I'm having sleepless nights again. The flashbacks are incessant. Distraction isn't working, my system feels full and wanting to release.
My memories of feeling helpless seem to have a running theme to them: feeling empathy for victims around personality disordered family members and there was nothing I could do to help because the disordered abuser always comes out on top through using aggression, violence and threats.
** TW ** Physical and emotional abuse
Tonight, I'm remembering my sister's kids, particularly her eldest. When they were both babies and crying in the car, she would yell and scream and hit them and threaten them. I would feel my blood boil with anger and feel sick with sadness at the poor children who wanted to be comforted. It was terrifying. If they cried too long, inevitably she would erupt and start abusing them with vile words and smack them. Before blasting out loud music to drown out their cries. Or their protests. The music was so loud, and stimulatory and seemed to fry my nerves further. When I asked her to PLEASE turn it down, she would get even angrier and an argument would erupt. All I can think of is how those poor kids must have felt: in distress, ignored and being bombarded with loud music. What message must their fragile distressed little brains have received? That their needs are SO aggravating and unimportant and unnecessary, that they deserved to be completely drowned out by crap music? My nephew turned towards playing on his ipad in the car to distract himself. Not even bother to get his needs met anymore. My heart sinks of how this message related to his needs is going to affect him in his future. How DARE people like my sister be SO selfish? They are contributing to ruining someone's emotional health and giving them mental problems which they will have to contend with for the rest of their lives. Its sickening. How anyone can have kids and its seen as a free choice, never mind what the kid will have to endure. Often my sister used to say: 'they're MY kids, I can do what I want' like they are objects.
No, they are not YOURS. They do not 'belong' to anybody to do what they like with them. They are their own people and they belong to themselves. You are responsible for nurturing this, nurturing their autonomy, not treating them like objects. Typical narcissist.
People tell me to focus on myself and that doesn't help here. Not yet. I saw too much of those kids suffering and I feel like the painful feelings associated with witnessing this needs to be part of my healing.
Many times I intervened and told her to have more patience or to stop and change her approach and that would aggravate her further and she would retaliate further: when she realised taking out her aggression didn't work on me now I was an adult and I could simply leave, she would re-direct it at her children, so either way, I knew intervening didn't work.
** End TW **
Getting social services involved didn't do anything to help either.
Its like these aggressors always win. The world doesn't seem safe when I think of this.
And there was one particular horrible time when I was picked up by her in her car with my mum and the kids. My mum and my sister both started on their infuriating narcissistic taunting. I felt myself raging inside as I stayed silent for the sake of the children. I was so angry and mad, and my little niece wanted to play and for me to pay her attention but I was too riled up to be able to pay her attention, I could barely focus. She then tapped me and said: 'look' pointing to my suitcase, the handle of which I had assumed had broken, as it would no longer slot back down into place. She had somehow fixed it and was looking at me both cheekily and hopefully, I was so surprised, my anger melted away and I felt terrible for being angry enough that I wasn't paying her attention; a situation she was often in with her own mother. I felt so terribly guilty, I hugged her and made sure to try not to let my distress get in the way of being an aunty to her again. Its so hard though, when her mother was somehow who had abused me as a child, and she remains the same to this day. I no longer have contact with any of them.
