The journey begins ... or continues ... articulating the rollercoaster that is my life

[mumstheword]

Headachey today, but in good spirits. Seeing my two, older, lady friends did wonders for my spirit! :-) I'm proud of myself for getting out, being social and curbing my worrying, over my kids.:-)

My guy finally got a tiny bit of work (Saturday was cancelled) so I get a bit of time to myself! :-) Yay!!! :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

I also lined him up some work, with my friend (the old friend) that I caught up with, yesterday. I'm stoked with myself, because it is work he will really enjoy and be good at, with someone I love. :-)

That friend looked after me, when I was homeless and shattered and "dying". She took me in, for a bit, and gave me some healing attention. She even went over to my ex's, checked on my kids and was horrified at the way he behaved, but it helped me see things for how they actually were, wih him.
She has (is on the spectrum of) Aspergers and can come across a bit gruff and forthright and judgey, but she is one of those, slightly, thorny, gruff people, with a heart of gold, brimming with real and actual, loving kindness and full of wisdom and useful and practical knowledge.

Both those friends are ladies in their sixties and I feel very comfortable, and can be myself , with both of them.

 

[mumstheword]

Saw my T yesterday, my trauma T. The "sexual abuse" T dumped me.
I'm grateful I still have my trauma T, she's lovely. She's helping me reframe stuff around the guilt and shame over the children, the overblown but unhelpful sense of responsibility. She gave me a good analogy, she said it's like I've climbed out of the hole and now I'm able to throw the rope in so they can climb out. And the stronger I get, the more I can pull them up.
I just can't stand them being in the hole though.
My disabled son rang last night. His dad is trying to get him to move back to his. After treating him so bad and sending him psychotic twice, so unwell my son was, and then dumped on me. So I had to do the hard call of having him treated and put on anti-psychotics and tending him down from terrible psychosis.

The last time, he just kicked him out on the street, luckily my oldest son brought him up to mine.

The previous time, he left him at my place in the terrible ghetto hood that I lived in, didn't talk to me, just dumped him and ran. I wasn't even home at the time.

Anyway I got angry, blew my top a bit, I'd had a glass of mascato, I told him his dad didn't care about him.

He just wants to make sure he doesn't lose that subsidized house I got him, that he wouldn't leave when I told him to , and get back on the "carer" pension and hide behind the guise of caring father, coz all of his children he's got living with him, are trapped and miserable and desparate to get out.

I'm powerless to save any of them, but my disabled son IS NOT going to move back in with his father.

I ended up softening, telling him his dad cares about him as much as he's able, but clearly can't take care of him (see years of history to back that up) as he is getting old and he's not real well.

Anyway, there are legal bindings in place that prevent him from going to his dad's more than one weekend a month, let alone to live.

It's all about internet access and his gaming habit. He is not allowed to have internet at the supported accommodation at the moment coz he stays up all night playing x box or Playstation and sleeps all day and misses his day program.

His dad loves to enable addictions in his children, it gives him more leverage in his hold over them.

I am in the terrible moral position of looking forward to the day my children's father dies. He's looking very old, people tell me. I hate myself for feeling that way, but he's a textbook narcissistic sociopathic sicko, and he's hurting my children, so I do.

 

[somerandomguy]

I'm looking forward to that day, too.

 

[mumstheword]

I've renamed Hopeless, she's now called Growing Ever More Hopeful.:)

My T and other members of my T team have helped me reframe and rename her :)

I don't quite know what to do about Moral Injury part though. I even feel morally injured over getting pregnant and bringing my children into this mess, in the first place. I mean, I get that I was very young, a womanly child, no less. A shattered, homeless, petrified, nearly mute, traumatised woman-child, who felt she had the choice of going with A, and giving him sex, or more rapes and very possibly being murdered and thrown in a ditch somewhere, (possibly by the three "Bush Pigs" ex-cons that were living at the squat my ex lived in, how did I not judge him by the company he kept?).

After all, I'd already been raped and molested a number of times, raped and drugged, raped and left for dead, naked and unconscious, raped and throat choked, nearly strangled, and threatened with death numerable times throughout my childhood. And horrifically narcissistically abused and neglected all my life by my mother ...

... but that's the nature of moral injury, isn't it?

You are corralled or driven to do things you struggle to live with after.

Having children to someone so utterly devoid of care for anyone but himself?

It's like bringing people into a cult you know is run by a narcissist, or worse, because my children are utterly my responsibility to protect and keep safe from harm and I've utterly failed them.

All except my youngest. My youngest daughter is ok. She has been with me a lot and I think she's not going to be so developmentally disadvantaged as the older children.

My oldest daughter is very sad and tired and bravely plugging away at digging her own steps out of the hole.

but my three oldest boys? Really, really hurting and chronically injured and developmentally extremely damaged.

I am grieving A LOT and feeling powerless-but-responsible for this.

Crying now.

 

[mumstheword]

Horrible foreboding
Crying for the pain of other's
Other's who are intimately part of me and mine
Their pain? I feel it
It's terrible, it's grevious, it's soul torture
I'm watching them hurt and be hurt, driven insane, feel terribly alone ... when will it be over? When will they be finally safe and cared for?
It's too late for me, I am too implicated in their trauma, I think
They have been brainwashed about me, very deeply, they have seen me being emotionally tortured, physically tortured through sleep deprivation and neglect and lack of medical care, they are in the same boat as I.
I am guilty for being victimized and impregnated. I am struggling to overcome the shame and fear and pain of this.
I can't save them.
I can't wipe away all the pain and confusion and maligning.
When will the source of my agony leave me and mine alone?
He keeps doing his evil shit, his covert yet oh-so-damaging crazy-and-sick-making f*ckery.
STOP HURTING ME AND MY KIDS f*ckHEAD!!!!!!

 

[AngelKeeperJ]

SWEET, SWEET (((MUMS)))
I have SO much in my heart that I want to say... But mostly I want you to KNOW that YOU DO deserve the BEST! You LOVE with a passion those who are closest to you! I KNOW that your children are going to SURVIVE and THRIVE, Eventually. :hug: :hug: :hug:

I do know that it's MORE than difficult to overcome the pain and shame we feel about giving birth to a severely impaired child. We "shouldn't" feel those things but a mother's psyche just DOES. It took me YEARS to realize that she was born to be my "teacher" of unconditional love, and that in some ways, I was/am more "handicapped" than she was.

I know it's BEYOND hard right now, seeing and feeling what your babies are going through Just remember that you SAVED THEIR MOTHER and it's YOU that is leading them forward into adulthood. Just think of how horrible it would have been if you hadn't survived your trauma?

You REALLY are brave, ((((Mums))) even when you feel weak! I am sure that I am not alone here in knowing this about you.???

Many hugs, MUCH LOVE, and ALWAYS MY prayers!??????

 

[mumstheword]

Ok so I'm going to.make this one more positive ... I just really needed to dump that stuff out, coz it's been eating me up inside.

I'm not capable of going into plenty of the crapness that's gone down, not yet, but I have made ENORMOUS progress.:)

I have a beautiful, gentle, kind relationship and I know I am TRULY BLESSED.

My children are all alive, no body killed themselves, although some came very close.

I'm still young(ish) and in reasonably good nick (all things considered).

I have housing and financial security.

I am a deeply inquiring person, who considers many perspectives and is curious, inquisitive and openly explorative of many understandings and phenomenon.

I have much love in my heart and my life.

I have boundaries, like I never did before.

I have a future to look forward too, that I have worked long and smart for.

 

[mumstheword]

SWEET, SWEET (((MUMS)))
I have SO much in my heart that I want to say... But mostly I want you to KNOW that YOU DO deserve the BEST! You LOVE with a passion those who are closest to you! I KNOW that your children are going to SURVIVE and THRIVE, Eventually. :hug::hug::hug:

I do know that it's MORE than difficult to overcome the pain and shame we feel about giving birth to a severely impaired child. We "shouldn't" feel those things but a mother's psyche just DOES. It took me YEARS to realize that she was born to be my "teacher" of unconditional love, and that in some ways, I was/am more "handicapped" than she was.

I know it's BEYOND hard right now, seeing and feeling what your babies are going through Just remember that you SAVED THEIR MOTHER and it's YOU that is leading them forward into adulthood. Just think of how horrible it would have been if you hadn't survived your trauma?

You momREALLY are brave, ((((Mums))) even when you feel weak! I am sure that I am not alone here in knowing this about you.???

Many hugs, MUCH LOVE, and ALWAYS MY prayers!??????

So grateful, @AngelkeeperJ :-) Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I feel better for the word-purge and a little cry and mope and pity party.
I needed to stare that moral injury stuff in the face. Stare it down until it backed down.
Yes, I do have massive pain around my kid being a failure-to-thrive kid from babyhood and all the rest.I shared some of the factors around his conception with my partner last night and he was very lovely, and he held me and reinforced my innocence and why I should let myself off the hook.
I'm getting there! :-)
Thank you for the lovely kindness! :-) love you lots @AngelkeeperJ .

 

[Freida]

I am guilty for being victimized and impregnated

No - not this. NEVER this. You were a child. A child yourself when you were forced to have children. Yes - forced. I don't think you realize yet that you never had a choice in this. You never had a say -- you were the sex partner and the pregnancies were the result. That doesn't mean your children weren't a wonderful gift to you. But. You were also a child - and you deserved so much better from those around you. You deserved someone better than a monster who got you pregnant over and over and then left you to figure out what to do. Much, much better

I'm getting there! :)

Yes you are! You are doing an amazing job :hug:

 

[mumstheword]

No - not this. NEVER this. You were a child. A child yourself when you were forced to have children. Yes - forced. I don't think you realize yet that you never had a choice in this. You never had a say -- you were the sex partner and the pregnancies were the result. That doesn't mean your children weren't a wonderful gift to you. But. You were also a child - and you deserved so much better from those around you. You deserved someone better than a monster who got you pregnant over and over and then left you to figure out what to do. Much, much better


Yes you are! You are doing an amazing job :hug:

@Freida, you never cease to amaze me! Your capacity to give! You are an amazing heart person.

Thank you. It feels better and better. Some days better than others and there's plenty more progress to be made, but yeah, thank you.

I'm working on the knowing I'm innocent, but it just hurts, what my kids have to endure.

Today I feel I've worked through some stuff, and yesterday...uugh.... It's just ongoing and ongoing. But I'm feeling better and better.:-)

 

[mumstheword]

It's Hopeful, she is still crying and hiding in her cave, not believing no one cares, anymore, but still very sad and still feeling lots of shame and dejection.
She's not hopeless anymore though :-)!

 

[mumstheword]

It's anger, deep hurt, upset, betrayed, let down, heartbroken and fear of being judged. That's what I've been uncovering in how I'm injured, emotionally, about my big kids. They were used by him to hurt me like nothing worse could ever be used to hurt me. He used them to discard me coz I left, instead of dying.
They colluded with the abuser.
They discarded me and joined in with his abuse, when I most needed support.
I was dying! I was soooo shattered, after 37 years of abuse! After raising them all, despite being a f*cked-up teen and in no state to be mum, I put my 100% in and kept them all together and gave them each other, so they wouldn't grow up so terribly alone, like I did, and I got abandoned and discarded and betrayed in my hour of need.
I feel ashamed for being so upset by that, because they were children (well, teenagers and young adults, my oldest was 20 when I left) and I won't make any kind of big thing about it. I've learnt my feelings don't matter and should be kept to myself, although I talked to my T about this and she validated my feelings.

Things are awkward with them because I haven't really addressed this deep hurt and sense of betrayal and the conflicted feelings of needing to protect them, and being true to myself, being honest and wanting a sense of justice. This is deep and very painful stuff!