All my life I have had to be tough..the tough gal who wouldn't let the rager and the pervert destroy her...If I fell down, I would grit my teeth, wipe the blood off and get back up on my bike or my horse, whatever the vehicle it was that tossed me....

It wasn't and isn't the way I want to be..Yea, tough when necessary, but life with insanity made me become hard..Hard meant that the real me, the soft, gentle, tender, sensitive me would be safe....My little fractured heart would be protected, but at what cost????

Today, I had a talk with A brother, older one..I had texted him telling him that when he was sober enough, plse send me his latest PO box # and city so I could send Janie's (our dead sister) life in pictures CD

He called me today..I was on the rowing machine at gym and propped the phone up on the machine, tucked in almost under the stairs going up to the other work out machines..Nice and private, quiet and perfect for a talk with him..As I rowed my way into physical health, he is telling me that NOW he has arthritis so bad that he drops his phone and hospital told him that he would have to work on a rowing machine and MAYBE his neglected, assaulted body with liquor could rebound enough for him to continue working...I listened to this and I didn't say a word..No more blasting him about his drinking, no more pleading with him to stop and get into re-hab..I just SAT on my rower and listened to him

Then he says to me  "please sissy, you are all I have...Please keep me in your life...Please don't toss me away, even tho I deserve it..Please let me be in your life"  I told him I would always love him but my boundaries were:  No calling me when he is drinking...and NO visit to me if he cannot be "dry" while he visits..I won't have him drinking at my home (he said he wants to visit in the Spring with his Best friend whom I know very well AND who is sober"...Anyway, we had a rather nice chat...He had to leave and get a boat (He is a marine engineer in MA and a very good one so often times he gets to sleep on a boat he is working on)  Anyway, he had to leave and get his latest "floating hotel" into the dock so he could work on the radio equipment.  I thanked him for the call and when we hung up I thought about how life with us used to be

He was my best friend in the world...We dated each others friends, Yes, I did try marijuana with him, but decided it wasn't conducive to doing my type of work and I feared addiction..and Yes, I used to drink beer with him, but I was the lucky one..I could drop it and not miss it..he could not..I didn't want to notice that...He was my buddy..When I had my emotional/mental breakdown over the accumulated stress of a life of horrid child abuse, HE was my flat mate, taking care of me, being my good company and taking me for walks and taking me for ice cream......I thought about those times we had during our lives growing up and after we both left that horrid home...Actually HE had a decent relationship with her AND with him, He was probably the only kid they DIDN"T abuse and torture...I always wondered , "is his drinking and becoming an alcoholic"  Survivor's guilt because he knows what happened to me and it hurts his heart to think about it...We have talked about it at length because when I went into recovery, I informed everyone I knew close that ALL non supporters would be at the very least long term temporarily out of my life as I needed all the support I could get..."R" was a big supporter..not only did he believe me and want to help me but he also came against the ones who put me down over my emotional issues.....He always stood up for me and defended me...Even now he does...

I thought about all this and when I walked to my car, the rain, cold, dark, grey ugly rain came down and It was COLD...I got to my car, wet and thinking about him...I fired up the car, turned the heater on high and while I sat there waiting for the car to get warm, I put my head on the steering wheel and I cried...I cried over my lost decades of life..I cried over my brother, the ravages of alcohol beginning to take away his once strong, handsome, sturdy body...I cried because I am tired of being tough and hard out of being afraid of more hurt to my heart!!!! 

I cried because I know I cannot give us back a better past, I can only change ME for a hopefully better future....I think I cried for all the ones impacted by this disease, either by their own struggle to stay sober and for those who are impacted by this curse called alcohol..

My father was an evil child offender..Drinking or sober, he offended against any little girl 13- 16 he could get, but HER....SHE enabled him so he would provide her with her "fix"  her Seagrams 7...She sold out her female relatives and other innocent young girls, including me to the devil so she could have her "fix"  I will never know the woman she might have been because she was already deep into drinking issues when i was born..I have a BIG empty hole in me that being abandoned by her caused..And I don't know how to fill it...Self love , often, is not enough but its all I have and the folks who love me now...I thought about all of this when I cried over my steering wheel...It was a cleansing cry...I needed it!!! Sometimes working the program is just having a good, honest, sincere, cleansing CRY!!!! 

(((Hugs)))

 

Dear Aline, Oh yea, I do NOT want to let myself, either wallow in self-pity too much....and I dont' think this is even remotely that because to NOT feel, the body "stores" the pain and one has physical issues..I do think my back spasms were "stored pain" coming out, so to NOT cry would be worse..to NOT feel only brings a harder, longer "invoice" later....Self pity is one thing...self COMPASSION is what I was feeling yesterday...for sure...checked my motives and did a step 4...I am just releasing more past pain and that is a GOOD thing for me....I know folks talk about "self pity" and I think it can be over emphasized to the point where recovery folks who are new are afraid to feel because it "looks like" self pity....to me, self pity is wallowing in victim mode and never coming out....self compassion is yes, feeling my emotions, crying when necessary and theraputic HOWEVER...the big difference between me feeling self compassion over self pity is that I am seeking the "what can I do to change/care for me???"  and what solution/step do I need to work on to keep peeling this onion down till I get to the healthy CORE of me.....I used to be bull of self pity because I had no program..No stuff to help me heal.....Now I do and I notice that when I need to cry, slowly, I am becoming able to....My inner child dares to feel now...That is a good thing because we have program to guide us through those dark times.....thanks for making me aware that self pity can and does try to creep in, but its not welcome in my home..............Hugs

 Dear jtpickle:  Thank for for that much needed and much appreciated ((((Hug)))) I could easily become a "hugaholic"   Today is grey and cold and cloudy..A day to "be with me" and do the "easy does it" thingy

There isn't onr.day I don't cry about my childhood.  That is.not the crying myself to.sleep.stuff 

I. Cry because I go.to.another level of knowing. Recovering from a childhood like yours.and.mine.(My own.recovery includes annihilating abandonment  by my motber) 8.is tough going. What isn't really acknowledged is after all those years of being courageous and looking at it.  That is the horror trauma neglect denial and at the.end.if it all simple.abandonment by all the.aduts in you life.thsre is.even more.in.store. 

When you get to that point of.knowiing there is another level.waiting for.you.   There is the.xknowledging what it cost you.as an adult.  That doesn't go away it is a.fierxe effort to learn create and manave.how to live.with that additional level.of trauma grief and devastating loss. 

So.for.many trauma survivors it doesn't get easier in fact it gets a lot harder because you don't have all the distdqctions.ti numb the pain. 

Anyone.like.yourself who.is.committed to recovery. Thatis.constantky searching trying and.being willing toaddress.that kind.of.horror.is.in.another.category for.me.

You are one.of.the pioneerz.who.is.willling to go to any lengths for.your.recovery. You are certainly in a special.catevody to me.  I hope more people in time will be as courageous kind and giving as you are. 

Most of all especially at Cristmas it is so refreshing for me to witnezs your  courage in.action.

Maresie 

Dear el-cee...not sure its peace YET with the past, but for sure, willingness to face it--accept it as it is and do the grief work..However that said, b4 my sister died, it was major:  Our reconcilling 2-3 years before her death, we did make peace with our past together and I am so grateful for that..it sustains me when I have my "down days" of missing her........Hugs to you el-cee...I hope life is treating you well...

 (((((((((((Maresie))))))))) You are so kind and special to stop in and share a part of you with me today....and yea, I agree.."another level of knowing)  I'm sorry your mother abandoned you as well..I don't know of anything so devastating as that..I never was "the whole world to anyone"  Not even during those special times when a baby is tiny--new---untainted by the world yet, when mother is supposed to be totally in love with that tiny new life..Oh she might have changed my diapers and gave me my bottle, but my aunties told me that I got the minimum as she neglected me totally..They tried to fill the gap, but I wasn't theirs to take home, much as they wanted to......

and yep..I had no safe place to go, not really, relatives who wanted me were scared of the beast and stopped just short of adopting me and 4ever removing me from my hell...and I think I grieve now because I am becoming more aware as I work my program and understand me the  like you say "the acknowledging what it cost you as an adult"  and I agree..It does NOT go away, I just have come to terms that I must find a way to life INSPITE of them and live good..Live loving..Live as a "light" spirit INSPITE of this....

and oh yea, I'm not self medicating with beer drinking and partying with my friends--escaping into another world OR even worse, I think, just shutting down and stuffing all those awful feelings of grief...WOW!! I re-read your post and you are SO spot on on what you say.....and yep, I am willing to address the horror because the only way I know, to get to the "muddy basin"of my emotional being is to keep digging as it comes up, with my backhoe called Al-anon and ACA and keep digging up the muck as it surfaces, sift through it, feel the feelings, so I can toss it away and finally get to my , if possible, "muddy basin" of emotions so the sun can dry out all the muck...

I told my daughter last night, my whole life is as though I was this little tree and someone came along as I was a little sprout and cut off my biggest branch from my truck...the absolute biggest branch...so there is this big gaping hole, sap seeping , dripping down my little truck as I try to stay alive, and through the years the sap hardened and other branches grew around that huge "spot" on my trunk, so maybe its not so visible because through program I am growing new branches around it, but that now "sap hardened" spot is still there...the robins and lady bugs will never be able to visit that part of me because it is just a scarred over spot, that I have to now accept as a part of me, anyway,  but they can visit and make homes in my other branches....I will look "off balance" all my life because of this nearly fatal "pruning job" I endured, but I will just have to live "off balance" and learn to walk, run, etc., "off balance"  the hole will always be there but through program and being willing to face and deal with all this "GUNK" , so I can make a life for me.......

I hope this post made sense,   I loved reading yours...I didn't "love" that you, too were abandoned, that makes me sad, but I am so glad you are here, working on you..Like me, you are like the willow tree, learning to not fight the winds that try to blow us down, as we have learned to "bend with the winds" and thus we won't ever be uprooted and so much brush on a neighbor's front yard....I have seen other posts of yours and loved reading you...You and I BOTH are gonna make it to the "good place" because we are not quitters....

Hugs of gratitude and immense respect for you and your sincerity and honesty and kindness....May your Higher power kiss all your prayers XO

I think the other issue of being abused particularly early in life is we had to focus on the abuser. I had to be hypervigilant. I had to be solicitors. I had to be benevolent to the abuser 

Indeed in therapy I protected some of the abuser who betrayed me for z long time. As a result of that I am a g8ver. 

So the normal advice of #g8ve to others# is for me deadly 

I would quite normally give everything I.have and then some to people around me.  Indeed that us what I had to do as a child. I had to submerge my own needs and absolutely take care of others.  I had to learn to repress all my needs swallow my feelings and exist on a survival level. 

So for me personally when I meet others who are struggling the  switch goes on I am programmed to be over solicitous kind and helpful.  My needs go out of the window. 

For me I had to learn like in baby steps not to be selfless.  When I encounter a human in distress I have to measure my response. In particular I have to respect they are an adult and need to keep their own agency.  Furthermore I have to respect their own agency 

A friend of mine committed suicide lady year.  My own immediate response was to feel I should have been able to help him.  Never mind that at that time I was working more than 80 hours a week.  I had real issues in a work situation and had to make significant efforts to change that. At the time my friend committed suicide I had not seen him in months. 

My friend had a lot of resources available to him.  He didn't use them. He also had tremendous financial security (which is not something I have ever known).  I am not sure what I could have presented to the issue even if I had becomne aware of it 

The people around him didn't respond even though they knew knew he was in despair.   For me personally I am far too responsible for others (even when there is absolutely nothing I can do) Some people call this is survivor guilt. I think personally it is about terror and survival.  My first instinct is to survive (barely that)     i.didnt get to the part of moving up.Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  

For me when I am dealing with an alcoholic or other person it's not about being indifferent. I.am far too emphatic concerned and responsive.  There are some times that responding is not the answer for someone else's dignity. 

I cannot chide myself about my friend commiting suicide. It is perfectl y acceptable that I.was dealing with my own needs 

I.am sad he is not around and I miss him.  On reflection I don't know if I really knew him that well.  He had on the mask of perfect home perfect life perfect marriage perfect hobbies and resilience.  He wasn't really that but who is. 

For me when I was crying about others including the ex A it was a way of being at home.  That is who I lived with broken people who.could barely hold it together  broken in ways I.can still barely comprehend. There was a form of love there but it's a love that doesn't include me in the equation. That's the live I knew as a child where my needs had to be the last thing on the agenda 

For me being around people in despair and acting it out is very difficult.  I know full well how to be in that environment but it isn't in a good way.for me.  

Being in a place where I attend to my needs my emotions my triggers on a daily basis is not that familiar.  I deserve peace.  I deserve compassion (for myself) but most of all I deserve the emotional space to heal.  Healing takes attention love and diligence.  I am no longer willing to give that to everyone else but me. 

Maresie