Second letter to my past
At my last therapy session, I had written a letter to myself as an 11 year old and then had to read it out, discuss it, and then respond to the words as I would have when I was 11. There was a bit of discussion between 21 year old me, and 11 year old me and then we continued with the session concluding with a successful safe space exercise.
For homework I've had to do some drawings representing the screaming inside I mentioned in my first letter after elaborating to my therapist and saying it felt like a statue was inside me. She also wanted me to write a letter to my 11 year old self again in response to our talk. I did the drawings in the sun today on my own in the university main square, as I was feeling pretty down and pathetic, and I'm not happy with how they came out but it's the best I could do. (For some reason when I post them as an image it stretches them, so if it looks a little short and fat that's why)
I got quite drunk tonight and wrote the letter. Here it is:
"I've decided that on top of everything else we've had to go through and feel, it makes me mad. Hearing some of what I did in response to my first letter has highlighted that for me. When you mentioned about people saying "It's never your fault though is it?" we both know you meant Dad. It makes me angry seeing how sad those seemingly harmless phrases have made you. Being where I am now I know how much they've resonated with us and our issues and the role they played in all this.
"It's a good start" is another one. It's just constant confirmation that nothing you ever do is good enough isn't it? And the constant insistence of everyone, not just Dad, that you are "too sensitive." No wonder you didn't understand. No wonder I felt like there was something wrong with me. Everyone always saying you're "too kind" as well? Why is this trait not encouraged in every child? If everyone was encouraged to be kind it wouldn't be a negative trait that is abused by others.
I've been mad about it before, but this feels different. I think about you sitting there in that chair crying, begging me to stop blaming you, wishing no-one did, wishing you could have understood and that people would understand you and when I think of it being me I almost turn away. Like I deserve it. But when I think of it as a child, which you were, and almost see you as someone else i get furious and protective. I get mad about it in a different way.
I'm mad at the people who did this, I'm mad at my school and sometimes I'm a little mad with my Dad and Grandpa L---- and even very rarely I'm mad at granddad. But when I think about an 11 year old girl being like that and feeling that way and I picture the poor child I was it has begun to sicken me in a whole new way. I don't know how to express it and that's not usual or comfortable for me. If I had to try and explain it, I'd use my big sister as an example.
One time, she found out that me and O---- (my first rapist) were seeing each other again and she was furious and I couldn't understand why she was so mad. - I hadn't told her what he did and I didn't really understand myself but she knew about the cheating, even so it seemed to go deeper. We were arguing in the kitchen and she had her back to me and I remember she span around, red, angry, tears in her eyes and yelled "You could have f**king died! I thought you were going to die!" I was so shocked. When I'd been in hospital for my kidneys he'd cheated again and that was what she was so mad about. She thought I was going to possibly die and he was out sleeping with someone else. I'll never forget that moment and I'm eternally sorry for putting her through that. But it's the kind of passionate, fiery, protective anger that I feel towards you now.But I still can't fully sympathize for myself. The moment you stop being a poor, separate, 11 year old girl in my mind and I see you as me, it fades. I know I've hated myself for a long time, but I didn't quite realise it was that much."
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I'd like to just say in writing that although I feel anger towards some stuff my family have said, or things they've done. I know they are people too and I wouldn't for one second consider blaming them on any level for what happened to me and I do love them so much.
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Thanks to a suggestion from my friend on here, I've taken 4 books out of the Library and have now read 2 chapters of "The Moth Diaries" and I'm loving it. I don't know how I would have got through today, however short it was, without it. So thank you DonnaWanda if you're reading this.
It's 3:34am here, and I want to stay up and read and draw and watch TV some more, but I've been going to bed to 5am lately, which means I get to wish my friend in Germany good luck at work for the day, but it's bad for my health and I know it. I'm missing the sunshine out of depression and I need to want to get better. So I'm going to make myself go to bed with the knowledge that even if I spend another day alone, I'll be able to read and draw and watch TV some more then, and maybe even go outside to do so, at the very least open my curtains and window and face the outside while I read again.
I manged to actually have 2 meals today. I had super-noodles for tea, and a 6-inch sub on my way home from drinking. I then wrote my letter and kept drinking in the shower while I watched Scrubs on my laptop... but I still had 2 meals. Optimistically - that's double my current average! Realistically... I'm still not eating as much as I used to or probably should be. I just don't know how much of it is the Fluoxotine and how much of it is me.
For homework I've had to do some drawings representing the screaming inside I mentioned in my first letter after elaborating to my therapist and saying it felt like a statue was inside me. She also wanted me to write a letter to my 11 year old self again in response to our talk. I did the drawings in the sun today on my own in the university main square, as I was feeling pretty down and pathetic, and I'm not happy with how they came out but it's the best I could do. (For some reason when I post them as an image it stretches them, so if it looks a little short and fat that's why)
I got quite drunk tonight and wrote the letter. Here it is:
"I've decided that on top of everything else we've had to go through and feel, it makes me mad. Hearing some of what I did in response to my first letter has highlighted that for me. When you mentioned about people saying "It's never your fault though is it?" we both know you meant Dad. It makes me angry seeing how sad those seemingly harmless phrases have made you. Being where I am now I know how much they've resonated with us and our issues and the role they played in all this.
"It's a good start" is another one. It's just constant confirmation that nothing you ever do is good enough isn't it? And the constant insistence of everyone, not just Dad, that you are "too sensitive." No wonder you didn't understand. No wonder I felt like there was something wrong with me. Everyone always saying you're "too kind" as well? Why is this trait not encouraged in every child? If everyone was encouraged to be kind it wouldn't be a negative trait that is abused by others.
I've been mad about it before, but this feels different. I think about you sitting there in that chair crying, begging me to stop blaming you, wishing no-one did, wishing you could have understood and that people would understand you and when I think of it being me I almost turn away. Like I deserve it. But when I think of it as a child, which you were, and almost see you as someone else i get furious and protective. I get mad about it in a different way.
I'm mad at the people who did this, I'm mad at my school and sometimes I'm a little mad with my Dad and Grandpa L---- and even very rarely I'm mad at granddad. But when I think about an 11 year old girl being like that and feeling that way and I picture the poor child I was it has begun to sicken me in a whole new way. I don't know how to express it and that's not usual or comfortable for me. If I had to try and explain it, I'd use my big sister as an example.
One time, she found out that me and O---- (my first rapist) were seeing each other again and she was furious and I couldn't understand why she was so mad. - I hadn't told her what he did and I didn't really understand myself but she knew about the cheating, even so it seemed to go deeper. We were arguing in the kitchen and she had her back to me and I remember she span around, red, angry, tears in her eyes and yelled "You could have f**king died! I thought you were going to die!" I was so shocked. When I'd been in hospital for my kidneys he'd cheated again and that was what she was so mad about. She thought I was going to possibly die and he was out sleeping with someone else. I'll never forget that moment and I'm eternally sorry for putting her through that. But it's the kind of passionate, fiery, protective anger that I feel towards you now.But I still can't fully sympathize for myself. The moment you stop being a poor, separate, 11 year old girl in my mind and I see you as me, it fades. I know I've hated myself for a long time, but I didn't quite realise it was that much."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'd like to just say in writing that although I feel anger towards some stuff my family have said, or things they've done. I know they are people too and I wouldn't for one second consider blaming them on any level for what happened to me and I do love them so much.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks to a suggestion from my friend on here, I've taken 4 books out of the Library and have now read 2 chapters of "The Moth Diaries" and I'm loving it. I don't know how I would have got through today, however short it was, without it. So thank you DonnaWanda if you're reading this.
It's 3:34am here, and I want to stay up and read and draw and watch TV some more, but I've been going to bed to 5am lately, which means I get to wish my friend in Germany good luck at work for the day, but it's bad for my health and I know it. I'm missing the sunshine out of depression and I need to want to get better. So I'm going to make myself go to bed with the knowledge that even if I spend another day alone, I'll be able to read and draw and watch TV some more then, and maybe even go outside to do so, at the very least open my curtains and window and face the outside while I read again.
I manged to actually have 2 meals today. I had super-noodles for tea, and a 6-inch sub on my way home from drinking. I then wrote my letter and kept drinking in the shower while I watched Scrubs on my laptop... but I still had 2 meals. Optimistically - that's double my current average! Realistically... I'm still not eating as much as I used to or probably should be. I just don't know how much of it is the Fluoxotine and how much of it is me.
Replies
((((Hugs)))). Will write to you tomorrow. I hope you do sleep and get some sunshine tomorrow.
First of all, good job on doing this. It has brought up so many feelings for you. And very nice artwork! I wish I could get a better look at it! It\'s very skillful and expressive.
I think all of us have this thing where we start out feeling nothing - or maybe only hostility - towards our own past self. Until we start to see that that was a child, and if it had been any child but ourselves, the things that happened or the way it felt or the way it was treated would seem outrageous. So it\'s really important to be allies and elders to our own younger selves. I think that what you feel when you see that 11 year old as a child, not yourself, is the correct and sane way to feel. How is it possible that any child on this earth deserves kindness and compassion except for the child that was you? I think you learned to stop having compassion for yourself because of the way you were treated by others. Instead, you learned to give all your caring and compassion away to other people, including the very people who hurt you. So it\'s wonderful and really crucial that you start to feel that towards your own younger self. You deserve it as much as anyone, that child deserves it as much as anyone. She needs and deserves to be loved, cherished and protected. She needs to feel safe and understood, as well as admired and appreciated. I think you are starting to do that.
There\'s nothing wrong with feeling anger towards your family members. It won\'t hurt them! And it\'s natural. It\'s natural in the best of circumstances and even more so in less than ideal circumstances. Even if they had no way of knowing what happened to you, it would be natural tendency to feel anger at them for not protecting you. You can\'t have an authentic and healthy relationship until you let yourself feel everything that you feel. You don\'t have to justify your feelings, ever. They are just feelings, and they are yours.
Please do eat healthy meals! You deserve all the food you need! You deserve to eat! You have a right to take up space and resources in this world! And drinking on an empty stomach is not good for your body or your safety.
(((Hugs)))
Thank you so much for your wonderful comments on this. I\'m really glad you liked my drawings as well, the picture comes up better on my profile.
What you\'ve said is really insightful and reading it coming from someone else has helped me a lot. I hope that eventually I\'ll be able to have some sympathy for my actual self and not just be like a big sister to my past self. I think not having any support at the time because I didn\'t know how to ask for it has contributed to this independent side of me that just doesn\'t think I should need or deserve help, particularly when I\'ve had people doubt in my abilities for a long time. It\'s hard to imagine any child deserving this kind of thing, it annoys me a little that in a way I\'m saying there are exceptions to that and I\'m one of them, because there should be no exception to that rule. All children should be loved and taken care of and be safe.
I also really appreciate your support regarding how I feel about my family. I don\'t blame them at all for not protecting me because I know that there is absolutely nothing they could have done. It\'s just the unhelpful words that have spurred my insecurities and made me into the self-doubting people-pleaser I am, and I know that partially led me into the situations I should never have been in. It\'s that that makes me mad.
Thank you for the encouragement on the food front. I only managed one meal again today but my mum is visiting tomorrow to take me to therapy so I should be having two meals because we tend to go for lunch afterwards and then hopefully I\'ll be awake late enough to be hungry again and make myself another meal. I\'m not sure why I\'m doing this. I wish I knew how much of it was my antidepressants changing my appetite and how much of it is psychological and maybe even intentional.
Big wonderful hugs.
You\'re the best. xx Thank you for everything. xx
There\'s nothing wrong with feeling anger towards your family members. It won\'t hurt them! And it\'s natural. It\'s natural in the best of circumstances and even more so in less than ideal circumstances. Even if they had no way of knowing what happened to you, it would be natural tendency to feel anger at them for not protecting you. You can\'t have an authentic and healthy relationship until you let yourself feel everything that you feel. You don\'t have to justify your feelings, ever. They are just feelings, and they are yours.
Please do eat healthy meals! You deserve all the food you need! You deserve to eat! You have a right to take up space and resources in this world! And drinking on an empty stomach is not good for your body or your safety.
(((Hugs)))