still going on

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.

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VAC
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Posts: 724
Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2011 1:16 am

Re: still going on

Post by VAC »

Fleur,

Thanks for asking. My daughter is a young professional woman and a musician. She is beautiful and strong. She has an adoring husband.
Ten years ago she was utterly destroyed.

She is a first time mom with a little girl who is her heart. I love to see my girl live.

She is still seeing a T on a weekly basis, the same wonderful woman who has walked her through hell from the beginning of recall.

The last several weeks I think I see the greatest downfall for me as a survivor: that is to try to make sense of the abuse and to find reason in it. It is healthy for me mentally to try to remember the good things about my parents when the descent begins back down into the abyss.

Even doing that has caused me to remember more and to trigger at odd things.

The desire to run has never left me. The more I remember about the child that I was I am amazed there was no intervention by teachers, doctors, etc. I was "rationally insane". I can't remember things about my parents that one would remember, such as birthdays. They were tortured people who were both amazingly intelligent and hard-working. The best description I can make of them is they lived under a "dark sentence".

I would like to talk to them. They both led incredible lives. They should not have led their lives together. The anger and disappointment I feel towards them concerning my childhood, and their diabolical role in my children's lives, is a futile and impotent thing.

They are dead in the hearafter.

My necessary vengeance is that we do not have the ordinary portraits or family images honoring them, and outside of private conversations with my wife, they are not mentioned in our family. They do not exist.


I have healthily realized there is way too much in life that is way too much.


I recently was in the back of a friend's yard: covered with leaves are enough bricks to build a small house. They sit there.


I have enough thoughts concerning all of the past that could build a house of thought, a prison for me, more or less. Those thoughts can sit there, the images dismissed.


There are places in our city that are not safe to go.

I pause when I have an image emerge. It comes from a place in me that was unknown for a lifetime. If I remember it more than once....otherwise it can disappear and never be a part of me again. There are places in me not safe to navigate unless there is a good reason for me to remember.

I have to choose. When I don't, I fall down a long flight of stairs in my inner man.
VAC
Member
Posts: 724
Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2011 1:16 am

Re: still going on

Post by VAC »

Hello,

My last post was heavy....sorry.

Put a dear friend to rest this week...one of her last wishes was that those who loved her take a flower from the casket and put it in water. Watch it bloom and think of her and her love for gardening.

I have a white rose on a counter. In my yard are generational plants she gave me almost thirty years ago. I am going to get some rooting hormone and do my best to root that long stemmed rose.

I truly miss the chat room from the first days I came to this wonderful place. I wonder what has become of several people.

I have been so resistant to writing a book/books, with several offers to publish when I produce a manuscript. Even though I am constantly around others, I am very much a recluse in my heart. The part of me that needs to interact with others does so often, then i need to be alone. Someone has suggested I do an audio book. I have an odd speaking voice, and a heavy accent, but that might be a breakthrough avenue.

I am regularly put into a position I have to help others make life-changing decisions: sometimes this is good, sometimes not. I feel the weight of this more than ever before. Peoples eyes are like clear deep pools in which i can often see the bottom; not all the time, but often. My wife knows that side of me, and is usually aware when I am "there".

I am so personally sorry for the hard things and horrific sorrows others have to face in this life.

The part of me that wants to run wants to pull back from everyone I know and love and to seek invisibility among strangers in place so remote or so large, the prying eyes of soul hunters can't find me. That is when I have to fight disappearing into a hollow place inside where I can disappear.

When I do this, I neglect everything that is important.

Occasionally my wife will say, "Come back to me".

We have a deal, a premarital deal, that we will never chew on or holler at each other. Believe it or not, we have not in almost 40 years (too much like childhood for both of us). I possess a good vocabulary which I can use ruthlessly. Because of that if I really get angry and anything I could say would be toxic, damaging, never forgotten javelins: I get very quite.

She knows. It usually is not her fault, but something that pushes one of my hidden places. The worst I have ever done is to ask her to stop the car, and get out and walk. It is best. She does the same. The power of angry words is overwhelming. We have always gone to look for one another the very few times this has happened.

Honestly, I think we would move away and start over elsewhere, but we are needed.

Our daughter needs us.

One of my personal statements to all things visible and invisible during times of craving running away, is to plant something in the yard that is different and that I want to see come to maturity.

I also have been cleaning out storage areas....throwing things away, giving things away: more to come.


My inner man longs for a place where the mountains meet the sea and I can return to the aquatic life I once lived; simultaneously that same hidden one longs for a walled mid-town oasis deep within a metropolis.


Saying that, how sad I am for the destruction of that great cathedral, Notre Dame. There can never be enough beauty and grandeur on the earth.
VAC
Member
Posts: 724
Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2011 1:16 am

Re: still going on

Post by VAC »

Hello to all....

Days well spent with visitors from faraway places.

Have another dog who occupies the spot our beloved Rio left empty a couple of years ago.

The weather here has been phenomenal.

V.
Harmony
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Re: still going on

Post by Harmony »

What sort of dog did you get? I have been really longing for a big fluffy dog.

hope all is well,
Harmony
VAC
Member
Posts: 724
Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2011 1:16 am

Re: still going on

Post by VAC »

Harmony,

A black, white, and silver merle Pomeranian.....Maggie May.


V.
Fleur
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Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2011 9:23 am

Re: still going on

Post by Fleur »

Hello VAC


Thank you for writing so eloquently. Often your words paint pictures that reflect something in my life experience

May you see many plantings flourish, mature and here's hoping the root stock powder assists this special rose to grow strong

Wishing you many happy years of memories with Maggie May


Much caring
Onward to a safe community for all people in which to thrive ~ gentle hugs [if okay] ~ Fleur
VAC
Member
Posts: 724
Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2011 1:16 am

Re: still going on

Post by VAC »

Fleur,

Thanks...when the children were at home, we had our own little zoo.

Lately I have had many "flurries" of memories with only a few seconds of exposure to words or scenes on tv, or conversations that people have around me....
also the same with buildings and scenes in places I have lived.


None of it are things I want to remember or need to remember, but, as I say, those who have always known have all my respect.
I was a time bomb as a child and violent when provoke to breaking and I truly believe I was spared from knowing until I was beyond vengeance.


The positive side to this is that I believe I am healing when something comes up from the abyss. I see it as an infection that is being removed.


I have wanted to be chatter box about CSA and believe there is a good time and place for it, but in my case it is that demand to shock and to be shameless unless I tame myself. That was my lashback against drowning in shame as a kid, to be as brazenly shameless as I could fathom. I have an excellent T, a long-time friend who is semi-retired. We have an extended talk once a month or so.


My daughter is a valiant young woman...still in T weekly. She has a good husband. I mourn for the folly of my dad and mom, and whatever hell descended from the generations before them. It is sometimes hard for me to be with her for long just because the day she had recall was the end of life as I had known it, and the terror of my soul the moment I had recall. I knew then my dad had most likely done my kids too.


I have asked my son a number of times, and he says no, but he is very complicated, emerging from a long night. We talk. He too, has been blessed with a good wife.


I know that one day my wife, and daughter, and I will write a book together about our family experience.


At the same time, my wife's family has become maniacal and seem bent on doing as much damage to her as possible while they are still on the earth....it is a hard thing for one to realize he or she is so completely hated by those so completely loved.

Recently I was mistaken for being years older. I was at a conference and a new acquaintance told me I needed to change my photograph, as it was obiviously from so many years ago. I told him that photo was only ten years old.


He asked me what happened to me. I told him was in the 6th year of a 7 year court battle after my father's death and I had to face in the next two years how completely he hated me and all I loved and had sought to destroy all that was precious to me.

He bowed his head and said he was sorry.
At this time I am seeking to regain my heart and my strength.


I don't hate my parents. I know betrayal as all of us on this site do. I revel at the madness of them, or rather my dad who drove us all over the edge.


Monster, monstrous beloved monster. I know more about him in my heart than I say.


None of us were created to live in pervasive sorrow. I have tried to make our lives pleasant inasmuch as is in my power to do so. both my wife and I have stopped walking on eggshells around the kids, now adults. It is a growing process for us all.
Fleur
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Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2011 9:23 am

Re: still going on

Post by Fleur »

Oh my VAC


I feel for you. How horrid to have not only suffered in his lifetime but also years after the funeral

So sorry about harm to your daughter

Remembrance does alter perspective

May you enjoy the rest of the clearance


Much caring
Onward to a safe community for all people in which to thrive ~ gentle hugs [if okay] ~ Fleur
VAC
Member
Posts: 724
Joined: Wed Jul 27, 2011 1:16 am

Re: still going on

Post by VAC »

Fleur,

I would dare to say I do not believe my experience is unique....long before I had recall I had to deal with folks in professional setting with generational incest three deep, and doing studies, found out it went back farther.

I remember thinking several in our family acted oddly, and it caught my attention when I was young. They were stressed, strained, trying too hard to be ok.

I asked hard questions about my dad to older family members a lifetime before I had recall. He was sorrow on legs, and a grief to himself as well, one of the most truly conflicted people I have ever known. He was a dynamic personality, damaged, bestial, sorrowful, childlike, awful, wonderful. I know he never realized how precocious I was until he had done his damage, and then he lived in fear of me the rest of his life.

I could climb and swim at a very early age...it was nothing for me to terrorize them before I was three, and I knew what I was doing.


I was truly a dangerous child and would have been institutionalized in today's world.

One thing that I want you and others who read this to know is that I had only began to be at peace with myself shortly before I had recall. Years of insomnia were fading away, and I could look in the mirror and be truly satisfied with what looked back. That was a good decade for me. I never liked to be still long enough to think about the walls and hidden places I could not make my mind walk beyond. Honestly I could have lived forever without knowing, but the damage had already been done.

I honestly believe my daughter's sanity hinged on me being able to look her in the face and tell her I believed her and knew it was true....when she said, "Daddy, how do you know?"

I was able to look into her dear eyes and tell her, "Because he did the same to me and I did not remember in time to save you."

This is a poisonous sorrow and vexation to me.

Once without knowing what was going on behind the scenes with my daughter, we were at a family dinner. My father was snarling about my younger brother and insulted me. I was not a physically weak man. I sat at one end and my dad at the other, and I pushed the table against him and pinned him against a buffet. I rose up to beat him. I looked at the fear in his eyes, and my wife and children, and my mother.

They knew I was going to hurt him.

I looked at mother and knew she would lose her mind if I did. I also knew I would probably kill him.

I demanded an apology from him which he gave begrudgingly, pulled the table back and sat down.

Knowing what I know now, I wish I had, but vengeance does not suit me.

All that is past and can't be undone or relived. I was a slave to "family tradition". No more. I won't elaborate on all that, but it has died a slow death in me. I realize the rage that wants me is an unwanted inheritance I can easily refuse.

No more for now...I have a good life, I am loved, and I love.
Fleur
Member
Posts: 13378
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2011 9:23 am

Re: still going on

Post by Fleur »

Hello VAC


Generational abuse is dreadful. I'm glad you stopped yourself from harming others

Understand how it must hurt knowing how your Dad continued abuse of your daughter

I wouldn't leave my son alone with my Dad for similar reasons

Yet I did hurt my child, albeit more minor and profusely apologising. I honestly don't know how my Dad can live with himself

Letting go of vengeance is huge

Wishing you and your family very well on all levels


Much caring
Onward to a safe community for all people in which to thrive ~ gentle hugs [if okay] ~ Fleur
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