I am healing... and still have a long way to go. Last year was the hardest for me because i underwent extensive counseling and dug deep to figure out what got me to that point. The truth is... I was a child of abuse and neglect and i had to deal with all of it. And I have decided something... I have decided to go back to school to get my Masters degree to become a Therapist to help trauma victims become survivors like me.
I remember being a baby sleeping on a twin bed in a dirty room. I was waken up by something being put in my arms. I was tired but it seemed like being tired was the norm for me. My brother was coaxing me awake and all I understood was the word Christmas. He had placed a baby in my arms. It was a Christmas gift. He motioned for me to come with him and I did. I remember, my sisters playing amongst some presents in the living room with no one else around. No mom or dad and it was very dark like it was in the middle of the night. I sat on the couch with my new baby in my arms and I remember just... loving it but i knew it was different from the way I always felt loved.
I remember wanting my mother so bad, I remember just needing her all the time. It was probably the reason I was with her one weekend when she went to visit her mother when I was three years old. I can think of a million reasons that were my fault about why I was there. But i can't think of a single reason why she left me there with him. She knew what he was like, she knew what he already did to her. She knew what her stepfather did to me that weekend and she never once asked me if I was okay. Instead she hid behind forgiveness just so she didn't have to deal with it. She erased it for me, at least my feelings about it and tried turned me into a robot. No feelings just like her except I began to cry a lot more than usual and say things like no one loves me... because she didn't. She doesn't love me. She benefitted from me and always have and that's the truth.
She left all four of her children when I was 5 years old. She left us with a broken man who separated us but that wasn't the first time. I grew up hearing how she pulled up to our grandparents house, let us out of the car all the time and pulled away until she never came back.
What I can't figure out was why she came back years later. Was it because that's what mothers are supposed to do? Was it to appease her new boyfriend? Was it to hurt daddy? Was it for money, to claim her three daughters to get a tax relief she could spend on herself? Was it so she wouldn't have to pay child support? The reason doesn't really matter. What matters was that even though we were struggling with dad, we were okay. He got us to keep things clean and made us laugh. He interacted with us by playing games and having BBQs. He protected us, mostly... he even threw his friend out of the house when he took us to the park all day instead of taking us to school. Which is more than I can say for her. He wasn't perfect at all and we certainly would have grown up with wounds from an alcoholic parent who drove drunk but we were more okay than getting sexually abused by the man my mother chose over us.
I keep thinking about the way she never brushed my hair or made me brush my teeth. How she just let me walk to school with only my fingernail to scrape plaque off my teeth and hair bent in awkward places from sleeping in a dirty room. I imagine the clothes she dressed me in and I think about how much time she didn't spend grooming me with care. I remember walking around with holes in my shoes for along time and my sock kept sliding down and out of it. The first time I have ever felt like a normal child in style was with a family that wasn't even mine in a foster home. The first really pretty dress I ever owned was bought to testify against my stepfather in court which of course was purchased by my foster parents. I remember preparing to testify when I was 10 years old by doing twirls in my dress and fantasizing that someone would save me from having to look her in the eyes on the stand with the truth.
My father was angry because we chose to live with my mother in court. She sent us to be with a broken angry alcoholic father for a summer and then chopped all our hair off because she couldn't be bother to clean out tarnished hair as if we weren't traumatized enough after our dad tried to kill himself in front of us. She just sent us to school as tainted bald children so everyone would know we had bugs.
She never knew half the things we did as children because she never paid attention. She never knew that as soon as she left for work at the butt crack of dawn that we would wait for the right moment to run across a four lane busy as hell highway at the corner of our apartment at 7 years old just for the hell of it, she never knew that my twin burned my face with a match, she never knew that my brother would put us on our bicycles and have us follow him through the dangerous highways of Coronado to the park next to the library and that I was scared to death all the way there.
She never knew that we were desperately afraid of her husband. How could she not see the fear in our eyes every time he called us to the kitchen table to ground us to our room for weeks at a time just to get us out of her way. I see the fear in my daughter's eyes every day. How could she not see that? She never paid attention to our cries for help when our stepfather would creep into our room late at night to have oral sex with her 10 year old daughter. She never knew that my sister acted out what he did to her on me. She never knew that my sister would try to seduce men at 10 years old and if she did know, she'd think there was something wrong her, not with the situation she had us living with. I know because I remember her accusations when my twin confronted her at 16 years old. "You caused it by the clothes you wear. You want it... I have caught you looking at his penis." Well, it's easy to look when he pulls us on his lap in front of her with a hard on for her teenage daughters.
I look back and I think she let her daughters get taken away and she couldn't even be bothered to clean our room. I know, stupid right? But that's what I would have done, anything just to make up for being selfish.
I certainly wouldn't have let my baby girl come home to climb over mounds of rubble just to collect her things to live with someone else. No, I traveled all the way across the US to fight for my daughter. I left my husband just as soon as I knew he was trying to come between my children and me, to hurt them. I chose my children. My children have always been my target for me to find my way back to the light. Why wasn't I ever hers?
Instead she let us break in silence while she didn't believe. She put me in a position to need her, to depend on her so it could happen again and I couldn't have feelings about it because I became a teenage mother at 14 years old. No... I had to keep my mouth shut so my baby and I would have a place to live. She made me learn how to say "no" to her husband. She taught me that I couldn't say "no" to mine. I had to dodge my step father's advances while defending her to my siblings and completely ignore my feelings about it so that my son could have what she never gave me... a childhood.
Oh... but things got easier after my twin sent our stepfather to prison and left home. I made it easy for her to pretend nothing ever happened. I made it easy for her to pretend she wasn't guilty for letting another man hurt her children while one was living on the streets at the lake. I never spoke up. I lived in silence while she kept me in the dark of this trauma bond she helped create for control so she could take money from me. I remember her claiming us on her taxes and spending it all on herself. She used it for down payments on cars every couple years and then complained because i wanted to learn to drive so I could take care of my son. My son's father was the one who had to teach me to drive because she wouldn't. She absolutely refused to teach me... why?
I know why now... to keep me dependent on her.
I remember her buying computers and computer desks. I even remember helping her put them together and then she'd cry because our electricity would get shut off. She watched me work my butt off while going to school to try to make up for being a teenage mother when I should have been a child.
My college room mate was the one who clued me in on what she was doing with the taxes even after I moved out. I confronted her and as soon as she could no longer benefit from me, she pushed me out when I needed her again. She pushed me out with two kids and nothing... while trying to make it through college, feeding me with crumbs to keep me dependent... acting like she was trying to help me but then I'd have to pay her back knowing I couldn't. She left me vulnerable to a narcissist and watched me struggle every day until it destroyed me. If I actually had been lucky enough to find a healthy marriage after what she put me through, I could see how my ex husband was right. She did come between us.
Everything she ever did for me was disguised with her benefit. Inviting herself on my family vacations, guilting me into choosing her on family holidays made it absolutely horrible for me. From buying my house... she did it because we offered her money to do it. But again, I spent so much time trying to make up for that. So much that it almost destroyed me... I almost got prosecuted for taking all the money out of my husband's business account trying to make it up to her. I went backwards so much that I worried about feeding my kids trying to live in it for her.
But I never saw any of this, not until this last incident that woke up old wounds she says never happened. Why? Because she lived like it never happened. She never even tried to make up for any of it. She never tried to make up for it with my sisters or me or even my brother. But it was easy for her to push her religion on us. As if God could forgive her we should too. I never had the option to forgive her. I was so completely broken by her choices that I became a teenage mother, that my sister became addicted to cocaine and both of them lived on the street.
I watched her this past year, talking to a man who said he lived in Africa. He came up with this story that he was a widower and business man stuck overseas because he owed back taxes. I watched how easy it was to get her to believe him with a simple phone call from someone who said they were from immigration and all he had to do was dangle cash in her face. That's all it took was money but honestly, I didn't care what she believed. I was happy to see the smile on her mouth again until my son told me she took $500 from him and told him to keep it a secret. And then the lies started... I specifically remember asking what her what she thought he did with his money and she swore up and down that she didn't know. When she asked me to help send the money to Africa to random people is when everything clicked into place for me. The way she acted like nothing happened at church after her bank account was frozen from having $99 million sent to her account and threatened with an investigation. Shes really good at that, acting like nothing happened and turning on the tears when she wants something which was probably what happened when she asked the church for grocery money. Which is also what happened when we had a counseling session after I got pregnant. I just never knew that using tears was a form of manipulation to avoid responsibility until she told me how my sister did it in court. She would know right?
I'm glad she did what she did. It allowed me to confront her for the first time ever and I just can't get past it. At first I thought it was guilt I saw in her eyes but I was wrong. It was blame; I only saw guilt in the reflection of her eyes. My own guilt staring back at me. Guilt for being born, guilt that she had to take care of me, and the way she started to make me feel guilty for feeling mad at her. Telling me everything she has done for me as a reason for letting me go again for making things hard for her...for feeling.
Giving away guilt is easy for her but me... I avoided it. I made things easy for her and never spoke up, never asked any questions because i believed that everyone walks around with the same guilt I always did. But I finally got to ask her a really hard question and she didn't even flinch. I asked her if she stayed with our stepfather after what he did to us for money. All she did was deny like she always does. Deny...Deny...Deny. But I know one thing for sure now. She never felt guilty for anything.
In my healing process, I have decided to forgive my mother but you better believe I have put up a lot of boundaries. That’s the advice I would give everyone here. If you’re feeling bullied by the fog (fear, obligation, guilt), do something. Take action and place a lot of boundaries...
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I am healing... and still have a long way to go. Last year was the hardest for me because i underwent extensive counseling and dug deep to figure out what got me to that point. The truth is... I was a child of abuse and neglect and i had to deal with all of it. And I have decided something... I have decided to go back to school to get my Masters degree to become a Therapist to help trauma victims become survivors like me.
I remember being a baby sleeping on a twin bed in a dirty room. I was waken up by something being put in my arms. I was tired but it seemed like being tired was the norm for me. My brother was coaxing me awake and all I understood was the word Christmas. He had placed a baby in my arms. It was a Christmas gift. He motioned for me to come with him and I did. I remember, my sisters playing amongst some presents in the living room with no one else around. No mom or dad and it was very dark like it was in the middle of the night. I sat on the couch with my new baby in my arms and I remember just... loving it but i knew it was different from the way I always felt loved.
I remember wanting my mother so bad, I remember just needing her all the time. It was probably the reason I was with her one weekend when she went to visit her mother when I was three years old. I can think of a million reasons that were my fault about why I was there. But i can't think of a single reason why she left me there with him. She knew what he was like, she knew what he already did to her. She knew what her stepfather did to me that weekend and she never once asked me if I was okay. Instead she hid behind forgiveness just so she didn't have to deal with it. She erased it for me, at least my feelings about it and tried turned me into a robot. No feelings just like her except I began to cry a lot more than usual and say things like no one loves me... because she didn't. She doesn't love me. She benefitted from me and always have and that's the truth.
She left all four of her children when I was 5 years old. She left us with a broken man who separated us but that wasn't the first time. I grew up hearing how she pulled up to our grandparents house, let us out of the car all the time and pulled away until she never came back.
What I can't figure out was why she came back years later. Was it because that's what mothers are supposed to do? Was it to appease her new boyfriend? Was it to hurt daddy? Was it for money, to claim her three daughters to get a tax relief she could spend on herself? Was it so she wouldn't have to pay child support? The reason doesn't really matter. What matters was that even though we were struggling with dad, we were okay. He got us to keep things clean and made us laugh. He interacted with us by playing games and having BBQs. He protected us, mostly... he even threw his friend out of the house when he took us to the park all day instead of taking us to school. Which is more than I can say for her. He wasn't perfect at all and we certainly would have grown up with wounds from an alcoholic parent who drove drunk but we were more okay than getting sexually abused by the man my mother chose over us.
I keep thinking about the way she never brushed my hair or made me brush my teeth. How she just let me walk to school with only my fingernail to scrape plaque off my teeth and hair bent in awkward places from sleeping in a dirty room. I imagine the clothes she dressed me in and I think about how much time she didn't spend grooming me with care. I remember walking around with holes in my shoes for along time and my sock kept sliding down and out of it. The first time I have ever felt like a normal child in style was with a family that wasn't even mine in a foster home. The first really pretty dress I ever owned was bought to testify against my stepfather in court which of course was purchased by my foster parents. I remember preparing to testify when I was 10 years old by doing twirls in my dress and fantasizing that someone would save me from having to look her in the eyes on the stand with the truth.
My father was angry because we chose to live with my mother in court. She sent us to be with a broken angry alcoholic father for a summer and then chopped all our hair off because she couldn't be bother to clean out tarnished hair as if we weren't traumatized enough after our dad tried to kill himself in front of us. She just sent us to school as tainted bald children so everyone would know we had bugs.
She never knew half the things we did as children because she never paid attention. She never knew that as soon as she left for work at the butt crack of dawn that we would wait for the right moment to run across a four lane busy as hell highway at the corner of our apartment at 7 years old just for the hell of it, she never knew that my twin burned my face with a match, she never knew that my brother would put us on our bicycles and have us follow him through the dangerous highways of Coronado to the park next to the library and that I was scared to death all the way there.
She never knew that we were desperately afraid of her husband. How could she not see the fear in our eyes every time he called us to the kitchen table to ground us to our room for weeks at a time just to get us out of her way. I see the fear in my daughter's eyes every day. How could she not see that? She never paid attention to our cries for help when our stepfather would creep into our room late at night to have oral sex with her 10 year old daughter. She never knew that my sister acted out what he did to her on me. She never knew that my sister would try to seduce men at 10 years old and if she did know, she'd think there was something wrong her, not with the situation she had us living with. I know because I remember her accusations when my twin confronted her at 16 years old. "You caused it by the clothes you wear. You want it... I have caught you looking at his penis." Well, it's easy to look when he pulls us on his lap in front of her with a hard on for her teenage daughters.
I look back and I think she let her daughters get taken away and she couldn't even be bothered to clean our room. I know, stupid right? But that's what I would have done, anything just to make up for being selfish.
I certainly wouldn't have let my baby girl come home to climb over mounds of rubble just to collect her things to live with someone else. No, I traveled all the way across the US to fight for my daughter. I left my husband just as soon as I knew he was trying to come between my children and me, to hurt them. I chose my children. My children have always been my target for me to find my way back to the light. Why wasn't I ever hers?
Instead she let us break in silence while she didn't believe. She put me in a position to need her, to depend on her so it could happen again and I couldn't have feelings about it because I became a teenage mother at 14 years old. No... I had to keep my mouth shut so my baby and I would have a place to live. She made me learn how to say "no" to her husband. She taught me that I couldn't say "no" to mine. I had to dodge my step father's advances while defending her to my siblings and completely ignore my feelings about it so that my son could have what she never gave me... a childhood.
Oh... but things got easier after my twin sent our stepfather to prison and left home. I made it easy for her to pretend nothing ever happened. I made it easy for her to pretend she wasn't guilty for letting another man hurt her children while one was living on the streets at the lake. I never spoke up. I lived in silence while she kept me in the dark of this trauma bond she helped create for control so she could take money from me. I remember her claiming us on her taxes and spending it all on herself. She used it for down payments on cars every couple years and then complained because i wanted to learn to drive so I could take care of my son. My son's father was the one who had to teach me to drive because she wouldn't. She absolutely refused to teach me... why?
I know why now... to keep me dependent on her.
I remember her buying computers and computer desks. I even remember helping her put them together and then she'd cry because our electricity would get shut off. She watched me work my butt off while going to school to try to make up for being a teenage mother when I should have been a child.
My college room mate was the one who clued me in on what she was doing with the taxes even after I moved out. I confronted her and as soon as she could no longer benefit from me, she pushed me out when I needed her again. She pushed me out with two kids and nothing... while trying to make it through college, feeding me with crumbs to keep me dependent... acting like she was trying to help me but then I'd have to pay her back knowing I couldn't. She left me vulnerable to a narcissist and watched me struggle every day until it destroyed me. If I actually had been lucky enough to find a healthy marriage after what she put me through, I could see how my ex husband was right. She did come between us.
Everything she ever did for me was disguised with her benefit. Inviting herself on my family vacations, guilting me into choosing her on family holidays made it absolutely horrible for me. From buying my house... she did it because we offered her money to do it. But again, I spent so much time trying to make up for that. So much that it almost destroyed me... I almost got prosecuted for taking all the money out of my husband's business account trying to make it up to her. I went backwards so much that I worried about feeding my kids trying to live in it for her.
But I never saw any of this, not until this last incident that woke up old wounds she says never happened. Why? Because she lived like it never happened. She never even tried to make up for any of it. She never tried to make up for it with my sisters or me or even my brother. But it was easy for her to push her religion on us. As if God could forgive her we should too. I never had the option to forgive her. I was so completely broken by her choices that I became a teenage mother, that my sister became addicted to cocaine and both of them lived on the street.
I watched her this past year, talking to a man who said he lived in Africa. He came up with this story that he was a widower and business man stuck overseas because he owed back taxes. I watched how easy it was to get her to believe him with a simple phone call from someone who said they were from immigration and all he had to do was dangle cash in her face. That's all it took was money but honestly, I didn't care what she believed. I was happy to see the smile on her mouth again until my son told me she took $500 from him and told him to keep it a secret. And then the lies started... I specifically remember asking what her what she thought he did with his money and she swore up and down that she didn't know. When she asked me to help send the money to Africa to random people is when everything clicked into place for me. The way she acted like nothing happened at church after her bank account was frozen from having $99 million sent to her account and threatened with an investigation. Shes really good at that, acting like nothing happened and turning on the tears when she wants something which was probably what happened when she asked the church for grocery money. Which is also what happened when we had a counseling session after I got pregnant. I just never knew that using tears was a form of manipulation to avoid responsibility until she told me how my sister did it in court. She would know right?
I'm glad she did what she did. It allowed me to confront her for the first time ever and I just can't get past it. At first I thought it was guilt I saw in her eyes but I was wrong. It was blame; I only saw guilt in the reflection of her eyes. My own guilt staring back at me. Guilt for being born, guilt that she had to take care of me, and the way she started to make me feel guilty for feeling mad at her. Telling me everything she has done for me as a reason for letting me go again for making things hard for her...for feeling.
Giving away guilt is easy for her but me... I avoided it. I made things easy for her and never spoke up, never asked any questions because i believed that everyone walks around with the same guilt I always did. But I finally got to ask her a really hard question and she didn't even flinch. I asked her if she stayed with our stepfather after what he did to us for money. All she did was deny like she always does. Deny...Deny...Deny. But I know one thing for sure now. She never felt guilty for anything.
In my healing process, I have decided to forgive my mother but you better believe I have put up a lot of boundaries. That’s the advice I would give everyone here. If you’re feeling bullied by the fog (fear, obligation, guilt), do something. Take action and place a lot of boundaries...
January 24, 2018 - 7:43pmThis Comment
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