Away

It’s been a while since I posted. The gap reflects an awful time that has now passed.

A new job, a better sense of myself and space to reflect are the reward.

It’s true that the wounds of the first 8 months of the year cut deep, deep enough to dig out the pain of many years ago. But now there is time to reflect, to see that I am a different person. One who can look after herself, who knows she doesn’t have to be a helpless victim. I can fight and I can win. I am no longer a helpless, isolated child. I am a resilient and tenacious woman who can muster resources and support. No longer alone.

From testing the water with long trusted friends and colleagues, I have progressed to talking to extended family. In doing so I am gaining a new understanding of what happened. Of how it was for others to witness, others who felt helpless to intervene. And while I am still angry that they didn’t help me I can accept the apology and the regret.

What I no longer have is doubt that it happened, the records spell it out and I have read it. It happened to me, not some ‘other’ child. Seeing it written down makes it real in a raw and deeply agonising way.

It was real. It was vile. And she has alot to answer for. But she did not win. I have a great job, fantastic friends and a wonderful family of choice. She has forfeited her right to her children and grandchildren by her actions.

It will take more time to process and it will hurt more than I can imagine, and I am afraid of that.

But I know that I will be OK – one day…….

Peripeteia

Well it’s not working like this. Have I reached a turning point? Who knows but it’s not working like this.

The pointlessness of contunuing this way is self evident. And yet I feel no desire to try to be different.

The way things are now at least make some kind of sense. Why would it be different? People like me don’t get the luxury of safety and security, we must be ever vigilant.  Every success will be punished – after all who am I to deserve otherwise.

For now the best I can do is hold on tight to what I know, to push the pain away and just work through the exhaustion.

I had hope once, that things might be different but now I know, that was arrogant of me. To assume that anything else was possible, to think I might deserve better. Well I know different now and I won’t make that mistake again.

If I was alone, not responsible for anyone else, I would disappear. Just walk away. Maybe then it would end and I could have peace. But for now I must pretend to fight and I guess in a way, in doing so I will dissapear……..

It’s getting better

The last six weeks have felt like a living hell. But I am getting through it.
Facing a situation that triggered so much from my childhood has been deeply painful – it continues to be that way.

But I have held my ground, actually taken care of myself – for the first time in years – and in doing that I have started to face down the monsters in my mind.

The small part of me is terrified, why wouldn’t she be? Abused as a child and ignored and punished by me for many years, she doesn’t feel safe. She doesn’t trust me not to turn on her.

I hope that I won’t go back to that place again. That I can help that small part feel safe again one day. It will take time and practice to grow through this but what I know now, is that pulling back the curtain on the wizard is possible, and so maybe one day I can stand up to the real monster who has overshadowed my life and finally move on from the fear. I’m not there yet, but the more I stand up for myself today, the easier it may become.

For now the fallout will continue, and I will learn what I can, and with luck, grow through the experience.

It is getting better……..maybe I am too.

Once a victim…….

And so it continues, once a victim always a victim.

I guess this time I actually have a choice to stand up for myself, I am no longer a powerless 5 year old. But I still feel that way.

If I could believe, really believe the things that others do, believe that I am a good person, then maybe I could stand up for myself.

I have to do something, otherwise this will keep happening. I’m tired of just surviving, just managing.

I don’t want to be a victim anymore.

But right now I am too frightened to stand up for myself.

And again

Every time without fail I fall for it and each time I know it will not be the last time.

A life built on sand will always fall apart, no matter how many times I try to rebuild.  It will happen again and again.

I am so closed and self protecting in some ways. In others I am too open – this I have read about, it’s common in those abused as kids.

Each time it hurts just as badly. But this time more so. I’ve opened up some of those closed and self protecting walls and the pain this time is so very much worse.

So now I face it again. For the first time clear that it is not my fault, the repeating pattern, though perhaps there is something I need to look at.

And I wonder – is there actually a way to fix the foundations to shore up the sand, to fill in the holes – because I do know that I can’t keep going through this.

I’ve had enough now.

Hiraeth

It’s that time of year. A time when I yearn for home – not the home I grew up in, but the home I never had.

Christmas is a difficult time. I love the idea of it, the reality was different. Christmas and Boxing days were two in the year when nothing too bad happened, there were too many other people around, but the fear of payback once the days were over was ever present. Ever present and usually accurate.

I don’t wish for those childhood times again, but I do yearn for the childhood I never had.

This year for the first time I am hosting Christmas with my husband and his family. I am excited to have the opportunity to begin some new traditions, to make our own Christmas.

I will never have the childhood I long for but maybe I can make a future that is everything I want it to be 🙂

Pressure

It’s just too much right now, Christmas is coming and that’s hard enough. I feel like I’m in a pressure cooker the weight of it all is just too much. I can’t face writing cards, not that I don’t want too, but the ones I no longer write weigh heavy on my soul.

Estrangement was the only solution to allow me to deal with my past but at this time of year it hurts all over again.

The people who have passed on, those who were my family of choice, now also absent.

Memories of those fearfilled Christmases rise up again and I feel lost and alone.

For 25 years I have fought myself to keep going, to live in spite of the pain.

And today I wonder why, why as a 12 year old girl, I decided to keep going. And I wonder now if I can still keep going, if I have the energy and the will anymore.

If I could just get one day when it didn’t hurt, so I could think clearly, one day, is that too much to ask?

Closer

I don’t know where the summer went, busyness as a strategy for avoiding stuff is probably a reasonable assessment.

Therapy has been tough, not the content but the effort of avoiding stuff. It slipped out a few weeks ago, that I mostly think about what not to say in therapy. And now he has confronted that. I want to get better but to do that he says I ‘have to share more’, that I have to talk about the difficult stuff. I wonder if he knows already, those things I haven’t said yet? I think he might, but that doesn’t make it easier.

I need to let him closer, but I don’t think I can, I have always kept something back, always. Call it what you like, an exit route, a safety net, whatever.

I am scared, terrified – my choice then, as I see it,  is to work through it or to walk away.

He already knows more than anyone else, so how much of myself do I have to share, how much more? I can’t talk about this stuff, I need to be well enough and sane enough to manage – why can’t he understand that?

And all of it was their fault, they did this to me – so why do I have to struggle so much just because they couldn’t love me, because they couldn’t find a way to keep me safe, to help me grow? She attacked me, constantly, and he did nothing. And nothing will ever make up for that, nothing.

So why should I even try to get better?

I’m not ready

I’m not ready for this. Everything I thought is wrong – a career built on a belief that is wrong, a childhood misunderstood. I’m not ready for this it hurts too much.
I need it to have been my fault for it to have been me that is wrong, out of place, for it to be me that didn’t fit. I need that to be true. I’ve believed it for so long. Built my life and my career on it.
I’m not ready for this – for her to have been the crazy one, alcoholic yes, I can handle that she was that, who wouldn’t need something to take the edge of such a flawed child?
I’m not ready to feel this, this helplessness, this anger, this betrayal and sadness. Such deep, deep sadness.

I’m not ready – please make it go away…..

Maybe it’s not me…..

For a long time I have been trying to figure out what it is about me that is flawed. But then even if I am flawed she was supposed to love me. That’s what being a parent is.

She never tried, even when I finally got the courage to cut contact, she played a few games and then they just cut me out of everything. It is beginning to occur to me that that is not about my flaws and failures.

And if that is not about me then maybe all the rest of it – those years of being attacked – maybe that wasn’t about me either……

I’m not ready to accept that yet. Or to belive that how I am is ok. I should be able to cope, to be better, but maybe that doesn’t have to be about her.

I wish my craziness would go away, that I could managed these feelings, that just for one little moment I could be ok.