Posted by littleone on December 26, 2004, at 17:41:45
I've been trying to come to grips with the fact that my family was/is abusive. Plenty of emotional abuse with regular rages and furniture tossing thrown in for good measure. Sometimes I can see it as abuse and other times I excuse it all away. It's hard.
So because of this I wanted to just stay right away from my family over Christmas (indefinately?). I just didn't feel like I could put on a happy smiley face for them. Too hypocritical. Too risky that I'd just completely lose it and either start bawling or start attacking them or run away or whatever.
So in November I called each of them up and said that I was opting out of Christmas this year. Don't get me a present because you won't be getting one. Don't expect to see me because you won't.
But even after I called them, my dad let me be, but my mum and brother kept trying to set up a get together. They kept assuming that I was bailing out to avoid my dad. I just couldn't tell my mum that I was upset at her too and tell my brother that he's just a scumb*g. So I just had to stick by my guns and hold them off.
It was so hard. My T kept reminding me why I was doing this. There's a section in "The Courage to Heal" that talks about this and it helped me through a lot.
And I'm glad I did it. It was a big step for me to say no to a family *should* and to stick with it.
But now that Christmas is over, I'm being pressured to start seeing my mum and brother again. My husband has kind of manuvered (cr*p sp I know) me into a lunch with them today. And I don't want to go.
It's not like my feelings about them have changed over 48 hours. I knew it wasn't just going to be Christmas. My birthday is in January and my dad's is in February and my brother's is in March. I was going to try to dodge all of them.
But now my T is away for 3 weeks and I don't know how to hold them off. It was much easier with a set date. How on earth can I tell them I just want to stay away until some undetermined point in the distant future? Especially if I'm not ready to talk to them about the abuse.
I miss my T already. 3 weeks is an eternity. I'll be reading all the T vacation threads in the archives, but *sigh*. I've got the anniversary for the accident coming up while he's away too. So far I've been successfully shoving that one away, but I know that monster is getting ready to climb out of the box I've shoved it into. I can't keep the lid closed without my T there to sit on it.
I'm sorry, I'm just having a whinge. Just wish I could do better at shoving my family away.
poster:littleone
thread:434385
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041218/msgs/434385.html