Not Feeling Safe In A Car With Someone

[Let It Be]

Another week without my drug of choice, my ice cream, and more memories coming to the surface. Most of them are about being in the "car" with a family member such as my mother or sister.

I would get in the car with one of them over and over and somehow I would believe or forget about the last time, that I would feel "safe" but I never did. I would go to visit them, and then we would go shopping, etc. One time when my sister and I went shopping and I had to pull over so she could drive because she didn't like my driving. When we got to the mall and as she was waiting to take a parking space, another car took it. She pulled down the window and yelled at the driver that if she had a dozen eggs that she would have thrown them. I am thinking to myself why am I with her, and she is my sister? I had to "pretend" again around her because I was scared of what she was capable of doing and saying.

Another time I got in the car with my mother and she started driving. When I brought up the fact that I was upset over the fact that she had not told me that my stepfather was having surgery to have his lung removed, she started screaming at me to get out of the car, and the car was moving.

I guess now I'm looking back at all those times where I must have been so shut down that I didn't know that I could take care of me and since they were family...and these were the days before cell phones.

So, this week, I have been re-visiting so to speak all these experiences and looking at them from a different perspective and realizing that I never ever would treat another human being like they treated me, so maybe that's progress.

I guess I also need to figure out how to forgive myself also for keep going back to be abused again. So, the buried feelings are still coming up and this time, I can grieve over them.

 

[heather q]

I had to "pretend" again around her because I was scared of what she was capable of doing and saying.---I guess I also need to figure out how to forgive myself also for keep going back to be abused again. So, the buried feelings are still coming up and this time, I can grieve over them.

People write and talk about forgiving themselves, I'm not sure that that is for real, I'm more in the line of 'acceptance' of what has happened to us, acceptance doesn't happen once either, everytime things come up I need to re-accept it, the situation and my part in it, we all go back to it until we don't, so don't try and put a time limit or any other limit on it, that will make it more difficult, I think acceptance is the direction to head for.

It is understandable as well,

Heather

 

[Let It Be]

Thanks Heather for your reply…yes…acceptance…is very necessary.

I don’t know what is going on but now I know I need to feel those feelings behind being a battered wife which I wrote about when I first came here. The other man in my life was my father which in therapy they called the “butcher of people”. I now can see why I was so afraid to go out on a date when I was a teenager. My father would beat me with a belt when I was in junior high school. He would then give me the standard line about if you don’t stop crying, I will give you something to cry about, so more buried tears need to come to the surface.

I didn’t realize how scared I am to be around a man. I lived with a person whom I was terrified of because if I didn’t say the Right thing, well, who knows what might happen to me. I was so stuck in this relationship as I married him to get away from my parents. I knew that when he was killed in a car accident that someone was watching over me.

So, lots of years have passed, but it is time to come full circle as they say, and take it easy, as there is still lots of fear. I need to feel “safe” and know that a man will not strike back if I say the “wrong” thing to him and I did that a lot.

So more grieving and even acceptance of what I did to "survive"....

 

[heather q]

Some of your stuff sounds quite familiar, so I have an idea of what it can feel like, I also married for the wrong reason and had to get out of it to save myself. Still in that save mode because I meet the same guys all the time, so I'm a work in progress, I gave up on relationshiips because I knew I was doing something wrong. I'm doing better now that I just have a parrot to yell at me and he's not even that bad.

I've gained a lot reading about how other's on this site handle what they are going through and I'm still going through the thoughts and sadness over things the ex said and did. I didn't have the guts to stand up to it and I'm finally learning it now, what a long struggle, I just didn't know what was wrong that I kept getting attacked. It was always assumed that I'd done something wrong, I didn't have a chance, I was already broken.

So I will think of you and hope that you create a safer world for yourself, we're on the same path a better path.

Heather