Forgiving

For some strange reason “forgiving” comes more and more to my mind. I can remember that it struck me strange when I read about it in “The Courage to heal”. The authors say that it is entirely up to you if you want to forgive the perpetrator or not. It is not necessary to your healing. Other paths of life say it is necessary to do so otherwise you carry too heavy a load with you.

Yesterday I read somewhere that forgiving does not mean to think what happened was right or it does not matter what it did to you. Forgiving means to refuse to carry on with the pain, fear, hurt and anger that has been caused by what happened. I think that is how I feel about my past. I do not want to let these painful feelings dominate my life. I want to see my powers and my freedom. Still alone that thought “You forgave your father” makes me shrink. He does not deserve to be forgiven for what he did and what he caused not only to me but also to the rest of the family. But on the other hand I do not believe that this kind of thinking does any good. Who am I to judge what caused his way of thinking and acting?

My granny actually mentioned once that he was a sickly child and had to spend loads of time in hospital. That was post World War II Europe and you can imagine how that looked like. She also said she had to send him away for rehab for about 4 weeks when he was 4 or so and when he came back he was changed. Never wanted to hug or come close. I wondered if he had been abused as well. It does not make a difference though. Just because you have been abused you do  not have to abuse in return.

I am very controversial about this topic and I think it is worth to discover more about it. Something need resolving I think!

That was….

…. at the beginning of 2005.

I had several flashbacks in this time and it was incredibly hard as I had to get three jobs to make a living. And even that way it was not enough my step-mom had to help me as well.

It was hard for me then doing the psychological work, working and finding a new life but I was incredibly proud that I was able to get myself out of a situation I was not happy with and creating my own life without anyone telling me how to.

It was at that time that I met a lovely men online who was very charming, seemed to care a lot and had gone through a lot himself. I trusted him and fell in love with him even though I was always aware somehow that it would not last. But I had that feeling that I needed him in my life to learn a lesson.

After my experiences in the last week I know now that it was to learn how to protect my boundaries . I had to realise how people in my life had and do step over my boundaries and how much it has injured my instinct and my soul.

This maybe is the hardest lesson to learn for me so far but I am still in the middle of it. In a way he was my dream man: creative, strong, sensual but in no ways able to respect others boundaries or to make his life compatible with the world around him. He has the ability to be a great artist and I hope he takes his chances but again I had to cut ties this time with harsh consequences as he is not willing to give away his “possessions” easily.

I am glad that I am where I am now. All that hard work, all those lessons learned were worth it. Right now I feel that I have achieved so much but on the other hand if depression, old negative behaviours or panic strikes back it feels more and more as a defeat. It feel like I am not capable to put into practise what I have learned. It is not true though. I think if it feels that way I am close to learning the lesson in full as it is so clear to me how it is when things go well for me.

Still I could do without the pain!

 

An incident….

….. in autumn 2000 brought everything back though.

I was walking the dog and from far saw a man standing his hands in his pants. As I came closer he took them out closed everything came up to me and asked me if I minded that he was wanking. I did not know what to do, stayed in the conversation out of politeness but was evasive in my answers. In the end I just left but was really confused. I did not know how to react, just to leave it and make jokes or what to do. Later on I talked to my husband and a friend and both said:” Tell the police!” Which I did in the end. I had to go there as a rapist was around and they wanted me to identify someone. I did go and it was like in the movies. We came another way than the guy and we saw him though a glass window him not seeing us. It was not the guy who talked to me and I never found out what happened in the end.

Then the nightmare started again. All the agony came back in full force and I got panic attacks out of nowhere. I realised that telling someone about an incident like that had not a normal significance for me. I started thinking about what happened to me and I wondered if I ever told someone. I remembered that when my mum had passed away people from the authorities came along to check on us and I wondered why. Today I think it was just that my father got funding for someone looking after my brother and me when he was away working and they checked if it was used properly but I do not really know why. A few years later I tried to contact that office but never got an answer as to what happened then.

I remembered that I started soiling myself at the age of 7 or 8. I hid my underwear but of course it got found and I got hit for it by my father. I remembered how terrified I was. I also remembered when ever my granny was with us I developed a stomach ache and sickness and she made tea. One night I was sitting beside our oven that heated the water and I strayed into another world. I just started to blend out reality. It was not that I developed a kind of landscape or setting that I saw but three characters or maybe other identities. Two were women one was a man. They were not children. I can remember talking to them but not what exactly what we were talking about and what they did. But we were talking. At the age of 11 or 12 I visited meetings of the local church and decided to become a born again Christian and it felt like these identities were bad or sinful so started to black them out.

Thinking of this time still makes me feel upset. So much struggle, so much pain, so much desperation and no way out.

I was not able any more to work self-employed. I gave it up and started delivering newspapers as I felt the need to at least have a few pennies for myself. And again I tried to get counselling. I went to see a psychiatrist an elderly man who just sat there and listened. When I finished he smiled at me and said:” You need help don’t you?” and I started crying and said “yes”. Something hard inside myself broke at that moment. He gave me the numbers of several therapist trained in working with survivors. I chose one but had to wait a while until I got appointments. I also chose someone about 30 miles away from where I lived. I had the feeling I needed this distance to be able to work things through. Which was a good decision.

At the same time I got more and more trouble with my husband. He did not believe me even though he did not say. We distanced ourselves from each other more and more but suffered both terribly. There were nice times too as we like to have friends around for our birthday or we invited friends for new years eve and had dinner together. We were really good in making them feel welcomed but it somehow was a fake thing. By 2001 I nearly left him but he threatened to kill himself and so we decided to have counselling for couples.

So much hard work. So much hard work. It still drains my energies to think about this path I chose. And I think I do not need to wonder why I am exhausted all the time. It was such hard work.

I stayed without a counsellor….

….. for a while but I do not deal very well with major life changes. In that particular year I finished my professional education, started to work self-employed, moved to another place and got married. At the end of that year I felt the need to be on my own for a few days and went to a monastery close by.

I did not take part in their religious rituals but took time to have a look where I stood, connect with my spiritual self and just relax. The realisation that there was something deeply wrong and something deeply disturbing in my childhood made me decide to find another counsellor. That was 1997/98.

This lady knew more about abuse and was able to handle my emotions with calm and she gave me guidance that I was seeking. For the first time I remembered what my father was doing but I still were not able to accept what it meant for me.

I was drawing and writing besides counselling and reading. I wrote poems and stories about my feelings of pain, anger, frustration, fear. Most of it all pain and fear. It felt highly helpful to give these feelings words after many many years of hiding everything. My counsellor’s understanding gave me the possibility to reach these feelings. But they upset me, panicked me, my whole life was in uproar. At one point it got too much and I had to stop. I had to stop counselling, the reading, just everything that had to do with abuse.

I concentrated on my work, tried to live a normal life with my then husband, tried to make friends but I just felt out of place. Totally out of place. And my subconscious was still working on it. Looking back to that now it seems like I had to bring it to conscious, accept a bit of it and then pause and let it rest, grow and work to be ready for the next stage.

My first counsellor outside university….

….. had just finished her training and I think she had trouble to deal with my emotions. I did not feel very secure with her and I just scraped on the top of everything. But we moved away anyway after my practical year. There is one image that stayed in my mind though that she used about fears and unhelpful behaviour: She said something like they keep coming back like ants and they will challenge you as long as you find the right “antidote” but you have to keep doing that. It won’t stop just with using it once.

Well that is exactly my experience. From an early stage on I always had that wish or thought that you do counselling you understand what happens and it will be good. It does not work like that really!
It is more like a seed that you plant in soil that has been neglected for many many years. You have to prep up the soil, feed and water the seed, protect it against bugs, wind maybe rain. It is a lot of work and being nurturing and it needs time. But it is definitely worth it!

I still have not come to terms with it! (trigger)

I still do not know why I did that and what I did exactly. Some years later when I was further on in getting to know what abuse means I told my brother about it. Maybe I should not have as he was as shocked as I was and stopped having contact with me some years later. He perceives me as an abuser. I was 8 years old and did not know what I was doing. I can remember at the age of 11 I somehow gathered that there is something wrong. And I stopped myself which was hard as it was like an addiction. I had to do it. But I stopped myself without any help of any adult or therapist or counselling.

This experience of sibling abuse is the reason why abuse for me is not a thing of male = abuser ~ female = victim. Abuse goes all over the place there are no set roles. People of every gender, every social stand of every area do it and we have to stop it!

But I still feel guilty as it feels I did to my brother what the abusers did to me. I do not care that I was 8 and did not know what I was doing and that I stopped when I gathered that there was something wrong. I even apologized to my brother when I was an adult which makes no difference to him. I am a bad person and an abuser. That hurts deeply. It tortures me not to know what happened and how I am responsible or if I am even responsible. How much of it does a 8 – 11 year old know? How can she cope in a situation of mother seriously ill and away to hospital or rehab most of the time. Constantly changing people responsible for her and her younger brother. A younger brother she had to take care of very early in her life and two abusers around.

How does a child cope with that on her own?

When did it all begin?

A few weeks ago someone told me that I am quite far with my healing process and that the person wished to be as far. I then realised that my journey started 21 years ago. That is why it somehow does not seem that far for me.
This morning I thought it would be a good thing to start from the beginning and tell how I got where I am.

Well it started I guess when I made love for the first time. My second boyfriend it was and we really wanted it. But at one point I started panicking. It came out of nowhere and I pushed him away and said I did not want this! He felt hurt and offended and I could not explain where it came from. I could not help him because it just all felt wrong. And then the flashbacks started.

At first I remembered being with my little brother. I was about 8 years of age he was about 2 years. And I was doing sexual things a 8 year old should not do and definitely not with her younger brother. I was shocked! I was so shocked I pushed the memory back where it came from because I just were not able to cope with it.

But they came back and came back. It was OK in the day as I could occupy myself with other things but going to bed trying to sleep was a nightmare. These pictures came back and back and I tried to make sense of them. By then I had not heard of abuse or the related problems with it. That came a year later when I started to study Social Work. But that is for tomorrow.

It is hard to write about this. It is hard to remember the struggle and strive but I think I have to honour this fight as it is one part that made me who I am.

I buzzed about this entry on SeededBuzz.

a friend of mine wrote this….

…. a few days ago40 years ago
two “honorable” men
thought it funny
to mistreat a child
I still pay for it
day by day

that is exactly how I felt today at work. I sat alone at my lunch break and saw all my collegues sitting around chatting. None of them seemed to be so unbalanced by the challenges we have to face right now.
For me it is back to antidepressants otherwise I can not work and working hard with the therapy. The cognitive-behavioural-therapy seems quite effective as it made me realise how much my way of thinking affects my moods and behaviour. Am supposed to find out my negative (or distorted as they said but that sounds so sick) thoughts and write them down. As well a when they occur. That kept me occupied today so that I had hardly any time to start worrying too much.

But in that lunch break I felt sad and angry that I am not able to do a good job just because I have to deal with depression. Nothing is easy in my life. I have to fight for everything. But maybe that is a “distorted” thought too

 

There was a tweet from …..

……. BraveKidsVoices which said:” Children who are told not to speak up will grow up to be adults who are afraid to speak up.” and I started to wonder if I have been told not to speak up and how it affects me nowadays. 


I can remember that my father often told me “What happens in the house stays in the house!” meaning I should not tell anything that happened at home to someone else. When I got older and had suppressed the memory of what happened I often wondered why he said that. To me it seemed like nothing especial happened in our home.


But now I know why he said that because if I would have said to anyone what he was doing he would have ended up in prison. I wish I would have known as a child!


Well I have problems to speak up! I have problems to stand up for myself. I must have told someone and they have not listened. How cruel is that? And how much does it affect my life still. 


I am sad!

coping with feelings – attention might trigger

Well I explode more than I used to am very emotional and feel out of balance.
I have hidden away my feelings of frustration, anger, rage and mourning but also happiness, bliss and content from the day my mother died. The abuse wasn’t over yet but something died with her. I wrote about that dead child that I dreamed about and that feeling it is a part of me.
On the day of her funeral I felt so desperate that I was close to killing myself. In a way I did as I decided not to ever want anything ever again. It probably sounds silly and I am not sure if that explains it the right way. I don’t know how you can survive like that. You need to take decisions about your life at some point and how can you do them when you do not want anything any more????? But I do not know how to describe it in any other way.

But that feeling just to do what I am asked of no matter what and not thinking about what it means to me is part of that I guess. If there would be a healthy instinct inside of me I wouldn’t just run but take care of myself. That is probably what is changing. That is probably that healthy part inside of me maybe you can call it the wild woman who is so frustrated about me not taking care of myself that she expresses it in any way possible. It is time to listen I guess!