family

24 weeks (and a trip back to that place I came from)

~ KJ ~ 1 Comment

I survived Christmas.

I worked Christmas Eve morning, left at 10 AM and caught the train up to that place I came from. I wasn’t alone, though. Courage (the stuffed lion my therapist gave me a couple of months back) came with me and was right by my side through the entire train ride. I didn’t care how weird it looked. I needed him.

Then I thought to myself, if I can handle this train ride, I can handle anything. So I went to my old neighborhood. Then I went to my old workplace. With Courage riding on my back and a hoodie hiding my face, I walked into the building unsure of who would be there. I went to the back where I could hide in safety. I felt a rush of emotions, both good and bad. I saw my old coworkers, my old friends. I realized how much I missed them.

So many people were excited to see me. They were shocked at how different I looked (my hair is now black and I’ve lost 60 some odd pounds over the last six months). Even more noticeable was my demeanor. I was happy. I wasn’t stressed. Everyone could see the difference. I was a different person now, not only in physicality but in emotion.

One of my coworkers commented how I didn’t lookvstressed at all, and that time away from the job must have been good for me. Before I could even answer, my friend (whom I’ve written about before, about her not fully understanding why I cut contact and left) said “it wasn’t the job that was doing it to her.” In that moment, I felt like maybe something had finally clicked with her. I think she was starting to understand. It took her seeing the changes in me in person for it to click.

I was treated like I had never left. They welcomed me and gave me food. They hugged me. Most importantly, they respected that I needed my mother not to know that I was there. I had people protecting me there regardless, but there was no need. I didn’t even have to see that woman’s face. Instead, I could enjoy the dozens of faces of people I hadn’t seen for half a year.

Christmas day was simple and relaxing. My friend and I cooked a nice dinner in our pajamas. We watched a marathon of Catfish on TV and took a lot of naps. It was enough just being together. Neither of us were alone. I went home later that night (as I had work early the following morning) feeling validated in my decisions – my decision to visit for Christmas, and my decision to move away. Even though I miss people up north, I’ve changed for the better since I’ve been here. I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this had I stayed. I wouldn’t be smiling. I wouldn’t be healing.

I’ve changed.

For the better.

Gifts

~ KJ ~ 1 Comment

Gifts are complicated for me.

When I was younger, my mother would give me gifts and end up taking them away or destroying them soon after. I honestly believe that her intention each time was to leave me with nothing. It was like she was playing mind games with me. If I didn’t seem grateful enough, if I didn’t do something right, there went the “gift”. Bad girls don’t deserve nice things.

My mother continued that practice into my adulthood, except she would take away the gifts that other people would give me. It was always that I didn’t need it, or didn’t deserve it. Sometimes she even had the nerve to tell me I didn’t want the gift, and that’s why she took it. Everything was always about her.

One Christmas, my mother bought me clothes – sweatshirts, a jacket, shirts, pants – all in Men’s size 5XL. While I admit I was (and still am) overweight, I was nowhere near that size. I told her that none of the clothes were in my size, and she said “oh, just try them on. I’m sure they fit.” Yea, they’d fit two of me. When I told her I didn’t want them, she went on a tirade and started crying about how much I hated her.

Last Christmas was probably the most difficult for me. While the sexual abuse had stopped for months at this point, my mother continued to find subtle ways to remind me. She did it at first by showing me the shower picture. She continued it at Christmas by gifting me underwear, bras, and lingerie.

She wrapped them all just like they were any other Christmas gifts. I felt sick once I opened them and realized what they were. Even worse was that they were the correct size. My mother had no knowledge of my size, especially my bra size. She had gone through my drawers. I felt like my privacy was invaded, even though I knew privacy didn’t exist in our household. My mother knew no boundaries. I think she knew how it made me feel, how sick it made me. That’s why she did it. If she couldn’t abuse me anymore, she was just going to find other ways to get to me. And it worked.

Despite my shitty experiences with gifting, I really enjoyed picking out (or making) gifts for people, gifts with meaning and purpose. One Christmas, I bought gifts for all of my coworkers, even the ones I wasn’t very close to. Every gift had a reason behind it. I bought a 12-pack of diet coke for my manager who loved to drink it. I bought the human resource person two packages of Oreos because they were her favorite food. Small things, sure, but every gift was wrapped and adorned with decorative bows to make it special.

As I handed the customer service woman her gift, she started to cry. Confused, I started to apologize to her, thinking I had offended her in some way. She hugged me and thanked me through tears as she told me that no one had ever thought of her at Christmas before. She hadn’t even opened her gift yet and was already grateful. It was (and still is) a reminder for me that even small gestures can make a world of difference for another person.

My joy soon turned to frustration when I came home later that day and had to deal with my mother’s never-ending sense of entitlement.

“I hope you are as generous to your own family as you were to all these people at work. They don’t do anything for you. I give you everything. What do I get for it?”

I was quickly reminded of how obsessive my mother was about gifting. She believed that she should receive a gift for every occasion. I never wanted to give her a gift. I hated her. But if I didn’t, I’d get in trouble, even as an adult. I had to swallow my pride and get her something just to avoid further pain. And I couldn’t just get her something small. It had to be something good enough to meet her standards.

My mother made similar demands when it came to giving gifts to my brother. She was always on top of me in the weeks before my brother’s birthday, making sure that I bought him an adequate gift, telling me all of the things he wanted. If I told her I couldn’t afford any of those things, she’d tell me to find a way.

“If you didn’t buy so much for yourself, you would have enough for the people that matter.”

In her mind, gifts were associated with how much a person mattered. It made sense. It’s probably why she never demanded that I get my father any gifts; she treated him with disdain. It’s probably why she showered my brother with expensive gifts, gifts she couldn’t afford but bought anyway. Me? It was obvious I didn’t matter. Whenever my birthday came around, all I got were a bunch of excuses.

“Oh, I don’t have any money this week. I’ll get you something in a month or two.”

A month or two never happened. Despite her financial difficulties, she always found enough money to buy herself whatever she wanted. But when it came to me or my father, she was broke. There was no sense of celebration for my birthday. I was lucky for a few years and managed to find a birthday card thrown on my desk when I got home from work. No special message, just a cheap birthday card and a signature. There was no thoughtfulness. There was no love. It was merely an act to say she did something.

The last couple of years, I started to stand up for myself and refused to get gifts for people I cared nothing about. I dealt with the backlash. I dealt with my mother’s verbal assaults, all the horrible things she would say about me and the names she would call me. At times, it got physical. One time, she found out that I bought my best friend at work a Mother’s Day gift and she went on a rampage that ended with me in tears. I had to beg my friend not to tell my mother about anything I bought anymore.

Of course, my mother used that situation as a way to get people on her side, telling people that I bought this other woman a gift but wouldn’t even get anything for my own mother, how it breaks her heart and she just doesn’t understand why I hated her so. She was so manipulative, and people actually fell for it.

I am actually a little relieved that this is the first year that I won’t have to deal with any of the drama. I briefly thought about mailing my family a bill for my therapy (anonymously, of course). I’m not even sure that they are worth the effort of licking the envelope. Then there is a company that allows you to anonymously mail shit (literally) to anyone in the world. Some parts of me would thoroughly enjoy doing that, but I know it won’t serve a purpose in the end.

I did want to do something for my therapist. While I was browsing the local book store last week, I came across the same coloring book that I received a couple months back at a group therapy session.  I was in a bad place emotionally at that time and I made some apparently frightening color choices. It was a page with the word ‘HOPE’ in big letters, surrounded by flowers and a bird. I colored hope black, and scribbled over the rest. Both therapists noticed. Back then, I had no hope. It was dead.

I bought the coloring book. This time, there was no black. I colored in each flower with bright colors. I even colored the background sky blue, and colored hope white – the complete opposite of what I had colored just months before. I bought a basic frame and put my new art in it. After my therapy session today, I told my therapist I made her something. I preempted it with saying that it was kind of lame and that my coloring skills needed work. I handed it to her. I told her I have hope now. And that’s the truth.
It was the best gift I have ever given.

I needed a hero

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

Sometimes social media leads me to feel things I would rather not feel. For this reason, I try to avoid social media around holidays like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day because I know that I’m going to see things that will make me angry or upset. Still, there are posts about great mothers and fathers all year round, and I can’t avoid social media forever.

I don’t take most posts personally. I do when someone says something like you must honor your mother because she’s the only one you have. Unfortunately, I’ve seen my fair share of these posts and experienced many people carrying this belief in real life. I used to shut my mouth and quietly seethe on the inside. Then I started answering back. No, mothers need to earn honor and respect. No, being a mother doesn’t automatically make you a good person. It still amazes me how unreceptive people are to the reality that mothers are not all good. Many people shut me down. Most just ignored me. I hope that I got through to at least one person. If so, my battle was worth it. It’s difficult to fight against something that is still reinforced so strongly in society.

The less direct posts about parents just make me sad. They are a reminder of what I missed throughout childhood. I came across this post on my Instagram last week and had to stop myself from getting emotional.

image

I needed a super hero. So many times as a child, I wished that Superman would come and take me away from my mother. My mom was never my super hero. She was the villain I needed to be protected from. She was the evil that needed to be fought against. She should’ve been my hero, but she wasn’t. I never had the chance to feel safe and protected. Why couldn’t she just be my super hero? Why couldn’t my father? Why did my world have to be full of villains?

I feel like I’m constantly going to be grieving the loss of the family I never had. There are always going to be reminders of it: any time I see a parent hugging their child, any post on social media glorifying a mother or father, each holiday I spend without a family. There will always be that piece of me missing, my point of origin. Sure, I can build my own family, but it will never be the same as what I should have had from the beginning.

A Letter to My Father

~ KJ ~ 7 Comments

I managed to write that letter to my father yesterday.

I went through a whirlwind of emotions as I was writing it, but it didn’t stop me. I cried, I wanted to throw my pen at the wall out of anger, and then I cried again. And then it was finished. I didn’t read the letter over; I folded it in half and put it in my planner so I wouldn’t forget to bring it to therapy. Then I laid in bed for an hour and just let whatever was going on inside of me flow through. I was okay.

During our session today, my therapist asked if I wrote the letter. I told her I did. I told her that at first I was afraid that I would break down like I did so many months before, but that I did it and I was okay. She asked if I wanted to go over it, and I said yes. I thought I would be able to hand her the letter and she would read it to herself. But no. She wanted me to read it. My anxiety kicked in. I didn’t think I could do it. I started second-guessing everything. Writing the letter was one thing, but reading it out loud felt like I was putting everything out into the world, that I was voicing everything I felt. I struggle with having a voice because it still feels so inherently wrong to speak.

My therapist saw that I was struggling. She asked me why it was now so hard to talk. She knew why. She said I didn’t have to read it or talk about it if I wasn’t ready. I went back and forth in my mind for a few minutes. Then I told her I wanted to read it. I told her I didn’t want to be afraid of speaking for the rest of my life. I needed to start somewhere. We went over a plan to keep safe in case I started to dissociate or it got to be too much. Then I took a deep breath and started reading.

Dear father,

I have trouble just calling you father. Fathers are supposed to love their daughters. You never showed me love. You never hugged me or showed me that you cared. You only showed me disdain. How could you let me suffer for so long? I was hurting, and instead of making me better, you only added to my pain.

You and my mother should have never had children. Neither of you know how to be a parent. You brought me into this world to torture me. I don’t understand why you and she just didn’t drop me off in a ditch somewhere. Sometimes I think that I would have been better off if one of you just killed me. You would have saved me a lot of pain. But you couldn’t even do that. Instead, you killed my spirit. You made me dead on the inside.

It scares me that I can’t remember everything you did to me. I know that if I asked you, you would never admit to anything anyway. You and my mother choose to live in your own made-up world where everything is perfect and you are perfect. That is nowhere near reality. There is no way that you didn’t know what my mother was doing to me all those years. I have memories of you being there with her, but I told myself they couldn’t be real. How could you? You are no better than she is.

You’ve broken me, but none of that hurt more than that night you broke my spirit. Instead of being concerned about why I was feeling sad and depressed, you took all of your anger and hatred out on me. You told me I had nothing to be depressed about. Nothing to be depressed about? How could I NOT be depressed? I had every reason to be sad, to be angry, and to be depressed. But you told me you were going to give me something to be sad about, and you did. You broke me. The only way I could make you stop was to not feel at all. You made me believe that feelings meant pain, and I didn’t need any more pain.

I’ll never forget that night. I still cringe when anyone says I’m depressed because it reminds me of what you did to me. You taught me that feeling anything is a punishable offense. But you got your way. I wasn’t sad or depressed anymore. I couldn’t feel anything. I lived for years without feeling anything. It was the only way I knew how to survive.

Even after all of the shit you put me through, I dropped everything to take care of you when you got sick. Your wife didn’t care whether or not you died. But why? You would have never done the same for me. I still had hope that you would be a father, that you would see what a good daughter I was, that you would be proud. But you weren’t. I held out hope for something that would never be. But I know now that it is not my doing; it’s yours. You’ll never know what love is. You should have died years ago.

Now that you’re sick, I’m not sorry at all. I actually find it a little funny that your heart has been slowly dying all these years – I would have never known you had a heart. My heart may still be beating, but you broke it long ago. And now yours is broken, literally broken. At least my heart can be fixed with time. You’re shit out of luck.

I hope when you finally die, that it’s painful for you. Maybe you would feel just a fraction of the pain you caused me. You’re lucky in a way. You’ll die soon and you’ll no longer have to live with what you’ve done, as if you let it affect you anyway. Your pain will end while I will have to live with mine.

All I ever wanted was for you to love me. I never did anything wrong. I never deserved the pain you caused me. I did everything a daughter was supposed to do and more. It was never enough for you. I hate you now, and it bothers me to hate another human being. But you deserve my hate. You deserve my anger. You don’t deserve to be my father.

Thank you for showing me everything I never want to be.

Through tears and with shaking hands, I managed to read the entire letter out loud. By the end, I couldn’t stop crying. It was the first time I allowed myself to show my emotions to my therapist. As I folded the letter and looked up, I saw the sadness on my therapist’s face. Part of me felt bad. I’ve upset her. I knew this letter was horrible. I apologized, but there was nothing for me to be sorry for. There was nothing in that letter to be sorry for. Neither of our feelings were anything to be sorry for.

My therapist reminded me that all of my feelings were valid, but I had drifted back into my childhood beliefs that feelings were not allowed. I told her it was wrong not to love your parents. I’ve always felt intense shame and guilt for hating them, especially in childhood, when society seemed to push the idea that all parents must be loved and honored (an idea I still see presented way too often). My therapist told me I had every reason to be sad, and that I had every reason to be angry at him. She told me she was angry at him, too. And she doesn’t even know him. It was relieving to know that someone else was feeling what I felt towards him. It sort of pushed me out of that child-like state and back to my adult self.

I’ll never be able to get that validation from my father. Even in the extremely small chance he would ever provide it, I can never see him or my mother again. It will never be safe for me to go back. He’ll never know how I really feel. Maybe it’s better that way.

Daddy

~ KJ ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been struggling the last week or so in dealing with emotions surrounding my father. He has been declining in health for some time, and will probably die soon. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel.

For a long time, I had diminished a lot of what my father had done to me. I wanted (needed) to hold on to the belief that I had at least one decent parent. But I’ve slowly come to realize that my father was not a good parent. He was just as damaging, physically and emotionally, as my mother was.

I don’t even know the exact level of involvement my father had in the abuse my mother perpetrated on me. In a few of my flashbacks my father was there, right next to my mother as she was violating me. I told myself that those flashbacks couldn’t be real. I dismissed them as a  figment of my imagination. I don’t want to believe that my father would ever do that. I don’t want to believe that he knew what she was doing and let it happen. I want to believe that he knew nothing about it. I want to believe that some part of him was a decent person. But part of me knows that what I want to believe likely isn’t the truth at all.

I don’t know whether or not I want to confront him or let him die in ignorance. I want him to know how I feel. I want him to know how much I hate him. I want him to tell me why. It’s not fair that he gets to die and I have to live and suffer from the damage he’s done.  His heart may be failing, but my heart was ripped apart long ago. There’s no cure for either of us.

It makes me feel like a horrible person for wanting another human being to die. I feel no  sympathy for him. I want him to suffer and I want him to die. What kind of person does that make me?

Why couldn’t he just act like he loved me? Why did he have to hurt me? Why did he have to break my heart?

Daddies are supposed to love their daughters. Daddy only showed hate. Daddies are supposed to teach and guide their daughters. The only thing daddy taught me was how not to feel. Daddies are supposed to be role models. Daddy showed me exactly how not to be.

Why, daddy? I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not being good enough. I’m sorry I disappointed you.

I’m sorry you were my father.

Missing pieces

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

When I first moved here, I would go out on my back porch every night and sit and look at the stars. It was something I was never able to do back home. There was just something so amazing about looking into a vast sky with millions (billions?) of stars, wondering how many people were out there looking at the same stars as I was. But I don’t go out on the porch at night anymore, and I stopped looking at the stars.

In the beginning, I was full of hope and excitement, and running on a rush of adrenaline. Now, I’m coming to realize all that I’ve lost along the way during this transition. Pieces of me are missing. I feel incomplete.

It may be hard for some to understand, but when I was at home, I always held out hope that someday something would change…that someday, my family would become different people and the void in my heart would be filled and I would finally be whole. But now that I’ve moved away, I’ve lost that chance forever. I’ve been trying to fill the void with things that just can’t occupy that space in someone’s heart that is meant for family. I left them. I walked away and I took that chance to fill that void away from myself for good.

It’s not just the loss of my parents. It’s the loss of my entire family. It will never be the same again. I can never see my grandmother; she’s already fallen for their lies about me. My brother is too far brainwashed. Other members of my family don’t want to get involved. They don’t come to visit me, even if they are a quick drive away. I feel incredibly isolated from the people I should be closest to. Your family makes up part of your identity. So what do you do when that part of you is gone? I don’t even feel like I belong in this name anymore.

Then there are my friends. The ones I was closest to back home. The ones that now barely reach out to me, and the ones that haven’t bothered to visit me. I can feel what were once my strongest relationships now fading farther and farther away into the distance. I didn’t expect our friendships to remain the same, but I didn’t expect them to grow so far apart so quickly, either.

Then there are the quiet supporter friends: the ones that support me in private, but when I need them to stand up and fight with me, they are nowhere to be found. Then I am left alone to fight battles I don’t want to fight. It reminds me of the people in my life that knew I was being abused and chose to do nothing because they “didn’t want to get involved.” Not getting involved never solves anything.

People have changed the way they treat me. I’m not a child. I’m not made of glass that can be easily broken at the slightest touch. I’m perfectly capable of making my own decisions. I haven’t been able to make real decisions for the last 29 years of my life. Now I want to make them. I need to learn for myself how to make them. It doesn’t matter that they aren’t all good; no one’s decisions are all good. That’s called life. I’m no different from anyone else; I just have a little catching up to do.

It’s a little sad that the only person that I’ve come to depend on (aside from my therapist) is my roommate. My roommate…a woman I met off of Craigslist right before I moved. She barely knows me. She has no obligation to know me. Yet hers is the shoulder I cry on when I become overwhelmed. She is the one who holds my arms down when I dissociate and start scratching myself. And she is the one who sits with me when I don’t feel safe enough to be alone. She, a person unrelated to me and completely unknown to me until a few months ago, now burdened with dealing with me.

The nights that my roommate is not here, I have no one. Those nights are the worst for me; tonight is one of those nights. I often wonder if this is what my life will be like forever. Loneliness. Even Charlie is quiet. It makes me miss his angry ramblings just a little. He probably feels just as lonely as I do.

For so long, I defined myself based on the relationships I had with others. It was part of who I was. Those relationships mattered. And now those pieces of me are going missing, and I don’t know what to do. No family, dwindling friendships, and a lack of identity. I feel empty. It’s no wonder I don’t know who my parts really are. I don’t even know who I am.

Daughter’s Day

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

Apparently it is National Daughter’s Day, or that’s what the internet seems to believe.  My Facebook has been inundated the last two days with pictures and posts from mothers honoring and saying beautiful things about their daughters.  I started to read some of the posts.  Then it got to be too much and I had to stop.  I’ll never have one of those posts from my mother.  I’ll never be honored on Daughter’s Day.  I am no longer a daughter.  My mother should have lost that right the first day she laid her hands on me, but she didn’t.  Instead, she lost the privilege to be my mother the day I walked out on her 11 weeks ago.

I went to the movies earlier today to try to clear my mind.  I thought seeing a kid’s movie would be a safe bet.  I was wrong.  Instead, I found myself crying five minutes into the start of the movie.  Why?  The movie began with the father standing by as his daughter got married.  I began to think of my own future wedding.  And that brought up a whole stream of thoughts about my future.

My father won’t be walking me down the aisle to give me away when I get married.  He won’t be dancing with me at my reception.  There will be no mother-of-the-bride at my wedding, no heart-to-heart conversation between mother and daughter before I take the long walk down the aisle to married life.  There will be no family to share in my happiness and excitement that day.  My side of the room will be empty.  I’m no longer a daughter.  I’m alone.

When I walk down the aisle at graduation in a couple of months to officially receive my degree, there will be no one there to cheer me on.  My father won’t be there recording the moment I shake the dean’s hand.  My mother won’t be applauding me after I make my speech.  There won’t be anyone in the audience for me; no one will be there to take my picture.  I’m no longer a daughter.  I’m alone.

When I have my first child, my mother won’t be there to help me get through those tough first weeks.  I won’t have my mother to turn to for help when I am feeling overwhelmed or have a question I am too embarrassed to ask anyone else.  My mother and father will never know the joy of holding their grandchild in their arms and seeing their grandchild’s beautiful smile. I’ll never be able to share each milestone with any of my family. My family will never be there to celebrate each birthday. I’m no longer a daughter.  I’m alone.

When I become successful, my mother and father won’t be there by my side to congratulate me.  I won’t be telling the world how I couldn’t do it without my parents’ support and guidance.  I won’t be thanking them or acknowledging their presence in my life.  They won’t be allowed to say “that’s my girl” or pat themselves on the back for a job well done.  Everything I have become and will become in the future is no thanks to them.  They deserve no recognition or honor.  They shattered me into a million pieces and took away the glue.  I’m no longer a daughter.  I’m alone.

As my children grow older and ask questions about their family, I’ll have nothing to offer them. I have no photographs. I have no happy memories, no stories to pass down to them. My children will never get to know what it’s like to be spoiled by grandma and grandpa. They will never even know that my mother and father exist. All that my children will be left with is a shell of a mother. That half of the family tree will always be empty for them.  They will be no one’s grandchildren. They’ll be alone.

When my mother and father pass away, there will be no tears or sadness from me.  I won’t be writing their obituaries or delivering any eulogies.  I won’t be attending their funerals.  I won’t be there as they are lowered into the ground, buried and left to rot.  I will never visit their graves, bring them flowers, or say any prayers for them.  I’m no longer their daughter.  They are alone.

Because of me, everyone is alone.

Ten weeks

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

Here I am, ten weeks past my escape; ten weeks into freedom.

I’m exhausted, physically and emotionally.  It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get a decent night’s sleep.  My anxiety is so overwhelming.  I check the locks on the doors so many times.  Then I go upstairs to my bedroom and get in bed for five minutes before I’m compelled to go downstairs and check the locks again.  It’s hard to feel safe.  My mind races at night.  I can’t calm it down.  I can lay in bed for hours just staring at the ceiling.  I get startled at every noise.  I just want to be able to sleep.

Emotionally, I’m drained.  I cried a lot this week.  Perhaps it was needed.  I’ve spent the last ten weeks trying to show how strong I am, despite how I feel on the inside.  That is a job in itself.

I’ve started to open up more to people at work.  People seem to be inclined to open up and talk to me about things, and my coworkers are no different.  I’ve listened to them, and I’ve opened up to them as well.  We regularly talk about our therapy experiences and have an open dialogue about mental health.  It’s actually kind of nice.  While I haven’t revealed much of my story, I have told one coworker (who shared his own experiences in therapy with me) that I am in therapy several times a week.  He asked why so much; I told him I had a lot of issues.  Then he said how I seemed so level-headed and put-together at work, he would have never thought that about me.  For me, that was a testament to my ability to act strong and stable.  At least I have that.

I had a conversation with my parts yesterday.  I don’t know if they heard me.  I don’t even know if I did it right.  I could have just been talking to the ceiling.  I told them I didn’t want to be in pain anymore.  I know it’s not their fault.  It’s not my fault.  It’s not anyone’s fault.  I’m just tired of being in pain.  I don’t deserve it.  I don’t know what I did to burn myself, but it hurts.  It hurts to sleep, it hurts to shower, it hurts to sit down, it hurts to bend.  I don’t know how I managed to deal with this as a child.  Maybe it is better that I don’t remember much.  I know they want to protect me.  It’s just so complicated.

I’m looking for a third job.  I don’t know how I’m going to manage it, but I need more work.  I sent in a few applications yesterday.  I was too tired to do any today.  I’ve been checking Craigslist to see if anything close by comes up.  I’d prefer to find something in walking distance, because public transportation doesn’t really run past dinner time.  I thought about buying a bike.  It would save me money in the long run so I wouldn’t have to pay for the bus or cab fares, but I also have to consider whether or not I can physically handle bicycling everywhere.  I am not the most in shape person.  I also managed to break my foot walking, so imagine what I could do riding a bike.

I’m trying to pull myself over back onto the side of positive thinking.  I think I’m in the middle right now.  I’m trying to think of how far I’ve come, and how much further I can go.  I was clearing out my e-mails today and I came across a copy of the letter I was going to send my mother once I moved out; I had e-mailed it to myself in case I ever lost it.  I read it over and couldn’t believe what I wrote.  A strong person wrote that.  I could never have written those words in the position I am in now.  It’s like I sunk back into weakness the last week or so.

I wonder what would have happened if I sent that letter when I left.  Even now, ten weeks later, my family is still going out of their way to infiltrate my life.  They are telling anyone who will listen all of these lies about me, and I am not there to defend myself.  I have to realize that the life (if I can even call it that) that I had there, the connections that I had there…I can’t get those back.  I have to severe ties.  My family is poison, and they have infected everyone there.  No one is safe.  As if they were ever safe in the first place.

To end on a positive note, every day this past week, a butterfly has followed me as I walked home from work.  I didn’t think anything of it the first two times.  But on the third day, I thought to myself, this is just weird.  I was wearing a different color shirt each time, so it wasn’t that it was attracted to a certain color.  I don’t know why it (they?) followed me.  I’m usually not into symbolic things at all, but I have to wonder this time, with all of the spiritual and transformative meaning behind the butterfly, if there was a reason it was with me.  And this week, of all weeks, when I was at my lowest.  Whatever it was, it helped.

How my mother portrays “reality” versus actual reality

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

Sunday afternoon, I received a text message from a friend back from my old life (one of only two that I remain in contact with).  At the end of the text, she asked me if I had called my father.  Apparently my mother had told my friend how my father was oh so worried about me, oh so concerned, and how he was counting the weeks and worried that I wasn’t going to be coming back home.

There were so many things wrong with this situation.  In fact, let me use bullet points.

  • Why is my mother mentioning my father’s worry and concern and not hers? Answer: Because my mother knows that I know she doesn’t have feelings.
  • If my father was so worried and concerned, wouldn’t he have reached out? Answer: He has my cell phone number.  I haven’t blocked him.  I have not once received one phone call or one text message from him in the six weeks I’ve been gone.
  • Why is my mother telling this person this? Answer: Because this is the one person she has continued to manipulate, despite my efforts to show this person my mother’s true colors.  My mother also more than likely knows that this person keeps in contact with me, and knows it’s her only way to get through to me to try to manipulate me still.  Even a distance away, this woman will still try to fuck with my life.  She knows what she is doing.  She has been doing this for 29 years of my life.  She lives and breathes manipulation likes it’s necessary for survival.  My friend is just an unfortunate pawn in my mother’s game.

I immediately became overwhelmed with feelings upon reading the text.  I responded that my father had my number and had not made an effort to reach out, so I doubt that there was any genuine concern for me.  I continued to tell her that I do not trust anyone in my family, that they haven’t cared about me for the last 29 years so why would they start now?  Her response showed me that she didn’t understand where I was coming from at all.  My heart sank.  I responded “they can find someone else to abuse” and I just stopped responding after that.  Now I’m left questioning whether the relationship is worth fighting for.  As much as I love her, she doesn’t see my mother for the monster she really is; she still falls for my mother’s manipulation.  I can’t risk all the progress I’ve made on a relationship that may put that in jeopardy.

It’s not like I blame my friend.  My mother is great at portraying her own version of reality versus what reality actually is.  To be clear, for my own sanity, I decided to verify with someone who had some inner knowledge if my father was indeed concerned or worried about me.  My suspicions of a complete lack of concern were confirmed.  The only thing my father is worried about is getting rid of my stuff.  So much concern, right?  It doesn’t sound at all like the father my mother was portraying in her story to my friend.  Maybe she just forgot to leave out a few (thousand) details.

My mother always has a story for everything.  When outsiders would question why I seemed so distant and unresponsive, my mother would tell them “oh, she’s just sensitive” or “fragile.”  The reality: I was a broken child, trained not to speak to outsiders and living in fear of nearly everyone and everything.  When doctors questioned why I had so many UTIs, she ‘d make up these elaborate stories.  The reality: things were in my vagina that should not have been there.  To add on to that, she’d also often switch doctors, to which she’d blame on insurance problems, yet I was the only one who had to change doctors so much.  In my adulthood, my mother would tell people I was Bipolar and had a lying disorder.  The reality: I was struggling with PTSD and beginning to open up about the CSA and MDSA, and she felt threatened.  By saying that I had a lying disorder, she protected herself by creating a veil of doubt over anything I said.

The scariest part is that she has always been so convincing.  Sometimes I wonder if she believes her stories are real.  She’s that good.  I can see why so many fall for her lies.  I think many in my own family have.  It’s unfortunate, but what can I do?  I guess the most important thing is that I know what reality REALLY is, and it’s NOT her reality.

Four weeks

~ KJ ~ 1 Comment

So, it’s been four weeks since my escape.  I’m still alive.  I’m still kicking.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t all over the place emotionally.  These last few days have been trying for me.  I had a lot of feelings about my family resurface after trying so long to keep them suppressed.  There are a lot of unresolved issues I have with people in my family that I just haven’t had the strength to deal with.  I still don’t have the strength now.  I don’t know if I ever will.  For now, my anger and sadness about it come out through my tears.

I have been on edge these past few days, and likely will be into this weekend and coming week.  As this is the four week mark, it is also the time I told my family I would be coming back home.  I haven’t had contact with my family since I left; the few text messages I received from my mother remain unanswered. I was actually relieved that her contact has been minimal.  With that being said, she hasn’t yet had the realization that I am not coming back.  People have warned me to prepare myself for her acting out.  When she realizes that she no longer has any control over me, she is not going to just concede; she is going to try to gain back her control.

While I have taken every precaution I could to make sure I am untraceable, I am still scared of her.  I am still scared she will find me.  It may be irrational, but to me, the fear is real.  The last couple of nights, I have barricaded my bedroom door before I go to sleep because I am scared she will somehow get in the house and try to hurt me.  I haven’t left the house the last few nights because I’m afraid she’ll be there, waiting for me.  I’ve had nightmares.  The other night, I became startled by a fight my roommate was having with someone.  Before I was able to process what was really going on, I began fearing that it was my mother coming for me, and I urinated on myself.  I haven’t done that since I left home.  I felt like a failure.

To add to my already increasing anxiety, I start work tomorrow.  Yes, I got my social security card just in time and was able to finalize the paperwork on Tuesday.  While the job is nothing I haven’t done before, I am anxious about being in a new environment with people I don’t know and who don’t know me.  At my old job, I often had days where I was not mentally present.  Sometimes, I was completely non-responsive, staring into nothingness; other times, I was in a child-like state.  Regardless, my close coworkers knew my situation and covered for me.  Now, I don’t have that.  What if I can’t focus enough to get my work done?  What if I break down?  What if I have a flashback while at work?  No one is going to understand what is happening.  I’m going to end up getting fired.

I really just hope I can get through these next few days unscathed.  I don’t know if I will ever get over the fear of my mother coming back to hurt me.  I can only hope that over time, the fear fades away.  I don’t want to live like this forever.