I’ve been hiding behind my wall of solitude – I’ve changed my WordPress website address, deactivated my facebook…stopped answering my cell phone and home phone…I feel like such a coward but I had to protect myself and lay low for a while – it was the only way I could feel safe. My brother read my entire blog and the only thing he got out of it was that I insulted him and he threatened to sue me. It’s crazy… I have written page after page of pain and he reads one sentence about him repeating bad patterns from my father and decides to threaten me! I just don’t understand this! How can my entire family hate me so much! I’m not even comfortable writing this blog anymore – It used to be a safe place to pour out my fears, hopes, pain, confusion, dreams…but now it feels poluted and I don’t know what to do…. so I’m trying to take my power back…
Category: Healing
It is hard for me when I think about how Eddie’s abuse affected me. I hate that his actions have had such an influence over my life. It has tainted how I view people. It has made it nearly impossible to trust anyone – even myself. I feel isolated much of the time – afraid that if people really knew me they wouldn’t want anything to do with me. Because of what Eddie did I feel dirty and broken inside and that is not fair. I feel like I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop – waiting to be abandoned and forgotten. I grew up feeling invisible – I became the perfect chameleon, it’s how I survived.
I am still affected by his abuse today – I am so broken and so afraid. I cannot function in a healthy relationship without constant guidance and reassurance. I am afraid to have sex because I dont’ want my marriage tainted by Eddie’s touches. I don’t want to think of his hands touching me when I should be enjoying my husband’s caress. Because of the abuse I suffered as a child I feel powerless and tainted and worthless. My life is still affected in so many areas. I struggle in my marriage because I am unable to accept and trust love and affection. I am affected in my job because I struggle to find my voice. I am affected in my relationship with my family because I am still so afraid of them and I still feel crazy around them – crazy and so small.
One strength I developed because of the abuse is empathy. I truly have a heart for the suffering. I have a strongly developed sixth sense about people and their intentions. It has helped me survive. I developed a tender and caring heart and a strong desire to fight for the weak. I developed and artistic eye and a desire to make the world beautiful. I developed a rich imagination and a poet’s heart. I escaped into words, books and dreams. I found a way to wring pleasure out of almost any small thing – whether it is a gift or just the sight of a butterfly. I am a strong woman. I had to be to survive my childhood. I locked myself away inside the warehouse of my mind and kept myself save in there between the dusty shelves. If I survived this I can do anything. I WILL make it out of this. I WILL get better. I will heal. I am worth fighting for. I can do this.
Father, I thank you for the strength You gave me to overcome my past. I invite you into my heart, into my healing, into my broken places and into my marriage. Come, Jesus. Make the broken whole again…
Excerpt from The Courage to Heal pg xxiv ~” Time will dull the pain, but deep healing doesn’t happen uness you consciously choose it”~
John Eldridge says in his book Wild at Heart that “A wound unfelt is a wound unhealed.” So I have to ask myself – how do I feel? How has living with this abuse made me feel…? Following along in the first chapter of Courage I have journaled the following:
How abuse affected my self esteem:
I feel…..
- Bad, dirty, ashamed
- Like there’s something wrong with me
- Like if people really knew me they would leave me
- Like I hate myself
- Immobilized by fear/can’t get motivated
- Unable to protect myself
- Self destructive
I don’t know how to….
- Identify my own needs
- Feel good
- Nurture myself
- Trust myself
- Recognize my own interests/talents/goals (my heart)
I feel like I can’t accomplish what I set out to do
I feel like I can’t move on with my life.
I feel compelled to be perfect
I feel like I am missing large parts of my childhood…
How this abuse has affected my body:
I have a hard time:
- Appreciating and accepting my body
- Feeling at home in my own skin
- Being fully present in my body
- experiencing a full rang of feelings in my body.
- experiencing my body as a unified whole.
I have:
- Hurt myself ~abused my body
- Used alcohol and drugs
- Had an eating disorder
- Had a physical illness connected to my abuse
- Felt as though I sometimes leave my body.
Sometimes I:
- Am not always aware of the messages my body gives me (hunger, fear, tiredness…)
- Mistrust my body
- Feel numb or disconnected from physical sensations
- Startle easily and have a hard time calming down
- Am unable to relax and feel physically safe.
Relating to intimacy – Sometimes I:
- Find it difficult to: trust people, make close friends, create/maintain healthy relationships, give or receive nurturing, be affectionate, say no/set appropriate boundaries.
- I feel I don’t deserve love
- I am afraid of people
- I feel alienated/isolated
- I rarely feel connected to self/others
- I don’t know how to trust
- I feel betrayed and taken advantage of
- I shut down, get nervous, panic when people get too close
- I cling to people I care about
- I expect people to leave me.
It is hard to take an honest look at my life – to survey the damage like I am taking inventory. I don’t exactly know how to feel about all of this…mosty I look over the different aspects of my life and kind of nod to myself and think…”Well this explains a lot.”
Please bear with me dear readers. I am by far not through this journey yet.
Peace be with you.
I’ve been absent from the electronic world for quite a while now… I’ve been working on a wonderful book called “The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse” by Laura Davis and Ellen Bass. It’s a wonderful therapeutic tool with several writing and meditation exercises. This book has taken me on a journey though my anger, my pain and my memories. Through it I am finding connections to my past in many unexpected places and through many maladaptive coping mechanisms. I am learning to identify survival techniques that helped me claw my way out of hell but are no longer serving me now. I am learning to honor those defense mechanisms and to release them. By no means have I “arrived” but for possibly the first time in my life I am consistently traveling on the road to healing. If you will permit me I would like to share more of that healing journey with you through sharing my journaling from this wonderful book as well as my writing exercises from it and an honest look at my anger and fear and the relinquishment of the same. May love and peace find you-may it find me as well.
I feel like I am drowning in fear, doubt, sadness, despair. They are my near-constant companions. I’m not sure I know what I am apart from them. I don’t know what to do or where to go – God help me.
It feels like a dream … I am walking through a field hoping to find some wild-flowers to make a bouquet… there is mist everywhere and it hangs so heavy I cannot see the ground. As the sun comes out and the mist clears I find that I am not in a meadow at all – but a battle-ground – bodies mutilated all around my feet… every face is my own… The only daisies here are resting on the closed eyes of the dead and my bare feet are wet not with dew but with blood.
Lately I feel like I am drowning in pain. All I can think is, “I don’t know how to do this…” It’s crippling, really…I feel frozen in this spot and I am afraid to reach for help. No one can help me through this. The pain of my past has finally caught up with me and is taking hold of my life… it’s ruining my marriage…it’s permeating my relationships….it’s taking over! I see every relationship or potential relationship through the filter of my parent’s abuse. I can’t go on living like this. It is so terrifying and isolating and maddening. I want to be free of it all. I wish I could wash this off… I wish I could dust my ands off and be done with it. I wish I could change my past and give myself a blank slate – a fresh start… I wish there was a pill for bad memories… I wish…I wish…
Dear M____,
This is the most difficult letter I will ever write to you. I know I have apologized a thousand times to you over the years and I know I have hurt you a million more. I know that you have no reason to hope for me to change, but I promise you I am trying. I realized this morning that I have become an abuser. The cycle must stop with me. You have pointed out to me that I have been abusing myself – but I realized this morning I have been abusing you as well.
All my life I learned that love meant judgement, rejection and pain. Though I had glimmers of real love in my grandmother, sadly, she wasn’t the stronger influence in my life. My toxic parents were…their lessons of love driven home much harder and deeper than hers. This is not an excuse, just an explanation. My life has been filled with overwhelming pain since birth and pain has been my constant companion. I don’t want this anymore.
All of those unhealthy abusive behaviors followed me from my parent’s home into ours. I have neglected you and withdrew into myself and withheld love from you. It does not matter that this was not a conscious decision or done with intent. The result is the same. Pain. Doubt. A crumbling marriage.
I realize this morning that the times I am feeling the most fear and panic and doubt are the times I need to be running to you – not away from you. Because of my fear of love and feelings of worthlessness I have continued my parent’s toxic abuse cycle with you in our marriage. I have been come the thing I hate. No wonder you don’t feel safe with me.
I don’t know why God brought us together but I fear that I don’t have much to offer you. I know I have a long road to recovery ahead of me and I know I won’t get it right all the time – but I promise to get it right more often than I get it wrong.
I want to tell you that I am profoundly sorry fo all the pain I caused you through the course of our relationship. I want to tell you that I truly understand if you don’t want anything to do with me – after all – I am more like our fathers than you mother or my grandmother. I am self-centered and neglectful nd don’t deserve another chance to hurt you. You have this beautiful, loving heart and I have done my best to destroy it. You don’t deserve this.
this is what I can promise you… I love you with all my heart and I am fully committed to you – to us- and I will do everything in my power to break this cycle. I will make better choices – when all of my instincts tell me to withdraw – to hide…I will make a conscious decision to seek your heart that much harder. When I feel like pulling away I will cling to us and to God. I will pray against my strongholds daily and I will seek God in our marriage. I will see you and love you and not hide myself from you. I will fight harder against the lies and patterns I was raised around and I will talk openly about my hopes, beliefs, fears and doubts instead of retreating into my head and locking down my heart.
I take full responsibility for the current problems in our marriage and I beg your forgiveness.
I love you M___. I pray that I haven’t ruined this.
Love,
No Longer Damaged Goods
I don’t know how to be in this much pain.
There is so much I don’t understand about this life. It feels like it is crumbling around me.. every time I feel safe – like I might possibly have a chance at being ok, like I might actually be beginning to grasp things and see some glimmer of day-light… it hits. Life socks me right in the gut and tells me again how worthless I am. How am I supposed to stop believing that I am worthless when the evidence is all around me. I hurt the people I love. I am desperate for forgiveness – for absolution. I pray and I pray… I am doing the work – reading the books… I am trying to get in touch with my heart and find some true peace but I don’t know if I will make it. I am terrified. There is one person on this earth who truly knows me and loves me and he can barely stand to be with me because I am so hurtful to him… I am screwing this up! I am failing all over again and I don’t know what to do. I can barely function. I wish I could just die sometimes so I could stop hurting people…stop hurting me. I wish I had never been born. I wish I didn’t exist. I keep praying for God to remake me… maybe I could be better -I don’t know. I just know that there’s something profoundly wrong with me and I am afraid I’ll never be right again.
captivatingbitter 