Okay, new rule.
No more doubting myself.
No more doubt. Nope. Not doing it.
I KNOW that the abuse was That Bad. I know this. I have told people I trust who are SENSIBLE about it and gotten a lot of horrified and unimpressed looks when I reflexively try to justify it with “But it didn’t happen that often” or “But I did X first”.
Even two fucking years after I got out of that house.
“She only grabbed my hair and slammed my head against the floor because-”
No. Not doing it. NO. (Also, I was THREE. And five. And seven. And twelve. And it was ongoing. What the hell. WHO DOES THAT?)
“I said I couldn’t breathe and she said if I couldn’t breathe I wouldn’t be talking, and I mean it’s not like I DIED, so -”
No.
No more.
“I was having a temper tantrum, so she-”
No.
I was having a MELTDOWN, because I was a neurodivergent child who was being abused from at least age 2 onward, and I was in an intolerable situation.
I know that the abuse really was That Bad. Period.
No more doubt.
i got out a while back – still do this, trying to stop. my friends are still horrified every time i dredge a New Bad up from the memory hole.
it was that bad. let’s have 2018 be the year we stop prevaricating on behalf of people that hurt us.
“every time I dredge a New Bad up from the memory hole” is a very good and visceral description of what it feels like.
I very much agree! Let’s have 2018 be the year we stop prevaricating on behalf of people that hurt us.
The Memory Hole is a good analogy, but I know sometimes I’ve just casually mentioned something and stopped because the reactions of the people I’m talking to tells me this is Not Normal Childhood. I’m thirty six, and the last major time this happened was three years ago. I casually mentioned how the dynamic between myself and my mother operated when I was a preteen onward till I left home, and the person I was talking to was someone I’d been close friends with since I was thirteen, and she looked shocked. I’d told her all kinds of details of the shit my dad did to me decades ago, so it wasn’t like I was springing on her the fact that I’d been abused. She looked furious and very clearly told me that what went on between me and my mother was flat out abusive and wrong. And that wasn’t some discovered memory, or something I knew was bad that I was disclosing for the first time – that was something I’d never talked about because I never thought there was anything to talk about. My baseline, yet again, was established as way, way wrong – and with the parent no one had ever labelled the abusive one. So I’m dealing with the exhaustion, anger and bitterness I thought I’d left behind in my teenage years, in my thirties, for the OTHER parent. And while I’m yet again living with her.
knitting in the dark 