Don't trip
Silver Member
I'm having the most difficult time here, knowing where to post what and if I'm saying the wrong thing. I'm constantly monitoring myself and it's damned annoying...
I know how I feel, but I don't quite know how to express it.
I'm a survivor of chronic childhood abuse at the hands of a psychopathic father, stepfather, my narcissistic/alcoholic mother. I was sexually abused starting at the age of around 6 or 7 (my memories are becoming less spotty now-scary), by my stepfather. I outed him to my mother at age eleven to which she took her arm, lifted into the air and slapped me across the face so hard, I thought my head would fall off.She then called me a liar, was sick of my lies and grounded me to my room and told me she would tell my stepfather what i said. I was not allowed to eat that night.
The next morning, I got up to go to school and was terrified to use the bathroom. I was terrified of using the bathroom before this because my stepfather would be wrapped up in a blanket on the couch waiting for me in the morning. I remember this so vividly. I would lay in bed, holding in my urine, hoping and praying my sister or brother would wake up to go downstairs and watch tv so he wouldn't touch me. Didn't matter, he began to do it in their presence too. They acted like they didn't know what was going on.
Anyway, that morning, I was more terrified to go to the bathroom because my stepfather was home and in bed with my mother, but I had to brush my teeth and my hair. I had such long pretty blonde hair. It was the only thing I liked about myself anymore and I remember that too. As I passed by, my mother called my name and then as they lay cuddled close to one another facing me, my mother, in a patronizing way told me to tell my stepfather what I had told her the day before. I did so. They began to laugh at me. called me a liar again and told me that I was grounded indefinitely. I remember that day so well, exactly how I felt. I felt like someone had plunged a knife into my chest. I was in so much pain, I couldn't cry. At this same time, my biological father had molested me too, once. He was always sexually suggestive to me, he forgot who I was when he was drunk. One night he came into my room and began to fondle me. I pretended to be asleep, but was absolutely terrified..I remember at eleven thinking, "OMG, not him too..."
My father, before this, was on a pedestal with me. He was my Knight in Shining Armor. He turned out not to be that at all, but my fantasies of my father were real to me because of his absence from our lives, except every other weekend. After this, no one of authority was safe. My mother abused me from the time I was very little. she hated me. HATED me. She pitted my siblings against me and set me up as a sort of rival. I could never understand WHAT in Gods name I did to her? She said I was "born batting my eyelashes and that all men liked me from the time I was a baby" WTF??? If they did, it's not a wonder, considering what you married???
I was molested by a friend's father and never returned to that house again, this was after I ran away and called my stepmother and father to come and get me after what my stepfather did to me. BIG mistake. Every single authority figure in my life had me set up as a target. I was a very sensitive child. My mother refused me medical care when I had some serious chronic issues, later I would find out it was because she did not want me to tell about my abuse. I have had major issues with seeing a doctor and use to wait till I was so sick, my husband forced me to go. Twice it nearly cost my life. My mother use to tell me to shut up and be quiet so i wouldn't scare my sister because i was bent over in excrutiating pain. My sister and brother however, were a totally different story. She took care of them, always. My sister was in the ER I don't know how many times. She had colitis. I had the same issue, in far worse condition. I was not treated until I was on my own at 16 and could not bear the pain any longer, with bleeding stools and diarrhea.
Anyway...my psychopathic father, seeing that I would not project an image of pure and unsoiled, saaw me as a viable target. He annihilated the emotional, verbal shit out of me. He hated my vulnerability and sensitivity. He sexually abused, but then his verbal degradation and abuse, gaslighting, was overwhelming. he never stopped telling me that i would always fail, never commit to anything. His voice in my life was so powerful I believed it. This became a daily event for me. I loved my father dearly. He saw me as damaged goods because of the molesting of my stepfather. i was tainted then somehow..
I learned that I wasn't loveable. I learned that I was only alive for a man to use. A emotional non existent entity to service men and nothing else. It is amazing I never went into prostitution....
I left home at sixteen, was in a relationship at 13 with a major abuser, exactly like my father, who made endless comparisons of me sexually to other girls. I was desperately in love with him and he ripped me a new asshole. Another self fulfilling prophesy...I was unloveable. Again. My ex husband was a rebound choice. I became pregnant with my first child at 19, gave birth at 20. She was a preemie as I became deathly ill with a body wide infection that settled in my uterus. She was 1 and just over 1/2 pound at birth. My daughter stayed in the hospital for four and a half months. I was sick for three months, on heavy antibiotics, either in bed, or at the hospital, my ex husband in the service and God forbid i was staying with my mother, who was extraordinarily abusive to me emotionally. A new mother, who didn't know if her child would live, her husband gone...
I had five more children with this man in a twenty year marriage. I wanted it to work. I didn't want failure. He beat the shit out of me. Verbally/emotionally aggressive. A drug abuser and alcoholic with an amazing work ethic. He was chronically unfaithful and I was unfaithful later in the marriage too. I wanted out, but was afraid, not because I loved him anymore, because I didn't. I had fallen in love with another psychopath, this time, he was married and so was I. He was going to leave his marriage. I left mine. He never did leave his. I was his mistress for ten years. I became an alcoholic in this relationship, never before a drug or alcohol person. I was deeply in love with this man, I thought at the time, only to discover that he was almost literally a spitting image of my psychopathic father. He was the most serious of my abusers. It was a gun drawn on me, that was the beginning of the end and after his divorce, discovering many, many, many more women. I walked out of that relationship with a newly discovered STD that I will have for the rest of my life.
My children...have suffered greatly as a result of my hyper focus on my abusers. I am grateful that I was aware by instinct to handle each of their traumas that were inevitable. I was huge into therapy for them. No matter the cost to me. I was an open book for them. I can't say what those traumas are, but no one should have to walk through them. As a parent or a child. I found out through one of my children's traumatic reactions, that my ex husband had been molesting my son, on top of a babysitter of a childhood friend, who sodomized him. My children bear many scars and two are disordered. One is bipolar the other psychopathic. Yes, these are known by 'professionals'. I do believe that psychopathy is in fact genetic and weaves a heavy genetic link through my paternal side. My father is not the only psychopath on his side of the family, my grandmother was terrifying....I am very protective of my children now and keep their lives and situations private, exception my psychopathic son, whom I have written about on my blog.
I do believe somewhat, in karma. I don't know why what happened to me did, except to say I was born into tragic circumstances beyond my control, but i cannot reconcile my behaviors throughout my adult life, choices made that I am aware now are karmic in nature. It is a frustrating state of ironic.
I have lived the last two years with my two youngest sons. One will be leaving home this month and the other will graduate from high school in June. I am left with my memories, of attempts to go to school, all of which failed because I could not stay committed to it. I would go for the gusto and then lose steam. This is probably one of the most frustrating of my PTSD symptoms and I do not understand yet from where it derives or why I lose steam. Boredom? Fear of success? Failure? Parental tapes? I have been with men who were non committal, married to them or not and the theme has been the same, only to realize I was non committal too by choosing them as I knew they were abusers.
I live knowing i am terrified by authority figures. Absolutely terrified. My reactions to them are varied but are unnatural to me. I react by not being myself. Being what I think they want me to be, to be accepted or liked. I fear them greatly. Those who are abusive, i shut down. I don't fight back until very recently with my medical issues. In fighting back in a very abusive medical/insurance system, I am told I am 'difficult' for doing so, mentally ill for speaking up. I am treated this way. I don't know how to react to the way I'm being treated so I back off.
These revelations are brand new for me. I was feeling strong and ready to go out into the world again, only to be flat on my ass due to a spine issue. It put me in a place to think, rather than to run, not realizing I was running.
I'm faced with a dilemma with my health. I have two autoimmune diagnosed last year and now in remission. I have a spine issue that is in the cervical spine with severe stenosis and cord impingement. I have lower DDD starting in my back with a herniated disc, annular tear and my first acute sciatic flare that had me bedridden for a week and a half and in the ER when I could not get into the doctor. I have never felt so much pain in my life. I am still recovering. In May i will undergo surgery to remove my bottom teeth, the top were removed several years ago. I will be without dentures for two months. I'm in pain but keep moving. I HATE being sedentary. I love to write and stay busy in that, supporting survivors of personality disordered individuals, educating myself by reading, working on myself, spending time with my children, grandchildren and wiener dog.
I have not worked in 20 years. If I am not careful, I can go to despair immediately when I think about the social stigmas that are applied to those such as myself, poor a nobody, never accomplished and never successful like my wealthy, successful family of origin. My whole life has been a sham. I've spent the last two years in hardcore therapy, trying to correct a lifetime of wrongs, only to discover i have a long way to go yet.
This process and my current state has me in a state of depression and a feeling of helplessness as to what to do. I have been pretending that i can do things for a long time, and when I do it, I decompensate. I am so frustrated with my lack of follow through. Working very hard to become independent emotionally and physically, I'm trying hard not to let this get to me, but it does. Where is the balance? I have never EVER given up. I have kept trying and trying and working and working. How do you define limitations and work with what you've got when you have nothing and have to survive? My son is taking care of me right now, financially. I suffer tremendous guilt over this. Dependence sickens me. I'm angry about this feeling that I'm a pathetic loser, when I don't believe in my soul that it's true but my life reflects it.
I don't know what to do. For the first time, I can't run or solve this right now. I'm someone who will look for solutions, fight back and work on a way to make it through whatever challenge is presented. I believed I had my health under control. I was doing well and then I picked up a 20 pound tub full of wet towels and clothes to do laundry and everything changed. The doctor told me I will have to greatly scale back my activities, that there is no cure, my progression is getting worse.
I filed for SSI and HATE it.
I want to work. But I also know how I react to authority figures. I'd fold like a lawn chair if it were an abuser and somehow they can 'smell my vulnerability to them. It pisses me off.
I hate not knowing what to do. With so many challenges and so many consequences of rotten, shitty choices, I have only me to blame and me to pick up the pieces.
And I don't know HOW.
Just writing this out, has me feeling very vulnerable, for one who is 'suppose' to be so strong. I feel so very angry.
Thanks for reading. I know it's long. Ugh. I'm wordy.
I know how I feel, but I don't quite know how to express it.
I'm a survivor of chronic childhood abuse at the hands of a psychopathic father, stepfather, my narcissistic/alcoholic mother. I was sexually abused starting at the age of around 6 or 7 (my memories are becoming less spotty now-scary), by my stepfather. I outed him to my mother at age eleven to which she took her arm, lifted into the air and slapped me across the face so hard, I thought my head would fall off.She then called me a liar, was sick of my lies and grounded me to my room and told me she would tell my stepfather what i said. I was not allowed to eat that night.
The next morning, I got up to go to school and was terrified to use the bathroom. I was terrified of using the bathroom before this because my stepfather would be wrapped up in a blanket on the couch waiting for me in the morning. I remember this so vividly. I would lay in bed, holding in my urine, hoping and praying my sister or brother would wake up to go downstairs and watch tv so he wouldn't touch me. Didn't matter, he began to do it in their presence too. They acted like they didn't know what was going on.
Anyway, that morning, I was more terrified to go to the bathroom because my stepfather was home and in bed with my mother, but I had to brush my teeth and my hair. I had such long pretty blonde hair. It was the only thing I liked about myself anymore and I remember that too. As I passed by, my mother called my name and then as they lay cuddled close to one another facing me, my mother, in a patronizing way told me to tell my stepfather what I had told her the day before. I did so. They began to laugh at me. called me a liar again and told me that I was grounded indefinitely. I remember that day so well, exactly how I felt. I felt like someone had plunged a knife into my chest. I was in so much pain, I couldn't cry. At this same time, my biological father had molested me too, once. He was always sexually suggestive to me, he forgot who I was when he was drunk. One night he came into my room and began to fondle me. I pretended to be asleep, but was absolutely terrified..I remember at eleven thinking, "OMG, not him too..."
My father, before this, was on a pedestal with me. He was my Knight in Shining Armor. He turned out not to be that at all, but my fantasies of my father were real to me because of his absence from our lives, except every other weekend. After this, no one of authority was safe. My mother abused me from the time I was very little. she hated me. HATED me. She pitted my siblings against me and set me up as a sort of rival. I could never understand WHAT in Gods name I did to her? She said I was "born batting my eyelashes and that all men liked me from the time I was a baby" WTF??? If they did, it's not a wonder, considering what you married???
I was molested by a friend's father and never returned to that house again, this was after I ran away and called my stepmother and father to come and get me after what my stepfather did to me. BIG mistake. Every single authority figure in my life had me set up as a target. I was a very sensitive child. My mother refused me medical care when I had some serious chronic issues, later I would find out it was because she did not want me to tell about my abuse. I have had major issues with seeing a doctor and use to wait till I was so sick, my husband forced me to go. Twice it nearly cost my life. My mother use to tell me to shut up and be quiet so i wouldn't scare my sister because i was bent over in excrutiating pain. My sister and brother however, were a totally different story. She took care of them, always. My sister was in the ER I don't know how many times. She had colitis. I had the same issue, in far worse condition. I was not treated until I was on my own at 16 and could not bear the pain any longer, with bleeding stools and diarrhea.
Anyway...my psychopathic father, seeing that I would not project an image of pure and unsoiled, saaw me as a viable target. He annihilated the emotional, verbal shit out of me. He hated my vulnerability and sensitivity. He sexually abused, but then his verbal degradation and abuse, gaslighting, was overwhelming. he never stopped telling me that i would always fail, never commit to anything. His voice in my life was so powerful I believed it. This became a daily event for me. I loved my father dearly. He saw me as damaged goods because of the molesting of my stepfather. i was tainted then somehow..
I learned that I wasn't loveable. I learned that I was only alive for a man to use. A emotional non existent entity to service men and nothing else. It is amazing I never went into prostitution....
I left home at sixteen, was in a relationship at 13 with a major abuser, exactly like my father, who made endless comparisons of me sexually to other girls. I was desperately in love with him and he ripped me a new asshole. Another self fulfilling prophesy...I was unloveable. Again. My ex husband was a rebound choice. I became pregnant with my first child at 19, gave birth at 20. She was a preemie as I became deathly ill with a body wide infection that settled in my uterus. She was 1 and just over 1/2 pound at birth. My daughter stayed in the hospital for four and a half months. I was sick for three months, on heavy antibiotics, either in bed, or at the hospital, my ex husband in the service and God forbid i was staying with my mother, who was extraordinarily abusive to me emotionally. A new mother, who didn't know if her child would live, her husband gone...
I had five more children with this man in a twenty year marriage. I wanted it to work. I didn't want failure. He beat the shit out of me. Verbally/emotionally aggressive. A drug abuser and alcoholic with an amazing work ethic. He was chronically unfaithful and I was unfaithful later in the marriage too. I wanted out, but was afraid, not because I loved him anymore, because I didn't. I had fallen in love with another psychopath, this time, he was married and so was I. He was going to leave his marriage. I left mine. He never did leave his. I was his mistress for ten years. I became an alcoholic in this relationship, never before a drug or alcohol person. I was deeply in love with this man, I thought at the time, only to discover that he was almost literally a spitting image of my psychopathic father. He was the most serious of my abusers. It was a gun drawn on me, that was the beginning of the end and after his divorce, discovering many, many, many more women. I walked out of that relationship with a newly discovered STD that I will have for the rest of my life.
My children...have suffered greatly as a result of my hyper focus on my abusers. I am grateful that I was aware by instinct to handle each of their traumas that were inevitable. I was huge into therapy for them. No matter the cost to me. I was an open book for them. I can't say what those traumas are, but no one should have to walk through them. As a parent or a child. I found out through one of my children's traumatic reactions, that my ex husband had been molesting my son, on top of a babysitter of a childhood friend, who sodomized him. My children bear many scars and two are disordered. One is bipolar the other psychopathic. Yes, these are known by 'professionals'. I do believe that psychopathy is in fact genetic and weaves a heavy genetic link through my paternal side. My father is not the only psychopath on his side of the family, my grandmother was terrifying....I am very protective of my children now and keep their lives and situations private, exception my psychopathic son, whom I have written about on my blog.
I do believe somewhat, in karma. I don't know why what happened to me did, except to say I was born into tragic circumstances beyond my control, but i cannot reconcile my behaviors throughout my adult life, choices made that I am aware now are karmic in nature. It is a frustrating state of ironic.
I have lived the last two years with my two youngest sons. One will be leaving home this month and the other will graduate from high school in June. I am left with my memories, of attempts to go to school, all of which failed because I could not stay committed to it. I would go for the gusto and then lose steam. This is probably one of the most frustrating of my PTSD symptoms and I do not understand yet from where it derives or why I lose steam. Boredom? Fear of success? Failure? Parental tapes? I have been with men who were non committal, married to them or not and the theme has been the same, only to realize I was non committal too by choosing them as I knew they were abusers.
I live knowing i am terrified by authority figures. Absolutely terrified. My reactions to them are varied but are unnatural to me. I react by not being myself. Being what I think they want me to be, to be accepted or liked. I fear them greatly. Those who are abusive, i shut down. I don't fight back until very recently with my medical issues. In fighting back in a very abusive medical/insurance system, I am told I am 'difficult' for doing so, mentally ill for speaking up. I am treated this way. I don't know how to react to the way I'm being treated so I back off.
These revelations are brand new for me. I was feeling strong and ready to go out into the world again, only to be flat on my ass due to a spine issue. It put me in a place to think, rather than to run, not realizing I was running.
I'm faced with a dilemma with my health. I have two autoimmune diagnosed last year and now in remission. I have a spine issue that is in the cervical spine with severe stenosis and cord impingement. I have lower DDD starting in my back with a herniated disc, annular tear and my first acute sciatic flare that had me bedridden for a week and a half and in the ER when I could not get into the doctor. I have never felt so much pain in my life. I am still recovering. In May i will undergo surgery to remove my bottom teeth, the top were removed several years ago. I will be without dentures for two months. I'm in pain but keep moving. I HATE being sedentary. I love to write and stay busy in that, supporting survivors of personality disordered individuals, educating myself by reading, working on myself, spending time with my children, grandchildren and wiener dog.
I have not worked in 20 years. If I am not careful, I can go to despair immediately when I think about the social stigmas that are applied to those such as myself, poor a nobody, never accomplished and never successful like my wealthy, successful family of origin. My whole life has been a sham. I've spent the last two years in hardcore therapy, trying to correct a lifetime of wrongs, only to discover i have a long way to go yet.
This process and my current state has me in a state of depression and a feeling of helplessness as to what to do. I have been pretending that i can do things for a long time, and when I do it, I decompensate. I am so frustrated with my lack of follow through. Working very hard to become independent emotionally and physically, I'm trying hard not to let this get to me, but it does. Where is the balance? I have never EVER given up. I have kept trying and trying and working and working. How do you define limitations and work with what you've got when you have nothing and have to survive? My son is taking care of me right now, financially. I suffer tremendous guilt over this. Dependence sickens me. I'm angry about this feeling that I'm a pathetic loser, when I don't believe in my soul that it's true but my life reflects it.
I don't know what to do. For the first time, I can't run or solve this right now. I'm someone who will look for solutions, fight back and work on a way to make it through whatever challenge is presented. I believed I had my health under control. I was doing well and then I picked up a 20 pound tub full of wet towels and clothes to do laundry and everything changed. The doctor told me I will have to greatly scale back my activities, that there is no cure, my progression is getting worse.
I filed for SSI and HATE it.
I want to work. But I also know how I react to authority figures. I'd fold like a lawn chair if it were an abuser and somehow they can 'smell my vulnerability to them. It pisses me off.
I hate not knowing what to do. With so many challenges and so many consequences of rotten, shitty choices, I have only me to blame and me to pick up the pieces.
And I don't know HOW.
Just writing this out, has me feeling very vulnerable, for one who is 'suppose' to be so strong. I feel so very angry.
Thanks for reading. I know it's long. Ugh. I'm wordy.
