I'm really glad that you allowed yourself to open up about this from the perspective that it is your individual story. And honestly, while part of this is "middle child in a divorce family," the severity of your experiences isn't typical of that. You came from a very broken home before the divorce. Otherwise, all of you would have had more internal resources to deal with things without it going this far. I am not saying this to pass judgement on your parents, either, but just stating what I see as someone from a dysfunctional family and attempting to maintain a functional one.
Once again, I'm really glad you opened up about this, whatever your personal feelings on it.
My parents stayed together through our childhood, but once my brother got into school, I often ended up ignored. Still, it remained my refuge. Teachers were the adults I went to and confided in, and my peers were people I avoided for fear of being labelled "weird" and awkward. (Which happened anyway! Because if you avoid people, they start to feel strange around you.) I got teased a lot from my classmates and my relatives, and so I treated even further into my own world in my head.
I had relatives who were passive-aggressive towards me, I was basically a servant in my own house from the time I was 10, doing all of the laundry, the cooking, and a chunk of the cleaning. If things weren't done to Dad's level of perfection, I was instantly punished. I wasn't allowed over to people's houses because they were "poor influences" and if I had friends over, not only did I get in trouble for anything I did pushing the envelope, but I got punished when they left for any house rules they broke as well (/guests/ could not be punished, obviously, but I was made responsible for their actions and manners, as well as my younger brother's.)
I never had scars and marks. Dad stopped using corporal punishment on me when I was 12, because I was becoming a "young lady" and for him, gentlemen did not /hit/ women, they just gaslighted them. So the rest of my time at home everything went from 50% psychological to 100%. I still thought all this was normal. I was certain my parents loved me dearly, because they always provided for me. Mom's worrying and projecting of her own fears and feelings of failure was just how mothers were.
Neither of them discussed being proud of me until Dad said so at my wedding, and both said so when I graduated from college. Since, Mom has waffled between supporting me pursuing more education and advising me that I might be too broken to really finish this and might consider giving up. Dad spent 2 years blasting science in general from the pulpit to try and get me to quit biochemistry and do law so they would have a lawyer in the family.
I've abused painkillers and self-harmed, and unlike your sister, I never told anyone. I didn't want anyone to know. I've just now gotten around to tell Cendri most of it. I didn't want to deal with coming from a bad home, I didn't want to be the abused kid. My internal dialogue was "suck it up!" and "show no weakness!" and I hated the idea that bad things I had done and that had been done to me would define me, too. I felt like if that was what made me, then I was a bad thing, too.
I ended up standing over a sink, then sitting in a shower attempting to slit my wrists and screaming at myself for being a coward, while my infant son was laying in his crib in the next room crying for his mother. I was convinced I would screw him up--not because of my childhood, because I hadn't admitted there was a problem yet, but because I felt like it was me who was wrong. I felt like I simply was a defective parent and a bad wife because of some internal flaw in my being. I blamed myself for everything that happened to me, from my father's treatment of me, my antagonistic relationship with my brother, to "allowing" my first boyfriend to assault me because I couldn't tell him I was uncomfortable before the situation got out of hand.
I have just always wanted to be normal, to not make waves, to blend in. The first 24 years of my life were all centered around just being as quiet as I could be and touching as little of the world as possible. Leave no marks! Because people got angry about marks you make. Clearly you only made marks for attention.
I didn't have it any worse than you, though. We're pretty equal from where I sit. Though I understand if you don't accept it that way.
People who are trying to heal and move on get hostile when their world views are challenged. They get hostile when things shake up. They get hostile when horrible, negative feelings arise and they want them out, but they can't aim the hurt at the people who hurt them. I was an utter bitch to everyone in high school, even the people who tried to help me. Ask Cendri sometime. But it was because I was hurting.
The disheartening feeling is hurt. But know you are what you are not just because of the past. We are only defined by our past when we let it. When we choose to turn back and look it in the eye, when we take our new found wisdom and set the past in context, when we define it instead, it loses its power over us. That's when we get some traction.
You are moving on. You're working. It's a process, and a long one. Sometimes a lifetime one. But don't lost hope--not because you will make, but because you are making it. Every step forward right now is making it.
Things can effect you and shape you, but they do not make up your core self. You can make a vase from a piece of clay, but the clay is still clay. It's periphery changed, not its substance. In the same way, you have always been and always will be Jynx. And that is for you to know and define, whatever you have been through and will go through. You know that as a truth more and more each day. This is how it will get better, is in knowing yourself.
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no subject
Date: 2013-05-16 05:04 pm (UTC)Once again, I'm really glad you opened up about this, whatever your personal feelings on it.
My parents stayed together through our childhood, but once my brother got into school, I often ended up ignored. Still, it remained my refuge. Teachers were the adults I went to and confided in, and my peers were people I avoided for fear of being labelled "weird" and awkward. (Which happened anyway! Because if you avoid people, they start to feel strange around you.) I got teased a lot from my classmates and my relatives, and so I treated even further into my own world in my head.
I had relatives who were passive-aggressive towards me, I was basically a servant in my own house from the time I was 10, doing all of the laundry, the cooking, and a chunk of the cleaning. If things weren't done to Dad's level of perfection, I was instantly punished. I wasn't allowed over to people's houses because they were "poor influences" and if I had friends over, not only did I get in trouble for anything I did pushing the envelope, but I got punished when they left for any house rules they broke as well (/guests/ could not be punished, obviously, but I was made responsible for their actions and manners, as well as my younger brother's.)
I never had scars and marks. Dad stopped using corporal punishment on me when I was 12, because I was becoming a "young lady" and for him, gentlemen did not /hit/ women, they just gaslighted them. So the rest of my time at home everything went from 50% psychological to 100%. I still thought all this was normal. I was certain my parents loved me dearly, because they always provided for me. Mom's worrying and projecting of her own fears and feelings of failure was just how mothers were.
Neither of them discussed being proud of me until Dad said so at my wedding, and both said so when I graduated from college. Since, Mom has waffled between supporting me pursuing more education and advising me that I might be too broken to really finish this and might consider giving up. Dad spent 2 years blasting science in general from the pulpit to try and get me to quit biochemistry and do law so they would have a lawyer in the family.
I've abused painkillers and self-harmed, and unlike your sister, I never told anyone. I didn't want anyone to know. I've just now gotten around to tell Cendri most of it. I didn't want to deal with coming from a bad home, I didn't want to be the abused kid. My internal dialogue was "suck it up!" and "show no weakness!" and I hated the idea that bad things I had done and that had been done to me would define me, too. I felt like if that was what made me, then I was a bad thing, too.
I ended up standing over a sink, then sitting in a shower attempting to slit my wrists and screaming at myself for being a coward, while my infant son was laying in his crib in the next room crying for his mother. I was convinced I would screw him up--not because of my childhood, because I hadn't admitted there was a problem yet, but because I felt like it was me who was wrong. I felt like I simply was a defective parent and a bad wife because of some internal flaw in my being. I blamed myself for everything that happened to me, from my father's treatment of me, my antagonistic relationship with my brother, to "allowing" my first boyfriend to assault me because I couldn't tell him I was uncomfortable before the situation got out of hand.
I have just always wanted to be normal, to not make waves, to blend in. The first 24 years of my life were all centered around just being as quiet as I could be and touching as little of the world as possible. Leave no marks! Because people got angry about marks you make. Clearly you only made marks for attention.
I didn't have it any worse than you, though. We're pretty equal from where I sit. Though I understand if you don't accept it that way.
People who are trying to heal and move on get hostile when their world views are challenged. They get hostile when things shake up. They get hostile when horrible, negative feelings arise and they want them out, but they can't aim the hurt at the people who hurt them. I was an utter bitch to everyone in high school, even the people who tried to help me. Ask Cendri sometime. But it was because I was hurting.
The disheartening feeling is hurt. But know you are what you are not just because of the past. We are only defined by our past when we let it. When we choose to turn back and look it in the eye, when we take our new found wisdom and set the past in context, when we define it instead, it loses its power over us. That's when we get some traction.
You are moving on. You're working. It's a process, and a long one. Sometimes a lifetime one. But don't lost hope--not because you will make, but because you are making it. Every step forward right now is making it.
Things can effect you and shape you, but they do not make up your core self. You can make a vase from a piece of clay, but the clay is still clay. It's periphery changed, not its substance. In the same way, you have always been and always will be Jynx. And that is for you to know and define, whatever you have been through and will go through. You know that as a truth more and more each day. This is how it will get better, is in knowing yourself.
I'm just honored to help. <3