That is just terrible. I'm also shocked that she admitted that. My brother was my abuser and my mom went above and beyond to make sure that no one found out what he was doing to me and that he didn't suffer any consequences. Basically my mother would rather sacrifice my well being so no one looked at my brother funny. I understand the betrayal, and I'm no sure if there's any reason to forgive something like that.

threesix---I see what your saying. I just can't connect with the warrior thing. Because in my head a warrior is some one who is strong and secure and brave. I actually think I talk about it to the degrees that I do and I lay it out there the way I do. And I hold nothing (well almost nothing ) back. Because I am scared to death to have all that lingering around in me. I am scared to death to keep it. I actually think some times if I come here and write it out. I am giving it away. It's not mine any more. Then I might be better able to cope with the mountainous amount of pain that resides in my heart. And That is probably a childish way to think about it. But some times it works for me.
I can come here and I can write about the things that occured when I was growing up. What I thought, what I felt, what it did to me. But I can not come here and write about the things that have happened in the last 5 years. When I think about one incident in particular that happened a couple years ago. If I compared it to what it did to me to hear my Mom say those words. I think that is what keeps me from being able to admit it or disclose it. Because I do believe my head would implode. And that makes me weak and afraid and cowardly. Why can't I just say what I need to say. Cause I think if I don't it is going to kill the spirit in me that I have worked so hard on rebuilding. And some how I know that if I could just lay it out here and give it away. I would feel so much better.

Whatever works for you, I hope it works well.

I have written a post it note to my self which might also help you (I hope).

::: My emotions are appropriate :::

All that we go through as a result of our abuse, all the horror and pain - however it manifests is normal.

Please don't be annoyed with me, but when you talk of giving it away and getting rid of it, I am put in mind of the feeling I have which makes me want to put all the aspects of myself in that black box and lock it up for ever.

I'm just not sure how do-able that really is.

I used to think I would 'get over' what happened to my husband, but now I realise that I will never completely recover and am learning to accept that. It's part of the fabric I am made of.

My emotions are appropriate :::
For what I have learned and for what I have been taught. Yes my emotions are appropriate. I have been thinking about this. What I ask my self. Is do I have the emotions I have because they are now a permanent part of me. If I live to be 100, will I always feel this way? Will I always feel sad and alone in my pain. I have been on this planet for more then 50 yrs. and I can not remember a time. When some where, some how my emotions were not effected by the things I have experiencedI am asking myself today. Why is it as aperson. I can not let them go. What is it about me that allows all those hurt feelings to stagnate in my heart.
I know I am not responsible for the pain that others caused. I know I did not ask for it or bring it on or cause it. So then why am I always feeling like I some how deserve these feelings. I keep saying to my self what did I ever do to deserve to feel this way. I did not do any thing. So why are these feelings ruling me like I owe it to them.
Has it become such an important part of who I am, that with out I couldn't survive. I would be missing the very core of me. I think I am realizing that all of this is not a part of me. It is me. This is who I am. This very screwed up, emotionally destroyed individual. No one or nothing can ever undo it. Can ever take it back. Can ever make it go away. I always say to others. Just hang in there it will get better. I am beginning to think it just gets more doable. But it is still the big ugly monster that lives deep in my soul and will till the end of time. No therapy or meds are ever make this feel or seem or look differently in heart and in my head. Okay I think I am bordering on that break down Ihave been waiting for.

That pain, that grief, in my heart is from being abandoned to my dad's care when mom went to work...There was nothing so horrid to not even know why I was screaming (I dissociated even at the time). I just knew the purest terror as my mother left, and this inner knowledge, "the monster has me." This is where my feeling of internal separateness comes from.

It's still very hard for me to feel loved, to not feel alone.

We will never become the people we could have been.That is a great loss. You are worthy of your own grief.

When I found my first inner child, she was an undead corpse climbing out of a pool. I later found that pool was a pool of tears, which I must cry to drain...I think I have gotten through about 1/3 of the pool draining. I was crying for hours a day for a while.

You really were that abandoned, you really were that betrayed.
We have, in fact, lost so much.

But that which remains is still precious. I've learned a lot through my best friend...he is so shattered also from abuse. He could have succeeded at anything, if he only had a decent childhood...They took so much. They broke him.

But he is so beautiful inside...it's not easily seen. You look just right and you can see it, you can see the incredible beauty he has.
He survived, you survived, I survived. We survived the most malignant ugliness and are still kind. We fell 1000 times, and got back up 1001.

You are beautiful, my friend.
We are all so beautiful.

I hope that helps a bit. ((((hugs))))

This did help. Thank you very much. I just feel so lost and so disconnected from every thing and every one. I can relate your your senerio of crying so many tears. I sometimes feel like I am at the bottom of a well. And the tears just will not stop. And the well is filling up around me. It is dark in there. And I can feel the icey feeling of the very cold water rising up as I shed more tears. And I fear that I will drown in my tears. Because there is no way for me to climb out of this hole.

I came today and was reading thru this discussion. All of those things that are the monsters under the bed. Constantly raising thier ugly heads at me..

My mother and your mother Failed at the most important jobs of their life. I think most abusers and enablers deep, deep, deep down in their core they know how evil this is and the thought of confronting demons this dark is next to impossible for cowards like them. We were the angels in all this we were the strong ones enduring, surviving! I mean look how hard it is for us to face and we didnt do anything wrong so now try to imagine these pathetically weak individuals trying to come to terms with what they have done. Odds are not in their favor and theyll have to spend the rest of their life playing that out. Sucks for them!

My son said it best to me one day when I was raging about my family - He said:
They just not deep Mom they cant get it!

THAT REALLY SUCKS! At least she was honest enough to give you an answer. Most of us have not been given one.


so sorry but it reminds me of the dying words of my abuser to his wife as a message to me. His very last wods where "tell richard all is forgiven". I hadn't seen him in years and i had come home to confront him, only to find out he had died several years before.

rich

freeing....I so totally agree with you. I think every abuser on the planet knows in some deep seeded way how evil what they do is. But I also agree that if those of us who were truely innocent are having so much difficulty coping with our realities. I can't imagine being an abuser and looking the abuse right in the face excepting responsibility for it and then coping with what that would make them feel like. It is so much easier to place the blame else where.
To me it is like when someone makes up a thousand excuses for why their husband or brother or father abused another family member and says you should forgive them. To me that is tad amount to saying I know what he did was wrong. But if I say I know what he did was wrong. Then I have to explain why I didn't do anything to stop it. And it's easier for me to just ask you to forgive them.

Rich...I guess if I was an abuser and I was dying. I would say some thing like what your abuser did to anyone who was with me. So I could leave them with the impression that I am leaving with a clear concious and one last time reflecking the guilt back onto my victim. As all abusers do. I am certain that was quite hurtful for you to hear. But an abuser is an abuser is an abuser and they will never take responsibilty for the harm they have caused.

I am going to add this on here as an after thought.....

I once knew a man who was a very good friend of mine. We were very close friends and I thought I knew him very well. We talked very openly about any thing and every thing. There were no limits on the topics of conversation.
He told me one that he saw a little girl and that he wondered what it would like to touch her. Now he knew I had been abused by my father. But even with that he felt comfortable telling me about his desire. I said to him you have never done that have you. And he said no he hadn't, but he came close to doing it once years before. So I asked him if he knew the kind of permanent damage he would do to her little head if he did what he had thought about doing. And he said to me. I wouldn't cause her damage, because i would be very gentle and kind to her and say the things that would make her trust me. And some where in that sentence i got a whole new perspective of what some abusers must be thinking. If he aproached her gently and talked kindly to her, then some how that would make it different then if he jerked her off the street screaming and kicking. I said to him. You are so wrong about that. No amount of kindness can ever prevent the kind of pain and distruction molesting a child will do to them. And he said, well it doesn't matter because i would never do it anyway.
Did he ever do it. I don't know, he never confided in me if he did. But I truely felt like he had some how convinced himself that he would not be doing any thing wrong as long as he was kind..What a sick he was...

Yes. The majority of abusers rationalize what they do somehow. Some are completely self-centered; they really lack the ability to care for others. A lot of them project their own desires onto the child.

Below are 2 links, the first one is triggery, it's the psychology of a regular pedophile:

http://wings4help.tripod.com/id17.html

The second one has information about the mental workings of incest perps...and you'll likely find it VERY disturbing, as I did the first time I read it.

http://www.child-abuse-effects.com/incestuous-sex-offenders.html

As I read this, two things came to mind: I would have been in utter shock to hear this from her. I don't think I would have been able to express my emotions.
Second, I suspect that is perhaps why my own mother allowed the abuse to happen to me. My mother allowed me to be molested/raped for 2 years after I told her what he was doing. I never gave this explanation a thought.
Tyler, yes, sometimes it feels good at the time to take 'the low road', but you are correct, you're facing assault charges, and bringing yourself down to their level. Though difficult as it is usually is, the high road will be the best road. I never got an explanation from my mother. I have lived with this pain for 38 years.

I am ready to help others who are hurting. No one should ever have to live with pain such as this, inflicted by another.

It has been nearly a year and a half since I first started this discussion. I came back today and reread the whole thing. Hoping to find some wisdom in my own words. To find something that might help me regain some kind of sanity.
I was hoping at this point to have moved way beyond this pain and the pain caused by my psychopathic abuser. But instead I am just plain stuck. I am still alive, but not living. Suffering and not knowing why I keep living this nightmare everyday. I sat and thought out the timeline of my life. Looked at every situation of abuse that have occurred.
And at this point I can understand why no one in my life gets it. Because I don't get it.
I spent 16 years being tortured by my parents. Raped and beaten and used and abused. Neglected and damaged. Yet I allowed myself to stay in a five year relationship with a psychopath, that had more of a devastating effect then anything the two of them caused. I was trained to be abused and live with abuse. But in between those years early on and then the five I just spent with the psyco. I had 28 perfectly happy and normal and productive and healthy years with my first husband. So I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that it was possible for a person to be loved and cared for and nurtured. To be respected and appreciated. So why as a person did my brain not jump into high gear when the psyco came into my life. Why couldn't I walk away from him?
Now I can't undo the damage. I can't find my way. I have no hope and no will. I simply exist and dread, but get thru each day. So now I am asking myself why? Why am I still doing this? Living each day completely ruled by the pain and the sadness and the loneliness?
I have isolated myself as much as possible. Only because I don't want any one else to have to endure me and all the scary luggage I carry every where with me. It seeps from my pores and surrounds me like a clod of toxic dust.
I don't talk to anyone any more about any of it. Only because I number one can't stand to hear my own voice saying those words any more.. And because I know that nothing anyone says in response will ever change one shattered emotion or change one ounce of my broken spirit.
They say never try to fix something that is not broken. But what do they say about something that is so broken it can't be fixed?
The old adage about until you have walked a mile in my shoes.. I have yet to find anyone in my life, who truly understands what that means.
And I swear...the next person who says to me " Just hang in there". Or " just give it some time it will get better ". I will just start screaming and never stop.........

I replied to this from my original DS page. ( SammySandi )That page has been out of commission for years. I was looking at old journals on that page when I went looking for this discussion. I meant to switch back over to my active page ( SMRK ) to write the response that is now listed under SammySandi . I apologize for the confusion..