part 84

In my last conversation with my brother I asked him if my mom was sad. He kind of paused and then said a little awkwardly and taken aback that, yeah, sad was one of the things she was feeling. I was a little surprised that he didn't just immediately say that she was feeling really sad.

That was a couple of weeks ago, and it just occurred to me today that what my brother was not saying was that my mom is mad at me.

It kind of slapped me in the face, the same way it did the last time I talked to her - I honestly and genuinely thought she would apologize to me, at least for ignoring me when I was little and doing nothing when I told her what was happening to me. It actually really shocked me that she was pissed about that.

I don't know why it surprised me so strongly when I made the connection between what my brother didn't say and what was going on with my mom. I definitely knew she would be pissed - she did some really fucked up shit and she did NOT like me telling anyone about it, much less publically writing about it.

But I really thought she was feeling a sense of loss, too. She's lost her daughter. She's lost her son-in-law who has been in her life for over twenty years. She's lost both of her grandsons. I really thought she would be sad about that, because when I say she's lost us, it means permanently lost us. Even if there were some sort of reconciliation in the future, nothing will ever be able to get the things she said and did and didn't do out of my head.

I know her now. I've been able to move all of my own pain and fear out of the way enough to see her for who she is. I'm not going to un-see her again. Those things that she did to me got lost in my mind when I was growing up because I depended on her for love and security, and to define who I was, and to survive.

Where is a five-year-old going to go when she tells on her abuser and her own mother does not believe her? Actually, I'm pretty sure my mom did believe me, but she didn't do anything about it - I don't know if that is worse. I think both ways are really shitty.

One of my kids got in a trouble tonight, and I was telling him that I was angry about it, and when I tucked him in, I was still a little angry, but I gave him a kiss and told him I loved him and to have sweet dreams. He smiled at me when I kissed his cheek - I was never able to do that, to switch from being physically hurt to being loving and sweet in a matter of seconds.

My parents would hit me with a wooden spoon or a belt, and then immediately kneel down in front of me and tell me they loved me. They wanted to make sure that even though they hit me with a belt or a wooden spoon, they still loved me. That physically assaulting me meant they loved me. That was when I was little, though. When I got older, I'm not really sure they gave a shit if I believed they loved me or not.

I have been having a weird day. I have been super-jumpy, like literally jerking around - really, like something is jerking on different parts of my body - and shaking violently to the point that my ability to perform simple tasks has been completely inhibited. On days like today, everything startles me more than usual. Its like some invisible little imp is following me around and zapping me with electricity over and over again, and there is no rhyme or reason to it, there's no way to prepare for it, it just comes out of nowhere over and over again.

All I can do is get in my bed with my back against the headboard, which is against the wall, and I don't have to worry about anything sneaking up on me and I can relax a little. The jerking around subsides back to my normal state of just being shaky, and I am able to function again without having to concentrate so hard on what is really real.

When I was about through my first year of therapy, I noticed that my symptoms were getting much worse. My fears and anxieties and flashbacks and gut-wrenching, raw feelings seeping out of every pore got much worse. I had expected to feel better, not worse. My therapist said that is the way it goes, because even though these things happened years ago, I am only now consciously dealing with them, and it is the conscious awareness of them that affects my brain and body to such extremes.

Every couple of months I will notice a new chunk of silver hair on my head. Not a few silver hairs, but a chunk of hair turned silver. It makes me kind of sad, since I'm not old. I feel a lot older, though, and I guess the silver hair is some sort of external validation of that. I guess everything that is happening to me physically is an external validation that I really experienced those hideous moments and days and months and years of just not knowing if I was safe anywhere at all.

I feel the safest when I am on/in my bed with my back against the headboard and I know nothing will be able to sneak up on me. I also feel safe in my car, especially once I get home and turn the engine off. I like to just sit there and feel safe. I would probably do that for hours if my kids or my husband didn't eventually come out to see if I was okay.

I would be a disastrous disaster without them. I don't worry so much that any of them will die or be kidnapped or something, because I do believe that I will not be handed anything I can't deal with, and I definitely wouldn't be able to deal with all of this shit from my past AND lose my husband and/or my kids, so I feel confident they are safe from harm.

Earlier today, when I was coming to grips with the fact that my mom is primarily incensed and not so distraught about losing us, I got this feeling that I hadn't felt in a while. It was the feeling of knowing that it really is going to be this way, that she really is going to flat-out deny what we both know happened, and that people really can do bad things to me and no one will become outraged about it. I guess I was still having the expectation of my mom being a good person and reacting to how torn up I am by being sad, but then I had to remember that she is not taking the same stance as me.

Her stance is convincing people that I am lying and/or crazy, and am making things up about her and telling them to people in order to harm her in some way out of spite or delusion. I suppose if I was pretending that something I did never happened and got called out on it, my reaction would be outrage, too. I mean, what else can you do?

Because it is real, but you can say it is not. It actually happened, but was never supposed to integrate into the timeline we want the world to see. Its real, and accepting and acknowledging that are not options because it would mean having to accept and acknowledge how that passionate and dramatic and resonating outrage was all a bunch of bullshit.

If you're going to put that much effort into bullshitting people, they are going to question what kind of person you really are. They will think that you are bad and small and selfish and cruel. YOU will think you are bad and small and selfish and cruel.

That's not the way it really is though - I know because I've lied like that before. I've passionately and dramatically expressed my outrage at the very idea someone could be questioning my character at all. I dragged it on for years and years and years, but it started to really eat away at my guts - just a little at a time, very slowly. But years and years of it really building up into something quite big and nasty and harmful is not a nice thing to live with.

So I also know what it is to drop the pretense and admit the truth. Some people thought I was bad and small and selfish and cruel, but most people knew it was bullshit all along and were fine leaving it behind once I'd come clean.

The most important thing, though, was that I didn't have to keep putting all of that energy and defiance and indignity into action every fucking day. I didn't have to worry about it anymore, about being found out, or even about being doubted, because I went ahead and threw it out myself. I could just relax because the skeletons in my closet all got evicted and I could just have a nice calm closet.

I don't think my mom will ever acknowledge and admit what she did, though. It is too much, and she is a weak person. She even said to me, a couple of years ago on the way to see a movie, that I was stronger than her. It surprised me that she said that, and surprised me even more that I believed it to be true.

So now all that is left is for her to get eaten up from the inside. Her and the sick, demented bastards in that neighborhood, and all of those men out there who bought or stole some time with me and devastated me. That's all there is left to happen.

I don't expect to be happy to know it is happening, but I don't expect to have much sympathy for them in their suffering either.

I've already put my time in with them - they can't hurt me anymore, and I don’t have to give a shit if they are hurting now.