BITTERSWEET

There is no escaping my past, memories, experiences, or the family born into.

The longings for something different with stability and warm love is not helping no matter how fervently wished for. If only my parents weren’t partiers and drinkers. If only they’d stopped at two or three children not eight.

If only dad hadn’t died, laying there right in front of me. Brothers free to attack filling their teenage lust stealing my childhood, my life.

If only.

ONLY in accepting all of me will peace come. Over winter, a supposed friend, tore me down with her ignorant words. She is thinking herself helpful and supportive, but her cruel words devasted.

It does not matter what another thinks. What I feel and believe matters. My embedded negative self is a part of me. When it comes up which is often, daily, almost constant, just say, ‘oh that.’ She did not bring me down. It was that part of me that feels unworthy, lazy, and no good. She did me a favor really. I need to learn this.

The negative sense of self became part of my personality in childhood. In taking on the evil being done to me I could still have a family. And those that committed the crimes weren’t evil but as much in need of care as I was.

But evil was committed. The culprit of my unhappiness then was the responsibility of the origin family, all of them. (even the those never touching me that way because all expected my silence while befriending the doers) Now it is mine.

Trying to make myself feel positive, grateful, happy? Is that the search? Human existence isn’t all flowers and happiness. It is being with what is there.

After waking unable to sleep (as has become the custom these past several years) the worry-fear bomb imploded causing the switch to flip. No sleep was going to come without a sleep aid.

This morning sadness for having to use it. Peaceful warmth while sitting on the patio in the sunshine with birds splashing in the bath freshly filled mixes with melancholy. Joy and grief mingle while a pair of robins take turns bringing worms to their hatchlings just a few feet away.

Sitting in the shade by the creek, leaves swaying in the breeze with shafts of light peeking through, a heron swooped gracefully over the water bringing a smile, yet tears fell- and that’s OK. Feel it all…

HONESTY WITH SELF

Honesty, my blog has been about boring down to what is really going on inside because for most of my life the training from all origin family, especially my mother, was silence.

When silent about such traumas, repeated for years during childhood, all feelings go silent even from me.

But over years of writing, it is tempting to be dishonest even on an anonymous blog. That is not useful. It is only by writing honestly that learning my truth becomes clear. Morning reflections help by bringing meaning, clarity, and hope.

Honesty with self is the goal. If in the process someone benefits from it, like, ‘I do that too,’ and feels less alone, that is as they say, icing on the cake.

Being alone even at age 70 scares me. Samuel took off at 2am to catch a flight to California with his brother and sister-in-law to visit the other brother and sister-in-law.

My world has drilled down to home, the meadow, and me. No traveling other than day trips. My sleep problems prevent it. My C-PTSD is profound, always has been, but I was not allowed to speak of it, so it has gone unacknowledged even by myself. Now I am respecting my needs, and learning not to be so ashamed of it.

I am terrified of being here alone.

Yes, at 70 fear is my shadow and has been since age 8. Even with Samuel sleeping next to me, waking throughout the night hearing unexplained noises sends shock shivers of fright through me,

Also in the meadow with bright daylight, a sudden noise or movement does the same. There is no escape from the past or the hypervigilance that comes with it. Brothers creep around every corner, even though 3 out of 4 are dead. While resting by the creek memories of different ages throughout childhood remind me of my resilience. There is a strong tree grown in me.

Curiously, my feelings about my brothers are complicated. Living with the effects of what they did makes me hate what they did, not really them. HATE was never allowed while my mother lived, dying at 91 in 2009. But poignant, loving compassion flows through my soul. They had to live with what they did shortening their lives because my belief is that guilt kills.

Hello meadow, hello nights, hopefully the terror of my nights without Samuel will be lessoned by daytime meadow joy with my friends- birds, sunshine, frogs, and every other living creature that isn’t human. Humans still feel dangerous and are mostly avoided.

Tectonic Shift

When my soul speaks it might be the culprit for sleepless nights. So used to living in my head that when direction comes from my core, and that weathervane is the ultimate good blossoming upward, it is also terrifying.

Ding dong, tick tock, what’s the sound that wakes me in the night keeping me up? My soul speaking, and being honored by the actions taken in the daytime. You risk breaking taboos of ‘family.’ How dare you?

Change, growth? Terrifying. How dare you become anything but a people-pleasing doormat? The origin family unit needed that from me to keep its secrets. And who is going to kick at the family unit?

If you are thrown out of the cave you will die.

So, the personality formed is not my true nature. The finding of it continues, little by little, growth occurring out of persistence, determination, and courage.

GOODNESS GLOWS

Freedom from restraints others impose comes often, even if the restraints grow from my own beliefs of what is expected rebelling against it.

Round and round the critic bites, once my mom’s voice, or any from the origin family imposing a gag on me in case secrets making them look bad were revealed. It has molded an old woman (is 70 old?) who is still unable to set boundaries or speak up.

That is permanent. What can be challenged is self-hate for the brokenness causing loss of speech. It is not my fault or doing.

How could my voice ring out loud when molded and forced as a child to endure quietly. The damage is done.

Wrong doings by others, insensitivities, crossing boundaries, (the list goes on) curdles within till coming here writing words to make sense of the utter jumble inside of me, here, a safe place where authenticity rises once the chaos is sorted out. Growth occurs. The stranger within becoming known.

When the flashlight peers inside, goodness, not the badness consuming me since age 8.

Goodness glows when daring to look honestly, with gentleness, compassion, empathy and self-acceptance.

LIARS, MANIPULATORS, DECEIVERS

Very often the weak character of others instills great doubt in me because my tendency is to blame myself. And the hurt coming with being blamed (by me) goes deep as if my insides might crack.

Since beginning the journey of learning to love and accept myself, with it comes a wiser eye to the truth. Others who do not like my truth or my need to tell it, seek revenge in the form of niceties that sound so sweet yet cut to the bone.

That is the social norm; don’t yell, don’t tell the truth, cover it up with lies, but do harm anyway and don’t get caught.

People closest to me do the most harm, and go to the greatest lengths to conceal what they do. Flower it with lies that sound believable but aren’t true. There is no way to confront such brilliant masqueraders.

I despise liars, manipulators, and vengeful people disguising themselves as something other that. And no wonder considering what was learned early in childhood.

Tom, who spent his life putting me down so skillfully that even intelligent people in the group of people I was unfortunate to be born into (origin family) didn’t realize they too began treating me badly because of the light cast on me. Tom made it OK.

And Chet who threw the pack of Wrigley’s Chicklets down the hall, “Get it, if you get there first you can have it.”

I did, it was empty, then he plowed into me dragging me down the hall to my mother’s bed half-way suffocating me as he yanked down my pants rubbing his penis up and down on me then ejaculating.

Who would like being lied to after that? Deceived? Manipulated? And everyone does it to some extent, but some are masters at it.

My quiet life suits me. People ARE dangerous.

LOSS

Tears fall while talking to Shane on the phone, but he knows his mother well. He goes on unperturbed offering kind words in a soft, warm loving way. He understands how much it hurts when Cory visits then leaves.

“Be gentle to yourself,” he said, chuckling because we go through this every time.

There is something about Cory visiting home then leaving which rips a hole inside me. Most mothers miss family members who live far away, but my feelings of loss are exacerbated because of the separation from the ‘origin family’ to keep myself safe and authentic.

Once the self-flogging about every little thing that wasn’t perfect, including me, had worn itself out, and enough tears shed, a tired calm has begun to replace the jittery anxiety. A little wine by the fire helps too.

One so tired out to be able to rest and sleep, but for me the opposite happens, my body moving while th rest of me tries to catch up. On 4 hours of sleep- buzzing around putting toys away downstairs, laundering sheets, remaking beds, putting Thanksgiving stuff away, and zipping around like road runner on speed.

But slowly, ever so slowly, my center will be found. It just takes time.

ORIGIN FAMILY DANGERS

Home-made apple pie for Don & Seth

It’s always a danger asking two siblings to visit from the city, but felt the risk was worth it. And it did kick me in the butt during the night after waking to use the bathroom.

Tossing restlessly in bed for a few hours, going through the moments of the visit. Really? Do you have to? Great effort was put into NOT doing that, yet when soul speaks it is often in the middle of night.

Feelings of self-worth tend to plummet around those called ‘family.’ And this time was no different, crackers in my hand before bed letting the carbs melt on my tongue satisfyingly. Carbs produce happy chemicals neutralizing those negative feelings about ‘self.’

Food has always been about a different kind of hunger, that of self-love and care, a desperate lack of both until recently when gentleness, kindness, and acceptance of ‘self’ magically dissolved the cravings for something to numb that cloying need.

It is hard labor being around those who are loved yet not trusted, and who cause such toxicity in their insistence of treating me like they once knew me; malleable, pleasing, and unassertive for my own needs.

It took herculean effort to stay inside myself, losing that groundedness momentarily but mostly feeling whole.

So, it isn’t an occurrence that will happen often, but this time progress was made. And sleep came finally, waking a few hours past my normal waking time.

The body has a way of giving itself what it needs if my mind makes room for it by cutting through the gnarled jungle of memories and old habits to discover my true (worthy) self, finding peace.  

SUCCESSFUL FAILURE?

Lost in the thicket of my mind, the past, the inability to make the present perfect, or at least better in my own eyes. Rather than failing at a relationship, maybe it is the other person not willing to meet me halfway.

Maybe Don wants the ‘Patty’ of before, the clinging, needing, pleasing ‘Patty,’ not the woman I’ve become today.

It is Don, the twin who survived, who once fathered me, taking me into his home during my early twenties after his twin, sibling Danny, succeeded at taking his own life.

The confusing mess of a family was all over the place, and so was I. Living at home after leaving college one course short of my AA degree. Mom was heavy into alcohol.

Don took me in with his wife and young daughter. Supported me as the pieces of my life were temporarily patched together; a job, signing up for the Army, then eventually my own apartment.

During my mother’s decline and subsequent death 13 years ago there was friction between us that hasn’t resolved, nor is likely to. Taking me out to the hallway of her apartment because I’d said something wrong, he chastised me on making things worse. That moment a rip tore inside me that won’t be mended.

The father-like figure disappeared. There’s not been a way to establish a new balance since. I become a cowering puppy who did wrong. During her last illness I did make things harder which wasn’t my intention. I became frantic losing the only place where a morsel of love could be found, from my mom. It came with strings, but having no love inside myself, it was all there was.

Am I the failure, or is it just to be? That in his gathering of the two other brothers, and a cousin or two, in his efforts to make a ‘family’ which also includes a fourth brother, the last surviving abuser of my child’s body and a torment to my mental health throughout adulthood, that I just don’t ‘fit’ in.

That I don’t want to, because ‘fitting in’ means going backwards, way, way, back to the invisible doormat I once was. I don’t know how to be with ‘them’ and still be me. Every try I become a dithering drooling pleaser.

Yes, me, Private First Class 50 years ago.

GENTLE DENTLE

The dentist said the area was traumatized by something crunchy and hot. It had been unhealed almost two weeks and constant pain with it. Then showed me photos and it looked awful. Tears began to fall. Partly relief that it wasn’t something more serious and that the medical appointment earlier went alright too, but also that my disconnection to my body is so stark and harsh.

To chomp down and injure myself? It isn’t uncommon for me to cause myself injury unintentionally. Once a hygienist told me to floss better. At the next appointment she was aghast at the cuts in-between my teeth. “Your gums are sliced in-between each tooth!” she exclaimed in shock.

She said floss better. For me it meant harder, and faster, no gentleness required, or I didn’t really know how to be gentle with myself. Others, yes, not me. I wasn’t raised to be kind or gentle to myself, though if my mother were alive, she’d also be aghast for my saying that.

But when you are required as a child to keep horrific traumas in your little body and psyche you learn quickly- you don’t matter and also learn disconnection/dissociation. The body in one place, the mind in another.

That was how to escape someone doing things to my body that felt horrible, disgusting, and sometimes too terrifying to stay inside it. That way of living became habitual because nowhere felt safe again. There are still monsters lurking around every corner.

And, don’t I deserve it? Afterall, no one came to help once crushed under the wheels of the Mack Truck of sexual attacks by brothers loved and trusted. (but became the monsters of my dreams awake or asleep)

My work now? Gentleness, kindness, compassion, and acceptance of self. With no guidance, roadmap, or history of it, it still can be done. I am doing it, albeit slowly, but doing it.

HEALING? Yes & No

The Morning Goddess: enthralling throughout summer due to the unusually cool nights.

Talk of ‘healing’ makes my stomach turn. There is no healing, only managing the damage done. Well, there is, and isn’t.

The horrific feeling of being abnormal has mostly healed, though left with struggles of self-esteem permanently. But my internal ‘home’ offers more welcome and understanding as to why that exists accepting it with a more loving embrace.

And yes, admittingly there is healing in many areas, yet much damage was done by silencing me as a child causing irreparable damage than cannot be healed, changed, or reversed in any way, only coped with daily.

These are the truths of my life. To silence me at age 8 after a violent rape. To not administer medical attention. To leave me all alone with it stuffed inside for decades, because you and your cohorts (your sons) couldn’t bear that truth be told- that caused irreversible damage. Not what they did but silencing me and forcing me to be alone with it.

An 8-year-old child? Pummeled again and again by your other sons as they satisfied teenage lust on my little body? All alone. Suffering. Holding it in then- and for my life to come, until you died. (in my fifties)

By then it was too late. Though it all came out in my writings, every egregious ghastly detail, and with it the joys that were stuffed too, the damage was done. Repression represses joy too, creating a walking robot without feelings.

After you died I started to live, learning wholeness and love for self. It was my choice to remain gagged so that the little crumbs of love you gave could sustain me because I had not yet learned to love myself. How could I when who I was had been locked away?

The chronic severe C-PTSD is here to stay. There is no denying it, or if so, as with much of my life trying to keep up with others, unhealthy ramifications occur. There isn’t fear to jump in and try, but rather an outcome of disease. In trying to do things my body cannot cope with the severity increases exponentially.

Like camping. As the camper left yesterday swirling panic almost descends watching Samuel get it ready for the buyers to take it. Neither of us want to let go of over 40 years of camping in the woodsy mountains- campfires, biking among the pines down to the pristine lake, canoeing, our paddles softly licking the water’s surface as the loons near-by take a dive, sunsets of salmon, rose, and magenta, so many pleasures let go of.

But good-bye it was, along with all the gear, because my body cannot cope with being anywhere but home. When not home, finding my own home internally is about impossible.

So many years of pretending because that was required to be part of a ‘family.’ That caused the damage. Traumas kept inside caused physical ailments that worsen with age. The spirit, mind, and body are connected, and so much has been injured due to forced censoring that no amount of therapy of any kind will relieve or fix.

Only loving care to manage it. All the many things that need attending to are only attended to in the safety of my own home. And it does not have to make me weep, it can be decided on instead to bring me joy- joy in living, joy in finally feeling I have a right to be here too, joy in the little things which sweep me away with their beauty. Joy in that I finally honor the reality of where I am and why, learning who I am and liking what I find.