Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
Seeing the truth for the first time is like experiencing a traumatic shock. It took me little baby steps to see the full enormity of what my DNA chums did to me.
I feel that too, SWOT. You said it better. It is traumatic ~ not just ugly, but weighty in a traumatic way ~ to see the deficits lined up one after another and really get it that these terrible things really, actually happened to...me.
To me! Oh, those dirty rats.
I like that phrase "DNA chums".
We are addicted to our childhoods; all of us
Interesting turn of phrase. I never thought of it that way ~ like an addiction. It will be a simple matter then to put it out of our heads once we are through this part.
That is true, too. There is nothing to feel badly about once we know how what happened affects us today and clear it. Nothing can be changed; only how we see ourselves can change. And that is happening. That is why there is that trauma feeling. I am putting together what I've always known with who I am. It's like I've stopped running from it.
Remember the poetry?
An innocent did gambol o'er the land; conversed
in mists of shifting, timeless hue
Glimpsed and pursued that creature destined to become
herself
Caught, and was caught by it
in the omniprescient dew
And all of it happened so long ago, and cannot be changed and so, it doesn't matter like it used to. There has always been a negative emotional charge when I have thought about my childhood. I think that might be gone. There seems to be, instead, a growing acknowledgement that it was as bad as it felt, and a kind of awed respect. I really was in danger.
That was real.
All that stuff was real.
And what would I think about today, and how would I put the pieces together, and how would my life revolve around fear, if I were to be strangled by someone with a mental illness, today? All those things I saw and heard and all those strangenesses...there was real danger, there. Real heat, blazing heat, in those threats of burning.
Real teeth.
Roar
So this is something else that is changing in my internal landscape now: I roar: "Get away from that child!" And I mean it. And I have the authority to back it up. Not to be too dorky here, but like Azlan (?) in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. This is major, you guys. In the past, I have been frozen, eyes open like that man in the river when the plane crashed. I could see and see those terrible things, could relive them a thousand times...eyes frozen open. Everything, frozen.
In the past, there was no sound or motion to those memories of abuse. It was like looking at a movie frame by frame. Now, I don't fixate on seeing myself hurt, as though I were looking through the abuser's eyes. I hear myself, hear the Azlan self roaring, "GET AWAY FROM THAT CHILD!"
And I am running toward whatever the abusive incident was even those times when I saw my brother hurt.
I see her; see her right in the eyes.
And she stops. Like something wicked caught out, the thing that was my mother drops the child.
***
Finding that information on borderline moms changed everything for me. I have alot of that WTF feeling going on this morning.
I am not sure how I feel about my mom.
Or my sister.
Could they not know what they are doing? Could they know and not know, or has everything they've done been done with conscious intent?
The world is going to be a very different place once I am through this part, I think.
Everything looks different, already. It feels like my brain is quiet.
Cedar, I think it is normal to fall back a little but you will come back because you have changed. It is always saddening to think of our own families as being too clear to us, because of what we see. But we also have to remember that we chose not to be one of them and eventually we move on again. And you will move on and thrive.
Thank you, SWOT.
My perspective on everything will change, is changing already. I like that you posted I would move on and thrive.
I like the thriving part.
Cedar, we can move on, learn to let them go, and have great lives.
We can. I cannot imagine not feeling badly about the state of things ~ about that family dinner I am always posting about. But you are very right, SWOT. After visiting and revisiting those Family of Origin feelings and, as you said, finally understanding what our DNA chums have been up to all this time...you know, I really don't feel badly about that dinner, anymore. I feel a little sadness, but there is distance there now, where before there was longing and intention. If I let myself understand that these things happened on purpose, that there was intention behind their actions every time, that none of it, nothing about any of it, was an accident, I am still popped into that shocked place. Because they would have to hate me, they would have to have focused on and hated me, personally, me, to do what they've done.
Isn't that something.
Cedar