theshadowoftheliving
Diamond Member
So, introductions make me nervous.
I've been cyber-stalking the site for a while, looking for reassurance and knowledge that I'm not totally crazy. Now, here I am, officially.
My story is hard to tell. On the surface, it seems relatively benign, but its pretty obvious to me that the impact has been huge. I grew up in a pretty dysfunctional home: my dad was an alcoholic, and although he never hit anyone, there was always a lot of frightening, loud words and implied violence (i.e. slamming doors, hitting pets, etc). My mom was an emotional wreck, crying all the time and reacting to my father with submission and fear. Mid-grade school, I was molested by my grandfather. I think it was 2nd or 3rd grade: I date the memories by the haircut I had at the time. I never disclosed, and for years I couldn't remember it. But I think that the molestation, combined with witnessing my dad verbally abuse my mother, set me up to react stronger than normal people to seemingly benign situations. By sixth grade, I could dissociate on cue and I was starting to have suicidal thoughts.
My first year of high school, my sister died as the result of a car crash, although, ultimately, the cause was medical malpractice. On top of the grief, it caused my dad to drink more and my mom to reach out to me for emotional support. Obviously, at 15, I failed at being able to be her surrogate spouse, and that made her alternately cold and withdrawn from me and desperate and clingy. A year later I finally fell apart completely and started cutting and cycled into anorexia (prior to this, I was an honor-roll student at the top of my class, quiet and obedient. As such, no one ever questioned that anything was wrong with me). I got into therapy with the help of my mom. But this therapist would talk to my mom behind my back and lie to my face about it. She had an agenda of protecting my parents, and whenever I suggested that my parents had problems that were affecting me, she told me that I was either making it up or overreacting. Whenever I dissociated, she acted like I was being a manipulative, adolescent jerk for not being able to talk. When I tried to change therapists my mom refused to let me, so I was stuck sitting with her and had to listen to her tell me that I was overreacting and making things up until I was 18 and could legally stop going. During this time a counselor at school became involved (I credit him with saving my life), and through him I was able to see that my familial experiences caused my emotional reactions. All through high school, I flirted with suicide, coming closer to killing myself than I'd like to admit.
One day, though, I laid in bed with the thoughts that I couldn't possibly go on one more day like this. I tried to convince myself to kill myself, but I couldn't follow through, so I started working really hard on getting better instead. I stopped cutting, and without that distraction, I started recovering memories of the abuse. These aren't implanted memories; these are like when you see funny hats at the store and suddenly remember when you were five and wore silly hats at a birthday party. The process of remembering felt exactly like that.
In college, I found myself in numerous relationships where I was taken advantage of sexually, once where I ended up in the ER. It took me a lot of time to learn how to keep myself safe, but eventually out of sheer stubbornness, I learned coping strategies and methodologies. Since then, I've lead a *fairly* normal life, until my brother was in an accident that nearly killed him. He spent days in the ICU in a coma, having the doctors tell us that he wasn't going to live, in the room next to the one my sister died in. Eventually, after months, he came out of the coma and has been slowly recovering ever since.
I'm leading a "normal" life now, but I don't think I ever really worked through things completely. I've just learned how to ignore it and push them down instead. I'm here because I can't keep pretending to be okay.
I've been cyber-stalking the site for a while, looking for reassurance and knowledge that I'm not totally crazy. Now, here I am, officially.
My story is hard to tell. On the surface, it seems relatively benign, but its pretty obvious to me that the impact has been huge. I grew up in a pretty dysfunctional home: my dad was an alcoholic, and although he never hit anyone, there was always a lot of frightening, loud words and implied violence (i.e. slamming doors, hitting pets, etc). My mom was an emotional wreck, crying all the time and reacting to my father with submission and fear. Mid-grade school, I was molested by my grandfather. I think it was 2nd or 3rd grade: I date the memories by the haircut I had at the time. I never disclosed, and for years I couldn't remember it. But I think that the molestation, combined with witnessing my dad verbally abuse my mother, set me up to react stronger than normal people to seemingly benign situations. By sixth grade, I could dissociate on cue and I was starting to have suicidal thoughts.
My first year of high school, my sister died as the result of a car crash, although, ultimately, the cause was medical malpractice. On top of the grief, it caused my dad to drink more and my mom to reach out to me for emotional support. Obviously, at 15, I failed at being able to be her surrogate spouse, and that made her alternately cold and withdrawn from me and desperate and clingy. A year later I finally fell apart completely and started cutting and cycled into anorexia (prior to this, I was an honor-roll student at the top of my class, quiet and obedient. As such, no one ever questioned that anything was wrong with me). I got into therapy with the help of my mom. But this therapist would talk to my mom behind my back and lie to my face about it. She had an agenda of protecting my parents, and whenever I suggested that my parents had problems that were affecting me, she told me that I was either making it up or overreacting. Whenever I dissociated, she acted like I was being a manipulative, adolescent jerk for not being able to talk. When I tried to change therapists my mom refused to let me, so I was stuck sitting with her and had to listen to her tell me that I was overreacting and making things up until I was 18 and could legally stop going. During this time a counselor at school became involved (I credit him with saving my life), and through him I was able to see that my familial experiences caused my emotional reactions. All through high school, I flirted with suicide, coming closer to killing myself than I'd like to admit.
One day, though, I laid in bed with the thoughts that I couldn't possibly go on one more day like this. I tried to convince myself to kill myself, but I couldn't follow through, so I started working really hard on getting better instead. I stopped cutting, and without that distraction, I started recovering memories of the abuse. These aren't implanted memories; these are like when you see funny hats at the store and suddenly remember when you were five and wore silly hats at a birthday party. The process of remembering felt exactly like that.
In college, I found myself in numerous relationships where I was taken advantage of sexually, once where I ended up in the ER. It took me a lot of time to learn how to keep myself safe, but eventually out of sheer stubbornness, I learned coping strategies and methodologies. Since then, I've lead a *fairly* normal life, until my brother was in an accident that nearly killed him. He spent days in the ICU in a coma, having the doctors tell us that he wasn't going to live, in the room next to the one my sister died in. Eventually, after months, he came out of the coma and has been slowly recovering ever since.
I'm leading a "normal" life now, but I don't think I ever really worked through things completely. I've just learned how to ignore it and push them down instead. I'm here because I can't keep pretending to be okay.
