Childhood Not sure what to do with these

[ladee]

I am sickened by your discovery. I don't know what I would do if I came across something like this... The courage you have to share this is amazing to me.....
All I would suggest right now, is to make sure they are safe and where no one else can get a hold of them... and please, see about getting a therapist as soon as you can... I know I could not try to navigate this by myself... please give this some serious thought.

I am so sorry you have been validated in such a way. And I too have been gaslighted my entire childhood and a lot of my adulthood. So I understand the shock of seeing something you always knew to be true... too much for the brain to process...

I hope you stay here and keep sharing.... you do not have to do this alone... we are here for you.. and I am so very sorry.

Keep them safe and you will know what to do with them later.... again, please think about starting therapy...

 

[Klo]

I think I'm just going to grab an umbrella and go for a walk for a while. I can't stop thinking about destroying everything they own in this house. Destroying it and/or taking it all out to the curb in trash bags to be carried off to the dump tomorrow morning by the trash truck. All my mother cares about is her social prestige. This house is full of all of her expensive stuff from all over the world in her travels, along with framed quotes about how sexy, smart and worldly she is. I really just want to destroy all of it. Which of course I shouldn't really do. So a walk it is.

 

[Muted]

I think I understand how you feel in some ways.

Thank you, bless your heart, my heart goes out to you and everything you've been through.

I know there are bad apples in the justice system, definitely, but I can also feel for the good apples who often have to struggle between both sides of the coin in upholding justice.

I agree and have experienced both. The good ones can have such a tremendous impact.

It's like numb but not really numb.

I understand that feeling very well.

I guess I just blocked them out to some greater degree.

I think that's completely normal, how could you possibly have processed that? It was all you knew and those kinds of people are masterminds at victimization. The psychological impact of them torturing your mind like they did is difficult for anyone to process much less the person they were victimizing.

How can so many people have turned a blind eye and then participated in the gaslighting and everything.

I have no idea how they could possibly justify that.

But they live such high functioning lives. Careers, marriages, vacations, etc. They seem normal. So is that normal?

Those are the scariest kind, because they're master manipulators. They're victims often feel completely powerless against them. It's the perfect cover for their sickness.

Like what even is this.

It's a cruel game to them. It doesn't make sense, because it's not possible for even a semi-normal much less a healthy person to even comprehend the complete madness of it all.

 

[ladee]

It's interesting that you talked about destroying their home... because my first initial feeling of reading your first post was pure RAGE.... the really dangerous out of control kind....tearing their house apart to symbolize what they had done to your life... how impressed I am that you are going for a walk instead.... have a feeling you are going to be one of my 'teachers' here...

Very proud of you for keeping your dignity and integrity.... I think i would have gone for the first thought... so yes, you are handling this much better than I ever would.

 

[Klo]

It's interesting that you talked about destroying their home... because my first initial feeling of readi...

Well don't be too impressed just yet. I smashed their wedding photo and then later cleaned up the glass and put it in the trash. It was a photo of my mother, her husband, his children, my brother and myself on their wedding day. In the photo I look like a drug addict from so much sleep deprivation and have raw scars all over my arm, trying to force myself to smile. She was able to hook this guy in because we all kept the nasty secrets, she would dump us off with our father who she knew was insane and abusive, so that she could go on dates with this guy, her now husband. I regret all of it. I regret keeping all of her secrets. I went to go for my walk, walked past it on my way out and smashed it into the floor, then went on my walk. Don't really regret it, honestly. But it was enough. Just one symbolic act, I guess.

 

[ladee]

No, I'm still very impressed.... the fact you didn't go on a destruction rampage, just to be standing there with a camera to see the look on her face when she came thru the door.....then saying, 'here ya go mom, a mess for you to clean up, like the one you made for me', and walk out and never ever have to see her again... ever....

 

[Klo]

No, I'm still very impressed.... the fact you didn't go on a destruction rampage, just to be standing the...

I'm just getting rid of all the photos of me. There's only 4 of them. I don't know if I am right or wrong, but I feel that I have the right to get rid of them. I've put them in the trash and they will disappear forever tomorrow. I guess it's not really about her stuff, that is driving me up the wall. There was the wedding photo. Then there was a photo of me from my junior year of high school, which I can't remember at all, made a therapists suspect that I actually had DID, but I'm not sure about that. To me it's just like looking at a photo of a dead girl who is wearing my face. There was another one where I was a teenager and my mother took me to JC Penny to get my photo taken. Of all the photos, there was one to which my mother replied, "I figured you wouldn't like this one, because your belly is sticking out in it (i.e. calling me fat)," and that was the one she chose to get a big print of and put in the living room. Into the trash. There is another one that was taken shortly after their marriage. I have ratty hair and am in unkempt pajamas while at a family gathering, since I was apparently so depressed that I wasn't showering or dressing right or anything, and I'm sitting on the ground looking at a bug by myself. Apparently she creeped up on me and took the picture, followed by hanging it on a wall. Also in the trash. So now it's all finished. There's no history of me in this house anymore.

 

[ladee]

And so when they get back and ask, your reply is going to be..............??????

 

[Klo]

And so when they get back and ask, your reply is going to be..............??????

I don't know. I probably won't have a reply. Based on the memories I do have of the two of them, I can probably guess pretty close to how they will react. Which is that their reaction will be blown totally overboard over me removing photos of myself from the house, as though I slashed their tires or something, probably with her husband yelling and slamming his fists on things and accusing me of just wanting to ruin their vacation or something, while my mother tries to make barely veiled threats about getting rid of my dog. That seems to be the norm in the rare cases that I ever show any signs of emotional distress.

I'm worked up right now, but it's because they're on the other side of the world. They're not an immediate threat to me right now. More of my mind is awake. Best way I can describe it. There was a time once when I was a teenager, and I had a sketch journal along with my other sketch journals, but this one held a lot of processing art of stuff that I didn't even fully understand yet. Compulsive drawings of rape and such, which I had been doing since I was a young child. Just another one of those blatant red flags that everyone magically ignored, I guess. It had resurfaced in my teenage years. My mother went through my stuff and found this journal. She waited until a family gathering at the house and then placed the journal in the "donation pile" by the front door where I was sure to see it. Which I did, and picked it up, and looked at it, and realized that she had gone through my stuff, had seen this horrifying and confusing stuff that I had been sketching, had ripped out all the pages and then placed what was left of it in plain site on the day of a family gathering so that I would see it and react while everyone was over. Which I did. I started crying really hard. I had no words. My mother marched up to me, grabbed me roughly by the shoulders and growled at me under her breath, "I NEVER MEANT TO HURT YOU," and then switched back into 'nice' mode as she walked back to the kitchen to entertain the guests, while I stood there in a state of emotional shock, frozen by the front door.

So Idunno maybe I should growl at her I NEVER MEANT TO HURT YOU and then walk away when she says something about the photos.

But that's just the current me talking. In reality I'll probably have a triggered dissociative response when her husband starts yelling and slamming his fists around and acting crazy, and then not be able to speak at all or remember half of it the next day. Alas.

 

[ladee]

Are you still living at home? Is there a safe place you can go for an extended stay until you figure out what you want to do next....
I understand the humiliation... it goes to such a deep level... and it damages us to our core... my oldest sister was infamous about doing things like that at family gatherings... and then if I showed ANY feelings, I was shamed to death.... that is why when I went to rehab and got clean and sober, the only feeling i had was rage... I had self medicated for twenty years.... so I am hoping you are safe.... or find a safe place, you do not have subject yourself to her husbands outbursts or her , what ever she comes up with.... Do you mind sharing how old you are...??? And thank you for answering the question.... you don't have to put yourself thru any of it... something for you to think about... ok?

 

[Klo]

Are you still living at home? Is there a safe place you can go for an extended stay until you figure out...

I am turning 29 this Summer. I have made it out on my own for brief periods at a time, a few times, in my adulthood, but I was always living paycheck to paycheck, so when one thing would happen, the whole thing fell apart each time. The last time I was out on my own for a while, I was so desperate to escape and had managed to set aside just enough money, I bought a plane ticket and basically ran/flew away to another state, grabbed the cheapest sublet I could find and desperately searched for jobs until I found something that could just keep my head above the water. I was walking an hour to work and back each day in Montana winter and got some freeze burn on my legs that killed the skin for a while, but I was making it. I'm so glad I had that experience, of just making it for a while and feeling free. Just to know what that can feel like. I eventually became homeless, though. My mother was the only one who knew, and she didn't tell anyone or text me or anything. I think she was just kind of hoping I would die. But somehow I survived a few harrowing things and was able to eventually get a plane ticket back to this state. Showed up kind of ragged and underweight, but I was alive. I've had a couple jobs since then, part time minimum wage work, not enough to sustain myself, and working in retail well, honestly I just failed at it. Angry customers and my issues were not a good mix. I lost both jobs after only a couple months each. I still apply within a few miles of the house, where I can get to on foot, since I have no car. I just have to convince myself every day that somehow if some place will take me, then maybe that will eventually lead to freedom again. I don't know at $7/hour after taxes, but I have to just ignore the technicalities and blindly believe, I guess.

It feels like no time has really passed in the past 10 years, either. When I graduated from high school, my mother became especially hostile and wasn't willing to help me transition into adulthood at all, unless I was willing to become a nurse. Which I told her I could never handle that job because being around suffering people in pain all the time would murder my psyche. So that just made her push for it even more. I finally tried to assert myself a little bit, and told her that I wouldn't ask her to help me, that I would just get a job, save up money and pay for my own education in a field that was better for me. I did start working and saving, which I guess infuriated her so much that she kicked me out of the house. I moved in with a guy I had only known for a couple months to have a place to live, and my whole family disowned me for a couple of years while I lived in this guy's walk-in closet and gave him most of money for his weed.

It all just sounds so ridiculous. By now in my life I know that I should have gone to a women's shelter or something. Now I have a dog, which is the only real reason I'm still kicking, and I don't know where to go where I could take my dog. I figure the smart thing to do would be to give my dog to a shelter, but I think that would literally kill me at this point. The idea of losing my dog gives me a feeling like I would just disappear, like I would be crushed by something that would just swallow me whole, and I wouldn't exist anymore.

My mind is just going so fast and flooding so much ever since they left on this vacation of theirs. It was like my mind just activated and I could really think about these DVDs. It's like everything is connected, like some John Nash schizophrenic web of madness. My father killed all of my pets when I was growing up. All of them. Two cats, one that he made me shove down a pipe in the woods. I was crying but I was scared of him that I did it. Dead fish, a turtle that was killed with bleach, hamsters that were thrown outside so that the neighbor's cat killed them and left them on the porch. My mother's attitude was always that I deserved it / she didn't care. Whenever I start to feel like this, I just get this sense of dread that they will try to hurt my dog or get rid of my dog. I can't handle losing a pet at this point in my life, not in that manner, not taken from me by one of them, nor driven to a point where I have to give him to a shelter.

I can never fully respond to any of these memories. I just can't. The truth is that I hate them. They're monsters and I hate them. I just want to sink my claws into her face and scream at her until she answers me as to why she even created me in the first place.

 

[ladee]

Having your dog, may be the real reason you stand up and really take control of your life.... do NOT, under and circumstanced, give up your dog, or let them take it from you..... I am the same way about my dog... do not give up the one thing you love that loves you back... have a plan.... I wish you would start looking into places you can get some help.... most shelters will not take dogs... but there has to be a way for you to get out.... I hate it that they have done the horrible things they have done.... you are not the only one that wants to inflict pain on her and her husband.....
But that gets us nowhere..... you have access to a computer or phone, start searching.... not even sure what to suggest you start looking for...

But i do want you to know, you are an extraordinary young woman.... so very very proud you have sustained until now... there is a way out.... there is.... nothing is completely hopeless.... we will help you find a way....

Do NOT give up your dog.... I would live on the street before someone has the power to TAKE one more thing from me.... have to work today.... but will be thinking of you.... maybe you can start a thread asking for resources.... how to get out, how to find a place, a job, anything, but the hell you are in now.... you are in my heart today, that isn't helping your situation, but it does say you are not alone....

You have made it this far.... you are going to do this.... you are going to get away, and have some peace and freedom.... sending gentle hugs if you accept... if not ready, save them for later...