Am I already 'dead'?

Started by Contessa, August 17, 2018, 10:12:10 AM

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Contessa

I feel dead.
Everybody else is living but I feel... nothing.
Nobody is answering their phones. Nobody is responding to anything.
Nobody is talking to me.
I was evicted from a home by one sibling one week ago. A sibling who asked me to move in with them.
A two line text told me a baby was born to another sibling yesterday. That's it.
Nobody else is returning texts.
For more than a few months i've come home, watched terrible tv, and have spoken to nobody about anything. All plans to see friends have fallen through over and over and over.
I'm never asked to do things.
I can't talk to anybody about what I want/need to talk to them about.
I was in this same spot eight years ago. Nothing has changed.
Am I breathing when I shouldn't be.
I am that person at work who shows up, barely showered most days, slaps on a mask. Is in complete isolation when the work day ends and the weekend rolls around.

Why.
Things were done to me. I didn't violate anyone, they violated me. Why am I alone.
Why am i the outcast and they're not.

radical

It's fantastically unfair, but this is how it usually goes when someone speaks up about abuse.  It is a big part of why most don't, and why bystanders, and the community at large, get to live in smug denial.  Stand up and tell the truth and you are attacked and ostracised. 

It's really hard to live through, but there is a way through, and that path can bring greater rewards than the losses incurred in the long run.    In the meantime, between the incurring the losses and starting to reap the benefits of rebuilding better, it is pure *. No question. 

What I know, Contessa is that I was dangerously close to killing myself.  If for no other reason, if you can't find a way to love yourself enough to keep going, I believe thatn you will find that things unfold in very funny ways, and the more time passes, the funnier it gets.  I'm not saying things haven't continued to hurt me and there haven't been some unexpected and nasty poison arrows for me in the longer term.  But what is going down with the people who hurt me right now, is hilarious.  Truth is stranger than fiction. If you can't hold on for yourself right now, hold on for the laughs to come once you no lomger care and those people are just a sideshow. 

When we met on here I was close to where you are now, a bit further through i think, I can't remember.   I'm not wanting to be Pollyannish and I'm not suggesting that the cruelty involved could ever be justified.  But I know that were things I needed to learn that I couldn't have learned any other way.  I've changed and I really like the changes.

Contessa

#2
It might take me a while to understand the message Radical.

I wasn't speaking up at the time. I was asking... then screaming in desperation... for help after I could no longer look after myself.

What happened to me was not their fault, but it sure as heck wasn't mine either.

I've realised now they ostracised and infantilised me for years before the events. I just had the mental, physical and emotional resilience to stay true to myself, rise above morally, and be there for them when they needed me. I did however live in hypervigilent anxiety for a long time once I clued in.

The sister that just had a baby was emotionally abusive and socially manipulative with me for years. She actively isolated me from friends - not by taking up time with me but by 'owning' them - potential friends, and managed to date several men after I expressed any form of interest in, no matter how slight. Well in short, anyone and everyone I could possibly relate to became 'owned' by her. I remember when she would talk about people she had labeled as 'my friends', people who were in fact my long time friends from school or somewhere else. Sometimes I'd ask out of absolute hurt and confusion why she was doing this, and she would tell me why in her most self absorbed, deluded and disrespectful way, and would justify present exclusions with the results of her previous exclusions.

I was often met with confusing and random accusing comments from other people that I could not work out. Sometimes these wonderful relationships were sacrificed to both of us because of the stupidity. Of course, I could never pursue a man once she had had him. I do remember the times I was confronted by others - friends, family, work associates - directly due to things that she did.

I once met a few people through my other sister who I found fun, and I got along with really well. They liked me too. I revealed this to her and said lovely things about them, but she remained silent in response. I later found out that my other sister was told off for introducing me to them, and that should never have happened.

I used to have a reputation for being easy-going, bubbly, funny, cool, creative, nice to everyone, and having high integrity. I was actually popular to a degree. I know I had very strong personal morals and values toward other people, I loved them. I also worked hard for my independence, and I did it the right way by everyone. I always kept mum about what she was doing.

Her undermining efforts were many and relentless. Even when I was doing a favour for her at her request, I was reminded of how selfish I was.

Fast forward to now. I wanted to have children ten years ago. I always wanted a family since I was a child. My sister has now finally got hers - after years of ****ing around sabotaging my chances and therefore hers in some instances. She could have had hers earlier too.

I finally got together with a man I loved in an unideal situation. It took a long time to dodge and repair her meddlings, but clearly there was enough damage to my reputation for me to become an object in his eyes. He abandoned me when pregnant, and I lost the child I wanted.

I never told them about the pregnancy until a year and a half later, when I could not take the pain of his demigod-like worship any more.

To her and my family, this was my fault. In fact, he still receives proclamations of love from them. So does my rapist who also isolated me from my family. I don't even receive a hello. I was not invited to my sisters wedding, and then was read the riot act because there were people 'I didn't like' that had been invited, and she didn't want me causing trouble.

At the wedding, she used my unique ideas that I happily shared as a plan for my own wedding about a decade before over an unassuming cuppa one sunday afternoon.

She's popular. She's had a sawthe of men find her attractive. She has a large group of friends, all of which she has actively isolated me from in every way. She's seen as bubbly and easy going, and generous.

I've now got a reputation for being angry, destructive, abusive, mentally ill (in fact I was pathologised and treated as 'odd' years before my violations occured and the isolation from my family broke me). I've got no happy memories at all for the last decade. Everything I do is a struggle. Trying to find friends is a struggle.

I hoped I never shared the name I wanted to namy my daughter. I lived in anxiety over whether I was going to have a niece or nephew with a name I had chosen for mine over fifteen years ago. I am so utterly relieved that the child i'll never be allowed to be near, does not have my child's name.

I am almost infertile now. Chances are very slim that i'll ever conceive, even with medical assistance. I will have to pay through the nose with money I struggle to earn to even try.

I can't even handle a full-time job.

I don't see anything funny.

radical

I got it wrong in how I responded to your post.  I'm sorry

Contessa

#4
Radical, you have my best interests in mind. I wish I could see it your way, it would be ideal.

Unfortunately I can't even laugh perversely at anything. I lost every single time, and I never even signed on to a competition.

'I' don't exist.

Xo

radical

I know we are different, our situations and lives are different.

One thing I gained was validating myself.  I didn't know how, I still stumble and fall but when I look outside of myself for my 'self' for my value, to mean something, for validation of what happened or is happening I get caught into a compulsive paradox that makes me dissolve.  It always did, even before the s***hit the fan.

I value what I know of you through this forum and I feel for you.

Contessa

Thanks. I just have no value.

Contessa

Big **TW** SA

I was talking to a family member today (not a sibling) and I slipped out the name of one of my abusers.

They replied "I know that name... they're really good friends with (insert my sibling's name here)."

I started to cry. I responded with "(Abusers name) is my rapist"

That particular sibling is beloved to my relative. I believe that personal link between my sibling and rapist just shattered them. I could feel the anger and confusion in the things they said next, their empathy for my trauma - as they suffer with trauma themself I have learned - but their despair at learning that my family in fact never had my back through any of it, and have in fact caused the most trauma of all. They made my cptsd chronically life long.

My relative gave me some peace today.