I M Perfect lady

Tag: abuse

  • Reality shows a hole.

    As I walked down the driveway to get our mail, my foot slipped on the ice and I did an impromptu triangle pose, stretching further than my muscles actually stretch, it was as if the ground shifted beneath my feet and caught me way off guard.

    You find your self in a position of surprise and pain, slipping out of control, trying to restore balance.

    That is exactly what happened when my mother’s request came in, it caught me unaware and it took me awhile to gather myself back into control, for it felt like she had snagged my life for a few hours, upending my plans by sidetracking my emotions and me.

    One minute you are walking along with a firm ground underneath you and zip its gone, replaced with rolling upsetting thoughts and emotions, going from a placid empty space to a state of turmoil.

    It is amazing that she still can tromp in and trash my space with just a few uttered words and make me feel that she has tampered with my child.

    The request is secondary to the position she inadvertently put my daughter in, playing monkey in the middle in a game of insanity, where it is impossible for my daughter to win.
    It’s the price paid for allowing my children to define their own relationship with my family, I knew it would leave them vulnerable and open to being a conduit for information about me.

    I just hoped it would never be used, or my children would be used.

    Being used is exactly how I feel my daughter was treated, my mother didn’t see the girl who she was asking to perform this act, she just wanted the picture and took the route easiest traveled, she didn’t want to ask me directly.

    I have tried hard to not use this access myself; I have tried to maintain a neutral stance as I witness their involvement with my family, allowing them to leave or stay as life unfolds.

    A phone call wouldn’t suffice, for she has hung up on me before when the words coming at her were not what she wanted to hear, so I will write a letter.

    A restraining letter.

    A letter that requests her silence between her and I, letting her know that my kids are not to be an open line for her to Use.

    This behavior of hers going to the second generation really boils me, asking others to do her dirty work.

    She knows without a shadow of doubt that if she asked me the path would be unfruitful, she wants what she wants and it matters not how the mission is accomplished, who she steps on and mistreats along the way, what she wants most is a complete set of daughter pictures.

    She wants no holes or vacant spots and she is using my children to patch the hole.

    My glaring open hole in our family will remain that way.

    She isn’t interested in knowing my life; she just wants my photograph to fill the hole in hers.

    The simple thing would be to fill the spot.

    That is what she has wanted all along, for me to get back in line, to rejoin the family, to not be standing out here alone, making her family look shattered, she wants to paint a pretty picture of all her children, to see them all unaffected and looking no worse for the wear, it will soothe her conscience, and make her feel like a whole mother.

    My refusal to slide back into position leaves her with a broken family.

    It is amazing that she wants a picture of the one who ran away.

    The striking juxtaposition of asking for a picture, when she has yet to ask in all these years, “How are you?”

    How are you feeling and dealing, how is your life going, how is it being abused my husband, how has that affected your life? How are you…?

    Nothing, silence…she doesn’t want to know or hear or wonder how I am, she just wants a pretty picture to fill her spot.

    The one sidedness of her world blows me sideways.

    Once again, she doesn’t see me or see my daughter, she sees us both as fulfilling a request.

    A request from a very selfish woman, who is so self- absorbed she is unable to see beyond the end of her nose.

    She doesn’t see the lives behind the pictures, just the pretty pictures; we have no life beyond what we can give to her.

    She doesn’t see the lives beyond the hands doing her dirty work, we have no purpose but what we can do for her.

    My giving days are over; I was done giving to this mad charity a long time ago.

    By keeping focus on the picture, you don’t see the madness orchestrating the life in denial.

    The picture completes a perfect set of six.
    Reality shows the hole.

  • My Soul Cheers

    Shutting the valves or entry points where I have allowed toxic behavior and or negative energy to seep in, feels soooo liberating, so empowering, so self loving, I feel so lightened by this, if only I knew that I wouldn’t feel alone, but empowered, I wouldn’t have waited so long.

    The first time I left my family, I did so in fear, anger and anxiety, in moments of pure panic due to the way they were all acting, I segregated myself in solitary confinement in fear. Fear of who they were and how weak I literally was, I scurried to be far far away from them.

    I was out of control in a lonely spot with raging fear, alone and empty inside, twisted up with confused and conflicting images, tangling love and fear, I had to run to survive, not knowing that I would survive…I left.

    It wasn’t an act of courage or empowerment but an act of sheer terror.

    The difference between fleeing in terror or fleeing with knowingly and great awareness are oceans apart.

    One leaves you vulnerable and alone.
    The other empowered and alive with great gusts of newfound peace, like breathing or not breathing.

    Breathing with the right to orchestrate your world, using your free will to close the source of pain that flows into your world.

    What a great thing to know, how empowerment is grown, it is birthed by making a choice, using your awareness and seeing the cause, doing what you can to eliminate it in your world.

    This isn’t at all about them, but about you.

    You have the right to open and close relationships.

    I love that I found the energy to use the switch, to flip the button to off.

    It doesn’t change who they are, but it greatly changes their impact in my world. Little did I know, even though I left the window open, that I was the one I was waiting for…

    Inside, as my tank overflows with empowerment, my soul cheers!

    (I think I scored one for me!)

  • Window in Self Love

    Sitting here this morning with a visual of a scorecard and its shocking totals are prompting me to shut a door, close a window, and separate myself from those racking up the score.

    It wouldn’t be so bad if the game was close to a tie but the numbers in the Perpetrator column are 100 and the Little Girls Zero.

    This game started with my parents and continues on to the second generation, they have taken over the scorecard and adding their marks.

    Each of us carries our own scorecard and then a collective one for those we travel with, and we write upon who we are by where our hash marks go.

    Our actions are our hash marks, no words are needed, its an actions only game of life.

    I had 40 years of filling the column up with support for the Perp and his wife, I worked, lifted, carried, toiled, struggled, adding to their columns.

    They had my full undying support, my confidence, my faith, and what I called love back then…they had all of me, and I had zero.

    Zero was all I felt and all I was worth.

    My only worth came from filling up another’s column.

    It was up to me to build them up, cheer them up, help them up, make them up, hold them up, Anything to keep them from falling down.

    I was worth something If I could keep them from falling down. Like a juggler of bad behaviors, I kept trying harder the more they fell down.

    Sadly all the beefing up of their columns couldn’t make them into what I needed them to be, and in the end they fell exactly as they were, nothing changed.

    We just can’t know that we are not our brother’s keeper, we can’t make or break their lives by our actions, our actions and our scorecard is our life.

    Each of us accumulates scores by what we do.

    My actions have drastically changed, I no longer lift a finger to add anything or take away anything from another’s scorecard, I only make marks on my own.

    Don’t worry folks, I know what you feel about me, I know the sharp edges of self righteous labels you are sticking on me, the tags of uncaring, cold, heartless, mental, unstable, distant, sickening, all the names float towards me when we communicate, I get it, I receive fully your intentions and your feelings, and this is why I am shutting the window, closing the door, for I am not willing to take it anymore.

    You won, the game is over.
    I quit.

    You can’t keep racking up the scores against me If I am no longer in the game…

    My wellness, healing, happiness, peace, love and joy falter as each time I feel these energies coming towards me, it is self-abuse to keep the window open.

    I shut the window in self love.

  • In Me

    “Once you know, you can’t not know”, is a quote I read, it’s the knowing that changes you forever.

    Knowing is different from hoping, wishing, dreaming or wondering, knowing trumps it all.

    I know what they wanted the most is for their lives to remain unaffected, to not let one shadow to cloud their whole lives, to be so strong as to not let it change who they are, and it didn’t.

    I have seen the evidence, but refused to see it, I have heard the silence and refused to hear it. I have felt the absence and wouldn’t feel it.

    Blindly not accepting what is.

    What I wanted the most was for the family to implode, for it to feel what I felt, the loss.

    Loss of love.

    Loss of trust.

    Loss of faith.

    The betrayal within the family.

    None of that happened, a bomb went off without flicking a hair or altering a stance, it was dealt with like a bad review, ignored.

    One bad review will not stop the many who are cheering and clapping as life goes on.

    It does play with the mind to see pictures of normal, am I nuts? Did I make this whole thing Up?

    What I see displayed around me today, all the unchanges, it has to be the same reaction repeating itself again.

    I can just see the tiny girl, speaking the unspeakable and nothing happens. Nothing. Life goes on without a hitch.

    You are left to deal and heal alone, unsupported.

    Unsupported you drop, you fall, you lose your way, your mind, your knowing, your trust and your faith, stripped naked of all you counted on…you begin again alone.

    ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’…oh I am strong.

    Also something that has been broken and glued back is stronger in its broken spots.

    My heart is stronger.
    My faith is stronger.
    My trust is stronger.

    In me.

  • Pick Up the Broken Piece.

    What a slow learner I am, how incredibly naïve and blindly stupid…I am surprised that I am just now catching on. How has it taken me this long, almost six years to figure this out?

    The pain I have gone through, the mental anguish and all the soul searching, and still I didn’t know.

    My family didn’t break apart, wasn’t destroyed and didn’t crumble under the weight of abuse, it wasn’t shattered, or flung upside right or mentally broken, only I was.

    I broke.

    In my head I had them all broken up like me, but they remain intact, a full family, minus a few.

    No worse for the wear, unscathed and unbroken, they are holding up strong as the same family unit, while I am broken.

    My brokenness is sharp, loud, and unwanted, a jagged point that doesn’t fit into the familiar routine.

    A routine I can’t remember, forgetting the lines and missing the steps, characters changing before my eyes, my script no longer matches theirs.

    When they laugh I cry, what they love I fear, when they gather I flee…I shout at their silences, say wrong words that jumble up the play.

    I am the heckler or a bad actor playing on the wrong set and ruining the show.

    When I am gone and silent the show returns to its familiar dialogue.

    I see the picture clearer now…I see me trying to direct a play in progress, wanting to hand out new scripts, change characters and lines, make it a horror movie instead of a comedy…

    What I have been trying so hard to do is change a play in progress.

    I have been wanting them to change so the broken me fits in…while they want me to return to the stage unbroken, healed, once again the old me.

    The spot is open, the stage is there unchanged all I have to do is not be broken and rejoin the chorus line.

    What I know to be true of all people who are abused within the family, it is not so much the first betrayal, but the second one.
    The second betrayal is that once you expose yourself and speak your words is that nothing changes, except that you are now alone and exposed.

    Kicked off the stage of your childhood home.

    I sit here dumbfounded at my naiveté how I foolishly believed that a child, even an adult child that was broke, would break the whole family, but my family marched on, again.

    No one stopped to pick up the broken piece.

  • Hand and Hand…

    There seems to be two energies of silence, awareness and unawareness, peace and hostility, love and fear, solitude and loneliness…

    There is silence to shun and hurt to push out and away that isn’t inclusive but divided.

    Silence that is cold and uncaring, thoughtless and too busy, unaware and out of touch, forgotten…and good intentions piled high, never spoken.

    Silence of lazy relationships or untried or pushed, where silence is required, no speaking of the ills, just silence.

    The silence I was raised upon.

    Seeing, feeling, and knowing my mother’s silence in anger, dark still, raging, quiet, strong silence.

    Her silence against what was wrong.

    Silently staying.

    Silently waiting for change.

    Silently looking away. Silently.

    Silently hoping, wishing, praying.

    Silently walking hand in hand with pain, shame, guilt, abuse, neglect, betrayal, faithless, unworthiness, looking away from innocence and vulnerable child and self.

    The dark side of silence…where nothing changes, pain continues, victims born, old victims live, abuse blossoms.

    Silence isn’t peaceful in an abusive home.
    Silently we suffer.

    Breaking the silence I have found myself in a new kind of silence, the knowing silence.

    Knowing silence is peaceful, strong, empowering.

    I speak out about the abuse, but am silent with the abusers.

    Living the opposite.

    Where before my ‘peace’ was gotten from being silent, I needed to be silent in order to survive, to be in my home, my family.

    A false sense of peace and security living silently in abuse, blind and unknowing.
    Now my peace is to speak of my abuse, telling is my peace. Telling brings me power.

    Silence and abuse go hand and hand…

  • Ten Affirmations for Male Survivors of Abuse

    My brother found these on Oprah’s website, and I believe they can be for
    anyone who is has been sexually abused.

    Howard Fradkin, Ph.D., LICDC, Co-Chairperson, MaleSurvivor Weekends of Recovery

    1. Recovery is absolutely possible and achievable for me.

    2. I will practice being disloyal to dysfunction and loyal to functionality.

    3. I give myself permission to connect to loving, affirmative, strong, sensitive, accepting men and women in my community.

    4. I release and forgive myself for any responsibility I have accepted in the past for my abuse.

    5. The abuser (s) from the past chose to hurt me; I will stop repeating the lie that it just happened to me.

    6. Offering myself daily compassion is necessary for my healing and growth.

    7. I commit to connecting to the boy inside me today so we can play, laugh and experience joy together, even if just for a minute or two.

    8. I believe deep inside me I possess the ability to face the truth of my abuse and to learn to use new tools for healing.

    9. I have the right and the ability to speak the truth of my abuse and deserve to be heard, understood, believed and supported.

    10. Feeling is healing; as I heal, I develop the ability to experience a wider range of emotions to enhance my health and connections to other.

    Thanks Oprah and Dr. Howard Fradkin, for doing the show, for sharing this information and for allowing each of us to stand a little taller, feel stronger and less alone.

  • Stand Up!

    Yesterday Oprah had the second part with the 200 men who stood up against abuse, I have only seen small segments on her website, but the few I seen offered this, “Standing UP against abuse”.

    Standing up and speaking up with courage, releases the shame, the blame and the rage that live in silence.

    Standing up is not a victim stance.

    Standing up takes courage.

    Standing in the truth of your life and your life experiences, standing and speaking of the deeds of evil you survived as a child, the mixed messages, the bad definitions, the path it set you upon, all stop when you stand up.

    You then pick your own path.

    A path free of abuse.

    I believe to the depth of my soul, you either are sitting down with abusers and letting the legacy continue, OR you are standing up and speaking out and walking away from the abuse.

    It takes courage to stand up, but standing up is the only thing that will stop abuse.

    Sitting and remaining in relationships where the abuse lives is sitting down in abuse.

    I Stand UP!

    I applaud these strong men and the courage it takes to stand up and I am standing with you!

    It will change your whole life, from being a victim to becoming a survivor.

    Standing up and speaking is the only way to end this.

    It is never too late to stand up!

  • Let the Pain Out

    “Real difficulties can be overcome, it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.” ~Theodore N. Vail

    When you face what you actually are compared to what you desire to be, you will find much peace, it is trying to be someone else that’s impossible.

    Letting go of the potential, the prize of someday, the if only of yesterday, and the idealized version of self that is the hardest to do.

    To sit down fully in imperfection and disappointing the mind, by facing all the evidence contrary to many beliefs.

    What I felt most for the men on stage with Oprah was that they were unable to claim their lost innocence and how abuse changed them.

    They wanted what is impossible to attain, and in doing so sit in denial of whom they are.

    They are the combination of innocence lost and the affects of abuse, and when they can see the imperfections of their lives, they will see how perfectly it is.

    How abuse does steal innocence, how if you don’t address abuse, abuse lives its life for you.

    It seems that you are a victim when you repeatedly succumb to the wishes of if only, or I can’t be different, and you become a victor when you stand and state the obvious.

    I was abused.
    I am confused because of the abuse.
    I lived an upside down life due to being abused.

    Until we can recognize how upside down we are, we can’t seek to right ourselves.

    By holding on to the picture of innocence, we miss who we now are.

    I will never not know the feelings of terror of a father.
    I will never not know who I would be without the abuse, but I can know who I can be in spite of it.

    There is a life after abuse, a way to reclaim your life today, but not undo yesterday.

    Life after abuse starts when you out yourself.
    Until then, you are locked in the dark with the secret.

    Once you step out, your life after abuse can begin…Abuse and its shame lives in the dark quiet silence.

    You don’t have to tell the whole world, but speak to someone, open the wound and let the pain out.

  • Shine Once Again.

    “Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.” ~Maya Angelou

    I don’t know what to blog about the show with Oprah and 200 Adult Children of Sexual abuse, men whose boyhood was stolen and now their manhood too seems to be lost, they are left in a middle ground, no longer innocent and no longer able to be a man.

    What I heard was that sexual abuse leaves you feeling vulnerable.

    The definition of vulnerability is,

    “Susceptibility to attack or injury; the state or condition of being weak or poorly defended; a specific weakness in the protections or defenses surrounding someone or something.”

    Being susceptible to attack and injury is to be a child, especially one that isn’t being properly watched and cared for, being poorly defended…having a specific weak parent that can’t protect you.

    A weakness in a parent can be a simple as loving the predator, defending his goodness while the child’s experience is widely different.

    I have stood on both sides, the parent and the child, the blind and the unseen, the knowing and the unknowing, on both sides feelings are denied.

    Fears are pushed aside…children are left undefended, monsters go on labeled as father, feelings not felt.

    Blindness spreads.

    When I did see, damage lay all around.

    When I did feel, terror was the truth.

    When I did know I was cast out.

    Cast out for speaking, seeing and knowing abuse.

    As I watched these men, I know what they fear, they fear being cast out.

    Shunned for being abused.

    How is that right?

    How do we have this so upside down and backwards?

    What I know to be true is I was cast aside, my voice not wanting to be heard, what they want the most is for me to be unchanged, to appear like the picture of innocence all the men held.

    To just be me without the abuse.

    What an impossible task to attain… to not be abused while being abused.

    So each man stands in the impossible stance, abused while trying to not show the affects of it, yet the abuse has infected each part of their lives, there is no place that abuse doesn’t touch.

    Once you stand fully in being abused, you can then begin to see where abuse created a life instead of you.

    Exposing the abuse allows the innocence to shine once again.

    “In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche