Just One More Day

Just  one more day, in fact, only until noon tomorrow, and the toxic tenant who lives below me will be moved out. Well I have been assured and reassured by the new apartment manager that yes indeed she will be moved out by noon tomorrow. I am not celebrating, and I probably won’t be celebrating until there is silence and the manager confirms that she has moved out. She’s banging around downstairs right now. She was quieter over the weekend, I had called the police on her in the early morning on Saturday, due to marijuana smoke. I think she got scared from that and then I had one whole day of wonderful, respectful peace. Then she smoked cigarettes all day on Sunday and there were several incidents of marijuana smoke. And then the noise started up again, so I think she is recovered enough to be an unbalanced whack job once again.

I saw my therapist today and we talked about her some and all the negative tenants who violate their leases and how little that has been enforced in the last 18 months, due to very bad management. We talked about lots of other, more important issues, most importantly going into more detail about my siblings and mother’s varied and all-encompassing emotional and verbal abuse of me.

I talked to her about all my efforts to have boundaries and enforce boundaries with my family. She was encouraging and supportive of that. That was nice. I like the validation. It is a part of my healing work that I don’t get much from my family. She agreed with me that reaching out to others and forming new involvements and potential friendships are good use of my limited energy.

I talked about the Myer-Briggs personality test and how it showed how different I am from my family. Beyond the fact that most of them are introverts and I am an extrovert, they are incredibly inflexible in understanding that other people are different than them and that that too is normal and acceptable. They have a rigid and inaccurate perception that they are the norm and everything else is worthy of rejection, stigma, exclusion, and scapegoating. Their perception and beliefs of reality and the world are really diametrically opposed to my beliefs.

They don’t have a lot of tolerance for accepting and adapting to differences from themselves. In that too I am different from them. I am very tolerant of others, of cultures, and of accepting all the ways that people are. They are rigid and intolerant in a lot of ways and it has never occurred to them that from my perspective they are the ones who are different, not me. I told her that I believe I got these personality traits and differences from my ancestors.

My family have a whole belief system that is entrenched and rigid and pretty unmoving. It is the basis, the foundation of all the emotional and verbal abuse that my family perpetuated on me all my life. I object to it. I have always objected to it. But reasoned, rational argument has never moved them. Appeals to my heart and emotions have never moved them. Familial appeals have never moved them. Gender appeals have never moved my mother or my sister. They say, at times, that they love me, but very little in their words or actions could be defined as loving. They suck at this.

As I was leaving my therapist’s office she brought up the tenant again and I said, I wish her well, just somewhere else as far away from me as possible. And I guess that is how I feel right now. Go in peace, but just go.

Dr. Strange was just released today on Netflix streaming. It’s a good movie to watch on perceptions and beliefs and changing reality. I saw it once before, but I was definitely ready to see it again. I’m watching it right now. I hope you all are doing something fun for yourself too.

Good and healing thoughts to yous.

Emotional/Verbal Abuse is Abuse

I have expressed a hatred of teasing and emotional/verbal abuse to my parents and my siblings all of my life. My parents and some of my older siblings gave us children very abusive nicknames. Some were given to my older siblings when they were teenagers. Mine was given to me when I was three. My siblings around my age were given their nicknames when they were older children. Just based on the age when abusive nicknames were given,  you can see they started after mine in age and in time. I was named two nicknames filthy and abusive and my siblings had very less damaging and abusive nicknames and they were done when they were much older than I was

My mother, who I used to confront often on this issue, would gaslight me and say, well all your siblings have nicknames they don’t like either, like well they are all being treated like shit and I am normalizing shit, so you can’t complain and have no right to complain and have no rights  that you can appeal to, because this is normal, they are all treated like you are treated, it is not mistreatment, it is normal, it is okay, no one is going to stop. And if you want to stop them, if you want this to end, then what you have to do is not be hurt or complain or say anything. They are getting a reaction and that is why you are to blame for the perpetuation of their treatment of you. My mother was a master at blaming victims for being abused, even while she abused them.

When the only person that I could go to for relief from emotional and verbal abuse against me by my siblings was my mother, who was my sexual abuser and my emotional/verbal abuser and who encouraged and perpetuated sibling emotional and verbal abuse against me , that made life very hard for me. Still, I was very determined that they should stop and that I deserved better treatment by my siblings, that I persisted. I don’t know where I got this strong belief in myself and that I deserved good treatment, but I had it, all my childhood. I think that is very strong of me and I am very proud of myself.

I knew that I deserved better from them all, even though none of them agreed with me. I knew that none of them should be called nasty and vicious and filthy nicknames. Some of the nicknames were not very bad, compared to mine, though they were all emotional and verbal abuse.

I didn’t just ask my mother to intervene and stop abuse. I asked other siblings as well. I don’t recall any of them trying to stop.

I don’t remember ever asking my father to stop. I don’t believe that I thought that he would, since he was the one who gave me the nicknames and the one who spread it all around the family and who allowed it to continue without ever once commenting about it or ever once trying to stop it.

When I was ten years old my father retired and was at home all the time, all day long and all night long. That was when the two nicknames about me stopped. I know that he did nothing to stop it. I just think that having him around, as a witness, is what stopped others from abusing me as much as they were. I suppose it was a shock to him to see how bad it was, how much of a scapegoat that I was, and how much I was being verbally abused.

I know that he enjoyed mistreating others, especially with words, especially with his children, but the bad nicknames stopped. I don’t believe that he ever lifted a hand to stop it. In fact, he started verbally abusing my brother more directly, who is 18 months older than I, during that time period.

It’s hard when this is the closest man in your life; someone who cruelly enjoys mistreating you with words and mistreating your emotions. It’s horrible that this was the closest example of an adult man that I had. It’s sad and pathetic that this is the best that he could be for his own children. I didn’t have a male teacher in my life until sixth grade, and that was a physical education teacher who was verbally and emotionally abusive to students. So not a good man or a good human being either.

I never felt that my father was on my side. I never believed that he would protect me. never felt that he loved me, though there was a time in my childhood when he would say that, though that had been some time before that.

If only there had been one person in my family who loved me and was good to me through my childhood. That would have changed my life so much. But none of them were willing to stand up for me and to suffer the consequences. With my mother, there was always consequences. I know that I deserved their love and loyalty.

She Refused to Apologize

Several years ago an aunt told me, on the phone, that she used to emotionally abuse me with filthy name calling when I was a child. She was an adult. She had her own girl. She did not treat her own daughter the way that she treated me. She did not live with us. She did not take care of me or babysit me. She never bought me gifts or spent time with me or treated me as though I mattered to her or that I was special or that I was loved. She just visited and treated me the same way that my parents and siblings did, she called me filthy names that my parents started and encouraged my siblings to do.  She came into my own home, as an adult, and was vicious and cruel to me when I was a child.

I have to say that I was shocked. I never remembered that from my early childhood. I did remember that while she seemingly worshiped my older sister, treating her like the golden girl, she never seemed to express or demonstrate love for me. I remembered that for no reasons that I could see she would make fun of me, she would invade my space or life, even to the point of reading my private diary or evaluating a hobby or activity that I would do and enjoy. She would enjoy making fun of me. She would grab my belongings and wave them around, shouting, making fun of me, and laughing at me. I remember those times. I remember the kind of aunt that she had been to me.

We were never really close for decades. But over a number of years we had become kind of friends, talking on the phone late at night from states far, far away. She knew a number of issues that I was dealing with because I was an abused child. She knew that I had been sexually abused as a child and emotionally abused as a child. She knew that my father had been an alcoholic and that my mother had been a sexual offender against me. She had heard me talk at length over several years about how painful it all was. There were specific times that I had recalled telling her how painful it was to be the scapegoat child in my family of origin, especially with all the filthy names that I was called. She never told me she did the same thing to me.

So I was shocked and flabbergasted when she finally admitted it to me on Christmas Eve one year. I told her immediately that she owed me an apology for treating me like that when I was a child and she was an adult.

She started making excuses. I was shocked and appalled. I was sickened. I thought how dare she excuse her malicious and cruel behavior by acting like she could do anything that abusive parents and siblings were doing to me.

I explained to her that as an outsider in my home she knew that there were different rules of conduct, as an adult and not one of my siblings she was held to a different standard of behavior, that she was not my alcoholic father nor my sexual abuser mother and as such not my parent and that she had no right to do that to me, no right at all, and that I knew for sure that she had never treated her own daughter that way. Even so her daughter has a very antagonistic relationship with her mother, my aunt and considering the kinds of abandonment issues and emotional abuses she went through, I am hardly surprised.

I told her I am not filth and she doesn’t get to tell me that I am filth, then or now. I told her that no matter what my family did to me in my home that does not make it okay for her to do, and I told her that I know that you knew that as an adult. I told her that what my siblings did to me when I was a small child was when they were children as well. That I understand they were abusive, but that they were also children and that I hold them to a different standard than I do to my parents, to any adult. I told her that she knew it was wrong then and she never said word one to stand up for me, to try to stop the abuses or to be on my side. I told her I know you knew it was wrong because you never did that to your own daughter. I know you saw what kind of lovely little girl I was and your response, instead of to be loving and good and kind to me, was to crush me, to try to crush my soul and my spirit and to make me hate myself, my body, my life.

I told her she gives me an apology or I am out of her life for the rest of my life. She refused, she continued to deny wrongdoing with a number of excuses. I sent her a letter later outlining exactly why again and that she owed me an apology if she ever wanted to be in my life and it has been more than five years and nothing from her. I am fine with that. I never miss her. I hardly ever think of her. I have never refused to apologize to someone. I have always forgiven someone when they have asked for forgiveness. I’m nothing like her. I’m nothing like my mother.

I Still Don’t Know What to Do With That

A huge part of my healing has been healing from what I believed about myself due to the abuse and what others thought was true about me.

Most of my worldview was formed by those who sexually abused me. I went from loathing to not loathing. I still had self-hatred. I went from hatred to no hatred for self. It took me a long time.

My inners gave me someone in my life, for the first time as an adult, who saw me and loved me, who saw all the good in me and found me lovable. As hard as learning I was multiple was and as hard as integrating that awareness into my life and my life history was, it was hugely empowering due to their love of me. I still feel so ashamed that they look at me and feel love, I wish I didn’t, I wish I believed all the good they see in me.

I think that having survivor friends and their ability to see me differently than my family has been a huge part of my ability to change my views about self. At times I have noticed that my online survivor friends saw me in ways that no one in my life had ever done. I can’t say that I was able to immediately take in their new views, not at all, it took years and years to slowly let that they saw me that way.

My family has always told me how depressed and depressing I am, how negative I am and how much I need to think positive, ignore my past and all it’s abuses, and focus only on the good things. Yes I was under a mountain of horse manure, but I didn’t think it was accurate to say that I had major depression. Yes I had a lot of needs and no one to help me meeting those in my life. Yes I had not ever been parented or loved by my mother. Yes my father was an alcoholic. So for me I always thought that I had a lot to be depressed about, not some unattached depression, but a huge measure of grief to feel and overcome. I know that it was easier for my family to see me as the problem, as the one with “mental problems.”

I know that my family of origin was always heavily invested in scapegoating me. I don’t think that you ever see a person accurately that you are scapegoating. You are putting all the dysfunction and blame of all the family and abuse onto a member of the family, usually one member.

So no there is no way they could see me accurately. But their worldview was pervasive, at times it still is. I still get caught up in it all, feeling down and ugly about myself, until I have to remind myself that is their image, their view, and that it is not accurate. Well it is a process. It takes time.

About five years ago one of my best friends told me that I was so positive, so focused on healing and the knowledge that healing would happen. Well I almost fell over. It took me a while. I had to think long-term on that one. I am still trying to integrate that into who I am. So recently several other survivor friends have mentioned my being positive. Okay, I am resolved not to argue about that. I’ll try to see it. I’ll try to believe it. But I still don’t know what to do with that.

It might take me some more time.