Should I Tell the Brother Who Was There?

    The brother just younger than me is currently really struggling with a lot of aspects to his life and I have felt very worried about him for several months.  We haven't interacted a lot, especially over the past year and a half or so since the family started freezing me out, but I've had the recurring thought that something is wrong.  I think he may be dealing with really severe depression; the signs are all over the place.

    Sometimes I have the thought that maybe I should write him a letter and tell him what happened to me, minus details he doesn't need to know, and let him know that he was there when it happened.  It's very possible that besides sensing something was wrong, he may have seen the rape because his crib was next to the bed.  It's also possible that he was molested.   If I did this, I wouldn't tell him I thought he may have been abused this way as well, because I know how hard it is to get to the point where you are willing to look at that possibility; even when the signs are staring you in the face. There is also a deeper impact for males, I believe--or maybe just a different impact, because as a society this kind of abuse is associated with happening to females. Also there is a very strong stereotype where men are supposed to be the strong sex and so they should be impervious to this kind of violation. Therefore, being a victim of something like this and admitting it might seem, to the victim, to be an admission of being weak or that something is inherently wrong with them. This, of course, is utterly false, but because of this stereotype many males who do know it happened stay quiet about it and don't get the help they need. A lot of times they think they should just be able to handle it and move on.  I think that's the case for all victims, but it seems to me that that dynamic must be a lot stronger for males. My husband is also a survivor and it took him a lot longer to decide he needed help than I did, so to an extent I've seen how that process works with men.

    As we were talking one evening, I expressed to my daughter that I have been worried about him and it's crossed my mind more than once that he may have been sexually abused, too, and she said, "That would explain a lot because you and he have a similar energy about you that the rest of your siblings don't have." He and I have always been treated as outcasts compared to the way the rest of my siblings interact.  Part of that could be the "oldest" role that we both play--I'm the oldest child, but he is the oldest of four boys.  My dad would have put a lot more pressure on him than the rest of the boys, and there are resentments there on the part of some of the younger sibs towards us, I think.  I'm sure part of that comes from being jealous at the older ones getting to do certain things first, and as the oldest I was put in charge of the other kids All. The. Time. My brother would have been Choice #2 for that role if I was at my dance lessons or otherwise not around to be the substitute parent.

    The only way he and I could hope to have the approval of our parents was to try and measure up to the kinds of pressure that were put on us, hoping we would get a pat on the back and nod of approval. Add to that the abuse issues and you have no idea how intense the pressure is. It literally is like something is pressing down on you all the time, and you have to push against it just to stay upright. For some reason, from Brother #2 down, the rules changed. It's so weird to me.

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.

About My User Name

You may have noticed that to start off with, the username attached to my posts is Her Majesty, and now you are seeing Forest Rose. They're both me; I just changed the username.  Forest Rose it is and will be from now on. :)  I had the Forgiveness post in drafts, not yet completed, when I changed the name so it posted under the first one.

Thoughts About the "F" Word (Forgiveness, That Is)

I think anyone who has been through abuse can relate to the joke I attempted up there with the title of this post. :)  Humor is one of the ways I cope with this process--some days it's easier to do than on other days, and sometimes the humor can be pretty dark; some days it's not there at all.  I love the days where I'm able to genuinely laugh and have fun, finding the bright humor in everyday situations.

Obviously, you can tell that I'm not in a fabulous place when it comes to forgiveness.  I don't have it figured out yet, and I'm not rushing to it.  I can't count how many times during my life I've focused on needing to forgive, thought I did it, and then realized that obviously I didn't because more pain and anger would come up. I've learned over time that it's because I rushed to attempt forgiveness before going through the rest of the process of healing that needed to come first, and that includes letting yourself feel the emotions that are part of the wound--sorrow, grief, anger, etc.  If you try and rush the forgiveness process you don't fully process those emotions and when they come back up you feel like a rotten person for "holding grudges."  At least that's how it's been for me.

What exactly is forgiveness?  I can tell you for sure what I know it is not, and that is saying that what happened was okay and then pretending nothing ever happened.  And I think one reason this one screws with my head so much is the way it was exercised in my home, especially in regards to how my mom defined forgiveness.

First off, I have never known my mom to take accountability for her mistakes or actions that hurt other people.  Ever.  If someone dares to stand up to her, say she was hurtful or rude, etc. she flies into a rage and/or freezes the person out.  When I was living at home the freeze-out sessions usually lasted for 3 weeks, regardless of how I tried to apologize or desperately tried to communicate with her to reach a better understanding.  It was the definition of walking on eggshells.

There would be many times when I would be upset in my room over something she had done and she would come in (this was usually after she did something that had a traumatic impact) to "talk" to me and tell me that she was sorry she spanked me too hard or whatever, but then pointed out why I deserved it.  Then she would say that she would try harder if I tried harder, and after I said I would then she would say that we needed to "forgive and forget" and pretend nothing had ever happened.  I got duped more than once into thinking that meant things were going to get better. Turns out her definition of forgiveness, at least in action, was "You need to forgive me, but I get to keep doing the same things over and over and you just need to get better at taking it."

How often do parents, when they are teaching their children about apologizing and forgiving, coach their children to say "That's okay," when the other person says they're sorry?  Maybe most other families didn't do forgiveness like this, but this is the language of forgiveness that I heard all the time, not just in my home.  It's the knee-jerk response that a lot of people use when someone says they're sorry about something--"Oh, that's okay."  Now, I try to use phrases like "I forgive you," "Thank you for apologizing," etc.  That phrase, "That's okay," has been a huge trigger for me and has given me real issues when it comes to looking at forgiveness because the things that happened to me are NOT okay.

About five years ago I read a book called Toxic Parents by Susan Forward.  This book was so helpful to me, and I have recommended it many times to other survivors.  The whole book is excellent, but one of the things that helped me the most was her section on forgiveness and how she defines and approaches it in relation to abuse.  In all honesty, my knee-jerk reaction when I read other books and they addressed forgiveness was that I was ticked off.  I did not want to hear another person talking about just forgiving and moving on, because I had tried doing that and it wasn't working and I felt completely invalidated by the whole experience. I also felt that my pain, feelings and other needs were completely disregarded in the process, and this is how I felt during the times I was abused. Talk about adding insult to injury. I was pleasantly surprised and intrigued by the title of this chapter in Toxic Parents--"You Don't Have to Forgive."  Wha-whaaat???  What I found in this chapter was a version of forgiveness I could live with.

Early in her professional career she, like many others in her profession, encouraged clients to work on forgiving cruel or abusive parents.  She also had clients who entered therapy claiming they had already forgiven their toxic parents, but she found that more often than not, they didn't feel any better for having forgiven.  They still had their symptoms, "forgiving" hadn't created significant or lasting changes for them, and often they felt even more inadequate than they had before.  As she re-examined forgiveness, she came to the conclusion that there are two facets to it; giving up the need for revenge or getting even, and absolving the guilty party of responsibility.  The first is pretty important to work on, mostly because revenge keeps stirring up the emotional chaos for the survivor and wastes your energy and time.  Letting go of this aspect is difficult, but is clearly a healthy place to get to.

The second aspect, absolving the guilty party of responsibility, is another issue altogether and gets pretty complicated.  In cases of abuse particularly, the danger there is that it can actually become another form of denial, creating that scenario where you pretend that what happened wasn't so awful.  It undercuts your ability to let go of your pent-up emotions.  As she puts it, "How can you acknowledge your anger against a parent whom you've already forgiven?  Responsibility can go only one of two places:  Outward, onto the people who have hurt you, or inward, into yourself. Someone's got to be responsible.  So you may forgive your parents but end up hating yourself all the more in exchange (page 179)."  Another dangerous aspect of this to me is that you are then vulnerable to repeatedly going back for more because you feel like you don't have any right to refuse being around the person. Forgiving someone doesn't mean that you are obligated to hang out with them; in fact, if you do that you are sending them the message that you are fine with that kind of treatment and you are opening yourself up to be abused again. It really screws with your boundaries.

There is much more in the book, so if this resonates with you I urge you to obtain a copy and read it.  I bought my own so I could highlight the things that I could relate to and things that were helpful to me.  The bottom line that I took from this particular chapter was that I could work on letting go of a need to get even, but that I needed to be free to assign responsibility where it belonged, rather than carrying blame that belonged on someone else's shoulders. Another aspect of this that is important to realize is that shifting blame and guilt onto the victim is something that the abuser does on purpose.  You have to be free emotionally to reassign that squarely back onto their shoulders. You don't necessarily need to do this through confrontation or telling them, but you need to do it within yourself.  I can't describe how freeing it was emotionally for me to embrace this approach to forgiveness.  I still hate lessons on forgiveness in church, etc. because most people don't grasp this and the discussion can get so condescending, but I am at least at peace with this approach.  I hope that what I have shared here can help you, too.

Invisible Dragons

A friend of mine shared a post she wrote called Invisible Dragons, alluding to challenges they deal with in their family .  She graciously gave me permission to share the link to that post here.  I loved the way she describes the invisible battles that we all fight, and how some dragons are more visible than others.  Abuse survivors also fight invisible dragons, so I thought I would share her thoughts here since I think the same principle applies.

It's a good reminder not to judge others based on what we see.  You never know what difficulties people are dealing with.  I know that I have had periods of time in my life when healing work has been particularly hard and physically taxing, and I have a really hard time keeping up with tasks that other people would consider no-brainers and things that you just do every day.  I tend to isolate during these times to avoid judgment, which contributes to the feelings of loneliness.  By the same token of trying to not judge others, if you are doing healing work be gentle with yourself.  Treat yourself with the same understanding you would like to have from others.  We can be our harshest judges, but we need to remember that we are battling very big, ferocious invisible dragons.  In your efforts to press forward, if you are having a day where you were barely able to get out of bed, congratulate yourself for being vertical and moving rather than berating yourself over all the "shoulds."

http://invisibledragons.wordpress.com/