Quote: Oh Corri, I can't imagine what it must be like to live with a memory like that.
I don't live with it everyday, not anymore. I did when I was younger... it was constantly in my face early in my marriage... as I began to work through the issues, it began to fade. It will continue to pop up from time to time, and it literally kicks my feet out from under me, because I don't know when it will come roaring back.
Quote: I think that you must be very strong to carry on as wonderfully as you obviously have.
While I don't want diminish your compliment (thank you), I have not carried on wonderfully, not always. I've continued moving along, yes, but there were years when I was a downright ugly individual.
Two years before my abuse started with my brother, my step-father did an episode of his own on me. I am almost certain he did something to my brother, (or it was someone else I knew) for I remember the DAY he changed. And radically. Before that day, my brother and I were extremely close... after that day, everything changed.
My mother and step-father divorced, we moved, got to a place where I think both he and I felt relatively safe... then my mother went and married a man neither one of us liked... at all. (My cat didn't even like him). We moved again, to a place neither one of us wanted to be... and not long after is when it all started.
A year later, my mother divorced again, we moved.
A year after my brother left the house, my senior year in high school, a boy I had been dating (who was a real dinner winner, let me tell you), broke into my house one night and proceeded to rip apart my bedroom and threated to kill me... because I had broken up with him.
I went away to college about two years after the abuse stopped. One weekend I was driving home and I was in a car accident. It was the first time in my life I had ever worn a seat belt... had it not been for that, I would likely have been seriously injured or killed.
I remember thinking very clearly, "God, what in the HE!! do you have against me?" I pretty much gave up on God for quite some time, and needless to say, I was an EXTREMELY angry individual.
I'm not making this up, I swear. There's even more that happened, but I really can't get into it.
Now lest you all think I was living in da 'hood, I wasn't. From the outside looking in... I was living a normal middle to upper-middle class life.
Quote: Clearly you have recognized that the events of your childhood had nothing to do with you, nothing to do with being a girl or a woman and really nothing to do with healthy sexuality.
I do now, but I can tell you, it took me YEARS to get there (and I'm still getting there).
But anger aside, I think you can see how it was very easy for me to set my standards very low, for I would always compare my current sitch to what I had lived through... I put up with behavior from others that should NEVER have been tolerated simply because I would say to myself... well... at least what I am living in now isn't as bad as that.
Was I a victim? Yes. But so was my brother. Being a victim doesn't let you off the hook. I could easily have become a throw away... a drug-abuser, an alcoholic, an abuser myself. To give you an example.... the way I got my abuse to stop was not how it happened in the story. I had an inner need to give my abuser some measure of compassion and self-accountability... what happened IRL is... one day, he came into my room... and I snapped. I've never in my life felt such blinding rage, and I literally threw my brother against a wall... lifted him off the floor by his throat, and told him that if he didn't stop, I was going to kill him. I could have done it right then and there.
And then I collapsed on the floor and began crying, begging him to stop. He sat down next to me, gave me a small hug, told me he was sorry and left. He never bothered me again, but I didn't begin sleeping at night until he left. Wasn't like I had a great deal of trust in him. But my point being... I got very familiar with some horrific parts of myself.
You can imagine how I panicked I got when I began to feel fits of rage during sex with my H. Rage scared the heck out of me... so did anger... and I stuffed it. A lot of it.
I would say there were times with my H that I got pretty verbally and emotionally abusive myself to him... but given his life background and mine, we should never have married.
But we did. And thank God I found my shrink. I thank God every day of my life for him... and quite honestly, he cried more in our sessions than I ever did. (I'm not proud of that, btw).
I worked long and hard, and my prognosis was very low. I wouldn't even say I'm 'healed.' But the one thing I do know, at least now, is the difference between hating myself and respecting myself, and I know first hand how damaging it can be to you and everyone in your life when you set your expectations so low, for you will allow things to happen that never should... all because... 'this isn't as bad as that.'
That is survivor mentality, and it is no way to live. For anyone.
Self-respect is an easy word to throw around. It is a concept easily misunderstood, for up until recently, I would have said to you, 'yes, of course I love msyelf, of course I respect myself.' Don't think so. I KNOW the difference now, and I can tell you I'm not all the way there yet, either.
At least now I know what I'm working towards. I was a victim once... long ago. To me, the most dangerous thing in being a victim is that it sets you up to always be a victim... can you see how I did it?
I'm not being hard on myself. It is something I always have to keep in the forefront of my mind so I don't end up kidding myself. It is so easy for me to fall into old patterns of behavior and thinking, and it is so DAM hard to change them. But I continue on with it because there is something I want now, more than anything. I don't want to show my kids how to survive, how to cross days off a calendar and live for tomorrow... I want to show them how to live, how to be happy, how to respect, how to fail, but not necessarily be a failure.
I don't know that D'ing was the best way to do that, I don't know that it wasn't. I made my decision, and still to this day, I make the same one.
For you all, looking at my life, I think it is very EASY to see why I might have done the things I have. But for me... I had a normal life (up until the abuse started). You don't have to live through endless childhood drama and physcial abuse to develop patterns of stuffing anger, disrespect, denial... all kinds of weird patterns of behavior.
Maybe I'm lucky because once out of it... it IS easy to see... unlike other adults who would describe their lives as relatively normal and happy. We all learn things, good and bad, but you don't have to be a kid to pick up bad habits. You don't always have to be a kid to learn defense mechanisms. Anger is as damaging to adults as it is to kids. Abuse, neglect, shame, anger, disrespect... it all hurts, regardless of your age.
I do know, though, that the only way to change it, to stop it, is to have the courage to say, 'enough. I've had enough.' And that requires self-respect.
This life thing is dam hard. Almost as hard as being a girly girl.
