BOUNDARIES

As days accumulate without contact with any origin family, the more space and safety that is felt. There is also a burgeoning of self-esteem without the nagging feeling of being ganged up on and kept silenced when trying to fit in to this newly formed dysfunctional clan. Keep me down so that you can pretend there is a family to be had. Include me so that you feel good but disregard me.

But for me it is much safer to be apart feeling freer, authentic, and autonomous. Giving in to the pressure when others finally wanted to include me made me vulnerable. Because there is love, but it is not possible to both love and interact.

Feelings of love and hate eat internally because each still interact with the last surviving attacker who did the most destruction to me with his continuous cruelty. And never, not once, an apology or remorse.

To love from afar and not be drowned in memories, or the feeling of being held under without being able to breathe or feel free. It is harmful, deadly, and a very bad choice.

I was pushed into something unwanted, too easily done because doing what you want if you bug me enough works. Expensive gifts given by me, treating others to lunch on an outing, invites, visits. I tried. But again, and again it takes away all growth in a snap. Suddenly I am that child all alone in agony. Regret sets in, feeling weak with the wanting of family that just won’t be.

Give me my space to grow, love the ones safe to love, and be me. Give? I must take what is needed by setting boundaries. The wish that there’s a supportive family is not happening in my lifetime. It didn’t then, it won’t now.

My family is one I made, nurtured, and grew.

Wise Moves

It was a wise move to delete Seth’s response without reading it. Then I’m able to proceed with what I need to say unencumbered by negative, hurtful, angry, defensive responses which were what came from him after sending a link to my book. I wrote the following to him this morning:

I wish good things for you. There is a sweetness about you I have always loved. We share the same passion for nature and animals which touched me and made me smile so many times via emails. And you uplifted me when I was down, which was a lot.

Yet in spring an email was sent to Tom with our photo at the Mill after camping. It was only this past year that I finally asked both Don and Stevie not to add me to emails he was on. I didn’t think I had to ask you.

But after the criticism about writing the book detailing horrific abuse, the realization hit that your shame about what others in the family had done outweighed my need to finally have a life I wanted to live.

That you didn’t answer my email for a very long time? I was the victim, not you. For much of my life I’d lament to Samuel that I didn’t want to live. He finally told me how hard it was to hear that. So I changed it to, I wish I had never been born.

It wasn’t until after Mom died that I finally faced the truth and let it up. Before then I couldn’t destroy her fantasy family with the truth we both knew to be true. With it came the joys of childhood too. One chapter horror, the next one joyful. Because when one is suppressed so is the other.

I am not ashamed of writing the book. And you should applaud me for the courage in doing so. But it seems you want a fantasy sister. One who didn’t go through such horrors.

But in seeing only what you can handle, you deny the existence of who I really am, and the strength it took to get here.

I don’t want to give up the sweetness we shared, but I also cannot pretend to be this fake ‘Sis’ you seem to see me as.

You were there for me as much as you could be throughout life, uplifting me with humor and positivity. I am thankful for that. I don’t need anything from you anymore except to see me as I really am which includes the horrors you seem to need to pretend didn’t happen. As if hearing about it is harder than my going through it.

I’ve grown to see just what exceptional qualities lie inside of me. Something I’ve never seen or experienced before.   

REPRESSION

No matter how much is put in having body, mind and spirit mesh, the brokenness occurring at age eight might be permanent. That is impossible to accept.

Would work on repression help to mend this divide? The divide between body and mind go on as if no work was done. One positive that can be said, hard work is taken on daily.

With a working mother, my job was clean the kitchen and get dinner ready. No mother awaited us coming home from school no matter how much longing there was for it. That began at age eight when dad died, right there on the floor in front of us. Trauma enough, but every detail is burned into memory- no repression there..

There is at least one severe and traumatic attack that is repressed. Dan’s attack. Would that coming up help at all? Would it help these nights when nothing is much different but my body is on high. Seeing 2 AM while all others sleep SUCKS.

These males, not brothers- once you touch that way you are no brother, or family. I had 7 seven of them. the other three stood by, did nothing once hearing the truth, said nothing, but most injurious are buddies with the remaining attacker, but also were friendly with the ones now gone. It is not OK.

Night after night of uninterrupted zzz’s, then a night when after almost two hours of trying to sleep everything looms as a grave disaster causing a double dose of medication to sleep. What is the cure?

Walks in the meadow lately bring fear; bees, snakes, someone popping out of the forest to scare me, just as the attackers disguised as brothers would do each finding it funny. They must have hated me. Would reading about the repression of Danny’s attack help? Would finding out what repression does to the body help? Would remembering the violence of his rape help?

It must take enormous energy to repress diverting limited resources needed elsewhere. That repressing a memory every minute of every day must depletes precious energy even if it is unconscious.

The search for answers, truth, authenticity, and knowing my real self continues… along with the need to speak up to the origin family about my true anger with each of them. There is certainly a bucket of it, but the cork stuffing it is slow to open.

HEAVEN

It has taken an entire week to come back to a place where peace had cupped me in her arms. A week to come back down from severe PTSD affecting all systems dramatically causing real illness.

Without understanding why, the sad truth is that origin family members are like drinking poison. Go ahead drink it, but the sickness comes after…. every time. It was OK for a while when meeting with one at a time, but becoming so immersed with all three, as Seth’s wife was indisposed, became overwhelming.

They talk about another not there. If you have something to say to someone, say it to them. It does no good to discuss it with others. More importantly it’s disrespectful along with cowardly.

There is still a part of me wanting to do what others seem to do so easily. Attend a brunch, go on a spur of the moment camping trip, whatever. But again, no, my body will not comply splintering in a million pieces.

Coming home it took days to unwind. Finally peace seeps in fully. The sweet scent of blossoms are noticed, my breath is felt, and the songbirds fill me. By the creek the gift of a graceful heron fans her enormous wings as she glides past over the water looking for another fishing spot.

Heaven is again discovered as the sun shines down warming like an embrace, right here in my back-yard.

HONESTY

Tensing up when Criminal T comes on the news, whether concerning the upcoming impeachment, or anything else illegal he has done that keeps getting dug up the more others dig, mostly it’s relief causing my shoulders to un-crunch and relax.

Honesty, honesty leads the way. Not only in the oval office but in every institution the criminal sullied and turned into a sham of its former reputation.

Now there is freshness and hope. When a new director of each federal institution speaks- it is truth. If for some reason it isn’t, they will be gone in a heartbeat.

Honesty. My heart feels happy, lighter, and gay with it.