childhood

Photographs

~ KJ ~ 1 Comment

I don’t have any photographs from my childhood.

I wish I would have stolen just a few before I left. I wouldn’t even have been able to, though, because whatever family photos my family had were in a lock-box. All I am left with now is memories.

There were not very many photographs of me aside from the yearly school pictures. In comparison, there were a lot of photographs of my brother. It makes sense; he was the first-born, and very much the more favored child of the two of us.

My baby pictures were hidden away in that box, with the exception of a few I managed to take and keep in a box in my room. I was a small baby, with very tan skin and a head full of pitch black hair. I looked nothing like either of my parents. I looked nothing like my blonde-haired, blue-eyed brother. Where did that baby come from? I remember, over the years, people responding in disbelief when they saw the picture; they insisted that baby was not me. Why would my mother have pictures of another person’s baby? Clearly it was me. An innocent baby, with no idea what she would have to endure in the years to come. I feel sorry for that baby. I wonder what she could have done differently to make her mother love her.

I remember a few pictures of me as a toddler, with out-of-control curly hair, an innocent smile, and bright eyes that were full of life. I was a beautiful child. There was no reason not to love me.

I saw a clear change in the photographs of me once I was past toddler-hood. There was one photograph I will never forget. I must have been around 5 years old. I was sitting on the floor in back of my closed bedroom door, with my head looking up from the fetal position I had taken. There was a look of fear and sadness in my face. My eyes were no longer bright. My smile was long gone. I wonder what happened to make me feel that way. I wonder why my mother felt compelled to take my picture. Other photographs depicted the same sadness, the same emptiness that I continued to have well into my adulthood. The light in my eyes ceased to exist. Smiles were few and far between. I was no longer that innocent child.

Then there were the photographs of me in the shower, very much past the age of being able to bathe myself. I can barely understand having naked pictures of an infant. I will never understand why a parent would take naked pictures of a child. I didn’t know such pictures existed until last year, when my mother flaunted them in my face. I was able to get hold of one and destroy it, though it took me months to gather the strength to see the photo again.

I feel sick not knowing if she has any other photos like that hidden somewhere. I wish I would have set fire to all of her photos before I left. She doesn’t deserve to remember me.

With the invention of the smartphone, I began taking pictures of myself. Even then, there was something missing. I rarely smiled, and when I did, it was forced. My sadness and emptiness were written all over my face. I never noticed it because to me, that was my normal. When people recently started pointing out how much better I looked since I had escaped, I looked at old pictures I had taken of myself and I realized they were right. My face has always explained my feelings better than I ever could verbalizing them. Just like those photographs of me as a child, clearly miserable and in fear, but never able to express it in any other way.

I wish I just had something tangible to hold onto other than my memories.

After nine weeks, she throws away the keys.

~ KJ ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been free for nine weeks now.

I wish I could say my life is so much easier.  While I am physically out of prison, emotionally, my mind is in a prison of its own.  It’s a lot harder to escape that prison.  I can’t just walk away like I did before.  It doesn’t work that way.  My mind still believes I am in danger.  My mind still believes I am going to be hurt.  It is something I can only hope will heal with time.

I threw out the keys to my old house today.  I don’t even know why I had been holding on to them all this time.  I took them out of my nightstand, held on to them for a few minutes, and then tossed them in the trash.  I don’t need them anymore.  I won’t ever be going back.  I would rather die before subjecting myself to that ever again.

I couldn’t help but think how something as small as a set of keys helped my mother continue her control over me for years.  I wasn’t even allowed to have any keys to the house until I was in my 20s.  Even then, I never had every key.  She’d always make up some nonsense excuse as to why I couldn’t have every key.  I knew the real reason.  If I didn’t have every key, that meant I couldn’t sneak out and get back in without her knowing.  It was her way of keeping me contained.  And it worked.  I never left.  The fear of her finding out was too real.  It also didn’t help that she took up residence five feet away from the door…literally, she slept just feet away from the door.  No one was ever getting past her unnoticed.

A mail key was another thing I never had the privilege of having.  I was never given a key.  I was never allowed to check the mail.  The mail had to be inspected by her first.  Oftentimes, I would be questioned about mail she deemed “suspicious” (from out-of-state, from a name she didn’t know, hand-written addresses, etc.).  A friend from a few states away had mailed me something a few years ago, and my mother interrogated me about it.  “Who is this person?  When did you meet her? What does she do?  What does she know about us?  What did she send you?  Why?” The questions seemed like they never ended.  The interrogations would last over a span of several days.  Eventually I got smart and had “suspicious” mail sent to my job instead.  I could usually intercept it there and avoid any issues altogether.  But even that was a hassle.  I had to turn down a lot of opportunities for mail because I didn’t want to risk my mother finding out about it.

My mother didn’t want me sending out mail, either.  If I wanted something mailed, I had to go through questioning first.  I used to find ways to sneak around her.  I remember in 8th grade, I asked a classmate to bring me a stamp so I could mail a letter to someone.  I ran to the mailbox after school let out and dropped it in before anyone noticed.  My plan failed though, because I didn’t think the person would write back to me.  Sure enough, my mother opened that “suspicious” mail and all hell broke loose.  I broke one of her major rules of talking outside of the family.  I got the shit beaten out of me for days.  I never had the desire to write another letter again.  I should have known better.  She always finds out.

It’s weird how I never really thought about all of this until today when I picked up those keys.  For the longest time, it was just a part of my normal.  I never really thought about how messed up shit really was.  I wonder what drove me to break the rules when I was younger.  There was so much fear there, and for good reason, yet a part of me still wanted a taste of freedom and went for it.  I know I had that desire to break free later in life, but now I can relate some parts of my earlier life to having that same desire.  I just wish it didn’t end up causing me more pain.

Some books for Anna, some books for me.

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

I went to the bookstore for Anna today.

I was exhausted after work, but I knew that it was something that I should do for her.  I walked around the children’s section for a while to see if anything jumped out at me.  They really didn’t have anything with doggies.  Then I found the coloring and activity section.  I saw Press Out Pets book with dogs.  I didn’t know what it was at first, I just saw dogs and picked it up.  Apparently they are like paper dolls, but in dog form.  I thought Anna would like it, so I held onto it.  Then I started sorting through the coloring books trying to find something with doggies.  I thought this task would be a lot easier than it was.  I went through the entire aisle and didn’t find anything with just doggies.  Then I went over it one more time and noticed something that said Paw Patrol.  I guess it’s a cartoon or something.  Perfect.  A coloring book full of doggies.  Anna will love it.  Oddly enough, hidden behind it was a beaten up Sesame Street coloring book that looked like it was from the 90s.  I remembered my therapist mentioning that Anna liked Sesame Street.  So I picked that up, too.  Hopefully Anna will be happy.  Maybe she can help me with the Sesame Street, because aside from Elmo being red, I’m not sure I know anyone else.

I have a short day at work tomorrow, so I am going to spend the rest of the day doing things that Anna would want to do.  Maybe it will help me connect with her.  I don’t really know how this works.  I hope I’m doing this right.  I’m trying.

In an effort to educate myself, I ordered a dozen or so books on DID and dissociation.  What I know is what I’ve learned through psychology courses.  I feel that now since I have it, and that I will be blogging on an open forum about it, I should educate myself as much as possible about it.  How can I expect others to look to me for help when I don’t know what I’m talking about?  I wish I had an alter that liked to read.  THAT would be helpful.

Superman

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

The other day, one of my therapists suggested that I buy a stuffed animal to comfort my child self.  I never had a stuffed animal.  If I needed to hold onto something, I’d use a pillow.  I’m usually compliant when it comes to therapy, so that night, I checked online to see if there were any stuffed animals that caught my eye.  After ten minutes or so, I came across the perfect bear – a brown teddy bear dressed in a blue sweater with a lightning bolt, red cape, and eye mask.  It was the teddy bear version of Superman.

I knew I had to have it, so the next day, I trekked to the nearest Toys R Us and searched frantically for over a half an hour for that bear.  I even went to customer service, who could only tell me that they had it in stock and that it “must be somewhere in the store.”  I was minutes away from breaking down and crying before I finally found it, stuffed behind a bunch of ballerina bears.  I hugged that teddy bear so hard, right there in the middle of the store.  No fucks given.  That bear was mine.

You might be wondering why it was that particular bear that I needed.  As a child, I would close my eyes and hope that Superman would fly down and defeat my evil mother and save me from ever having to be hurt again.  I would look out the window, just waiting for him to fly through, at the same time trying to distract myself from the pain of the abuse.  Superman never came.  But that never stopped me.  Superman gave me hope in a hopeless situation.

Now that I am older, I know that Superman can’t save me.  I have to save myself.  In a way, I had to become my own Superman.  I took on a Superman persona.  I wore my Superman pajamas every night to bed.  I wore Superman t-shirts all the time.  I even wore a cape (out in public).  People that knew me associated me with Superman.  During a group therapy workshop a few weeks back, we had a body image exercise in which other members and therapists wrote messages on traced images of our bodies; my therapist drew the “S” and wrote Superman on mine.  Among all of the messages, it stood out the most.  I knew I wasn’t Superman.  I just needed to feel like I was in a theoretical sense.

My coworkers used to call me Superman because I could do anything.  I could unload trucks, answer any question, and complete any task with ease.  Little did they know how weak I really was.  I could lift a 200-lb grill by myself, but I didn’t have the strength to fight back my abusive mother.  While I may be physically strong on the outside, my inside is completely shattered.  There’s no point in having physical strength without the support of an internal structure.

While I have escaped, I still don’t see myself as strong.  I didn’t confront my mother.  I didn’t stand up to her.  I didn’t stand my ground.  I left in a weak way.  There was nothing Superman about that.  I’m still so broken.  Why didn’t anyone save me?