mother-daughter sexual abuse

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.

Six Weeks

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

It has now been six weeks since my escape.  I’ve made it six weeks.  In some ways, it feels like time is rushing by me.  Six weeks?  I just got down here!  Where has the time gone?  I should be further along by now.  What am I waiting for?  But then, when I really sit back and think about it, I’ve done a lot in six weeks.  I’ve managed to keep a job for the past two weeks.  I managed to meet a few people and possibly make a few friends.  Yes, I ended up being hospitalized, and yes, I had a breakdown on a bus in the middle of the day.  But I came back.  Both times.  You can’t choose when and where your PTSD will affect you.  I can’t wake up in the morning and say “You know what, PTSD ain’t gonna bother me today!”  That’s not how it works.  The day can be going great and BOOM.  Flashback.  It just happens.  That is life with PTSD.

It has also now been five weeks since I started this blog.  I started this blog not really knowing what to expect.  I wanted to write about my journey, about my escape from a life of pain into a life without hurt.  I also wanted to give others a glimpse into the world of mother-daughter sexual abuse and how it has affected not only my past, but my present and my future as well.  So many people are afraid to speak up about it.  I was afraid, too.  But I’m not anymore.  As much as I want to spread awareness of MDSA, I cannot expect people to understand an issue if there’s no one there to speak up about it.  I need to be one of those people.  And I will be.

I did not go into this expecting my blog to reach so many people in such a short amount of time.  Within five weeks, I have over had over 200 visitors, and over 1,000 views.  It means a lot to me.  Even if someone has only read part of my story, I hope that part has stayed with them.  I am especially grateful for those that have continued to follow my story, and those that take time out to comment, even when I may not respond back.

I have also noticed, in the little over a week that I have been writing about my battle with a dissociative disorder, my followers have more than doubled and my visitors have increased significantly.  While I went into this originally planning to focus on MDSA, I also plan to write more on my journey with DID.  I believe this blog will be changing, just as I am.  And it’s for the better.

I also noticed, in reading over some of the comments and going over my recent posts, that I’ve let my recent issue with dissociation overtake my emotions.  I intended this blog to be hopeful for others, and instead it became the opposite.  I lost the sense of hope I had before.  A DID diagnosis isn’t going to change who I am.  I can’t let it change who I hope to be; that isn’t going to help others.  For all of the shit I’ve been through, a diagnosis will not change me.  I let a label define who I was and who I would be.  For that, I apologize.

To end on a good note, tomorrow marks the final day of my undergraduate career.  I have two papers due, one of them being my thesis.  I haven’t really worked on them much (procrastination seems to be a characteristic of any college student regardless of age), but I have actually passed the classes even without the last assignments.  All of these years, I have always been about perfection.  This last year, I have been on academic survival mode, doing whatever I can to get by and graduate.  I’ve been hospitalized five times (four for psychiatric, one for pneumonia) in the last year, I’ve juggled multiple jobs, and managed to plan my escape AND move all while continuing to go to school year-round.  And you know what?  Through it all, I still managed to get a 3.9 GPA.  I will be graduating with honors.  I did it.

Misplaced blame

~ KJ ~ 6 Comments

Last week, one of my therapists gave me Beginning to Heal: A First Book for Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse.  I read through it rather quickly, as it’s a small book.  Parts of it were difficult for me.  The hardest part was on page 38:

“When children are abused, their ability to say no is severely damaged.  So even if the abuse continued into adulthood, you are still not to blame.  There is no magic age when you suddenly become responsible for your own abuse.”

I struggled with this most of my adult life.  I still struggle with it to this day.  My mother remained physically and emotionally abusive until the day I left home.  But that didn’t bother me as much as living with the fact that she sexually abused me until I was 28 years old.  And I let it happen.  Every single time, I let it happen.

The sexual abuse wasn’t consistent.  It stopped being consistent when I turned 14/15.  But every time I got sick, which unfortunately for me was quite frequently, it was like she preyed on that, and I became like a child too weak to say no.

“You can’t bathe yourself, I’ll do it.”

I didn’t fight back.  She’d undress me and make me stand in the shower as she washed me down.  Then she’d lead me into the bedroom and dry every last part of me.  Then she’d dress me.  I couldn’t go to the bathroom myself.

“I have to watch you.  Keep the door open.”

And she would sit right beside me.  I didn’t fight back.  Why didn’t I fight back?  My arms weren’t broken.  My legs weren’t broken.  I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself.  But I couldn’t say no.  Here I was, a mentally competent adult in my 20s, letting someone take advantage of me.  How can I expect anyone to feel sorry for me when I chose not to stop this woman from continuing to abuse me?  I made the choice to let her.  I had a choice.  I could have said no.  I could have stopped her.  I could have left.  But I didn’t.  All of those times it happened, and I didn’t.

My own bad feelings about the situation were magnified when someone who I thought was a friend blew up on me, and said I was a grown ass woman who could just leave, but that I was “scared of my mommy”.  She then continued to call me derogatory names for not leaving, and that I just kept letting it happen and so it was my fault.  It was one of the worst verbal attacks I have ever experienced in my life, made even worse by the fact that it occurred on a public forum.  I was ashamed.  I was already feeling like so much of this was my fault, and she only confirmed by beliefs.  I was acting strong on the outside, but on the inside, I was breaking apart.  What kind of person lets their mother abuse them?  She’s right.  I must have issues.  Something must be wrong with me.

Except not.  Why are we victim-blaming?  The person responsible in this situation is my mother.  Not me.  When she abused me all of those times in adulthood, I was not an adult.  I was a scared child, afraid to go against her mother for fear of being hurt or killed.  Same situation, just a different age.  How should I have expected my response to be any different?  For so long, I’ve blamed myself for letting the abuse happen.  I blamed myself for what happened in childhood, but I especially blamed myself for what happened when I was an adult.  As if a magical cloud of knowledge and responsibility appeared before me on my 18th birthday and gave me everything I needed to know any better.

I should have known better.  But I couldn’t have.  I never had the opportunity to learn what was normal.

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?

Five Weeks

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

As I typed in the title of this post, I wondered when (and if) I would ever stop labeling the weeks of my life based off of the time I escaped my ‘old’ life.  I’m sure there may come a point in the future when I will be so occupied with my new life that I will no longer need to base it off of the old.  For now, I feel that each week that goes by is an accomplishment.  I came here expecting very little of myself.   I’m not even sure I expected to make it one week.  Now I’ve made it five weeks.  So what’s stopping me from making it six, seven, eight weeks?

I probably shouldn’t even be writing this blog post right now.  I have a thesis that is not writing itself.  Chapter 5 was due last Sunday while I was hospitalized and I have yet to hand it in.  Honestly, I haven’t even started it.  I’ve been so preoccupied with work, so exhausted with adjusting to a new schedule, and so many things on my mind that I just haven’t been able to sit down and focus.  It will get done today, I promise..right after I finish this post.

I can’t believe I have one more week of school left.  One. More. Week.  I have to give myself credit.  In five weeks, I have moved/escaped, got a new job, started therapy, gotten hospitalized, and still managed to write 60 pages of a thesis on a topic that I unfortunately live with every day.  And in one more week, I’ll have my 120 credits (121 actually) for my BA in Psychology.  I don’t know that many others would have been able to do what I’ve done.  I have fallen, but I’ve also gotten right back up.

In my previous post, I briefly mentioned the possibility of a DID diagnosis.  For me, it was hard to swallow.  That whole experience was hard to swallow.  I was dissociating so badly, it was out of control.  I could have been hospitalized again.  The other therapist brought up the possibility of putting me in IOP and my heart sank.  For me, I see that as a failure.  I am in no way saying those that go to IOP are failures, I am saying for me personally, it is a failure.  I want to be as normal as possible.  I want to be able to go to work every day.  I want to function.  I feel like IOP takes that away from me.

At the same time I understood where she was coming from.  I can’t put them in a position where I am a danger and it comes back on them.  They are only equipped to do so much.  I told them I didn’t want to do IOP.  I’ll do whatever it takes not to do IOP.  But to do that, I need to accept that I have a dissociative disorder and focus my treatment on that, instead of trying to cover up my symptoms and having it blow up in my face like it did in therapy on Thursday.

I think hearing those words hurt more because I knew deep down that I had a problem with dissociation.  I was familiar with DID from my courses in psychology and through meeting people with DID through trauma support groups.  I always felt that so many of the symptoms rang true for me.  But I didn’t want them to.  No one wants DID.  No one wants a lifetime of therapy, a lifetime of misunderstanding from others (although I sort of have that already).  There’s no cure.  DID won’t go away with a pill.  A lot of therapists won’t even acknowledge its existence and therefore won’t treat it.  It’s a complicated diagnosis.  It’s a complicated disorder.  I don’t need any more complications.  Why can’t life be simple?

Maybe I am just overwhelmed right now.  I’ve always wanted answers, and now that I have them, I am pushing them away because they are not the answers I want.  Why is it that now that I have escaped the horrible abuses my mother had been committing against me for so so long, that I am still being affected?  Why couldn’t everything just become normal once I left?  Why do I still have to suffer? She should be the one in the hospital (or better yet, in prison).  She should be the one in therapy trying to figure out why she does the fucked up shit she does.  She should be hurting.

Instead she’s living her life day in and day out like it’s nothing, like everything is okay.   Yet here I am, physically and emotionally in pain.  Here I am paying for therapy instead of groceries because my mind is going to kill me before hunger does.  And here I am struggling day in and day out trying to keep it together, not only for myself, but for those out there (my friends, my readers, my therapists) who are pulling for me.  This shit is backwards.

There is a part of me that is strong, that knows I can overcome anything and do great things.  Unfortunately, a lot of times, that part goes into hiding and I am left with my fearful, anxious self.  The self that doesn’t want to get out of bed.  The self that is so scared just to take a shower.  The self that fears mother is coming to hurt me.  I almost enjoy when I’m not myself because it gives me a break from living in fear for a while.  Or maybe it’s not even myself.  Maybe it’s another part of me entirely.  How do I even know?

Maybe I understand myself a little more than I like to acknowledge.

Involuntarily voluntarily admitted

~ KJ ~ Leave a comment

I’m back.

A few hours ago, I was released from the psychiatric unit of my local hospital.  I had been there since Friday.  I didn’t want to go to the hospital.  In the end, I knew it was the right thing to do.

Friday night, everything just came to a head.  My flashbacks were occurring quite frequently to the point that I was becoming almost paranoid.  Looking back, my thoughts were so irrational.  I genuinely believed that my mother was going to come and hurt me.  I heard her voice in my head and I couldn’t get it out.  I didn’t feel safe.  I jumped at every little noise.  I couldn’t breathe because I had gotten myself in such a panic.  I was switching between wanting to die and wanting to find safety.  I ended up cutting myself more than I even consciously realized.  I taped menstrual pads to myself, grabbed my hoodie and my sneakers and ran out of the house.  I left the house originally planning to take a walk, hoping I would be able to find some relief.  Instead, I found myself panicking even more, constantly looking over my shoulder, running through the streets in the dark of night.  After awhile I decided to walk to the hospital.  I waited in front of the emergency room for a while still hoping the feelings would go away.  But they were still there.  I knew I had no control at that time.  So I went in.

When I first got in the ER, I was panicking. I kept telling the nurse to “please don’t let them (my family) find me, please don’t tell them I’m here.”  When I met with the social worker in crisis, she asked me if I was hiding from anyone because of what I kept saying. I told her the basics, that I left my family because they were not nice people. No one wants to hear that shit anyway.

After a few hours in the hospital, the panic began to subside.  I started to feel safe again.  I wanted to leave, but of course you can’t just do that.  If you don’t admit yourself voluntarily, they will involuntarily commit you.  Then, if you try to sign out of voluntary before you are released, they will involuntarily commit you.  So not much of a choice, is it?  The staff kept trying to tell me I was depressed.  I specifically told them I was not depressed.  It was an issue of anxiety and PTSD.  I know the difference very well.  It always seems to be a fight, though.  I was more upset at the fact that I was now going to be missing my first day of work, and I’d probably be out of a job.  All these steps forward I took and now I’d have to start over.

In the hospital, I contemplated going back home.  Maybe I just wasn’t cut out for this freedom.  I don’t know.  I moved away, yet I still ended up hospitalized.  So maybe it wasn’t the right choice.  Maybe I missed something.  Maybe my mother was right.  Maybe I can’t live without her.  I just want to be normal.  But maybe I have to acknowledge the fact that I will never be normal.

It doesn’t help hat my support system is lacking.  I have no family, and while I know that is for the better, hospital staff see that as concerning.  I tried to reach out to someone on Friday night, only to be shut down.  I couldn’t contact my therapist because she was out of the country.  While my online friends are available, I often think there is a lack of understanding, especially when some of the comments they make tend to piss me off or upset me even more than I was upset to begin with.  I’m not even surprised I ended up in the hospital.  I have no one here.  I’m not even sure the people I have a distance away are supportive for me anymore.  At this point, I only have complete trust in my therapists.  Everyone else is just sort of out there outside of my protective bubble.

Going back to my hospital experience, I can’t tell you how much I dislike going into psychiatric hospitals because you have to answer the same horrible questions so many times, tell all your problems to at least one person on each floor.  It’s frustrating for me because I always struggle with whether or not I should be open about my history.  If I say I have flashbacks, they want to know of what and why.  When they ask about any abuse history, they want to know who, how, and how long.  I never know what reaction I’ll get when I say it was my mother.  I admit, the last couple of times I was hospitalized prior to this, the staff were accepting and appropriately responsive to me.  During this hospitalization, when I revealed that my mother was my abuser, the nurse made a face and asked me “Are you a lesbian?  Is your mother a lesbian?”  What? Hold up.  I just told you that my mother and father both abused me, which means my father was in the picture, which means my mother was not a lesbian.  But even then, what the hell kind of a question is that?  Saying something like that makes me feel like you are insinuating all parties involved are homosexual.  Mother-daughter sexual abuse has nothing…I repeat NOTHING…to do with homosexuality.  This assumption gets me so infuriated.  If I was a male who admitted being abused by a male, would she have asked me if I was gay?  I highly doubt it.  Sexual abuse is rarely about sexuality.  I am not a fucking lesbian.  Fuck.  If it weren’t for the fact that I hadn’t slept in about 30 hours at that point, I probably would have blown up at her.  But I was so physically and mentally exhausted that I just let it go.  It makes me rage just thinking about it, though.  Then again, I can’t blame people for their complete lack of knowledge about MDSA.  I just need to use this experience as more fuel for me to spread awareness.

I have to say, the one (and probably only) positive that came out of this hospitalization experience was seeing the psychiatrist.  This psychiatrist had a brain.  He had a concern.  He actually talked to me for a good 30 minutes, which is something I have never experienced from a psychiatrist before.  He listened to me.  He listened to my concerns.  We went over my whole lengthy medication history.  For the first time, someone is focusing on treating my PTSD.  Not depression.  Everyone always wants to shove anti-depressants down my throat.  In fact, within 10 minutes of arriving on the psych floor, they wanted me to take a dose of Celexa.  I refused.  First of all, been there, done that drug.  Second of all, these people don’t even know me or my history yet, how are they medicating the unknown?  I am glad I stood my ground, and the psychiatrist agreed with me.  I think he liked me.  He told me that I should pursue a career in psychiatry.  When I told him I wanted to be a counselor, he said “you can do both, you can do whatever.  You’re probably smarter than I am.”  This dude just met me.  What?  How does he assess me so fast?  At the end of our session, he said “I would be honored if you would be my patient.  I genuinely enjoy talking to you.  Can I shake your hand?”  It was late at night.  Maybe he needed sleep.  I don’t know.  Everyone else was saying how much of an asshole he was, but he was anything but to me.

Anyway, he prescribed me Prazosin.  It’s actually a blood pressure medication but has been used off-label to treat combat veterans returning from war with PTSD with considerable success.  He said it should help my nightmares and night terrors.  He also prescribed Topamax, which has been used in treatment-resistant PTSD (since I haven’t responded well to anti-psychotics) and hydroxyzine for panic attacks.  So far, so good.  I had no problems in the hospital.  No side effects, except for the hydroxyzine making me extremely tired.  But I’d rather be tired than in a panic.

Overall, the other patients were cool people.  I talked to everyone.  There was one girl who was a little inappropriately attached to me and the other patients were saying she was in love with me.  She may very well have been.  She was constantly sitting next to me and at one point pulled me over to the side to ask me to help her fix her bra.  She also touched me several times despite me telling her please do not touch me.  It irritated the hell out of me.  I try to be nice to everyone but between the MDSA and the nurse’s question about being lesbian, I was just not in the mood to be involved in that shit.  I knew I had to be patient and bite my tongue if I wanted to get out of there.  Acting out would have just gotten me involuntarily committed or punished with a longer stay.

Since I was doing well on the medication and had a therapy appointment already scheduled today, they released me.  I’m glad, because being in that place was not an overall positive experience.  It was very unstructured.  There were very few groups and activities, no outside time, and very little staff.  There were no individual counseling sessions and no meetings with a social worker, which I have always had in my other hospitalizations.  It just seemed very disconnected.  You never really knew what was going on.  If it wasn’t for my roommate getting in contact with my therapist for me, I don’t think the hospital would have even ever contacted her to tell her I was there.  I learned a lot of the patients were “regulars”.  With the lack of care there, I am not surprised.  Many of the patients were just homeless and needed a place to stay.  It’s sad.  The system isn’t working.  It needs to be fixed.

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.

Changes

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

After my therapy session and subsequent blogging Tuesday night, I decided to go ahead and make some changes for myself.  For the first time ever, I have control of who I am and who I want to be.

I wanted to change my hair color.  I could have just bought a box of hair dye from the drug store, but I wanted to do something different.  I went to a salon, for the first time ever.  I got 10 or so inches cut off and layered.  I told the stylist the color I wanted and she immediately made me feel like it was a bad decision.  She said it wouldn’t look right, and that I’d regret it.  Usually in circumstances in which people disagree with me, I give in to their wants without a fight.  But this time, I stood up for myself.  I told her I knew what I wanted, and eventually, she gave in.  I went from one side of the color spectrum to the other; the change was drastic…and I love it.  I received a lot of compliments on it, which made me feel even better about my decision.  The best part?  My mother can’t copy me.  She has no idea what I look like.  It’s freeing in a way that I can’t explain.

I also did some shopping for myself.  I bought new glasses, some jewelry, and a nice shirt.  I probably would have gotten a tattoo as well if I knew where there was a tattoo shop around here.  I should think that through a little more, anyway.  I don’t want to turn into one of those out-of-control youngsters who goes crazy once they get a taste of freedom.  I’m too old for that now.

As if that wasn’t enough for one day, I decided to go to the beach…by myself.  I was just going to sit on the far end away from the water and absorb the sun, but by the time I got there it was windy and there was not much sun.  I didn’t want my efforts to get to the beach to go to waste, so I took a chance and went into the ocean.  This was big for me.  I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I tried to drown myself in the ocean.  I’ve managed to avoid anything further than dipping my toes in the water for that reason.  I didn’t want a flashback.  I didn’t want to go back to that place.  And since I was alone, I was taking a chance that if I went back to that place, I’d have no one to pull me back to reality.  But I did it.  I went in.  At one point, the waves knocked me right down on my ass and I just sat there for a while as the water pushed and pulled me back and forth.  But I got through it.

Maybe it was the physical changes I had made that put me in a different place.  Maybe it was the Adderall I had taken the night before so I could get my paper done.  Who knows.  I feel like a different person.  Even small changes can mean so much to a person.

I am not my mother.

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

I am not my mother.

It is such a simple sentence, yet it is an extremely difficult concept for me to embrace.

I try to avoid thinking about it as much as possible.  But when I was at a group-therapy workshop this past Sunday, I participated in a body image project that brought up a lot of those feelings.  It took everything in me not to just color over my body outline and stab the paper.  I’ve always had difficulty connecting to my body.  I’ve always had difficulty loving my body because I feel like it’s her body.

I’ve mentioned before how many people tell me I look so much like my mother.  That makes it so much harder to separate myself from her.  Aside from her being a couple of inches shorter, she has the same skin color, eye color, and stature as me.  To make matters worse, my mother consistently went out of her way to make herself look even more like me.  I believe she did it because she knew it bothered me.  It was just another way to manipulate me.

If I dyed my hair, she dyed her hair the same color.  If I got a haircut, she got a haircut, too.  She’d buy the same underwear as me.  She would even take my clothes without my permission and wear them.  I remember getting picked up from work one day last year and she was in the back of the car, wearing a familiar outfit.  It was the outfit I got for Christmas from one of my best work friends.  I didn’t even get to wear it.  When I asked her why she took it, she said it looked better on her anyway.  It didn’t even fit her.

I avoid looking in the mirror because I constantly see her, both in body and in face.  I never see myself.  If I look like her, that must mean that I am like her in every way.  It is nauseating to me.  I hate my body because it’s her body.  I hate my face because it’s her face.  I don’t know if I can get past that.  I’ve never been able to feel like anything is my own, and that includes my body.

During my therapy session today, my therapist asked me about the body image project.  I told her about my difficulty in seeing myself as separate from my mother, and how that makes it difficult for me not to hate my body because of how much I hate her.  My therapist tried to get me to realize that I was not my mother, especially on a psychological level.  Our personalities are very different.  I am also more intelligent than my mother – and that was something that she hated about me and constantly made me feel bad about.

Despite the differences, I still have a hard time acknowledging that I am not my mother.  It’s hard when you grow up in a society that judges you on your looks before anything else.  Part of me wants to make a drastic change, because now she won’t be able to copy me.  Maybe I’ll dye my hair dark.  Maybe I’ll get a new pair of glasses.  I need something to help me feel different, because knowing it isn’t enough for me.