How To Hurt

    I am hurting a lot today.  My heart is very, very sad.

    I'm still learning how to do grief and pain.  For a long time I have used food to mask it when it comes up; some people drink, do drugs, or have other coping behaviors.  The religion I was brought up in discourages use of alcohol, so the "good girl" version of addictive behavior for me is reaching for comfort food when I feel sad.

    I didn't realize for a long time that I was doing this; a lot of times I just felt this compulsion to eat.  I did go through a period of time where I overate, a LOT.  I have lost about 60 pounds and don't generally overeat as far as volume goes, but darned if I don't eat the wrong things when I'm not in a good emotional state. What I realized over time was that not only was I eating in response to feeling sad, but when I did so I literally did feel better emotionally. There was a chemical change that took place and I didn't hurt as much. There are a few reasons why, although in the short-term I feel better when I do this, it's not a good idea. First, not good for my health.  Food may always be there for me, but. . .it's always there for me.  Like, it stays on the hips and stomach.  I also don't want diabetes and I still need to lose more weight.  Second, when food deadens the pain, it doesn't get rid of it; it stuffs it back down. There is still a residual ache, and it's just a matter of time before it comes back up.  I also learned over time that when I felt that pain or sudden anxiety/panic, etc. that was my system indicating that something was coming up for processing, so masking it and stuffing it back down wasn't allowing me to do the healing work my system was indicating it was ready for.

    I've been told that I've never seen grief through all the way.  If you visualize being on one side of a lake with the lake symbolizing the grief process and needing to get across the lake to the other side, I've never gotten to the other side.  I have usually gotten about halfway across the lake and then gotten stuck, then go back to the side I just came from rather than continuing through the water to the other side--so I've been carrying a huge amount of grief around with me throughout my life.  Part of the reason is that growing up it wasn't safe for me to express what I needed to and I have carried that nonexpression into my adult life. Besides eating, there are other ways to distract yourself from feeling grief.  Shopping, staying "too" busy, hyperfocusing on other things or the needs of other people, etc.  I'm the poster child for all of this.

    One thing I hate about trauma-related healing work is that when I'm processing something hard and then get to where I feel like I'm in a pretty good place, it's not long before I start feeling that old feeling again ("that old feeling" can show up in many ways for me: a sudden feeling of panic or anxiety that seems to come out of nowhere, feeling a sudden compulsion to stay overly busy all the time, compulsions to stay up all night and not let myself sleep, feelings of depression and hopelessness when I've been fine and taking steps to support feeling that way on an ongoing basis, sabotaging myself on the eating front when I've otherwise been doing really well) and something else comes up.  There are so many layers.  Sometimes I feel like it will never be done.

    I went to the pool late this morning and did water aerobics; I always feel better after I've been in the water. Besides the exercise, I find that I am able to literally release a lot of stress into the water. Even if I have a day where I don't do a great "workout," I still feel better just from being in the water.  As I was changing, etc. afterward I was keenly aware of this pain.  This past weekend was a major conference event at church where there were many speakers and I found some of the talks to be just what I needed to hear.  But other talks hurt.

    One of the age-old questions that comes up about God is why He allows pain and suffering, and this is why a lot of people don't believe that there can be a God.  The explanation I hear and that makes sense to me is that God can't interfere with our free agency and that learning to use our agency is one of the reasons we are here on earth. Intellectually I get it, but I am having the hardest time with the fact that sometimes there is intervention. Sometimes people do get strong promptings that help them avoid danger.  I was in danger from the time I was born, and I was in an environment that made me vulnerable to further abuse and being used by other people. I wasn't protected.  Furthermore, these circumstances conditioned me to not readily trust my instincts when they signaled to me that something was wrong, and so throughout my life I have had poorer boundaries than the average person and have been more vulnerable to opening myself up to unhealthy people and situations.

    Many people would be quick to point out that God has helped me persevere through everything, and generally I'm part of that group. But a huge part of me feels so betrayed by that same God who I have tried to put my trust in my whole life.  As an adult one of my sole, constant prayers was for my children to be protected, and while we gave them a better home environment in a lot of ways, I have learned of abuses that happened to them.  To me, that has been the ultimate slap in the face.  With all that I endured, I just wanted my children to be safe and well, and it feels to me like God just turned his head the other way and said, "Ummm, let me think about it. . .actually, no. There are other people who are more important than you, so that's where I'm going to direct my attention."  Sometimes I hate God.  And then I feel guilty because that's not showing faith in Him, and then I feel that being that way makes it so I'm not as worthy to be blessed as someone who doesn't have these feelings.

    One of the constant things that comes up when I'm hurting is this feeling that I don't matter, that I'm an afterthought, that by my nature I'm not as worthwhile as other people.  The message I got from my mother early on was that my very existence wasn't acceptable.  So many people have always seen me as a project that they needed to fix, or someone to feel sorry for.  Very rarely was I built up or allowed to "just be."

Nothing New

    Just got back from a therapy session, where I worked on processing the incident where the uncle I alluded to seeing at the funeral last week sexually abused me.

    This was the first person I associated with abusing me in this way when the memories started coming up.  As I mentioned before, I spent a lot of time several years ago working on it and vacillated quite a bit between denial and acceptance.  It felt right to address it again today and I got a lot of clarity, which actually confirmed what I already knew but had been afraid to completely embrace as fact.

I was four years old and he was 17.  He was the family golden child. He raped me, full penetration, during my nap time while my family was staying with my dad's parents after moving back to the states from being on active duty in the Army.  My mom and dad had left me and my brother with my step-grandmother while they went house hunting.  We slept in a room up in the attic.  He told me at some point that he would kill me if I told anyone.

    On either that day or another day I went to tell my step-grandmother that "Sometimes Uncle _____ is bad," and he tried to stop me from going down the stairs, resulting in me falling down a very steep flight of wooden attic stairs.  He ran down after me and I was surprised that he acted so solicitous and concerned about if I was okay or not, because 1) what he had done before hurt and that didn't seem to bother him and 2) since he threatened to kill me, why would he be worried about me hurting myself falling down the stairs.  Obviously he was covering up and was putting on an act in front of his mom; maybe he snapped out of whatever fog he was in and realized that I could have died, that it was almost obviously his fault for struggling with me on the stairs and he didn't want me to say anything about the struggle so he didn't have to explain why that went on.  When I tried to tell her, she became furious with me for not staying upstairs where I belonged.  She was crocheting.

    I have an image of my younger brother standing up in a crib up in the attic during some aspect of all of what went on.  I don't know if I should tell him any of this.

    When my mom and dad got back from house hunting after I got in trouble for coming downstairs, step-grandmother went on a tirade about what an inconvenience it was that they were having her babysit and how we were misbehaving, etc. and they made a quick decision to leave because of how angry and unreasonable she was.  I definitely had the sense that they were frustrated and felt very responsible for the fact that we had to leave. We went and stayed with my maternal grandmother until my parents found a house for us to live in.

    Two years after that this uncle went to Hawaii to do some volunteer church service.  I remember it being a big deal that he was "such a neat guy" to do this and remember all the hooplah with the family greeting him at the airport when he came home. He, of course, was sporting a Hawaiian shirt and leis and was quite the celebrity.  At the party at the house afterward he was playing the piano and I came over and pushed some of the piano keys.  I wanted to see if he remembered me and he gave me a weird look and said, "Who are YOU?" I said my name and he just looked at me like I had lost my mind and he had no idea who I was. So then I felt very stupid and self-conscious.

    I remember that when he became engaged and got married, I couldn't wrap my head around it.  He must have said something when he raped me about this being what mommies and daddies do. Even though I compartmentalized the incident, I retained some sense of it because I remember looking at her and wondering why she wanted to be with someone who was bad.  Then as I watched how he acted and she responded to him, I wondered if she knew how bad he was. She was very pretty and nice.  When I watched them it seemed so weird to me that he acted so "normal" and that everyone thought he was so wonderful.  I really think that that kind of thing plays into keeping victims quiet--if everything seems normal then what happened has to be impossible.

    I bet he never told his fiance that he had already had practice for the honeymoon.  I wonder if she was enough for him or if he needed to bother their daughters, too.  Now that the encounter at the funeral is over, I keep picturing me leaning in when he hugged me to say, "Does your wife know that you practiced on little girls before you got married?"

    I compartmentalized so well that when I was engaged I kept having the thought, "I wonder if I'm a virgin." Then I would wonder why I was thinking something so absurd, because I had saved myself for when I got married. I started remembering on my honeymoon when I realized that "I know this. This isn't new."

    One of the things we addressed quite a bit today was the threat he made to kill me if I told anyone.  When someone says that to a four year old, the child believes them.  As we talked today I told her that the therapist who worked with me on this several years ago was probably ready to rip his hair out because when it came to the question of confrontation or just telling in therapy I kept saying, "I can't.  He'll kill me," even though I didn't have a super clear memory of that.  I felt it with everything in my gut.  It didn't matter how much we went the rounds with him telling me that perps are the most cowardly people in the world, that statute of limitations was up so he was free and clear from being prosecuted so it would be stupid of him to mess that up now, that he lived in another state, and if he did kill me then he was really stupid because there would be a clear trail that the police would figure out, because both my therapist and my husband knew what I've been processing and he would be the #1 suspect.  I could see what he was saying with my head, but that emotional conviction that he would do what he said couldn't be reasoned with.  I think the work we did today will help a lot with that.  Still don't know that I'll ever write a letter of confrontation but maybe now I won't be so scared to say something to family members if I feel it's needed.  I don't expect to be believed but I don't want to be frightened to death about talking, either.

Reflections On a Funeral

    As I alluded to in my last post, my husband and I attended a funeral service on Saturday for one of my uncles (husband of one of my dad's sisters).  He was in his 70s and died in his sleep; pretty good way to go, to my way of thinking--although I would probably like to be a little older when I go (if I'm in reasonably good health and not a burden to my children).  My dad was one of nine children and we used to have summer and Christmas family reunions; you can imagine that with that size of a family all having their own families, that always meant a LOT of people.  There were also a lot of bridal and baby showers.  I had a lot of anxiety when it came to being in large groups of people, especially if I didn't know them well.  This aunt and uncle were always very kind and I felt calmer around them.  I really didn't know them super well outside of family events because we lived in a different city than most of my dad's siblings as we were growing up. Since I can't say we had a close relationship, I didn't really feel a lot of personal grief; I went to the funeral to show support for my aunt and cousins.  My father passed away 21 years ago so I know what it feels like to lose a parent.

    When we got there we headed to the room where they were having the viewing and as we were waiting in line I saw my mother inside and thought, "Great.  She's already here."  I was kind of hoping to be seated, etc. before she arrived.  The last funeral we had was for one of my cousin's husbands and my sister and I went up with her and she just kind of sat off to the side and waited for people to come to her.  She acted annoyed when I left the three chairs we were sitting on to go and interact with some of my cousins and say hello to people.  It's funny; she always complains about these family functions being clannish and that no one breaks out of their individual family groups to sit by anyone else, but then when I do it she acts weird.  This time she seemed pretty animated and smiley.  She came out as we were signing the book to go in and I just didn't look her way.  She went and sat in the foyer of the church with one of my brothers, his wife and son. After my husband and I gave our condolences we mingled to say hello to cousins, aunts, etc.

    Then I saw a face I hadn't seen for quite a number of years and decided I needed to find a restroom.  I can't believe I didn't consider that he might be there.  An uncle who lives out of state and hardly ever comes this way.  The last time I saw him was at an aunt's funeral several years ago and everyone made a big deal, saying, "Did you see that Uncle So-and-so is here?"  When it happened at that aunt's funeral I froze and felt kind of sick to my stomach, not wanting him to see me.  But then I decided for some reason that I needed for him to know that I wasn't scared of him so I marched up to him and said, "Do you remember me? I'm ______" and gave him a hug.  He was very uncomfortable.  Right after that is when I started having memories surface of him abusing me, and I spent a LOT of time in therapy dealing with that, doing memory work, trying to trust myself and going in circles between denial and acceptance.

    As we were headed to the bathroom, we of course had to acknowledge my mother who was in the foyer and I was really amazed at how normal she acted, smiling and acting like we are just the best pals ever, a far cry from the cold and distant woman who has been freezing me out for the past year and a half as we have dealt with our daughter's health problems.  Rather than support she has acted like we've been lying or exaggerating, and using that as an excuse to not come to her house for family dinners and the like.  This past holiday season was horrible and illustrated plainly to me just how vindictive she can be if she doesn't get her way on something, regardless of the circumstances. Anyway, that is a story for another post, maybe.  This time I just kind of played a long and told her I liked her pink sweater and she said I looked nice.  My husband said I gave him quite the look over her shoulder.  After we left the restrooms we went back into the viewing area to be there for the family prayer (I also didn't want to hang out in the foyer with my mom).  I got talking to one of my cousins who then pulled the aforesaid uncle over to us and said, "Uncle So-and-so, you remember ________ (me), don't you?" and I was completely floored at how natural the uncle acted.  I had no intention of going in for a hug but he did, and although I returned the embrace I definitely had a wall up and he could only get so far.  Afterward I thought, "It is weird that I don't feel more freaked out."

    As I watched my mom and this uncle, I was really struck by how NORMAL they looked and acted.  They didn't look like they have been wrestling with a guilty conscience, they didn't look like older age has been unkind to them as a consequence of the terrible things they have done.  My mom looked great.  He looked good.  They seemed happy. This is probably what bothered me the most when the shock set in AFTER the funeral was over.  It doesn't seem right that they should fit in so well with everyone else and look so normal. It strikes me that this is one of the freakiest aspects of abusers--they don't look like bad guys. They don't act like bad guys. It is so covert and secret. They must do some serious compartmentalizing to be able to do those kinds of things and then just move on like nothing ever happened.  It's so weird to me.

    During the funeral service my cousins (children of the deceased) each spoke and gave tribute and it seemed very evident that they loved their father very much.  It seems that their family functions well and they actually like each other.  As they spoke about learning experiences they had growing up it was very evident that this was a father who treated his family with love and respect, and guided them in that way, as well.  I sat there and wondered what it's going to be like when my mom passes away.  I've wondered this many times and I really have no idea how it's going to be for me.  I did make a decision quite awhile ago that I am not going to be the one to organize everything, and I am not planning on speaking.  I don't know if I'll be sad or relieved that she is gone.  The legacy that my mother is leaving behind so far is a very sad one in many ways. She has left so much pain in her wake, which includes fractured relationships between me and my siblings, because of the way she gossips and spins whatever she is saying in a way that casts her in a noble light--whether it's correct or not.  Our home growing up was one with a lot of yelling, belittlement, beating and threatening, and using fear and anger to control.

    So when that time comes, do I play the game and contribute to the facade?  My plan so far is to attend but to be there quietly and graciously thank people for coming.  I know people in similar parental situations who have chosen not to attend their parent's funeral because of where they are in their healing and they deal with backlash from the other family members.  I don't think the backlash would be worth it to me personally to stay away, so I don't think I will choose that option, but I don't think I can sit and act like she was this wonderful, giving person (something I will hear from her church congregation because she puts on quite the show where church is concerned).  It's so sad that I am even having to consider these things.

    What a legacy.

Tired and Triggered

    Rough couple of days; I attended a funeral yesterday for one of my uncles, who was a good man.  I wasn't really close to him but in the very large family on my father's side we had family reunions once or twice a year, and many baby and bridal showers for cousins as we grew up.  He was a quiet, softhearted person and his children spoke of him with great love.  It was very evident that he guided his family with love.  During the viewing beforehand I became aware that an uncle who lives in another state was there, and he is the first one I connected to being sexually abused.  My mother and a couple of my brothers were there at that time and she acted like absolutely nothing was wrong and was smiley and huggy with me--consistent with how she changes in public.  I think I handled myself well; my husband asked me at one point if I was okay and I said I was. Afterwards we went to lunch and I felt like I was kind of in shock and was very tired when we went home.  He told me he was worried about me being triggered being around my siblings and mother when I told him I wanted to go and honestly I hadn't really thought about it.  I just didn't want to be in a position where I was reliant on any of them for a ride there or back.  I wanted to pay my respects to a good man and show support for my aunt and cousins. It didn't dawn on me for a minute that this other uncle would be there, so that threw me a little. I will post more about my reflections from the funeral tomorrow.

    Today at church was the annual children's program where the children's organization does a presentation for the rest of the congregation as our worship service.  It was beautiful and sweet.  I found myself crying during one of the songs called "Heavenly Father, Are You Really There?" and realized that my inner child was very triggered.  I felt like I was little again and desperately praying to God for help and trying to feel some sense of being cherished and special.  I'm struggling with the fact that I wasn't protected from the sexual abuse, and that my mother was so abusive in other ways.  No one rescued me from my situation.  I guess I need to focus on the fact that I made it through all of it, and maybe it was divine intervention that helped me get through, but I often wonder why I was put in those circumstances in the first place.  I was sitting on the stand to the side during the program because I am the organist for our worship service, so in a way I felt like I was one of the children in the program, remembering times when that was me and seeing my parents faces watching me.  There was always a nonverbal sense of them watching that what I said and the way I acted gave any indication made them look good.  One of the songs talks of "parents kind and dear" and that was a further trigger.  At the end of the song there is a phrase about heavenly glory being ours if we can but endure. I found myself thinking, "When is it enough?  I've been enduring all my life."  I'm tired.  I've always pushed forward through tremendous force trying to stop me from doing so and sometimes I feel like I just can't do it anymore.

    I told my husband afterward that I needed to leave rather than stay for the remaining meetings and although we don't normally do this on Sunday, he took me to a restaurant to eat and talk things out. He is so wonderful, the way he listens and doesn't judge.  He is also an abuse survivor so sometimes I worry that when I need to talk he doesn't need to hear it because he deals with his own stuff.  I will write more about today's experiences, as well, but right now I need to go to bed.

Broken Mirror, But Not Broken Baby

I have had a memory come up quite a bit lately that just won't settle down and leave, so I feel like I need to write about it and give it the attention it is obviously asking for.  This one is not a repressed memory; I've always had it.  I haven't dwelt on it throughout my life, but as it's come up this time I'm struck by how strongly my needs were disregarded as a very, very small child.  I was clothed and fed and kept clean, but my parents were completely out of tune with me emotionally and when it came to me needing to express myself or tell them when something was wrong.

I am the oldest of six children; there is me, four brothers, and my sister at the very end.  My father enlisted in the U.S. Army during the Korean war and ended up making a career in the military.  When I was born he was in O.C.S. (Officer Candidate School) in Ft. Lee, Virginia and was in various trainings after that so they relocated depending on where the trainings were.  When I was about two he was sent to Viet Nam for a year, and my mother got pregnant with my first brother when she met my dad on leave in Hawaii.  I was one month shy of being three years old when he was born in Pueblo, Colorado.  My dad was then stationed in Okinawa; he went ahead for a time while my mother moved back to the general area they were from when they met with me and my brother while my dad got things settled and got a house on base in Okinawa.

Somewhere with all those moves there was a day when we were first moving into a house and there was unpacking, etc. going on.  A neighbor lady came over to introduce herself and she and my mom were talking as they were unpacking in my parents' bedroom.  There was a full-length mirror leaning against one of the walls and I saw that my little brother was crawling towards it.  I saw that if someone didn't pick him up or move the mirror, he was going to get hurt.  I tried to get my mother's attention but she and the other lady were involved in what they were talking about and hadn't noticed what was going on.  My mother didn't want me bothering her while she talked.  I was frantic about my brother getting hurt, so I ran over to the mirror and got in front of it to block him just as he got to it and the mirror shattered.  I knew when it broke that my mother was going to be furious with me.  The noise got the ladies' attention and my mother's first reaction was rage as she ran over and picked up the baby.  She was furious that I ran over to the mirror and it broke.  Getting after me for running in the house and endangering my baby brother.  It wasn't until the other lady said, "Oh my gosh, she's hurt," and I looked down to see there was blood spilling down my front that my mother thought to see if I was okay.  The other lady kind of took charge and moved me to the kitchen to clean me up.  I had two huge gashes down the middle of my stomach; I still have the scars.  This lady was really nice to me and because of the way she was reacting, my mother's reaction towards me softened.  She was more solicitous and asked if I was okay.  I still remember how genuinely kind and concerned the neighbor lady was, and that she was really worried about me.  I remember how gentle she was as she started cleaning me up, and I remember that that reaction was new to me.  I knew I was going to be in trouble.  My mother's first thought was not to see if I was okay. She was inconvenienced that her conversation was interrupted and furious that her mirror was broken, and it was my fault.  I was punished for running in the house and breaking the mirror, and I was never given the chance to say that the reason I ran over there was so the baby wouldn't get hurt.  I protected the baby, got hurt in his place, and was then punished for what I did.  All I needed was for her to understand WHY I did it.  I needed her to understand that I was not a bad girl.