MY cousin just sent me a quote "being silent is a great way to let someone know they did something wrong" I think this is about his now ex-girlfriend, but there is a message in there for me as well. I could not talk about my mother's emotional abuse when I was a child - when I sought comfort from my dad, or he offered it, she got worse.........
So I bottled it all up. After she died my dad got unwell, he could not grieve and ended up being pretty nasty for several years. I withdrew so far into myself due to this. I lived expecting to be abused and hid myself deep, deep inside so that I did not get hurt. The suffering did not stop so I walked away - I was so depressed by this stage that I could not let anyone get close to me. I know that people tried, including my dad, but because I expected more hurt I kept on rejecting his attempts to contact me. I think this was all for self-preservation. I stubbornly held onto the idea that if I rejected him I would be safe.
But it hurt me so much to do this.
After several years had gone by I did not know any other way to cope. So I set up lots of barriers to protect myself. Then I did not know how to let them down. Then along came adult trauma - my barriers stopped me from asking for help or from letting anyone in to help me. I wanted to reach out, I wanted my family, I wanted help but I could not let it happen - out of terror that I would be hurt again and again and again.
I still fell as though I am going to be hurt forever - I no longer believe that it will stop and each day it a torment of mixed up messiness. I try to help myself and then stop because I think that if I do all the hard work and get 'better' something will happen to take it all away from me. A repeat of things that my mum did when I was a child, the rejections when I sought help, my rejecting help, my dad hurting me, my brothers being as helpless as me, my isolating and withdrawing into myself to cope, my adult trauma, my ongoing fears of more hurt....
I think this is way I am having dark thoughts again. We all die, so why not get it over and done with now and save myself a few more decades of suffering??? To just die and be able to forget about all of this. The traumas and my reactions to them have stopped me from living the life that I wanted and tried to live. What if this keeps on happening? I can't keep on living in this hell.
I have been dwelling on how much my early experiences have led me to be unable to cope with my adult 'junk' - some days the conditioning and patterns are so clear that I can set them aside and think like myself - like the person I could have been. I did this yesterday with my planning for today as I knew it was gong to be hard to get through. Now today is here and the old patterns are entrenched.
I have also thought of the number of times that I have sought help - and how each time it was a disaster. What if it had worked out better, would I have coped with my adult trauma better? Would I have not suffered from it so much? Would I be less alone?
Can I ask my dad to help me now? How do I do this - will he hate me? Howe much will he hate me? Can he forgive me? Can he help me? Will he help me? What do I say to him, how do I tell him that I am in so much trouble with my life - that everything has gone wrong for me since I walked away from the family - I feel like a total failure. I have so many problems that I have to try and fix and am too exhausted to do anything about any of them.....
I day dream about living in Melbourne again, being pretty healthy, being able to catch up with old friends and having a 'family'. I can even write down the steps that I have to address to (probably) make this happen. (This is the real me).
Then (the damaged me) is so overwhelmed by the massiveness of it all - so much to do - that I just give up. Then I have to self sooth and rest, and them I might get something done - one small task. I'll never get there. I just, simply wont. Not on my own and I am too lost to know how to get my dad to understand that I only blame him a bit for what has happened - the rest of it happened because I could not cope.
That is all for now.
