Thinking

I can't help but wonder when I will wake up from this hellish nightmare. The days keep stacking up on top of me and there is no place safe for me to run to. It's just me. Friends I thought were friends really weren't friends at all.

Too many years of stuffing down my feelings has made me emotionally numb. Until today I didn't know what to call it - emotionally numb - it fits like a glove.

An excerpt from a Psych Central blog about Childhood Emotional Neglect:

7 Signs That You are Emotionally Numb (Jonice Webb PhD)

1. At times, you feel experience a physical sensation, especially in your belly, chest or throat (but can be anywhere in your body, of emptiness.
2. You sometimes watch yourself going through the motions in a situation, perhaps even when you know you should be feeling happy, sad, connected or angry. Yet you feel nothing.
3. You frequently question the meaning or purpose of your life.
4. You have suicidal thoughts that seem to come out of nowhere.
5. You are a thrill-seeker. Thrill-seeking is often an attempt to feel something.
6. You feel mystifyingly different from other people. The lack of connection to your feelings does set you apart. You may feel like other people are living a more vivid life than you are.
7. You often feel like you’re on the outside looking in. Your emotions should be connecting you to others, and instead, they are holding you separate.

FINALLY a person has summed up these things I have been thinking about for years.

Emotionally Numb. Feeling Nothing. Thinking Everything. Hating myself more and more every day.

Playing the victim? Nope. Everything, every decision, every act, every word belong to me and me alone. I blame ME, hands down. Did other people contribute to the hatred I have for myself? Only inasmuch I internalized everything going on around me. 

I am by far my worst enemy.

My stepmom likes to tell me to stop blaming my mother for everything wrong in my life. If it didn't piss me off so badly to hear her say that - it turns into something laughable later on - I would tell her this:

I don't blame my mother for ANYTHING wrong in my life. She's a lying whore and she didn't factor in my life at all because she wasn't around enough to bother with me. End of story.

My mother will spend the rest of her pathetic life knowing what my brothers did to me and because she refuses to believe it, she will NEVER have any sort of relationship with me. Ever.

I called her a few weeks ago to tell her what was going on with Matthew so she heard it from me first and not my pathetic siblings. She thought, at first, that it was a social call. "Oh, honey, it's SOOO GOOD to hear your voice! How are you doing?" I shut that shit down right quick.

Instead of hearing what I was saying to her she was asking me questions about my life. I kept steering her back to the topic at hand. I finally hung up on her. Fucking. Clueless. 

Blood Is Not...

...thicker than water.

When someone tells you they are a survivor of sexual abuse or multiple sexual abuses - believe them.

When someone comes forward to solidify that claim, having been an eye witness, believe them too.

The consequences of NOT acknowledging it are severe.

You and my abusers are toxic to my sanity and well-being.

Severing the ties that bind was the easy part. Hating the abusers - and hating you for believing the abusers over me - will last forever.

While forgiveness was granted long ago - I did it for me, not for all of you - none of you will ever again be part of my life. Ever.

Even if you are my mother and they are your sons.

Idol Monsters

While others idolized
I was terrified
Of things that go
Bump in the night.

I was led from my bed
Sound asleep in my head
While you did whatever
You wanted.

As the years have gone by
I no longer try
To remember anything
That you said.

Because now that I know
How far evil will go
You are nothing but
Idol Monsters.

Hate

Every day I crawl out of bed, I shove myself into a costume before I dress, for the world to see. When I walk into my apartment every night, I take the costume off and hang it up. It is only here, in my itty-bitty apartment, that I can struggle and fight with myself, and cry.

Holding "me" underneath that costume feels like the only way I can survive this fucked up world. Someone recently said to me that I must be so unhappy and so lonely living by myself. Trying to explain the differences between alone and lonely was the equivalent of banging my head on the wall. Maybe I should have banged HER head on the wall instead. Until she found some common sense.

That is all.

Don't Be Ugly

I hate my mother.

I HATE my mother.

I hate MY mother.

I hate my MOTHER.

Every time I think that statement or say that statement out loud I can hear my beloved Grandmother's southern drawl, "Now, Carrie Denise, don't be ugly, that's your mother."

Forgive me, Grandmother, because I DO hate her. With every cell of my being, I hate that woman.

I wish you were here right now, Grandmother. So we could have one of our long talks – and I could ask you questions about things I've learned recently in regards to my mother and father. I would also have to tell you how hurt I am that, in all the talks we had over the years, you knew so much more.

I need to know why you withheld all of the horrible things about my mother from me. Grandmother, you saw how I struggled with the violence, we talked about it all the time. You and I – together – tried to figure out why my dad was like that when, all along, you knew. Grandmother, YOU KNEW why.

You KNEW it was my mother who put him into impossible situations.  It was because she didn't take care of us kids, or the house, or cook - you name it - she didn't do ANYTHING!  My dad worked his ASS off to provide for his family. She did NOTHING! It was every kid for himself – and she left everything for my dad to handle when he got home from work. From fixing dinner, to punishing whichever kid needed it at the time, that was what greeted him every night when he walked in the door.

(I am NOT, by any means, providing justification for how angry and violent my dad could be with my brothers. I do however understand how my mother kept him constantly stirred up to always, ALWAYS be the bad guy.)

I know you loved my mother "like a daughter".  She thought the world of you too. Why were you keeping her secrets? She was just like HER mother.

How many times were you, or one of my Aunts, called out to our house to take care of us kids when my mother took off on one of her whoring adventures again? Who took care of us so my dad could go to work and earn money to keep a roof over our heads?

Grandmother, how many times were you witness to any of us being locked out of the house by my mother? I know you and Aunt Peggy showed up one day, Jimmy was the only child at the time, and he was throwing rocks at the door trying to break INTO the house because my mother had locked him out.

The funny stories about Jimmy painting a stripe down the side of my parents brand new car and putting rocks in the gas tank of the lawnmower as well as the story of the three boys burning the horse barn down, really weren't "funny", were they?  These things probably happened on what was my mother's watch – except she wasn't watching, was she?

She filled my head with so many lies not only about her marriage to my dad, but also about my dad. She had me believing she was a victim of an abusive marriage, that my dad still (to THIS day) owes her child support arrearages AND he still owes her money from the sale of the house that SHE only lived in for ~1 year.

Everything she told me that day while sitting at MY table, in MY peach-colored kitchen, while looking me in the eye, was complete and utter bullshit.

My dad wasn’t able to have/keep friends because she cheated on him with several men in our community. She even slept with a deacon at our church, which explains why we suddenly stopped attending. Although I only remember her being in a psych hospital once, she had actually checked herself in twice, both times because my dad caught her cheating.

There is so very much more to write about all the things I now know about my mother, and how what she did so deeply wounded my dad and, as much as I dislike them, my brothers too.

At least now I know why she refuses to believe me about my brothers; it happened on HER watch and she wasn’t paying attention.

At the end of the day though, she just doesn’t give a fuck. She never did. I suppose I always knew that; now I have proof.