Around The Bend

[Powder]

Thanks for reading Candleflames and Albatross. I feel deflated now. I've been crying about this for days, and now realize I got completely convinced and "obsessed" as my hubby put it.

I'm obviously desperate for a new point of view, so I guess I am not as "better" as I felt I was, and that it was just distracting myself with fantasies. I'm in so much pain and it all jumped to a higher level when my sister contacted me.

Although I was happy she cared enough to finally (after 3 years) try to communicate with me in a positive manner, trying to listen, support and validate. But then I saw she wants to remember her trauma only to prove my belief wrong to herself. I don't blame her. I clearly can't stomach that my father is the abuser either. I need to alter the memory so that he's not my "real father" or anything to make it less ugly.

Rather than just beat myself up and feel shame, I do want to realize that this is a symptom of the acute emotional trauma of the betrayal. In fact, I'd prefer that I were traumatized or wronged in other ways, anything to shift the picture even a little. Anything to distract from the main trauma, I guess.

Also I think it's a search for a New Improved Father to take the place of the abusive one. I can't believe I want that. The fact I want that and now realize it, means instead of the word "father" just being a 100% dirty word and idea to me (other than my kids' dad and some good dads I know) I'm willing to reinvent for myself a new father? Is that good?

I do think I'm would like to get back to my T. But I may have to settle for a local one. Hasn't been good. There seems to be little here of substance. Most are such Christian fundamentalists that I am triggered by even the thought of seeing another God-my-way pusher here.

 

[Powder]

Today, I messaged my Mom relating that I really needed to know about my paternity. Because both she and my grandma had said that my dad was AB blood type, I was upset that my biol. father must be unknown to me and an issue. My hubby says I've been obsessing about this without enough cause but he's been supportive and validating of the emotions I have underwent in this worry. He agreed that anyone would worry if told that information, especially by my mother.

So I allowed my mother to come to my house and meet with me after 3 years of invalidation. Yay me for being able to tolerate that.

I quickly learned that she messed up and his type is A. But I asked for a printed documentation of that to settle my mind. Talking with her, I don't see any evidence of lying about that, or worry about it, so I no longer think that my paternity is an issue.

I think my deep-seated desire to deny that my father is my father is the issue and belies the amount of psychic pain it still causes me.

I think I have transference and reparenting type issues and take this as a sign of the need to still process some more of the related issues with my identity and a need to reframe it to continue healing.

Well, I handled her desire to argue with me strongly. I got angry but not very angry and I was well able to handle it and move right through the anger quickly to a desire to be caring and helpful as I can given the circumstances.

She left feeling that I care about her and love her, but that I will always be angry with her for not listening to me, although I get how challenging this is for her to accept (that her loving husband is a rapist and abused her children).

She shared that she has felt a sense of impending doom, and a sense of death coming for her. She tried to rationalize it as the fact that she just turned 62 and her dad was diagnosed with fatal conditions that are genetic at 65 and only lived a few years (bad years after that).

I got a sense of doom as I was preparing to deal with my trauma. We discussed ways it appears people prepare themselves for things intuitively.

Seems like I made some brave stumbling steps and did pretty well all things considered, for me, and was able to relate a sense of compassion and help even though she is not able to help me. She shared a sense of loving me, acknowledging that she was not the best mother to us, and that she is only beginning to accept the assessment of others that she "shuts people out" and is self-centered in her ability to relate to others, even her kids and grandkids. She feels it is normal to "just be acting" all the time and the idea of a genuine sense of a core self seemed foreign to her. No surprise as a narcissist, but I see minor progress has been made since 3 years ago. My sister has been working on her, and she said she's done some therapy and work on herself since her narcissist mother died. She said her mother gave her a lot of lessons to work on. I thought that was a positive way to put it rather then the negative way she has always had.

Finally, I worked with her on preparing for if my sister begins to face her trauma and tells her the same or similar things I have that our father abused us.

She got about 6 years old and whinned, "I would assume you implanted that idea in her head" and indicated she would dismiss my sister as easily as she has dismissed me.

I became very stern and cut her off. I said, "If you treat her that way with your made up and not scientifically valid theory of rejection you can expect a bad reaction and likely a 3 or more year being cut off from her IF SHE SURVIVES the trauma of your coldness!"

She whined "Well then you tell me what to say! What does anyone say to this?!!??"

I was so frustrated with her that I had to calm myself before I could help her. I told her to:

1. Let her finish and talk and listen to her.
2. Tell her you are so sad and in pain with her and show you are sad about what she suffered.
3. Tell her you are so sorry this happened to her and that you feel terrible and apologize that you didn't know and didn't protect her like you would if you had known what was happening to her.
4. Don't invalidate her memories or tell her she is wrong, even if you suspect that some or all of her memories don't add up for you and you dislike them totally.

I said even if you do this, it is normal for her to feel rage at you and blame you for not knowing and protecting her.

I also told her that my sister is unlikely to feel safe sharing anything with her because she doesn't want to be told she's crazy and outsted from the family as I have been. I told her that to be abused and then accused of being wrong by those who failed to protect you in the first place is horrible. I told her I would never forget it and never look at her the same way, even though I care for her.

I feel sad that there is so much collective pain in the family that I didn't cause. I am not as traumatized that everyone blames me for it as I was. I feel nearly immune to that, as I understand it to be a follow the leader case in which I represent the minority.

When and if my sister declares the same thing I have, then, the whole scene will shift dramatically. I asked her to prepare and to consider not hurting anyone when the pain comes.

 

[Candleflames]

WOW!!! :hug:

You are so brave and so strong. I am in awe of what you have been able to accomplish and how far you have come. This is a huge victory and I hope you feel a sense of pride at this. I'm proud of you and hope to have that bravery someday.

You're not alone in wanting to change the family scenario. I used to daydream frequently that I had been switched at birth and had a loving family out there somewhere. I had a dream about that a few nights ago even. It's totally understandable.

 

[Powder]

Thanks, Candleflames,

It took me awhile to figure out it was simply the latest installment of the wish for a somehow less messed up, even somewhat less shameful family. Pretty much anything would be better.

I've been over-thinking it, or have been, for a awhile. :) Just some things are just not good and will never be. Acceptance? Hope so soon.

Thanks for the encouragement! I sure could use it. :)

 

[Deleted member 12723]

Muse, my husband went through something like this. He did not think his father was his real father and after his father died, he asked his brother to do a DNA test and that finally gave him a sense of peace.

That is what I wish for you, a real sense of peace on your quest for real truth and validation.

I think going back to therapy at this point in your life is like going for a tune up as I have just made an tune up appointment for myself with my old therapist.

You are so gifted in being able to have a conversation like that with your mother. I was the scapegoat in my family so when I began to break my silence it surely ruffled so many feathers and you are handling and managing it so well.

I am happy for you that you are finding closeness now. You deserve it.

I admire you very much for the courageous steps you are currently taking.

 

[Powder]

I was so ashamed for thinking I had a different father than I couldn't write in this thread for six months.

I'm getting more tolerant of shame, after all, it's about all I've got most days, so might as well.

My husband is nearly done with college, and it's been years since he had a real job. During these years, I've also come undone.

He and my T's thought this was a good thing, to finally face and remember and process trauma.

It is good, but I feel like I can't take it anymore, can't keep reliving it. New flashbacks and I feel really torn apart and am led into further dissociative episodes more like DID than anything else. I don't understand.

Last night, I asked my H. if he thinks that after he starts working I might feel better??? He pulled away from me and felt hurt I brought it up, and he couldn't take in anything about how it's affected me--his being depressed and repressing it. (I triggered him; he doesn't have PTSD, but he has his own accumulative traumas from lack of success).

ALL of yesterday, His face was all Wrong. He's been acting weird lately, and I needed him to talk about it. He had been looking at my chest and making weird faces.

He finally said that he is triggered by my clothing, but upon further scrutiny, I really interpreted his statements as he is upset that I have big boobs. He wants me to hide them because they are "too beautiful." But all I feel is:

*intense shaming that there is inherently something 'marked' and wrong about my body (father's sexual abuse, other sexual abuse as small child)

*intense desire to hide, to disappear

*feeling trapped by his gaze

*terrified of the emotional abandonment

I had an emotional flashback of the above, and I felt instantly suicidal. I could no longer "converse" and I heard "I am going to kill myself" come out of my mouth.

Then, I tried to cry to get through it, but I couldn't cry.

INSTEAD, my body became super heavy, and as the tub drained, I could not move or get out. I crumpled up into a ball and couldn't move. I could think about suicide though, and I did think of how I wanted to do it. The more I thought about it the more powerful the dissociation.

When my H. returned some time later, I could hardly speak, and when I did it was a tiny, childlike voice and my brain hardly moved. I felt drugged. I didn't feel cold like I normally do.

I've read about opioids in the brain that naturally release, but it felt like I had taken an OD of narcotics, same as an IV of Demerol. Same feeling, can't talk even if I wanted to respond.

I'm super upset today, my H. left before I woke up. He knows that what he said was "too much and that I can't understand him" only be hurt by his opinions.

I know that having been sick and winter has made me gain back 15 lbs that I lost. I'm really sensitive about it, and feel really bad and down about myself, more than normal. My weight has yo-yo'd more this last fall, and I've had tons of health problems that won't heal.

Recurring sinus infections to the point I lost vision in right eye.
Recurring shingles, every other month, surrounding right eye (again right eye) and left leg
Anorexia/binging in cycles.
Lack of sleep.
Unstable self image.
Uncertain if I am on the "right track" in all areas of my life: parenting, marriage, work, image, body
Uncertain if I am "right" on everything; perfectionism or procrastination
Too tired to do my usual Flight Responses at work, sinking into depression and don't know how to get out
Panic attacks over small daily stuff
Flashbacks and intrusions of child EPs into consciousness, making me "hide" or go into fetal position

 

[Powder]

I need to write out the latest flashbacks. I've tried to twice already.

It was a rainy night, must have been late fall or early winter, and I was in preschool. I was almost 5. My younger sister was about to be four. Mom was cooking dinner, and what triggered this memory months ago was the odor of cooking peas with the lid on the pot. The smell brought that night back in a flashback.

First flashback of that night:

Mom was sullen and angry cooking, and the later it grew and dad didn't come home from work the more "evil" and angry her face grew. She said nothing. The only sound was banging of pots. I remember her angrily throwing dinner away, but I don't remember if she tried to feed me. I was upset and growing increasingly so as I realized that tonight something was "more wrong" than usual. Usually, he came home and they fought during and after dinner. But wasn't here.

My sister fell asleep on the couch and was moved to her bed earlier, and it was past our bedtime of 8 pm. Suddenly, her angry reached a certain point, and she instructed me to put my coat and boots on, and she dressed my sleeping sister in the same. SHe carried her to the backseat of the car and I got in next to her. Then, she drove us to the river.

The haunting steel bridge, green, was in the headlights as she pulled to the Left shoulder, keeping the beams of light onto the bridge and the river. I saw the rain, heard nothing but the rain and the windshield wipers.

To this day the sound of windshield wipers make me feel afraid. She shut of the engine and we sat for what seemed a long time, in almost silence as she stared at the bridge.

I thought she was waiting for my dad to drive across it, like a cat waiting to catch a mouse red handed. Nobody was there. Her silence was unnerving. It was torture. I was told nothing, and my fears ramped up accordingly. I was only 4, but I had PTSD and had endured severe, violent sexual abuse from my father and molestation from his friend, so I knew all about distrust.

(This is where Flashback 1 ends)

Fast forward a year to the next installment, Flashback 2)


Flashback 2

When mom got out of the car, and opened the back left door and began to remove my sister, I lost it. I cried out and then screamed, and began to pull my sister back, keep her in the car, keep her alive!

This moment was a non-verbal body language message that mom was going to sacrifice us, my sister and I, in the name of revenge against our father for his absence. Mom was insanely jealous of other women. Perhaps she knew about the abuse?

Flasback 2

 

[The Albatross]

I think I'd ask him if you thought that about his penis, how he'd be feeling right about now.

 

[Powder]

Flashback 2 happened a week ago. I had been feeling an emotional flashback, and had been told to hide by a voice "You hide!"

After hiding in the house for about an hour I came out and then got hit with Flashback 2. Sitting on the sofa with a window behind me resembling sitting in the back seat of that car that night.

FB2 began with the thought "She's going to KILL US!" And starting with my sleeping sister!

I began to SCREAM and pull the blanket on the sofa to the left of me, but in my mind I was in that car screaming and pulling my sister's coat and legs, DESPERATELY, frantically. I wouldn't let mom take her out of the car. I knew she had the headlights pointed a the trail down to the river. She was going to take her down there and throw her in.

The FB2 consisted of that and me, frantically scanning the window (back then back windscreen of the car) for "HELP!" for headlights. I wanted someone to drive up, think we had broken down, and interrupt and help me! But no headlights were coming!!! It was all up to ME!!! And I am only 4!

A superhuman strength and will to live and keep my sister alive took over me and I was fully possessed by it.

I cannot allow myself to see the full struggle for life. I know that she got us out of the car and at that point I was insane fighting back. I fought her and beat her and attacked her with all I had in me, fighting to live. I pulled and pulled on my sister all the way down to the river. She got my sister in the water, but I attacked her and fought her. It was SOOO dark that I have no visual memory of this, only tactile. :( This is hard to process without visual recollection.

I lost track of my sister's body, so I used my sense of feeling to beat and attack my mom's larger body. I hit her as hard as I could and tried to kill her. My will was to kill her in that insane moment, to save my poor baby sister. I didn't kill her, but I succeeded in "breaking her will to kill us" and I over powered her with my will to keep us alive.

Mom gave up on drowning us. She put us back in the car and drove home, looking like a dejected wet cat.

After that night, my sister and I got fevers and pneumonia. My sister got dual ear infections that kept coming back for months until she had to have surgical tubes put in. I had a bad one in my right ear.

During FB2, I felt water in my right ear, which went away when the FB ended. It felt like it was really in there.

After that traumatic event, I kept worrying that Mom would attempt to kill us again when We Were Ill. "What if I'm not strong enough to fight her off NEXT TIME?!" I kept worrying to myself. I had nobody to talk to; it was all up to me.

Since writing this FB out two previous times, I now understand why I panic like it's life or death every time any of my kids has the slightest cold or minor illness.

For over a year, I was hypervigilant that if my sister AND I got sick, we'd be too weak to survive the next attack. And I began hiding in the basement laundry room to feel safe.

That is what I was doing the hour before FB2, as if working backwards.

This FB series about this attempted murder shows me how I was terrified to be alone with either parent. They both attacked us when the other was not there. Together, they beat us, but they didn't rape or try to kill us unless they were alone with us.

Why did they hate us? My adult self know they had a volatile relationship and we were caught in the middle, taking the brunt of it.

 

[Powder]

We were both so ill following the attempted drowning and I was trying NOT to be but I was dizzy, the room was spinning and I felt, even when she finally gave me Tylenol for my high fever, that she was going to kill us. I didn't want to be sick, and I had to guard my sister. I wouldn't leave the room my sister, S. slept in.

But after a while of feeling hypervigilant about S. I slowly began to resent S. and both S. and I began to displace our anger upon each other. She punched me in the guts. I began to resent her presence. Even though we love each other, the traumatic event injected a poison into us.

S. to this day, thinks that I tried to kill her, several times. She probably woke to me screaming and pulling on her and interpreted it as me trying to kill her, not save her life. She was only 3.

All the abuse from my parents built up walls around each of us so that none of the love could fully be felt or shared without the roughness of the walls beating us back down into isolation.

 

[The Albatross]

That is a hard thing to know Muse... it is good though to acknowledge that displaced anger or aggression was how both of you had to deal with the shit. My brother's version of events differ from mine though I am two and a half years his senior. Our relationship is still affected.

 

[Powder]

Yes @The Albatross I felt, well, so bad inside because he makes me feel like I'm bad just because I have these breasts. It felt shaming.

He said back when this expression fell onto his face about two weeks ago that he felt "deeply insecure" and that it is "inevitable" that he is going to lose me. :( He is worried he will not be able to find work and that I will grow despondent and leave him. I actually do understand that fear because I feel that way all the time. This is the first time he has opened up about it. Which is good.

He is basically, I think, afraid that I will be noticed by a male who will take me away from him. He thinks my breasts are so attractive that they will act like bait and make another male try to take me away. (He is a dumb boy sometimes.)

It hurts me how he perpetuates this stereotype that I'm going to go to the highest bidder as a sexual object. I feel objectified, even though it's not really about "Me" at all but his own complexes about not being tall and not being educated (yet) and having LD and a disorder, and never having any money. He doesn't fully believe that I love him and am loyal to him. I hurt him a long time ago and the sting never left.

He's scared because of the fact that most sexually abused women go on to cheat on their BFs and Hs. out of their complexes. I have already decided that I am not doing that. I would never hurt him intentionally.

Yeah, I now see how it would be easy to draw a comparison between my H. and S. Both of them don't see how fiercely I love them and in my defensiveness, maybe they are afraid of me?
I am both extremely compassionate and loving and yet, at the same time, a fighter and a loner.