wrote what I needed to say to him.

Even though I knew this was going to be just another card left unsent, like the cards I wrote to my father and to my mother, I found it oddly therapeutic. I didn’t need him to respond. I didn’t need him to give me an answer. I just needed, for myself, to say what I needed to say in the best way I knew how: through writing.

I didn’t always feel this way towards my brother. In fact, I struggled with feelings of guilt over leaving him behind. Every so often, the guilt would come back full force. It got especially bad after my father died. I knew that with my father gone, my brother was the only person my mother had left. I was scared for him. But there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t financially help him — I am barely surviving myself. I couldn’t risk my own safety by directly reaching out to him, because his closeness to his mother made it too dangerous to even attempt. I was (and still am) a mess myself. I needed to focus on me. I didn’t have the energy to devote to his cause. And I felt horrible for it.

Then the situation on Friday happened, and everything changed. I realized he didn’t care about me at all. He never once called me, but he still had my number. He couldn’t even contact me himself to ask for what he needed; he had someone else do it for him. And he didn’t even need to do what he did. He wanted to trade that Jeep in so he could pretend like it never existed, just like my family pretended like I never existed.

He could have offered me back even some of the money I put into buying that Jeep. Instead, he used all of it to get something bigger and better. The money from my father’s life insurance? Nothing. My brother and his mother have kept it for themselves. Because that’s who they are.

I realized that my brother is just like her. He is an adult. He can make choices. He chose to spread lies about me after I escaped, just as his mother did. He could have denied it, but I know that would have been hard to directly defy her. He could have said nothing at all and been okay, but he instead chose to fuel the fire his mother set for me.

He could have reached out. He knew my phone number, and my e-mail address. His mother would not have found out. But he chose not to try.

My brother could have just paid off the Jeep. Money was not an issue. Instead, he chose to trade it in, and trade it in for something better. There is something symbolic in that. He traded in that Jeep just as he traded me in.

My brother could have gotten away. He always had more financial resources than me. He worked full-time for a long time. I figured out a way to get out. He could have figured out a way, but he chose not to. He could have taken my father’s insurance money and left, but he chose not to. He chose to stay with his mother.

Together, they have chosen to take what isn’t theirs. They are opportunists. They are takers. They are liars. They are users.

My brother is just like her. Her training didn’t work so well on me, but it has worked on him. I didn’t see it before. Well, no, I did. The truth is that I didn’t want to see it. I wanted my brother to be a true and good person. I wanted him to be the brother I needed, the brother I always wanted.

But I realized he’s not that person. He never was, he’s not now, and he won’t be able to be. I can’t change him. I can’t show him something he refuses to see. I can’t save him. So I have to let him go.

It’s another loss. But sometimes, losses are for the better.

 

Dear Brother

~ KJ ~ 7 Comments

Dear brother,

I wish you were the brother described on the front of this card. I wish I could have depended on you. I wish I could say “I love you” without it feeling so complicated.

You were my big brother. Seven years older, taller, and stronger than me. I looked up to you. You were the only friend I had. You were the only person that knew my reality, because you were living part of it, too.

I wonder how hard it was for you to stand by and watch me get hurt. You were there all those nights she came into our bedroom. You knew what she was doing to me in the shower. But you had to close yourself off from it all, you couldn’t help. I understood that. You were just a child, too.

I grew up and watched you struggle. I watched you get beaten, just like I had been beaten. I watched you slowly self-destruct. I heard you crying in your room at night. I was crying, too. I watched you make yourself bleed, and I bled, too. Those scars on your body that you still bear, I know how you got them. I have those same scars, too.

I still remember the night you locked yourself in the bathroom. You banged your head against the wall until you were bloodied and bruised. You couldn’t even speak. All you could do was cry. Hurt and cry. I understood, because that was the language that I spoke, too.

We didn’t know any better. We weren’t allowed to have voices. We shared the same silence. We shared the same hurt. We shared the same pain. I understood you. I thought you understood me, too.

But then you turned against me. You became her adjutant. You pretended to be my brother only to report everything back to her. You helped her terrorize me. You stood by her side as she treated me like a prisoner. Why? You are her son, but you were also my big brother. I needed you. You could have protected me, but you didn’t.

I wanted so badly to help you. I felt horrible leaving you behind. I was weighed down with guilt for over a year. Did you ever feel any of those things when you chose to work against me? You never reached out. You never once showed me that you cared. You told lies about me just like she did, when you could have just said nothing at all.

I used to envy you. I wondered why she loved you so much. Then when I got older, I realized that’s not love. It’s abuse, too. I hope one day, for your sake, you will see that she doesn’t love you. What she’s done to you, what she continues to do to you — it’s not love. It never was.

Part of me fears that it’s too late for you. You’ve become so much a part of her that you don’t even know who you are without her, and who you could be. There’s a great big world out there waiting for you to see. I hope you see it one day.

We have chosen different paths. I chose to be nothing like her. I chose to be free. But you’ve chosen to follow in her footsteps. You’ve chosen to stay.

I’m grieving your loss, because I’ve realized you will never be the brother I needed you to be. I held out hope that you would make the right choice, but you haven’t. I don’t blame you, but I hope you understand why I have to let you go.


Why do I write?

~ KJ ~ 9 Comments

When I was a senior in high school, a friend introduced me to DeadJournal. It was my first and only outlet at the time. I knew my mother would never allow it, so I created it in secret. I wrote very obscure posts about my pain. I never wrote anything specific, for fear of my mother finding out.

And sure enough, my mother walked into my bedroom one night and searched my computer. DeadJournal popped up. She interrogated me, asking what it was. I told her it was an online journal I was looking at. She flipped. She told me I was not allowed to write about feelings. I was punished, thankfully less severe as I would have been had she seen what I actually wrote. But I never wrote in it again.

That journal was supposed to be for me. It was my opportunity to write how I felt, and that was taken away from me. Just like everything else was taken away from me.

I started writing after I ran away, because I knew my mother wouldn’t be able to take that away from me again. I could write what I felt, without anyone telling me what I should or shouldn’t write.

I didn’t go into this blog expecting anyone to read it. I did it for me, as a way of getting things out that I held in for so long. That was the purpose.

Along the way, a lot more people started reading my blog. Mostly strangers, and people who started out as strangers that I now have come to care about. And then people from my real life started reading. Then I wasn’t so anonymous. I couldn’t hide in my writing anymore. I was exposed. I learned to be okay with that, because people were supportive. In some ways, it reconnected me with people from my old life who were forced away from me by my mother.

Even with all of that, my writing never changed its purpose. I wrote for me. I write for me. If you don’t like it, don’t read what I write. If you feel the need to decide what I should or shouldn’t be writing about, don’t read it. This is my writing. This is my life.I write about my struggles. I write about my PTSD and DID. I write about the things that affect me.

I don’t write about my morning coffee. I don’t write about mundane shit. That doesn’t affect me. My writing isn’t sunshine and rainbows, because I’m not sunshine and rainbows. I’m not here to make anyone look good. I don’t even make myself look good.

I don’t want to hear anyone telling me what I should write. I will not be controlled again. This is MY space. If my mother ever came to me and told me to stop writing so negatively about her, I would tell her to fuck off. Perhaps she should have not done the things she did in the first place that led me to write in such a way.

This sentiment applies to anyone who thinks the same. If you want to read my writing and be supportive, rock on. If you want to read my writing and criticize, you can go away. I have enough to deal with already.

Now, since I got that all out, I have a dilemma.

My therapist asked me last session if I thought it would be beneficial for her to read my blog before our sessions. On an intellectual level, I understood her reasons for suggesting that. I wrote about my issues with communication before. It’s still a problem. I can write much easier than I can speak out loud, even with my therapist.

My therapist knows about this blog; she has since the beginning. But she told me in the beginning that she would not read it, and I was okay with that. I didn’t really think my writing was all that substantive back then anyway.

For some reason, when my therapist brought it up this time, I had a strong negative reaction. Perhaps it was the timing. I have recently been dealing with some people who feel the need to dictate what I should and shouldn’t write in my blog (hence my mini-rant just before). I think I may have transferred my anger about that onto my therapist.

I know my therapist is not out to criticize or judge my writing, or even my life. But I feel like I am losing my safe space a bit. I started out being able to write whatever I wanted, and now I have people in my life trying to change that. What if I wanted to hide here? What if I wanted to write something really horrible? Can I do that without receiving backlash?

I trust my therapist more than any human being, past, present, and probably future. I have told her things I would never tell another person, things I would never even write about here. But what if something came up that I didn’t want to tell her? I wouldn’t have a place to put those thoughts anymore. I’d have to keep them inside, like I did for most of my life. I don’t want to do that anymore.

On a realistic level, I see the benefits. On an emotional level, I feel invaded.

I just want to be able to hide. But do I really need to?

I choose crutches

~ KJ ~ 11 Comments

I’ve been struggling in therapy the last few weeks. Topics come up that I don’t want to talk about, things that I know will make me dissociate. I don’t want to go there, so I shut down. Then my therapist gets frustrated, and brings up intensive outpatient, because that is what is in the contract I agreed to in July in order to avoid hospitalization. Then I get frustrated because it seems like she just wants to send me off to IOP.  It makes me feel like she just wants to give up on me. It makes me feel like I’m not good at therapy.

It happened again during Thursday’s session. Her mentioning IOP just made me shut down more. I was hurt. I was angry. But I couldn’t voice any of that.

I ended up writing my therapist an e-mail early Sunday morning.

Sometimes I get frustrated whenever you bring up IOP. I know that’s what we agreed on, but I didn’t know that any time anything goes wrong, IOP was going to be brought up. It just further solidifies my belief that I’m not good at therapy. And I know you said not to judge myself, but that is how it translates for me. That I’m not doing this right. That this is just another of many failed attempts at therapy. And then the others think the same, and then it becomes a battle just to go to therapy. It doesn’t help me. It just makes me shut down more.

I know I can be frustrating. I know you have to repeat things a bunch of times because they don’t get through to me. There are times I really don’t understand what’s going on. There are times I don’t feel like my brain is working. There are times when I am sitting there, but I am not there. I’m sorry for that. I am trying, but I’m not perfect.

Sometimes I don’t want to talk about certain things because someone is telling me not to, or because I know I won’t be able to stay present, or because I am afraid to feel. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that I can’t.

I’ve made progress. Maybe you don’t think it’s enough, and maybe it’s not enough on paper, but I think it is. Because I live it. I could be so much worse than I am right now. I struggle, but we figure out how to work through it. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.

I’m sorry if this didn’t make sense. I just had a lot on my mind that I’d never be able to say out loud.

She didn’t reply back. I actually told her not to. We were having a session the next day, anyway, and I just wanted to get it out there because I knew I wouldn’t be able to say it out loud.
When I walked in her office this morning, she told me was that she got my e-mail. I immediately apologized. I regretted sending it, because I was afraid it was mean, and that she was going to be mad at me. She assured me that she wasn’t angry, that it wasn’t mean, and that I didn’t need to apologize.
My therapist asked why I couldn’t say the things I wrote in the e-mail to her in person. I told her it wasn’t because of her. I am just so afraid of people sometimes, so scared to communicate. I still feel that talking is wrong. I still feel unable to speak the thoughts in my head. Sometimes I can, and sometimes I can’t. I can’t explain it.
She told me IOP isn’t a punishment. She’s not sending me off to Shady Pines. She doesn’t want to pass me off, she wants to help me. She thinks the program will help with some of the basic things I still struggle with, like eating, daily triggers, and handling my emotions. I know how hard it is for you to get through each day. I know how hard it is for you just to get up in the morning. I see it in you every time you’re here.
Then she started with one of her metaphors.
“Let’s say you broke your leg. Luckily, your insurance covers everything and you have to choose between a wheelchair and crutches. Which do you choose?”
“I choose crutches.”
“But why? Choosing the wheelchair will help you recover faster and easier. With crutches, you’ll still be struggling, and you’ll risk falling and making your leg worse.”
I understood her analogy, but I still insisted on the crutches. I can’t do as much in a wheelchair. Sure, I may recover faster, but at what cost? I won’t be able to do my job in a wheelchair. I won’t be able to get around everywhere I could if I were walking. Half of my ability will be gone.
But with crutches, I can still walk. I can still get around. Sure, I will struggle to keep myself upright. And yes, knowing me, I’ll probably fall over quite a few times. But I’ll still be functioning. I can still hobble around and do what I need to do. Even if it takes me longer to heal, I’d pick the crutches.
In a deeper way, crutches are a less obvious sign that something is wrong. When someone sees someone in a wheelchair, they know it’s serious. No one uses a wheelchair for minor things. When someone sees someone using crutches, they assume well, at least they’re still walking. They’ll be fine. Maybe it’s just a sprain. Maybe you just need a crutch for a little stability. Nothing too serious.
Let me stumble through life on my crutches.
I don’t want to admit that I’m too broken to need a wheelchair.

The future

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

For the first 29 years of my life, I never envisioned any kind of future. I spent every day wanting to die, because I believed that death was the only chance to escape the hell I was living in.

Then I managed to get away, and I didn’t have to die.

I finally started to envision a future. I was going to be someone. I was going to make a difference. I was finally going to have the life I wasn’t able to have for 29 years.

And then reality hit, and that future started to dwindle away.

The reality that my mental illness will never be accepted. The reality that no matter what good things I do, no matter what I accomplish, my DID and PTSD will put everything into question.

The reality that, even though I’ve escaped physically, my mind has not escaped the terror. I still live in fear every day. I still carry 29 years of hell inside my mind.

The reality that my physical illness will shorten my life considerably. I’ll never have a family. I’ll never enjoy retirement. I’m going to die a lot sooner than I deserve to.

And that makes me angry. It makes me angry that I spent what will be the majority of my life in a prison.

It makes me angry that my mother may very well outlive me. Actually, I think that angers me more than the diagnosis itself. I can accept that I am sick, but I can’t accept the idea that my mother, of all people, could outlive me.

My therapist and I have talked about it a few times. She doesn’t sugarcoat anything for me, which I appreciate (most times). But I’m not so sure she understands the degree of anger and disgust I have over this.

My therapist tells me that yes, it’s possible that my mother will live longer than me, but it won’t be a good life, that my mother doesn’t experience joy and happiness, that her life is and will be empty. Even in a shorter life, I can still experience those things, things that my mother can’t.

But damnit, she still gets to live. I’m not even sure she deserves to be living now, and she sure as hell doesn’t deserve to live longer than me. How did this happen? For all the wrongs she has done, she is rewarded with a life longer than the one I will see. What did I do wrong?

It doesn’t matter that she can’t feel those good things. She can still experience life. She can still wake up every day and not stress about anything. And I get to spend the rest of my life struggling. I get to spend the rest of my life in fear of her, because I will never be not afraid until she is dead. I just want to know what it’s like to not live in fear. What if I never get that chance? What if I die before I know happiness? Then I really will be just like my mother.

My therapist envisions a future for me that I don’t see. To her, these existential circumstances don’t matter. She still believes I can do great things. She believes I can have a better life, and that I can heal.

But all I see is loss. I lost everything before, and now I’ve lost my future.

Falling apart

~ KJ ~ 17 Comments

Do I exist? Do I matter?

I feel invisible. Just like I did before. I ran away. Different surroundings. Same feelings.

I quit my job. I didn’t want to. That job was everything to me. It was my safe place. It was my family. It gave me a purpose. But it was too overwhelming. I tried voicing my concerns, but no one would listen to me. I asked for help and didn’t get it. I spent day after day struggling to get my work done, all the while watching other coworkers get away with doing next to nothing. I must be invisible. It feels like I’m invisible again.

I’m weeks behind in my work. It bothers me, because I strive to be the best. But I can’t work miracles. I blame myself for my inability to get my work done, even though on some level I know that the problem doesn’t lie with me. I’ve been going to work every day stressed out before I even walk through the door, because I know the piles of work that need to be done and I know it’ll be another day that it won’t get touched. I cry in the bathroom. I talk myself out of bashing my head against the wall. I contemplate walking out of work and running into the highway. Because I am a failure. I can’t even work right. So I gave my notice, because I would rather leave than be told I fail at my job. And no one said a word to me about it. Because I’m invisible.

So I no longer have work to lean on.

Home. I can’t lean on that, either. I don’t want to be home as much as I don’t want to be at work. It’s a consistent source of frustration. It’s a home full of triggers.

I try to be reasonable, but I have limits. I don’t need to be talked to like I’m dumb. I don’t need to be called retarded. I endured that long enough from my mother, and I couldn’t say anything then, I had to just absorb it. But now that I am free, I try to stand up for myself, I assert my needs. I asked her to stop and she just kept on, and then I had to deal (and am still dealing) with the emotional backlash. It may have been a different person talking to me, but it sent me right back to being at home with my mother. Why can’t people just stop when I ask them to stop? Why does no one respect my boundaries? This isn’t even the first time. I must not matter.

And then I go to eat dinner, my only meal of the day, only to find that my food has been eaten. Three days worth of food gone. So I sit and cry, because no one realizes the amount of effort it takes me just to get to a point to want to eat. No one realizes how complicated food is for me. They don’t understand that I eat an entire plate of food in minutes not because I am hungry, but because I am afraid my food will be taken away. They don’t understand that my mother took away my food because I didn’t deserve it. They don’t understand that she would take the food that I bought away from me because she said it was selfish not to share with the family. They don’t understand that I still struggle with food every day.

I’ve explained all this before. I didn’t think I was asking for much. But no one listens. Now I have to repair the damage yet again. Now I have to convince my parts that we deserve food. I can buy more food eventually, but that’s not the point at all. It’s hard to convince myself and my parts that we are safe and can have things if those things are taken away from us. My needs don’t matter. I don’t matter. I exist only for the use of others.

I wanted a different a life, not just different surroundings.

No job. No family. No purpose. No safe place.

I’m tired. I’m emotionally drained. I’m lost. I’m gone.

Everything is falling apart.

Can nobody hear me?

~ KJ ~ 9 Comments

I regularly make excuses for the poor behavior of others in my life, especially when their behavior directly affects me.

I excused my father’s part in my abuse because I told myself my mother made him do it (as if she held a gun to his head). I excused my coworker’s behavior a few weeks ago when he called me a bitch several times, telling myself he didn’t know any better because he was raised to treat women that way. I excuse a close person’s consistently offensive behavior, telling myself she just can’t help the way she acts.

I do this not as a way to defend these people, but to defend myself. If I didn’t excuse them, that means I would end up angry. And I don’t want to be angry.

But making excuses only works superficially, because on an intellectual level, I know that my excuses aren’t viable, that these behaviors were/are wrong, and that I really should be able to feel angry and hurt and however else I want to feel. Eventually, my feelings come to the surface, and I can only push them back down so many times before they come out full force.

Last therapy session, I couldn’t push my anger down any more. We were discussing the aftereffects of the letter, about how it made me feel sad. Then my therapist asked what else I was feeling, because it seemed like more than just sadness. Without thinking, I said “I’m angry. All of those fucking idiots, why didn’t they do anything to help?”

I immediately felt bad for what I had said, and apologized to my therapist. When she asked why I was apologizing, I told her I shouldn’t have used those bad words. I said, “it’s not their fault. They didn’t know. I wasn’t their problem. I shouldn’t be angry.”

“Why don’t you want to be angry?”

“Because if I’m angry that means I’m like her, like my mother.”

“Anger isn’t the same as abuse. What your mother did to you, she didn’t do because of anger. Anger is something that everyone feels, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re going to abuse. It’s okay to be angry.”

I sat there for a minute, still trying to push down what was trying to come out. I looked around the room, trying to think of something else to talk about.

“No, no, I can’t do it.”

“Yes you can. It’s okay to be angry. Anger makes you human.”

I repeated what my therapist told me to myself a few times. Anger doesn’t make me like her. Anger doesn’t make an abuser. Anger is okay.

And then it erupted. Through tears and clenched fists, I let it all out.

I don’t understand. I don’t understand why nobody helped me. I never wanted to go home after school, I tried to stay with the teachers but then the teachers sent a note home and said I couldn’t anymore and then I got in trouble. None of them ever asked why I didn’t want to go home. None of them asked why I wore so many layers of clothing to school, why I was always covering up. No one questioned why a six-year-old girl tried to drown herself. Children don’t just try to kill themselves out of curiosity. No one wondered why a girl would scratch off her own skin. No one questioned my injuries. How many times could a child walk into walls? I wasn’t clumsy. But nobody did anything! They just nodded their heads and moved on!

There it was. My anger. Finally free and out in the open. The anger that was rightfully mine to have. I was a child who had no other way to communicate. A child who was threatened never to tell. And I didn’t. So I tried every other way to speak without using my words.

I could see just by looking at my therapist’s face that she understood. She got it. And she was okay with my anger, and my hurt. “There were all these red flags, all these ways you tried to ask people for help…”

“And they still didn’t hear me!”

There were so many red flags in my childhood. So many. Yet no one wanted to see them. I could have set those flags on fire and waved them an inch away from their faces, and they would have just stood there and talked about the weather.

I am angry. I am angry that these people just perpetuated my hell by not intervening. I am angry that I spent my childhood thinking that it was just normal to be hurt like this, thinking that no one is hearing my cries so this all must just be normal. No one should ever believe that abuse is normal. It should have never had to be my normal.

It’s an anger I am not sure will ever go away.

Daddy’s gone and he took my hope with him

~ KJ ~ 1 Comment

Fuck you, grief, and your shitty timing.

I finally managed to quiet the internal chaos sparked by my father’s death. There’s no longer any fear that the police are coming to get us, there’s no more thinking that we caused his death, and thankfully, no more asking to be with daddy in heaven (because that was hard for me on multiple levels). So all is good, right?

Wrong. I sat down the other day to write an article that was due the next morning, when I was suddenly overwhelmed with grief. I couldn’t stop crying. I tried to distract myself, but it would only work for a few minutes before I would start crying again. I was a mess. At the most random, inconvenient time, my mind decided it was time to grieve.

But why? I don’t miss my father. I hadn’t seen him in nearly a year, and for good reason. He was an asshole. A fucking asshole. I don’t care that some think it rude to speak ill of the dead. I am speaking the truth; a person’s life status does not affect that.

I brought up my emotional struggle to my therapist on Thursday. She assured me it was okay to grieve his death, but I was sure I wasn’t sad about his physical death at all. I was starting to get frustrated because I couldn’t figure out how to put my thoughts into words (another problem I will write about later). My therapist encouraged me to just say what was inside.

After a few more moments of frustration, I stomped my feet on the floor, and through tears, shouted, “I’ll never know why he did it. Maybe my mom made him do it, maybe he didn’t want to. Now I’ll never know because he’s dead.”

That was the loss I was grieving. Not the loss of my father, but the loss of the truth. The loss of knowing why. The loss of the hope that maybe, just maybe, my father loved me. Maybe he just hurt me because she made him do it. Maybe he really didn’t hate me. Maybe he was just doing her bidding because he had no other choice.

I will never know anything. That is why I cry. I want to believe that if my father was alive, he would be honest about his role in the abuse. In some way, I want to believe that knowing would make a difference, that it in some way would change something.

I know it doesn’t change anything.

But there is a part of me that has spent decades holding onto hope that my father loved me. A child needs someone to love them, and I knew from very early on that person was not my mother. So I put all of my hope in my father, even when his actions showed the opposite of love. I needed to hold on to that possibility. I needed that to survive my childhood.

But do I still need that hope now?