I feel like something a scrambled message is spinning around in my head and I'm not able to dicipher it. I actually know what it's saying but I can't really see how it applies to my life. I can but I can't. It's hard to explain. I guess in a sentence, I'm confused, and so so thankful that you're all here to listen. Listeners, that's what I need.

I'm no good at being angry.

I'm different from a lot of people who've been through this – not better, just different. I pray for the people who've hurt me. For a few of them I even have compassion, because I see where they've come from. I think I'm gaining compassion for my primary abuser and learning that maybe I had three primary abusers instead of the one.....I do not have much compassion for any of them. I think understanding where they've come from has helped me process what I've proccessed but I think I haven't really felt the full anger enough to move to compassion....and I want to. Not for their sake but mine. I can't handle being angry. It destroys my spirit. I implode and I have no reason to hate myself because of things they've done....still it's hard to come out of anger and confusion and find forgiveness like that. I am trying.

Has anyone ever read The Wounded Heart or Healing The Wounded Heart? My counselor recommenced it and it's been a hard read.....a really hard read, but a good read.....some quotes that resonate

“Often the daughter chosen by the weak, insatiable father is made to pay verbally or physically by her angry and envious brothers. Instead of protecting her, her mother ingores the “boys will be boys” rough play and then blames her rival, her daughter, for being too sensitive. The “princess” is safe in the throne room with her father, but when she ventures into the rest of the castel she is a mark for the family's envy and rivalry. Not only is it confusing, but it is also lonely” - except I was not a Daddy's girl. I was always afraid of my Dad. It continues “Perhaps worse than confusing and lonely, it is crazy-making. There are so many inherent contradictions in being the chosen child. One is empowered to bring about a life in ones parent, and yet it is a losing game. No one can breathe into a soul but God. The chosen child is kind of god, but not God.”

I was the obedient child. I didn't want to get in trouble so I didn't get in trouble unless we both got in trouble because “boys will be boys” and clearly I instigated him....idk maybe I did but making breakfast too loudly or standing up for myself or not doing what he told me to do doesn't seem like instigating.....saying no to SA at 9, for the first time ever landed me in the ER. I didn't get in trouble, that I know of. I guess I don't remember. I remember bits and pieces of life surrounding that event. I was 9. I did get in trouble often for being his victim. It was not “Mom he hit me” sort of relationship – it was screaming, trying to come up for air from being drowned, or hoping I didn't die while his hands were around my throat. It was being pushed down the stairs and kicked/punched or beaten with my own musical instrument because he didn't want me to practice – even though I was just doing what I was told, on the other side of the house, very quietly. It was a lot of things like that. And mom was absent, even if she was there she did very little, if anything – besides saying “wait until your father gets home”

And then Dad would come home. I remember bare bottom spankings. I don't remember much really about mine but I know I got to a certain age where I wrote Dad a letter and said “this is wrong, find some other way to punish me” and I didn't get spanked again. I felt like I was too old to be bare bottom spanked by my Dad. I'm not sure how old I was but he never did it again – not that I remember anyways. When my brother would get spanked it was behind closed doors and he would scream bloody murder. It was awful. I can still remember his screaming. I also remember his fierce hatred for my dad and him telling me how – specifically in detail – how he'd like to kill him. I thought he would kill him. I really did.

I have not been able to put my finger on a reason why I as an adult am uncomfortable around my Dad or why I don't want him alone with the kids. But I read something in this book about subtle abuse. It talks about a woman who remembered her dad glancing at her breasts and just feeling it was normal, that's what men do. That describes me. I don't remember it from my youth but I remember it from this week....living with him. I wear sweatshirts and baggy shirts and I don't face him when I don't need to. It's awkward and I didn't recognize that this is not normal. I just felt ashamed of the things I was born with, the things I should be proud of, the life giving things I have nursed my babies with. I hate them and I've never understood why. I thought this was shame related to things my husband did but maybe it's both....

My SA is less severe than a lot of storries but it's still damaging. To read this was....well it was something...”Least severe involves touch of primary or secondary sexual body parts with clothing on, forced or unforced sexual kissing, and simulated sexual intercourse without penetration.”

“Abuse that began at a younger age and moved from least severe to very severe, and which is perpetrated by a parent, does more significant harm than abuse that occurred at age twelve involving a touch of thre breasts by a slightly older boy, for example.”

I don't know why that resonated with me. It was a young age, the least severe and didn't move to more severe....except I have holes in my memory so who knows....it continued in other less severe ways throughout my life....the things my brother would say and the embarassing things he'd say to my friends, things he claimed I liked that I would never have admitted him and had no idea if I liked it or not because I was ten or twelve and hadn't done those things but he'd done things to me, not those things but he'd done enough to make me uncomofortable with those statements. I froze and didn't know how to defend myself to my friends who just laughed at the awkward comments.....it isolated me. I didn't have close friends.

Here's one of the real kickers.....

“These premises set the trajectory for the remainder of the chapter:

1. 
   

   The more subtle the abuse (especially in a life with far more overt harm), the more likely it is ignored, denied or minimized.

   
   


2. 
   

   The devil is not merely in the details but in the subtle, unaddressed, daily prinpicks of abuse that seldom capture our attention

   
   


3. 
   

   The sweep of subtle abuse is seldom a single event, though it might be remembered in a few scenes; instead it is lik ea dark current moving through one's life, with inexorable consequences.”

   
   

Two moments of my life stand out long after the SA happened.

1. 
   

   I was in high school and spending most nights at a friends house because it was safe and understandable and I didn't need excuses or to explain myself because it was summertime and our parents didn't care. I came home to him sleeping in my bed and was overwhelmed with emotion, disgust and confusion. At this point in my life I didn't remember the reason why I had that ER visit at 9. I didn't remember the SA at all. It was a game and it was locked up in my memory but this moment is stained in my memory, as are the feelings of shame I didn't think I'd ever understand.

   
   


2. 
   

   I was maybe 21, 22 years old. I didnt drink because he drank. I felt obligated to be his sister because family is family it's all you have and at the end of the day everyone came to the table, even if he'd just finished trying to kill me....I didn't understand that I didn't have to have him in my life. He'd had a few drinks but not enough to excuse this....at this age my older brother hit on me and let his hand drift to just below the small of my back as he walked me to my car....I'm not one for language but WTF!???? This was the moment I knew I needed to get him out of my life. I simply tried avoiding him and that didn't work. I needed to be firm and years later I was. I told him to stop calling me. I told him I didn't want anything to do with him. It took a while but he was out of my life for five years until my mother brought him back without telling me and I froze.....I need to learn how to deal with my mother so I can cut him out again and I need to remember that I MATTER. My life matters and I don't need ANY of them. If they can't respect the ways I need to take care of me, so be it. Their reaction is their decision and I can do life without them.

   
   

I could write so much more but I need to go to work. Thanks so much for listening. I needed a place to put all of this. I have never said a lot of these things out loud. And as much as I know how some of this book applies to my life, I can't see it.....not sure that makes any sense. If any of you understand the confusion, thanks for understanding. Thanks for being here. I hope you have a wonderful day <3