This is a place for old members to come and share how their healing journeys have progressed.
Its also a place for those members to reconnect and share their experiences.
VAC,
You did not trigger me at all. Quite the opposite. You reminded me that not all people who have faith are intentionally hurtful.
I'm sorry I wrote something that made you think that.
I felt so angry that your father would hurt you so, and it made me think that we are all connected in our experiences. I just felt moved to share my pain. Please believe me when I say that in no way was it related to your post.
I am moved by your thoughts, stories, and reflections.
Thank you for checking back in.
I was thinking tonight about the last few posts and I remembered a young man I knew many years ago....I can't say we were friends, as I do not know if he had any.
He was physically powerful and could be violent. His dad was a preacher who had abused him.
If he got drunk and started on his dad it was awful...it leaked out of him.
I do not know what became of him...have not seen him or thought of him in over 40 years.
I also have a friend who grew up in a Catholic orphanage....it was bad.
I guess the thing that bothers me most about this kind of abuse and CSA in general, is the two places children should be safe are home and houses of worship...enough said.
VAC,
I agree, and I think it happens at those places because they are where we would suspect the least abuse. Trust. It's all about trust.
I will probably always distrust religious organizations. Mainly because they require a certain amount of privacy and power.
I am working through a lot of memories of physical abuse by my teachers and principals since I attended all Baptist schools K-12. There were a couple years where I was in public schools and although I still got in tons of trouble, I wasn't punished to the same degree as those "Christian" schools.
I did have a few loving teachers, though. They really affected me since they were few and far between. They were the light the divine gave me to keep me going.
Rumbling here...soul quaking I call it.
My mind has always swirled and I have to put a book mark in....I would pick out a task and follow it to completion, otherwise it would be forgotten.
Soul quake, rumbling, inner trembling: we have infrequent earth tremors here, not at all like in the West, but the dog always knows it before they are ever tangible; the birds act different too.
If I were in a different genre of life, I would say there were times I verge on being an empath ( I believe many survivors are like this). A T told me once that many survivors of early childhood abuse have heightened sensory and emotional awareness.
I continue to remember minute details stretching back to early childhood and coming forward not directly connected to the acts of abuse, but still connected. The amazing thing about these vignettes is that I now see them up to the point the event or scene that happened, but then go on to see a different, terrible outcome from which I was spared. I know that sound bizarre, but it has made me grateful.
Lately I have had to tangibly resist the emotional detachment and what I call the "driftingness" that charachterized my earlier life. I have not been afraid to love, but I have to consciously remain in the now of reality, and not be so imprinted by negativity. These details I remember and the "could have been" outcome have helped me feel grounded.
Other details that have haunted me, but are taking a positive spin, more so lately, is to remember how completely miserable my dad seemed much of the time. It is sort of like going back to a house that was burned and finding charred remains of events. He was a conflicted man with a child he had damaged and did not realize I could not remember. I stared holes in him. I did crazy things. He was afraid of me.
I always felt sorry for him, but at the same time, was filled with vengeance. He also knew I was fairly impervious to pain and punishment. I have remembered his terror of me, how he always stumbled in my presence. There were other abusers besides my dad--they are unknown to me; I believe mercifully so. Those parts of it are a haze I do not want to see into clearly to be blunt, but if it comes I will live.
His words to me after the abuse stopped were much worse to me than the things he did physically. I know he was insane now, very functionally so, but he did not possess the gates of his own soul. He was a serial adulterer and I knew this from an early age. I ponder what else he did, and am horrified at what I do know.
To many he was a kind and generous man who went out of his way to help people in need; to others he was a monster.
I also have realized I was a stranger to my parents. In so many ways they did and would do anything for me, but it was toxic and guilt ridden.
The rumbling and soul quakes I experience denote a profound vulnerability I feel....sort of like going to the doctor and knowing it is going to hurt? Like a wound which must be cleaned. It makes me feel very sober and serious.
I had an elderly friend who came to me close to 20 years ago when she was in her later 80's(this was several years before I had recall); she wanted to talk to me about her dad. They had a large family; they were poor. Her dad worked slavishly to take care of the family. She told me she never knew why he decided to begin molesting her, but he did, and it went on for years. She told me her mother did not know and she knew he never touched the other children.
She left home and married early.
She wanted to forgive her dad, but knew she could not talk to him or tell her mom. She thought long and hard about it and decided to write him a letter. She told me the content, that she wanted him to know that she knew how hard he had to work, and how difficult life was for them. She thanked him for keeping a roof over their heads and keeping them fed. She told him that if she had ever been a disappointment to him as a daughter to please forgive her.
She said that when her dad died, she went back to help her mom clean the house. She went into her dad's chest of drawers and in the top drawer, she found that letter she had written, in pieces because it had been handled so much, and the ink stained with tears. She was reading the letter again and contemplating its condition.
Her mom was standing behind her without her knowledge and walked in. She told her,
"I never knew that that letter meant to your dad, but I can't tell you how many times I walked in and found him laid across that chest of drawers with it in his hands, sobbing."
I know that many abusers just don't care. I also wonder if her mother knew or did not. I do know that if an abuser has any conscience they pay for what they do....
.....so I say all this to say, I am coming to peace with my past. I dearly loved my fragmented father. Most of my present physical suffering is due to serious, untreated childhood injuries I can lay at his feet--it was not a lack of money, but rather I know he was terrified a doctor would know what he had done to me. I suspect another adult abuser was someone he knew, but don't know, can't prove it, don't want to.
I can't change the past. I spent several years unraveling his madness at great cost.
I seriously do not want to be a bully on this site or cause sorrow or suffering to anyone else....but I can't live with hate. It is not a fuel that does well in the gas tank of my soul.
I absolutely hate what people do....recently I am having to deal with resentment and bitter disappointment with things people I love deeply have done, not from years ago, but in recent history. I can't draw a circle around my life and dare the vulnerablity of love or of facing what I do not want to remember to step over the line.
I could write more here about some childhood things, but when I start to rumble inside, I believe some healing is happening. I also believe I am about to remember some things.
Recently I have had an experience I have not had in over forty years...I had savage insomnia for years, even from a child. I became a different being in the dark, and have never really cared for it. I would lie down and would begin to travel in my mind. The raging storm would slow down and I would be in a car, in the driver's seat, and I would drive for hours, with the scenery flashing by. I could see everything on both sides. That is literally something I used to do, drive all night on rural backroads, in isolation, but that was what I called sleep looked like too.
Just recently that happened again, just for a bit. Rumbling. Thankful that is not my present reality.
Such a luxury to be able to take a nap, and to sleep at night.
I sometimes have these soul quakes if I am going to have to face complicated or heartbreaking issues in the lives of people I will meet.
WE are all on a Journey. I have driven through storms before that were incredible....I have had a few chase me across the country when I was doing my best to drive out of them, but I knew if I held the road and payed attention, I would be fine, even if I was driving far slower than I liked.
Sometimes I fear what I will remember or find out. I have started some minor investigation, as I had my dna done, and not much matches what I was told growing up. I know I am my parents' child, however.
I am much more interested in how I end this Journey than how it started.
