Posted by kiddo on February 13, 2002, at 10:27:25
In reply to Mother's milk, posted by trouble on February 12, 2002, at 22:43:29
Your life sounds so much like mine we could be siblings....except it was my stepdad instead of my mom...The exact things of course are different, but I know what you mean....
My chest is hurting, I feel myself pulling away from the present, like a movie camera zoomed in close and then zoomed out extremely fast.
Yes, IT sounds mad to me, however, you do NOT. Do you have the right to be angry? ABSOLUTELY! You have no reason to feel guilty, your feelings are just that. YOUR FEELINGS, they are neither right nor wrong, they just are...
I'm sorry you had to live through that, no one should have to endure that type of life, however, you did, and that shows just how strong you really are.
The saddest part is when people (govt., etc..) know about it, talk to the 'parent' (like they are going to let them see their true side) and then file it away, doing nothing to intervene.
Sorry-your post aroused ALOT of wounds that haven't yet healed, and brought back a lot of feelings I thought I'd dealt with, but guess I haven't...
Sorry, didn't mean to add all my stuff to your post....
Kiddo-> I don't think I'll drink right now.
> No, I think I will. I could drink instead of dealing w/ my feelings. No, I'll write this and then I'll have a drink and that will make me feel better.
> I'm mad right now. Dr. Phil was on TV today talking to moms who were maltreating their daughters. I sure wish someone would have intervened like that for me. "Look lady, there's something WRONG w/ the way you treat your daughter. Your behavior is dispicable."
>
> It's not like I didn't leave the door wide open from the minute I could walk. I went to my priest, my teachers, relatives, neighbors, strangers, everyone knew what was going on in my house and no one did anything to stop it.
>
> There were interventions, but never any follow-up. And the biggest intervention came when the principal of my school walked into his office at 6:30 one morning and found me sleeping w/ my head on his desk. We can't have that. I broke into the school b/c it was snowing and I didn't have anywhere else to go and tears were sticking to my face in the Minnesota January night.
> So they sent us to a Psychologist and my mom presented so well even I believed her. 'Til we got back in the car and she started mimicking and ridiculing the doctor, mocking my sincerety and working herself into a lather over the humiliation of having to jump thru these hoops on my behalf, like it was my fault I'd bleed when she'd cut.
>
> Just like that lady today my mom said the exact same thing when I'd be sad- "It doesn't happen every day." Meaning how can I still be holding onto something she long forgot. No, we don't have to drive to the hospital every day to get my ribs taped up, we don't have to visit my brother in the psych ward in 4 point restraints ALL THE TIME and am I still belly-aching about the goddamned eye-patch? That was two years ago! So I want to be mad about things but that makes me feel guilty and life becomes a tiny concentric circle that keeps coming back like a bad penny.
>
> Once my other brother Marky took me into the kitchen and demanded an explanation for my welts and bruises and when she looked I saw the spoon she was stirring pause for a nanosecond, but then being mom she goes "that's the price she pays for defiance." What defiance?! There weren't any rules!! We could do anything we wanted. She'd disappear for days and we'd fend for ouselves (by having pot parties and live music on the front lawn). She'd come home drunk and join in the fun. When she'd had enough she'd get in her car and try to run over the partygoers for being "a bad influence on her children."
>
> Then one day I'd wake up and all of a sudden it would be "This is the kind of family that has dinner together every night at 5:30," like it was a lifelong tradition or something. Afterwards we'd sing around the fireplace and mom would knit a sampler. Two days later she'd make my brother eat a carton of cigarettes and we'd be back to the normal routine.
> She was strict though. Not like these moms on Oprah today, more like a sadistic superego that persecutes you into a psychotic break. No rules or nothin, just you suck go die out-of-7-miscarriages-you-had-to-be- the-one-that-lived do the world a favor and kill yourself. And I'd just be like "Oh mom, you always say that stuff."
>
> AND?
>
> Last month the ss pdoc asked me where I thought my mom was now. And I go I think she's in heaven, watching filmstrips of the life she led and the wreckage it effected on the people who loved her" and when he put that in the report he made it sound crazy. What a dick! He set it up w/his gentle interrogation about my ghosts from the past and so forth.
>
> For all her sullen monsterishness there was an equal and opposing side-warm, kind, funny, charming, generous, tender, haunted, gracious, vulnerable, impish, and beautiful. When she was good there was always this hint of sadness about her, almost humility, a definite wistfulness. It was the closest I ever saw her come to any kind of self-awareness. A far-away look in her eye. When she was on her deathbed I was telling her how healing it would be when she first sees Jesus and she murmurs "Oh honey, we both know I'm going straight to hell."
> And I'm not just waxing poetic about that haunted gaze, I've got pictures of her like that and when I show them to people they get a far away look in their eyes too.
>
> HEY Dagnabbit!
> I thought I was supposed to be MAD. DOES THIS SOUND MAD TO YOU?
>
> Oh well maybe next time. And thanks for listening, wherever you are.
poster:kiddo
thread:18179
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020202/msgs/18187.html