alwayssunny16
New Here
Hello. First of all, if you're reading this right now I want to thank you. Even more so if you read all of it and/or reply. This is a dark and scary time for me, and I feel very alone. In order for this to make any sense, I'm going to have to start at the beginning, but before I do let me say this. I absolutely plan on beginning some kind of therapy. At the moment I am not in a position to do so, and it's going to be a number of weeks before I can. And I just don't think I can wait that long to have someone understand what the hell I'm talking about, I'm really losing it.
I'm twenty years old, female, and six months ago my husband and I moved from our hometown to his first duty station (active duty US military) a thousand miles away. We've been married for two years and we have a lovely, healthy relationship. Actually, the only healthy relationship I've had in my entire life. So much so, that it was in fact my first indication that there were things about my past I hadn't scratched the surface of. I realized this early on in our marriage but shrugged it off as "the past", "let it go, enjoy what you have now". But recently in an effort to improve ourselves we quit drinking. Oh my god, if I had any idea what was going to happen I may not have done it.
After we quit drinking, it started. These memories creeping into my head, memories that aren't repressed, I've always had them and known them to be true but I am beginning to understand that I've "disassociated". Mainly with the help of things like alcohol, and at some points drugs and alcohol. But never nothing. I've never not had a vice, I've never not had something to run to when abuse happened, or those moments when it feels like your world has devolved into chaos and screaming and all you want is to dive into a pool of forget all about it.
Now, right now is the first truly "clean" time of my life since I was 12. Even before that, I was that kid that always had her nose stuck in a book. I got in trouble for reading all the time, in school, under the dinner table. I'm beginning to wonder if that was my crutch before drugs, to disassociate. These memories have been creeping in and I've been pushing them away, not wanting to bother anyone with unnecessary drama or made up crisis. But I finally snapped a few days ago into a non stop mental horror show that ended with my husband coming home to find me wrapped in a blanket in the bathtub sobbing, days of not sleeping, not letting my husband touch me. So here I am. It's all happening to me for what feels like the first time, all at the same time, and no one understands what's wrong with me.
I come from a long line of dysfunction. My mother came from an abusive home and that side of the family was never in contact with us. My father's side is and was very strongly Christian Patriarchy (Southern Baptist). My fathers family has lots of depression and skeletons with an overall attitude of "We don't talk about that". My father adopted that.
My parents have always been heavy cannabis users and drinkers, and I was their first child and an accident. I've been told they had a toxic relationship long before I came along. When I did, apparently my mother had post partum depression and told people she was jealous of the way my father looked at me.
My first memories are my mother screaming at me and shaking me. My father tickling me and intervening when my mother was angry with me. Their fights all night, breaking things, cussing and screaming. They had a boy when I was six and another boy when I was eleven. The care of those boys fell mostly to me, as my parents grew worse over the years. Between ages six and ten my parents both confided in me like a peer, pitted me against one another, and verbally/emotionally/physically abused me when I didn't comply.
Eventually I grew very angry with my mother, because she had always been a source of anger and hate in our house. She grew more volatile, choking me and telling me I was worthless, threatening to kill herself, she began struggling to function on a day to day basis. Then one day in school my dad came in with a suitcase and told me my mother kicked him out and he didn't know when he would be able to see me again. My mother picked me up twenty minutes later, and that night she found me trying to cut myself, called the police and asked them to take me away. They took me to a state funded mental facility for minors where I have some very disturbing memories.
Those memories were some of the first flashbacks I started having. I don't feel comfortable going into those. My father broke the law and picked me up from the facility a few days later and I went to live with him. That began six years of intense emotional incest. I cut my mother out of my life, and my father and I lived alone, with my brothers coming to see us every other week. He treated me like a surrogate partner, and I didn't realize that until I was fifteen. He was complimenting my housework and slapped me on the butt and asked me to meet him in bed later. He apologized immediately, but it started to make sense. He depended on my opinion for everything, for adult decisions that didn't require my knowledge or input. He dumped on me emotionally, and held me responsible for his moods and feelings. He called me his room-mate and his wingman.
When I was thirteen I started drinking and smoking cigarettes with kids in my neighborhood. When I was fourteen I lost my virginity to one of those boys. I thought it was love, and it was only last week I realized it wasn't. He was rough and stopped caring about me afterwards. He was seventeen. Six months later I babysat for a woman. Her brother was staying with her, and that night he violently molested me, leaving bleeding bite marks all over me that they eventually matched his dental records to. I came home and told someone, proceeded with legal action. That began a slow process that didn't end until years later.
After that I was caught at school with alcohol and expelled, which led to a long period of isolation and continued emotional abuse by my father while he began a cocaine addiction that made him even worse and took me great lengths to get him out of. I always thought that those three years, 15-18 I was just wild. A slut, a partygirl, rebellious. But looking back, no. My parents gave up on me. My father lost interest in me and stopped caring about where I was. I was not a slut, I was raped over and over again at parties and in the back of cars.
Do you know how I know that? Because if I say no, please don't do that, and a guy has sex with me anyway, that's rape. Do you know what I thought all those years? That it was my fault, so it doesn't count. It's not rape if I got in the car with him. It's not rape if I thought I could spend the night on the couch without incident, stupid me. It's not rape if I got myself into the situation by being naive and dumb. It's not rape if we're already having sex and I say no. It's not rape if we've had sex before.
I am processing so much all at once and I feel like an alien. Because I never mentally acknowledged those things as assault, I never dealt with it. Well now I have to deal with all of it, and not because I want to, not because I tried, but because it forced its way out of my subconscious. It is only now, that I am realizing all of this that I see how I view myself, how I've always viewed myself. As a slut, an attention whore, burdensome, disgusting, dramatic, easy.
I have always possessed these memories. I have always known these things.
When I was seventeen, I finally figured out how to masturbate. I used the water jets on the hot tub outside, it was wonderful to get aroused from something other than abuse or being used like a tissue. I remember feeling that but not being able to articulate it (because I wasn't categorizing my sexual encounters as abuse). I would wait until my dad was asleep to go do that. Yet, I remember on more than one occasion my dad coming outside and watching me, standing less than five feet away. I wouldn't realize it until it was too late, with the water in my ears and my eyes closed and the hot tub roaring. Then I didn't know what to do. I would stop and keep my eyes shut until he left. Then I would be so unnerved I would chainsmoke and get drunk until I could fall asleep.I remember feeling gross and guilty.
I pretended to myself it never happened until this breakdown or whatever it is. Violent awakening. I've yet to tell my husband about it. Mostly because there's nothing that gets me off faster in bed than calling him "daddy". Now that I'm reclaiming some of these memories, I'm horrified and I can't bring myself to tell him about this. Because what does that say about me.
My fathers girlfriends have always hated me and now that makes sense. I want to beat my face into a wall.
HOW. HOW did I KNOW all of this and never know what it meant. I STILL don't know what it means. Did my father molest me? I don't even know if I want to know the answer to that.
How is it that these are all things that in the black and white factual sense, I have always remembered but yet it's only now that I know what they ARE. Did I disassociate that strongly for that long? Are there things that I may not even remember? Will I ever learn how to stop feeling guilty and obligated about every single thing?
I feel like I'm tied to a train track and trains just keep running over me. I feel like an ice sculpture of a person, not a real person. I feel like a complete and absolute failure. I don't know how to pick up the pieces of myself all over the floor and the more I realize how deeply dysfunctional I am, the more afraid I am of myself.
Help. Please help. I don't want to be alone.
I'm twenty years old, female, and six months ago my husband and I moved from our hometown to his first duty station (active duty US military) a thousand miles away. We've been married for two years and we have a lovely, healthy relationship. Actually, the only healthy relationship I've had in my entire life. So much so, that it was in fact my first indication that there were things about my past I hadn't scratched the surface of. I realized this early on in our marriage but shrugged it off as "the past", "let it go, enjoy what you have now". But recently in an effort to improve ourselves we quit drinking. Oh my god, if I had any idea what was going to happen I may not have done it.
After we quit drinking, it started. These memories creeping into my head, memories that aren't repressed, I've always had them and known them to be true but I am beginning to understand that I've "disassociated". Mainly with the help of things like alcohol, and at some points drugs and alcohol. But never nothing. I've never not had a vice, I've never not had something to run to when abuse happened, or those moments when it feels like your world has devolved into chaos and screaming and all you want is to dive into a pool of forget all about it.
Now, right now is the first truly "clean" time of my life since I was 12. Even before that, I was that kid that always had her nose stuck in a book. I got in trouble for reading all the time, in school, under the dinner table. I'm beginning to wonder if that was my crutch before drugs, to disassociate. These memories have been creeping in and I've been pushing them away, not wanting to bother anyone with unnecessary drama or made up crisis. But I finally snapped a few days ago into a non stop mental horror show that ended with my husband coming home to find me wrapped in a blanket in the bathtub sobbing, days of not sleeping, not letting my husband touch me. So here I am. It's all happening to me for what feels like the first time, all at the same time, and no one understands what's wrong with me.
I come from a long line of dysfunction. My mother came from an abusive home and that side of the family was never in contact with us. My father's side is and was very strongly Christian Patriarchy (Southern Baptist). My fathers family has lots of depression and skeletons with an overall attitude of "We don't talk about that". My father adopted that.
My parents have always been heavy cannabis users and drinkers, and I was their first child and an accident. I've been told they had a toxic relationship long before I came along. When I did, apparently my mother had post partum depression and told people she was jealous of the way my father looked at me.
My first memories are my mother screaming at me and shaking me. My father tickling me and intervening when my mother was angry with me. Their fights all night, breaking things, cussing and screaming. They had a boy when I was six and another boy when I was eleven. The care of those boys fell mostly to me, as my parents grew worse over the years. Between ages six and ten my parents both confided in me like a peer, pitted me against one another, and verbally/emotionally/physically abused me when I didn't comply.
Eventually I grew very angry with my mother, because she had always been a source of anger and hate in our house. She grew more volatile, choking me and telling me I was worthless, threatening to kill herself, she began struggling to function on a day to day basis. Then one day in school my dad came in with a suitcase and told me my mother kicked him out and he didn't know when he would be able to see me again. My mother picked me up twenty minutes later, and that night she found me trying to cut myself, called the police and asked them to take me away. They took me to a state funded mental facility for minors where I have some very disturbing memories.
Those memories were some of the first flashbacks I started having. I don't feel comfortable going into those. My father broke the law and picked me up from the facility a few days later and I went to live with him. That began six years of intense emotional incest. I cut my mother out of my life, and my father and I lived alone, with my brothers coming to see us every other week. He treated me like a surrogate partner, and I didn't realize that until I was fifteen. He was complimenting my housework and slapped me on the butt and asked me to meet him in bed later. He apologized immediately, but it started to make sense. He depended on my opinion for everything, for adult decisions that didn't require my knowledge or input. He dumped on me emotionally, and held me responsible for his moods and feelings. He called me his room-mate and his wingman.
When I was thirteen I started drinking and smoking cigarettes with kids in my neighborhood. When I was fourteen I lost my virginity to one of those boys. I thought it was love, and it was only last week I realized it wasn't. He was rough and stopped caring about me afterwards. He was seventeen. Six months later I babysat for a woman. Her brother was staying with her, and that night he violently molested me, leaving bleeding bite marks all over me that they eventually matched his dental records to. I came home and told someone, proceeded with legal action. That began a slow process that didn't end until years later.
After that I was caught at school with alcohol and expelled, which led to a long period of isolation and continued emotional abuse by my father while he began a cocaine addiction that made him even worse and took me great lengths to get him out of. I always thought that those three years, 15-18 I was just wild. A slut, a partygirl, rebellious. But looking back, no. My parents gave up on me. My father lost interest in me and stopped caring about where I was. I was not a slut, I was raped over and over again at parties and in the back of cars.
Do you know how I know that? Because if I say no, please don't do that, and a guy has sex with me anyway, that's rape. Do you know what I thought all those years? That it was my fault, so it doesn't count. It's not rape if I got in the car with him. It's not rape if I thought I could spend the night on the couch without incident, stupid me. It's not rape if I got myself into the situation by being naive and dumb. It's not rape if we're already having sex and I say no. It's not rape if we've had sex before.
I am processing so much all at once and I feel like an alien. Because I never mentally acknowledged those things as assault, I never dealt with it. Well now I have to deal with all of it, and not because I want to, not because I tried, but because it forced its way out of my subconscious. It is only now, that I am realizing all of this that I see how I view myself, how I've always viewed myself. As a slut, an attention whore, burdensome, disgusting, dramatic, easy.
I have always possessed these memories. I have always known these things.
When I was seventeen, I finally figured out how to masturbate. I used the water jets on the hot tub outside, it was wonderful to get aroused from something other than abuse or being used like a tissue. I remember feeling that but not being able to articulate it (because I wasn't categorizing my sexual encounters as abuse). I would wait until my dad was asleep to go do that. Yet, I remember on more than one occasion my dad coming outside and watching me, standing less than five feet away. I wouldn't realize it until it was too late, with the water in my ears and my eyes closed and the hot tub roaring. Then I didn't know what to do. I would stop and keep my eyes shut until he left. Then I would be so unnerved I would chainsmoke and get drunk until I could fall asleep.I remember feeling gross and guilty.
I pretended to myself it never happened until this breakdown or whatever it is. Violent awakening. I've yet to tell my husband about it. Mostly because there's nothing that gets me off faster in bed than calling him "daddy". Now that I'm reclaiming some of these memories, I'm horrified and I can't bring myself to tell him about this. Because what does that say about me.
My fathers girlfriends have always hated me and now that makes sense. I want to beat my face into a wall.
HOW. HOW did I KNOW all of this and never know what it meant. I STILL don't know what it means. Did my father molest me? I don't even know if I want to know the answer to that.
How is it that these are all things that in the black and white factual sense, I have always remembered but yet it's only now that I know what they ARE. Did I disassociate that strongly for that long? Are there things that I may not even remember? Will I ever learn how to stop feeling guilty and obligated about every single thing?
I feel like I'm tied to a train track and trains just keep running over me. I feel like an ice sculpture of a person, not a real person. I feel like a complete and absolute failure. I don't know how to pick up the pieces of myself all over the floor and the more I realize how deeply dysfunctional I am, the more afraid I am of myself.
Help. Please help. I don't want to be alone.
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