Healing the Wounds of Childhood

hello all! i am new to this board but not ivillage! this board was reccomended by another CL from a board i often visit! i have been dealing with anger and trust issues since i was the age of 14...i am now soon to be 29. i have had enough and thought this would be a great place to start my healing my process.

here is my story:

when i was 14 my sister's finance decided it would be cool to start messing around with me. he was 21 and she was 16. they were engaged to be married(of course not until she graduated)! one night i was awoken from my sleep by the feeling of someone touching me. i was halk awake and saw him standing there above me. i thought i was dreaming and just kinda mumbled and the feeling went away. the next morning my brain was all scattered and i had decided that this was just a horrible dream. well the next night...the same thing happened! i was awaken again by that same feeling. this time i was fully awake but pretended to be asleep because i was scared to death. i AGAIN made a sound and he went away. i was confused and did not know what to do! i could not lock my door because i had none! i was afraid to tell my sister and my family out of fear of HUrting them. my family had been through so much that this did not need to be added onto it. my father and mother recently just getting back together....my 18 yr old sister and her new baby living with us was stress for all of us..and  my oldest sister had just lost her fiance by his step brother killing him. THE FAMILY WAS A MESS!  plus i admired my sister(the one whose fiance had done this to me). i did not want to lose our closeness. i decided once again that this  was something that happened only twice and it would not happen again! I WAS WRONG! this same routine went on every night for years. only getting worse as the years went on! i became secluded...i was always away from my home...i hated night to come! i would just lay there wishing it (he) would go away! i would make a sound...even said stop....and he would scatter. during the daylight hours he would act as if NOTHING ever happened! he could look at me..he could even talk to me..with no response of course....but it was just another day for him. but for me...it was a day that i hated to see the night time come! one night when i was 16 (this has been going on for 2 yrs) i was awaken by the feeling his mouth on my well...private parts. i yelled as loud as i could and he left....only this time he LEFT the house! i could not  take it anymore and i think he knew it as well. that night i decided that i was going to die. (i was more willing to die than have to face my family with this). i swallowed pills...but i did not swallow enough. i did not even know what i was swallowing ..i was just grabbin. could've been tylenol for all i know. well i woke up the next morning..to my surprise...and just sat and stared at the walls all day. my mother had noticed the pill bottles and asked me what was going on...i simply said, " i was trying to kill myself".. confused she rushed me to the hospital and from there i went to the Psych ward. i was there 2 weeks before my counselor decided it was time to tell my family! my counselor told my parents to bring my sister with them to this meeting..confused they did. well this meeting sets up all the anger and hate that i feel (from time to time) for  my family. i told them all what was going on and my sister ran out of the room calling me a liar...my mother ran after her. my father said" what did you do?" ! i will NEVER forget those words from my father! he blamed me for this happening! my sister would not speak to me for weeks after that meeting...her fiance had admitted what he done. my parents ..well ...they were oblivious still! everyone was concerned for my sister....NOT ME! what about ME? was all i could ask! i received no answer. i was in the hosptial for almost a month! when it was time for me to go home...my parents and i talked. they said that he was not allowed in the house but he and my sister were trying to work things out! I WAS SHOCKED...HURT...AND FELT BETRAYED! that was all that was ever said about the issue! thats it...nothing more! i convinced myslef that it was ok what he had done and that it will NEVER  happen again!  i had to harden up..fight this feeling of betrayment that i was feeling. and to believe that my family knew what they were doing! i had to face this man almost everyday of my life!!!! well the day came that my sister moved out. i was so happy!!!!! then came the wedding...i was asked to be the maid of honor and i decided to be there for my sister. i was there crying the whole time. well a year later they divorced! i was even more happier!!!! this man was out of my life....so i thought! well turns out he and my other sister(the one with the baby) were hanging out. she was living with her boyfriend(now her husband). i found out  because i stopped by their house one day to see my neice and nephew and he was there WATCHING the kids!!!!!!! COME ON! i thought...why in the hell was he watching my niece and nephew after what he did to me. when he opened the door i just sat there with my mouth open and did not know what to say! i was turning to leave when he grabbed my arm and said he wanted to talk to me. please remember that by this time in my life the wall i had built had grown stronger over the years! i told him to get his hands off me and i was walking away and he said he LOVED ME!!!!!! i could not believe my ears! what in the hell did you just say is my response! he said it again and i could have puked right then and there! i ran out of the buliding and went back home...( i was 18).told my parents that he was there...by time they called my sister she was back from the store. that was the last time i saw him. and as far as my sister who was hanging out with him....it was never spoken of again! just like before!

sorry this is so long but i felt that to undertsnad the situation ..it needed to be told by facts! i had been in and out of counseling from the age of 16 ad whie i feel it helped me deal with HIM...it has not helped me deal with my family! my family hurt me and they are the only family i will ever have so i feel i have to just live with this! my sister and i have talked and she has apologised to me about marrying the jerk after what he done....but that is not enough! i am now married to someone who really has no clue how badly this has effected me and my life. he thinks i am just cold and heartless at times. i have a hard time trusting...opening up..and i hate to be touched while i am sleeping! i have 2 kids that i am way OVER PROTECTIVE with because of this event in my life. that wall is still there and it is getting in the way of me being a good mother and a good wife! my poor husband is always on egg shells with me and he says that i need to get help! but he is asking me to get help for all the wrong reasons! he says what happened to me was long ago but i almost reminded of it everyday through my children! and when i think i am just learning to forget about it....my mother...YES ...my mother will tell me she saw him and that they talked and hugged!!!!!! DO YOU GET THE PICTURE!!!!this is what i have had to deal with since the age of 16....i can no longer carry this with me! it has become a part of who i am on the outside but on the inside...i know better. i know this is not me...that i somewhere down there ..there is the hurt free me. the one who can trust my husband ...the one who can allow my children to have sleep overs with friends because not all people are HIM..

thanks so much for letting me get this off my chest! i really hope i can find friends who have gone through the same thing and we can start to heal together!

Dearest Tracy,

I am so sorry you have had to grow up in such a toxic family, and I felt utterly disgusted as I read the story of your family's betrayal and continual betrayal of you.  I am sorry for what you have had to go through...you didn't deserve that...the assaults, the discounting, the rationalizing, the disgarding of your feelings, your very humanity.  It is no wonder you are filled with a rage, and rightly so, because your very dignity as a human being has been repeatedly compromised and dishonored.

There are some serious problems with this family and I am very concerned for the young ones and their safety. It's clear to me these people have no sense of priority or even a grasp of reality.  You have to just wonder!

I am particularly sickened by the acting as if nothing happened which is a common response to abuse and incredibly evil in its affect on victims.  I'm not sure which is worse...the actual abuse or the "as if nothing happened" denial...even saying "I didn't do it" is at least some kind of acknowledgement that something is alleged to have happened, however acting as if everything is and always was fine is truly insidious and horribly wounding, because it is totally crazy making.  Nothing causes a person to deny or question their very own selves more than this.

You deserve better than this. You say your husband says you need to get help but he's asking you get help for all the wrong reasons.  That may be so, but it doesn't matter.  What does matter is that you need to get help for your own reasons, and get it in ways that are meaningful to you.  It would be wonderful if your husband could really understand where you're coming from, and perhaps in time he will, but until then the bottom line is you need to be there for you.

Already you are aware of just how the past is affecting you...and by the way, it doesn' t matter if it happened a long time ago...time doesn't heal wounds...time is just time...healing comes from acknowledgment, compassion, willingness , understanding, and these things can take place over time, but time in and of itself is just time.

So...whose acknowledgement do you need?  In a perfect world we would get it from the people who abused us...but then, in a perfect world, we wouldn't have gotten abused.  I have learned that often the people who lacked the character to refrain from hurting you will not have the character to do the right thing about it.  Which means you are often left to heal yourself.

And it can be done, which is great, because if our healing were dependent upon the people who hurt us...well, the door to healing would be closed to a great many.  But the door is open to any who would walk through it and it starts with our own attitudes toward ourselves, how we value ourselves, the priorities we set, our ability to speak the truth, our truth, and knowing that we are heard...if not by the ones who did it, by someone else...and the most important someone else is us. 

You know what impresses me the most is that throughout your whole family history, you seem to be the only one with any real sense of awareness...remember this.  You are so right about what you were perceiving as you were growing up...you knew who was messed up, you knew what was right and what was wrong...plus, you had compassion within you, a larger sense of nobility, wanting to not hurt your sister, your family, even as you were allowing yourself to be hurt until you could no longer take it.

These are your strengths...taken advantage of by crazy people in a crazy situation.  Now, give these qualities to you!

You know what's what...remember this when you tell yourself you know that inside there is a hurt-free person, that you can trust, that you are not what you have seen yourself become on the outside.  You are aware, and this iawareness is true!  That's real...it's not just a hopeful positive affirmation, Tracy.  It's real, it's truth...there is that you within you, and it is that you that is, in part, causing the anguish within you because it wants to be free, it waits not even so patiently anymore for its own birth!

Reclaim your compassion, your caring, and give this to yourself.  Give up trying to win the love or understanding or somehow confer a level of emotional intelligence or awareness on people who are profoundly in the dark.  Let them go...their approval, their acting with even a modicum of sanity.  Accept them as they are and let them go.

Redefine your space, your boundaries.  If these people didn't share your DNA, would they be in your life?  Would you seek them out and make them your own?  Consider this...we are all a family of humanity...if you go far enough back, we all share the same DNA anyway.  Who do you want to be your family?  Because "they're the only family I got" may not necessarily be the case.

I'm not saying we can discount our biological ties...but we don't have to worship them either, and sometimes, those we are biologically related to are so bad for our health, that for our sake and the sake of the family who truly are priority, like our children, we need to disengage ourselves from the unhealthy so that we may embrace that which has value to us.

In other words, don't sacrifice your husband or kids for those folks...you've done enough sacrificing already, and they don't have the capacity to appreciate it...which even if they did, I would have to say you still deserve better.  And your mom?  Knowing who this person is, knowing what he did to you, knowing that she, your father, your siblings betrayed you so deeply...for her to tell you she saw your abuser and hugged him????  That is so evil and spiteful, Tracy.  Can she truly not have a clue?  You are not safe with her.

I'm so glad you have come here to get this off your chest...please, don't apologize.  There is magic...and healing in the telling.  Telling our stories, speaking our truth is paramount to our healing process, because it is that very act which was so often denied us and that is a central core to the wounding itself.

So, welcome, dear Tracy, welcome to this community.  I look forward to getting to know you more!

Blessings,

first off i would like to say your words are inspiring! you have a great sense of what "life" is like for me. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR UNDERSTANDING!  as far as my family is concerned..they are CRAZY! and i do not mean that because of the way they handled my situation but because they are. since i can remember my family has been totally backward from the "average" family. when i was about 7 my father tried to kill himself by drinking bleach because my mother was having an affair. but let's not forget that my mother and father were "swingers" at some point in their life...but yet he tried to kill himslef over something he gave permission. then there was the constant fighting..it was like clockwork...every friday night,bowling season, my mother and father every night on the way home would be drinking and driving with me and my sister in the car. arguing and fighting in the car NOT paying attention to the darn road and we were in the back holding on for dear life. i would litterally kiss the ground when we would end up home safely. my mother leaves my father when i was 9 and we move to louisianna with her boyfriend...that was a nightmare in itself. i had to share a bed with her and him because we were living with his sister and kids...let's just say i was witness to sexual acts that i preferred not to be. SICK HUH! you know thinking about that ...i think that is where to learn to act like i was sleeping when my abuser would be messing with me! HMMM. anyway, i can remember good days but the bad surely outweighed the good.i was so messed up as a child. i would not go to school out of fear when i returned my mother would not be there. I GOT KICKED OUT OF KINDERGARTEN BECAUSE I WOULD FIGHT WITH THE TEACHERS ABOUT GOING HOME! not arguing fighting ...i would hit and kick them. this continued until the third grade. it was awful! needless to say i ended up quitting school when i was 16...when all this was going on with me. a action i regret to this day! but i could not handle all the responsibilties i was going through! i had to deal with my abuser...my sister...my other sister and her loss. SO MUCH! kids at school were hateful toward me....i was known as the "slut" because i had a few guy friends. i never even dated anyone from my school. funny huh! i "dated" guy that my dad absolutely hated..why i do not know because he was so sweet to me, but i will never forget the time that mother and father went to a wedding and i did not want to go because i had already had plans with him...(the wedding was for people i did not even know)...anyway at about midinght my mother calls and wakes me up out of my sleep yelling for me to get out of the house! WHY! i asked. i knew they were fighting but i was use to it and did not understnad what it had to do with me. she continued to tell me to just leave before my dad got there ...."he's gonna kill you"...was what she said! CRYING AND TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON...I RAN TO MY FRIENDS. my mother ended up calling the cops on him that night. when i got home in the morning my mother said my father was furious about me going out with him. i asked what the comment meant about him killing him and she said she feared for both of our lives. IT WAS NEVER SPOKEN OF AGAIN! 

WOW!!! what a life? it looks so different when writing it down. i am calling a "shrink" today. LOL

thanks again for having me on the board and for your kind words....i hope to hear from you soon! 

Hi Tracy! I wanted to pop in here and welcome you, as well. I'm glad you shared your story with us - often that is the first step to healing. And you're right - putting those words out there on paper or a computer screen seems to give you a different viewpoint, doesn't it? It kind of removes all the excuses we give ourselves for why our families aren't crazy (they are), why the abuse wasn't as bad as all that (it was), and why we should just "get over it already" (how the heck do you do that?). I think looking at those words and re-reading them helps to put it all in proper perspective. That's the most important step.

And I think Demian is right - go for that therapy. Not for your husband's reasons, however wrong those may be, but for your OWN reasons. He doesn't have to know what you and the counselor talk about. Really, he probably shouldn't anyway, unless he's involved in the therapy as well.  You may very well learn that as your own issues begin to be addressed, that whatever issues he's concerned about may begin to improve as well. Kind of a domino effect, ya know?

There have been incidents of sexual abuse in my family, different times & people, and always it seems to get swept under the rug. Never to be spoken of again... I've been sitting here quite a while pondering this, and I don't have an answer. Maybe it's because to truly deal with that issue in the way it SHOULD be handled would mean the total anihilation of the family unit. Divorces would occur. Parents, siblings, children would be disowned and outcast. Is it possible that parents tend to downplay those things because they truly don't know how best to handle them? So the only way they can think to handle it is to [gasp]  ignore it?

I guess it's human nature to fear change and avoid those things that would destroy what they've become comfortable with - even dysfunctional family dynamics such as your family's. I'm not saying what your parents and your sister did was right - it was WRONG.  Just that perhaps it was the only reaction they were capable of at that moment without destroying the entire family.  I dunno... I'm just trying to understand why families tend to deny or ignore significant criminal acts such as this.

Whatever the reasons doesn't really matter now, anyway. What matters is that you finally get the affirmation YOU need so you can heal, and so you can be the kind of woman you want to be. It's obvious that's not going to come from your family, except perhaps partly from your sister. IMHO, therapy might be a good resource to begin with, if you think it's right for you.

I hope your mother is safe from your father now - he sounds so very dangerous. Are they still together? Are your other siblings and their children away from your parents' influence now?

Keep us posted on how you're doing. It's good to have you here, and I look forward to getting to know you more!

{{{HUGS}}}