My mother passed away recently as I posted a while back… I am still trying to figure out how I feel about it all, but what I have concluded is this…I lost all hope of having a mother years ago… In many ways I lost my mother long before she died. I lost what it was to have a mother. I lost any concept of being loved by a mother or having a mother to love and celebrate and look up to. Now, here I am at 44 trying to reconcile my aching heart to the loss of a woman who hated me and did so much to crush my heart and who was far more concerned with being a martyr than a mother. I don’t know how to navigate these waters. I loved my mother and I was also so crushed by her and so utterly hurt. Sometimes my heart just aches within my chest and part of me recognizes that ache as the ache for family…for her. I dreamed of having a mother I could say anything to…who I could talk to about anything at any time. Someone I could tell the truth to and who would always tell me the truth in turn. Someone who would help me to know what a Godly woman looked like, what a good wife was, how to be a woman. I wanted someone to demonstrate femininity and not to revile it. Instead I was raised in loveless house of lies and my heart just hurts… I am not sure now how to mourn her, how to mourn myself…
Tag Archive: family
Who mourns the death of a tyrant? Do you mourn the loss of the person who caused you unimaginable pain? I recently found out that my mother died. Apparently she died back in May. I didn’t know how to feel… mostly because I kept waiting to feel all the things you are supposed to feel when your mother dies… I kept waiting for tears, for mourning, for pain, for confusion… What I mostly felt was … relief. The world felt a little safer to me… Don’t get me wrong, I felt pain… but it was largely the pain of my life…of every time I was abused, neglected, insulted, criticized, misunderstood, raped, hit… The pain of everything she could have been but wasn’t.
It feels scandalous to say out loud that I was relieved when I found out my mother died…but that is the ugly truth of it. I wonder if everyone that is abused feels the same… is this a truth that we all just don’t say out loud? We face polite society and cower in the face of judgement from others. I did. Honestly, I have been judged my entire life. I have lived in pain all my life and been judged for saying I hurt… been judged harshly for saying what you did hurt me… I have been flat out told that I had no reason to hurt. When I confronted my parents with the truth of my pain I was ignored, told that there was nothing wrong with me… when I asked for therapy I was told I don’t need it… I was told over and over that in so many ways that I was crazy…. So now…when I know she is gone – I feel relieved…. I feel like there is one less person trying to gaslight me. One less narcissist to go around pretending like we had this perfect little family.
I will not remain silent… I have been quiet for years – I backed into the shadows… This has brought me back into the light… this had made me feel a little safer in the world, a little more at home. The world with one less monster in it feels like a better world to live in… a safer place for my heart, my memories, my thoughts, my anger, fear, pain, triumph, hope…. safer for me.
I felt for the last several years like I just wanted to hide from everyone, from my past, from the world at large… learning about my mother’s death makes me feel invited back out into the sun…. I belong here. I am not going anywhere and just because the truth makes people uncomfortable doesn’t mean that I will ever stop speaking it and putting it out there. I realized that me shutting up doesn’t protect me – it just makes the monsters more comfortable and that is not the way I want to live anymore.
So…. I am accepting the invitation. I am going to walk in the sun and tell the truth and put my heart back out there… hiding it was not protecting my heart – it was only protecting their reputation… So here I am. In pain, broken, hurt, angry – but full of hope and enjoying the sunlight and not afraid of my own heart anymore.
Some days I feel like I don’t exist anymore… and in some ways I suppose I don’t. I am not the girl I was years ago… I am not the woman I was a few months ago. I am changing all the time. For the longest time I fought that tooth and nail…I thought that was a bad thing. I thought that changing meant I was losing a piece of myself ~or worse ~ all of myself. I thought I would not be me anymore. Turns out – I wasn’t. But that is ok. I began this blog to journal my healing journey. I have been runnin’ a lot lately. I have been hidin’. I have been sneakin’ around hidin’ behind syntax and proper grammar. I have been flowerin’ up my language and tryin’ to be proper. Truth is, I am so angry. I am so dang mad I could scream…and have! I have screamed, cried, prayed… I have felt lost and confused and abandoned. I have felt needy and weak. It feels like the deeper I dig the more junk I find and I feel like I will never be ‘done’. Like I will always find more junk to dig out and toss away. My current list – well, it’s loooong – but I am working on it.
I found someone in my family decided to throw away a 20 year marriage, he has just thrown it away and utterly failed his wife and son. He has been cruel and abusive and I am so disappointed in him. He hurls insults and he is so hateful. I doubt I would even recognize him anymore. Not that we are close. Those days are long over.
I am still working on my trauma therapy, having been beaten, raped, molested, abused…I just want to live, you know? To really live. I find myself tiptoeing around – literally. I find myself trying to make myself small and not to be a bother. I find myself waiting on the pain to rain down on me. It is killing me. It is killing my marriage. My husband married me, but got this docile, hiding, timid woman instead. I don’t even know who I am some days.
I am … well, not thriving… but hoping to thrive. I am tired of living on bread and water when there is steak and wine. I am ready to have my heart feast instead of hide. I want to swim in the ocean of emotion … swim, and possibly, drown. But I am ok with that. I don’t want control anymore. I want to be lost.
Hi, my name is Becka and I am codependent. I got a chip at my first CoDA meeting and I am taking things one day at a time. I am step by step journeying back into my life ~ breaking free of this disease and learning to be healthy and whole. I know I have a long uphill battle ahead. I know this won’t be easy. This codependency has seeped its way into nearly every aspect of my life and the depths of my mental illness has permeated me to my very core. I go days, sometimes, feeling nothing at all.
Numb…such a hateful four-letter word. I used to think it equated to safety but now I see it for what it is. The destroyer of all my humanity. My empathy, compassion, warmth, silliness, passion, anger… all faded to apathy and numbness until my world was all grey and I forgot what color looked like… what color felt like. I forgot what love felt like, what warmth felt like… I even forgot the fierce red heat of anger, I forgot the beautiful blues of sadness and all the vibrant hues of desire.
I found the stair-case…now I am climbing out… Becka-Dragon Girl… hear me roar…
I have been fighting my tendency to hide from my emotions… I have been fighting to stay in my feelings and stop hiding from them. I have hidden from my heart for so long… I have felt like a chameleon. I have tried to give everyone around me what I thought they wanted… in doing this I have failed to just be myself. I have learned and am still learning that what the people who love me really want from me is for me to just be myself. How can anyone love me if I never give them a chance to know me? What do I do if I never figure out who I am? I am so afraid of this… I feel like I have spent my whole life running away from who I am…I have spent my whole life hiding… I have spent my whole life afraid. I feel like I lost this fight today…. Today I hid in TV… I hid in food.. I hid in entertainment… I buried my feelings and totally failed to sit in my skin. I was all alone and there was no one to please but myself…and I still hid and ran away from my pain, my fear… I sat in numbness… I desperately hope (and plan) to win more battles in the future… I know this one failure is not me losing the war. I can do this. I passionately love… I passionately fear… I am passionately angry and I want to fight injustice. I did not do anything to deserve the abuse and pain I endured – but I do have control and responsibility in how I react to that abuse and pain now. No more running away! I will FIGHT! I am beautiful, I am fierce, I am worthy, I am loved.
I feel so much… My heart quakes within me. I feel so overwhelmed and afraid…I feel so sad and angry… I feel so much love and longing… I feel like I am going to either explode or fall apart… I feel like I am never going to stop crying… but then I will suddenly feel like laughing… I feel like yelling, raging, tearing things…I feel like screaming… I feel so very lost.
I foolishly assumed I would be good at marriage… I thought – through no fault or effort of my own – I would naturally be a good wife. I was so wrong. I have been so lost. I have been broken. I have been arrogant. I have failed so often I sometimes wonder why I try… I have believed lies… I have believed that I was helpless… I have believed that I did not have a choice in how I acted… no choice in how I gave/received love…. I have been so lost… I have been lazy and uncaring. I have been self absorbed. I have been numb. I have been just about the worst wife I could be. I have made my husband feel unseen, unheard, unloved… He has felt abandoned by me… He has felt unlovable and unlovely. I am so lost…
I spent most of my life running away from my anger, afraid of it. I thought if I just was careful, if I just suppressed all the seething anger threatening to overtake me I would ‘win’. I thought it would prove that I made it out… prove that despite their best efforts they did not win… I was wrong! My anger only turned inward… poisoning me. It turned into cutting, addiction, apathy, defeat, depression. I am through. I am not doing this anymore. You know what you deserve? You- pretender- the one who tortured me, who abused me, who raped me, who molested me, who slapped me, who beat me… you know what you deserve…??>> You deserve this anger – you deserve this pain – you deserve to feel crazy and out of control! You deserve to be beaten, stoned, tortured. You deserve to be exposed and laid bare for all the world to see. You deserve to be reviled. You deserve to be seen as the disgusting, weak, pervert that you are! And don’t think that you are getting away with anything help-meet… Don’t think I don’t see you in the dark cowering…hiding in his shadow! You are just the same! You are just as bad! Do you think that not helping – that just watching and being the silent partner absolves you of guilt?!? Do you think your hands are any less dirty?! I am here to tell you, you are just as vile! You are just as poisonous! You are GUILTY!! I am DONE feeling crazy because of your choices! I am done twisting myself in knots trying to make sense of your lies! I am not crazy! It was not my fault ~ It is never a child’s fault for being abused and not having anyone to stand up for them! I am done taking the blame for the damage you caused! I am not playing this game anymore! You are nothing and you don’t get a say-so any more!
captivatingbitter 