Posted by inja on May 11, 2006, at 11:17:36
In reply to Re: response to cf w/another-long message » inja, posted by corafree on May 8, 2006, at 19:07:52
****(seriously, the content and length of this response may trigger you or someone, so please beware. there is a lot of sick stuff in this response.)****
oh, hon... w/out sounding patronizing or anything of that nature, i TRULY understand where you're "at", in this moment. i too shivered many a time, in the corner, the closet, under the bed, or just even in my plain ol’ skin. God, what a horrific feeling of helplessness and hopelessness that is (for me).
this is quite long, so “pack a lunch” for this one if you like. you may need it! *smiling*
detach.... interesting thing for me to ponder, actually. i believe that i had to learn (bolded and underlined) just how to detach. it was always easy for me to attach myself to someone, mostly people who hurt me in one form or another. i attached to them as they were "familiar" to me. at least i knew what was coming, for the most part. that was familiar. and the familiarity, believe it or not, was comforting. i didn't have to "step outside the box". no matter how sick i was (mentally and otherwise), i at least felt comforted by the familiar sh*t.
but something really important happened to me, most especially when i needed it the most. i went to a spiritual retreat, based on the 11th step of the A.A. program (“sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out”) about 15+ yrs ago. i met a nun there, Sister Maurice Doody (Dominican Nun from ‘da’ Bronx). I spent quite a bit of time with her as i was in a serious “spiritual” crisis. Taking AA, so very literally at that time, i could not understand WHY I had to forgive, etc. in speaking with Sister, after telling her everything, she explained to me that as a Catholic nun, and a recovering alcoholic, that there are indeed some things in life that are UNFORGIVEABLE.
i was trying so hard to forgive my father, yet i could not. i felt like a failure. but as Sister explained, the bottom line is that what HE did (and others in my life) was totally unacceptable and unforgiving. “you do not molest your children, NOR do you get them pregnant at age 14 and have an abortion (abortion wasn’t the issue. she was quietly pro-choice, with particular regard to incest) and expect forgiveness from that child”. once she spoke to me and explained these things, and even held me in her arms while i cried (wailed was more like it), she comforted me by reasserting that i wasn’t bad because i could not forgive. i was human. and as far as she was concerned, no one with higher authority (i.e. God) would consider me bad because of the things that happened to me.
please keep in mind one thing. i am not religious. i am not a practicing Catholic or any other divination. but I am a spiritual person. i do believe in a higher power, however. once i actually grasped this concept, i got “better”. i started to (slowly) get strong, stand up for myself, speak back, and started to take care of myself. granted, i had many MANY stumbles along the way, including back sliding as in continuing to allow people in my life to harm me. hell, i think i “signed up” for some of it. and my understanding today of that is because it was familiar. i know I keep coming back to that word, but it is a powerful word to me.
again, familiar was safe. i knew what to expect, so to speak. and to step out of that box was some kinda scary sh*t, let me tell ya. BUT. once I practiced it and practiced it (with much help from my T), it got a bit easier.
i can SO relate with the ex-husband crap too. here’s my story on an incident, similar to yours. my mom died, and i was devastated. we were very close in a seriously co-dependent way. yes, she was ill but she had many years to go before it (the illness) would have killed her. my father took it upon himself to kill her. and kill her he did. he smothered her with a pillow, cf. he finally admitted it to me while in a drunken stupor. that aside, (i don’t mean to sound callous, it’s just that i’m not (and can’t) relating to that at the moment) i cried every day for a few weeks. my husband, at the time said “FOR GAWD’S SAKE. SHE’S WORM BAIT. CALL YOUR DOCTOR AND GET SOME PILLS”. deep breath, ok…….. so i did. dr. gave me Xanax. LOVED IT. totally numbed me to the world that I was living in, meaning while i was taking the Xanax everything was cloudy and had the feeling of acceptability. one serious problem though. i got hooked, and i got hooked BAD. i have an addictive personality and Xanax became my drug of choice. (NOT preaching here. it works for a lot of folks who have no problem with it. i myself, for anxiety, take Klonopin. it works for me and i’m not addicted to it.) Xanax made my whole world “livable” and “do-able” .
so. the day came (approx. 11 months later) when the doctor would no longer give me a scrip. having worked for dr.’s most of my life (with the exception of being a state employee before i retired) i stole 2 scrip pads. i knew how to write ‘em, call them in, etc., and i did just that. by the time it was all over and done with, i was eating over 750 (yes, 750. it’s not a typo) milligrams of Xanax a WEEK, just to maintain. not getting high or even fuzzy anymore. just feeding the monkey. by all rights, i should be dead. it did a lot of damage in many ways, but i am happy to say that THAT is all over with. that was over many yrs. ago.
back to husband #2. when i started to go cold turkey (“YOU CANNOT go the hospital!! what the f*** would people think??? you stupid c-word, how in hell could you let yourself get hooked???”), things got really ugly. he locked me down cellar with 2 buckets. one for vomit and one for the other necessities. the children went to live with their bio father for about 4 weeks during this time, knowing nothing about mama being “sick”. also during this time, he raped and sodomized me almost every night while I was down cellar. i was to be punished, and this was how he was going to punish me. that’s what he said word for word. “you KNOW i don’t like doing this, “inja”, but you MUST be punished so that you’ll never do it again!! you need to LEARN!!”
suffice it to say that about 8+ years later (what the hell took me so long???) we went our separate ways. i also had 3 serious nervous/mental breakdowns and had to be hospitalized, within a time frame of 18 months.
i also understand the devastation that is brought on when parents, ex’s, in-laws use children as”pawns”. not just devastating to us, but mostly them. children are the innocents here, and should not be used as such. the only thing that i can tell you cora, was that during that time i chose to take the “high road”, meaning that i would not stoop to bad mouthing my ex and their families as I knew my children were already getting an earful from them about me. at some point they started to ask me questions as in “did you really do this, mum?”, and related questions. i answered them as truthfully as i could, taking their age into consideration. i refused to speak ill of their father, as i knew he was doing enough damage for a whole fleet.
yeah, it was painful and hard as hell to just sit there and “take it” with out retribution. BUT, there came a time when they got older and started to piece things together and realized who was telling the truth.
i “lost” my children for a few years (they being in a situation where they felt they couldn’t trust me, etc.) and it about killed me. but i survived and so did they. once things came together (as they came more adult like in mind and emotion), so did we. we talked, we shared, i made amends for my part, and things sort of worked themselves out and mended over time. i am so grateful to be able to say that i have a close loving relationship with my daughter. my son is another matter (to be explained at a later date).
your ex sounds so much like an amalgam of the men in my life, cora. scary sh*t.
i don’t know the ages of your children (mine are 30 and 29, son 1st, daughter 2nd), but if they are in their teens, dis’ing you is a national pastime for our youth of today (IMHO). no it’s NOT right, but it happens.
hon, i gotta tell you something straight up and it’s only from my experience. ONLY mine, ok?
i did the same things, calling and begging my children to talk to me, to visit, “can i come visit”, etc. and even worse. all it did, so they tell me now (and earlier actually), is that i seemed so needy that it frightened them. (needy was the “bug” that the ex put in their ear, telling them that i would suck them dry emotionally and mentally). hon, try to not call them “begging” them to come see you. it only makes YOU feel worse, rejected, and seriously unhappy, and they may feel pressured which might push them more apart from you.
i know, i know. easier to say than do. but i did it too. i just took it one day at a time so to speak. in fact, what I did was buy 2 journals. (y’know – the black and white marbled cover notebooks we used in school?). every time i hurt, or felt so g.d. awful and how unfair things seem to be, i wrote my feelings down about it. one was for my daughter, and the other is for my son. it took me awhile to get real honest with myself and put it in a journal, but once i did, my healing started to begin. the healing of learning how to forgive myself, for a whole host of things. a problem that occurred for me in this was to find a safe hiding place for my journals, where my husband (at that time) couldn’t find it. but i did find a safe space for it. and for a while, i felt like it was my lifeline.
please understand that i am only relating my experiences to you (and others i suppose). just one human speaking with another. my journaling helped me to understand a phrase Dr. Phil has said time and time again, “you cannot change what you do not acknowledge”. that statement means so many different things for so many people. for “inja” it meant to take a hard and long, yet loving look inside of myself to see what i needed to change to make myself happy. after much time I realized that i had to stop looking towards others for love and validation. then the hardest part, cora. i had to learn to love and accept myself as i am. and to this day, i still struggle. i struggle with not only that, but truth, trust (in myself and others) and a few other things as well. but i keep practicing. in AA they say “fake it till you make it”. and that’s what I do, when I feel my “balls are to the wall”.
cora, no. they cannot “see” how devastating this is to you. at least not yet. another thing i learned along the way was that NO ONE can MAKE (bolded and underlined) me “feel” anything. it’s that i allow them to make me “feel” one way or another. so hard for me to explain that one, but it’s something i had to learn (the hard way of course) and accept. i had to accept that i am in control of “my boat”, and if someone engenders a feeling (good or bad) toward me, it is up to me to take it or leave it. that being said, it took me many years in therapy to learn this one (and quite a few others), and harder yet, put it into action.
ah yes. the “victim stamp” on our foreheads. someone told me the same thing. i tried to start to look at things from a different perspective to remove that stamp on my forehead. i don’t remember how or why, but somewhere down the line, i no longer had that stamp. instead, i became a (bolded) SURVIVOR. i can’t remember exactly how or when the “stamp dried up and fell off” as i have had a few strokes and some parts of my memories are gone.
you ask “is that why i can't innately 'be tough' now, ya' think?” i don’t know, really. but your thoughts on the matter “i had a good childhood inja ... i didn't have to be tough ... “ is quite introspective, honest and profound. and frankly, it sounds like you may have “hit a corner on piece of that nickel” by just making that statement. i am not a T but it sounds quite feasible to me, the reasoning i mean.
‘kay…. one last identifier that i have with you. my heart too was broken. at age 3. i was “daddy’s little girl” in every sense of the matter. but then daddy betrayed me. time and time again. thus, the man that i loved and adored was ripped from me forever. and yes, it still hurts, makes me sad, mad, depressed, all that crap. but now i am “dealing” right now, and it’s getting better.
due to a variety of things, i still feel at times feel suicidal, even though my life today is something I only dreamed of. i am blessed, and i try to bear that in mind as well.
i am sorry this is so long, but when i started to type, it just all kept flowing out. i couldn’t stop the “dam” from bursting. i am not embarrassed or ashamed by my response to you because, for today, my life HAS to be an open book. no secrets. secrets make me sick (or sicker than I already am! :>} ) even here on psycho babble for the “whole world to see”.
feel free to babble me personally if you like. i feel, as you said earlier, a “kinship” with you.
take gentle loving care of yourself, cora dear. i am sending you “gentle hugz” from Maine.
love,
“inja”
poster:inja
thread:635894
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060503/msgs/642585.html