Bermuda's Memories - Overflow Journal 1

[Armee]

What you lived through was horrific, Bermuda. That you can write about it now...you must have done a lot of hard hard recovery work. Thank you for sharing here. I'm sorry for what you went through and likely still go through as a result. You were not weak. You were so strong. Stronger than a child should ever ever have to be. I'm grateful you survived.

[Snowdrop]

I have so much compassion for you, Bermuda. Thank you for sharing. I'm sorry you went through those things. You're right, it was abuse.

[Bermuda]

Armee, it's true. Just simply that I am able to say things in a comprehensible timeline is a huge accomplishment. It's new that I am able to piece things together, as if my brain is just now untangling a thread that has spent my whole life being tied into knots.

Snowdrop, thank you. I remember as a child web-crawlering for help and always ending up on these emergency pages for child abuse, and when I read them they never applied to me. Sadly, 20 years later this is still the case. Was I physically abused? Not really, not usually, not by my parents, not how it's described (especially where corporal punishment is still normal and legal). Was I sexually abused? Well no, not that I know of for sure. ...It took a lot for me to come to terms with my abuse because of this. I am still triggered by things like filling out that questionaire for the trauma study. It was abuse. It was calculated, intentional abuse. I was tortured, and sometimes I am made to feel less validated still.

[Snowdrop]

I can relate, it took me a long time to be able to say my abuse was abuse. You were treated with such cruelty when you should have been nurtured, cherished and cared for.

[Armee]

Bermuda. Without wanting to trigger you, I also want to gently acknowledge that what you shared is unambiguous abuse, including sexual. I know you don't have the solid facts but many people don't.

I also wanted to say that I know what it's like to have your siblings think you were lucky or favored while you know it isn't true.

It's amazing what you've been able to do here this week. You deserve to speak your truth and to see it as a whole.

[Bermuda]

Trigger warning: Account of physical abuse

One of my earliest memories about "The punisher".

I must have only been five years old. My brother the punisher (who was not yet the punisher for another year or so) was approximately 8 years old.

We weren't typically aloud to snack, and if we did we were only ever permitted an apple or a slice of bread with butter. I hear it in my head quite often now, "If you were actually hungry you would eat a slice of bread!" Well, this day we had snuck food. We had done something very very bad. We took my mother's snacks out of the pantry, and us children secretly ate the whole container of potato sticks.

In the evening my mother always grabbed her snacks and laid on the sofa watching television, and that evening was no different, except that her snack was missing.

She yelled at us all, threatened us, and tried to get us to admit who did it. My brother "the problem child" always told or would succumb to making up a story if necessary under duress. So, he did that. He told my mother we had all done it, but that it was the punisher's idea.

In a rage my mother began beating us. I don't really remember at this point where I am in the room. I always just collapsed and waited, so in this memory I'm just kind of watching from above. I remember the punisher running around and my mother chasing him. She grabbed a broom and started to bat at him with the back end of it. He taunted. The punisher ran faster than she could, and quickly pulled one edge of the sofa out from the wall, and wedged himself into the tight corner he had created behind it. The problem child hid behind him as my mother swung at the punisher. I remember the punisher calling my mother the word for a female dog. She was furious, and the more he fought the harder she swung, as he laughed at her as he cried and she swung harder.

I remember thinking how stupid the punisher was. Didn't he realise he was making it worse? Why didn't he just let her beat him until she grew tired of it? ...Let her call my father to beat him until he grew tired of it too.

I guess this memory haunts me now because I was five. I was five and I thought my brother was stupid for fighting back. In my mind I was blaming him for causing what he went through. I was so broken that I never fought it, I just shrank until I disappeared, until it disappeared. Barely out of toddlerhood and my coping mechanism was clearly deeply established. This event marked a turning point for how we begun to be treated very differently.

[Armee]

That's a painful story, even before getting to the abuse, Bermuda. That she would have snacks for herself and deny you any except bread. We had similar rules in our family and honestly it wasn't until I finished reading your post that the horror of what I was reading for you sunk in as mine, too. So thank you for sharing. When I can see my story in others stories it helps me in my healing. I'm sorry this all happened to you and your family. I'm sorry this was the start of when the roles were established that led to even more abuse.

I also relate fully to the dynamics and reactions. My sister fought back. She laughed and laughed and the punishment and beating would get worse and she'd just taunt my mom on to hit her harder because it didn't hurt. I watched this and saw like you she was just making it worse. I shrunk and dissociated, I accepted every ludicrous accusation and apologized profusely. I took all the rage and hatred I should have felt toward my mom and step dad and turned it in on myself. I hated my sister for making everything worse for everyone. My sister would get hit harder, my mom would get more angry and then more depressed, and I would be scared. I wanted her to stop. I put all the blame on her. A kid. Now as adults I have ptsd and dissociation and have struggled with hating mysf. My sister does not, though she sure can't trust people or get close to them. So who knows which reaction was "right" given the circumstances.

You're not alone in how you reacted and feel about your reaction. We were all just kids. We were trying to not make bad things worse.

[Bermuda]

Thank you Armee for sharing part of your story. Like you, it really helps me too. I guess being the smaller child, always being a witness, we learn we can't fight back. I couldn't have run that fast. There is no way I could have pulled the sofa from the wall. I was at the mercy of my abusers and I just wanted them to like me.

Fast forward 6 years when I was being severely bullied in school and my mother's advice to me was, "If you don't give them a reason to want to beat you up, then they wouldn't do it now would they?" That's was what I already believed at 5 years old. She never had to tell me that.

[Alter-eg0]

True that. I suppose as a small kid, you did exactly what you could, and needed to do, in order to survive. If you physically can't fight back, fawning is a much more effective and appropriate response, survival-wise. But I can totally understand how that brings you to believe that you can't fight back. It takes time and practice to learn that there's a much wider spectrum of options now, as an adult.

[Bermuda]

After having a very tough time processing my earlier post, this week I have had so many revelations. I just read a post by someone else on this forum who directed to the page on Disfunctional Family Roles. I don't generally go out looking for information like this because it doesn't typically leave me feeling validated.

However, after reading this page ( https://www.outofthestorm.website/dysfunctional-family-roles ), it's so similar to what I was just writing about. I didn't comment on that person's post because I don't know what to say that hasn't been said.

My mother was the narcissist, but not a very good one. She was extremely emotionally stunted and her reactions were quite often extremely childish and lacked foresight. She was highly reactive and jealous, and told outrageous lies even to people who knew they were lies. Very much unlike what people see in the media about NPD. She always used her own victimhood as an excuse for what she did to us or told us horrible stories about what her mother did to her to justify the much "lesser" abuses that she did to us. There are many things about her that I only recently learned. She was abused, probably all of the types. When she was a teenager she was put on a train across the country with nearly nothing to meet an uncle to live with, who didn't exist. At some point she met my father, he was 18 years older than she was. She was only 17 when they got married. None of this is justification, but it is fact, and it is character building nevertheless.

My father was mostly away. I heard many stories growing up from my oldest two siblings whom I haven't really talked about on here who say that he was much more physically violent with them in a way he wasn't with us younger three. I can imagine his role changed over the years. I always thought he was afraid of my mother, and for the most part carried out whatever she said. (For the most part.) My mother was sometimes physical with him, and their dynamic was extremely unhealthy. He was in some ways the enabler and in some ways the hero. His role switched depending on what was most convenient for him. I suppose he did have the upper hand at some point but 17 year olds eventually grow up.

The roles of my siblings closest to me in age were very much roles they themselves did not select. My brother, the punisher as I call him here, was the hero. He didn't do well in school. He didn't really do well at much, but he was the golden child, and even his very mild successes were praised to an extreme. He was paraded around like he was a genius. His successes were often inflated. Meanwhile, I did everything to try succeed. I tried so hard to be noticed. I was only ever told about my short-comings, about my lack of well-roundedness, how my goals were useless like me. My brother only had to barely pass to be praised, and this really shaped his character. He was an adult by the time I was homeless, and he was not a decent person. He never had to be, and I doubt that has changed. He also downplayed and justified the abuse, even that which was directed toward him. He had a very different relationship to the abusers.

The sibling closest to me in age that I refer to as the problem child was the scapegoat, without a doubt. His real faults were mostly concealed by the narcissist in order to protect her own self-image and he was instead used almost like in the case of munchausen by proxy. When he did have trangressions that came out or couldn't be hidden, the narcissist played the part of concerned strict parent (which was very popular at the time). She behaved again only to serve her own reputation when under public scrutiny. One time she sent him away to one of these child abuse religious work camps that only now are coming out on the news. The problem child talked about how people dressed in military clothing and sprayed him with pepperspray so often that it didn't bother him at all, (a very concerning thing for a sexual preditor to say). He said they forced him to cut grass all day with a machete, refused him food most of the time, and beat him. He didn't seem that bothered by any of this. None of this improved his behaviour, but it did shape his character. If anything it would have affirmed his experiences with adults. That they are abusive, that it's normal to abuse children, animals, and anyone weaker than you.

I was the lost child, but I was never used as a face of the family as the punisher was. A lot of the things I was punished for are directly related to my coping strategy. I wasn't outspoken like the punisher. I dressed in black. I had severe social anxiety and was unable to carry out very normal tasks. I have talked about how my mother used humiliation as a form of abuse for me, really only for me, and she did this often in public. She triggered my c-PTSD responses, and used them against me to prove my inadequacy as a person. She pointed out only my flaws when talking to other family members, and when I would tell them about my accomplishments they would be in disbelief. I went to church willingly, was a published author as a teenager, I graduated early, I volunteered, I tried to do anything to be noticed... but I was scoulded. I was once forced to write an essay about "What I want to do when I grow up" and make a presentation to my mother, only for her to pick it apart and tell me how it would never happen, because I wasn't smart, how I had no money, and how she wasn't going to help me either. I always knew I would be homeless. I was singled out differently. When she couldn't hurt me, she hurt people/animals I cared about to show I was powerless. That really shaped me too.

[Hope67]

Hi Bermuda,
I am belatedly coming over to welcome you back to the forum, I've been meaning to say that to you, but somehow time elapsed.  I have read what you wrote in your last entry here, and I was particularly touched by what you wrote in your final paragraph - I wanted to extend a hug of support  if that feels ok and appropriate. 
Hope 

[Bermuda]

Thank you Hope67, consistency is something I've never been too good at and c-PTSD comes like electrical surges. A hug is greatly appreciated.

[Armee]

Electrical surges is a good way to describe cptsd.

I smiled at how you described your mom.  A  narcissist  but not a very good one.  She sounds like my  mom.  I describe her symptoms as borderline  pd which really just seems like narcissism  but with a different  underlying motivation system. All the damage though.

[Hope67]

Hi Bermuda,
I also related a lot to your description of c-PTSD as being like having 'electrical surges' - I intend to write more about that in my own journal at some point, as I really think it was such an apt description.

Hope 

[Bermuda]

Parenting is constantly confronting my experiences. Memories are triggered several times a day, but it's not usually negative.

Little things happen, like my 2 year old coming up to me to point out that he has a hang nail that needs to be clipped. I can't help but think there is no way I would have ever done that with my mother, and it just comes at me like a feeling rather than a thought, a sick hurt feeling.

When I watch my husband tickle my son, I just get a horrible feeling. My son ASKS to be tickled, and when he says, "No!" my husband stops until he wants to be tickled again. It's the cutest thing when he asks to be tickled, but it makes me feel horrible because my parents and siblings never respected my boundries and tickling was not fun and was never something I would have asked for.

When my husband throws my son in the air and catches him, I get a terrible sinking feeling. I just remember being thrown around for fun, like a doll, and as a child really believing the cieling fan would slice me up like in cartoons. My fears were exploited. Because of all this, I'm not really the wild fun parent.

This morning my son really didn't want to brush his teeth before going to preschool. My husband tried to force him to do it. I had to stop, and say that it's not worth it, we will sit and be late if we have to because it's more important that he feels safe and comes to the conclusion that brushing his teeth is the right thing to do on his own. He was only ten minutes late, and it was very worth it.

Last night my son had tried to move a chair to the light switch to turn it on and off, and when the chair was too heavy he got his tricycle and used it to reach the light. My husband laughed as my son flipped light on and off, and recounted how he used to play disco with his grandparents. I just said, "Oh, I never did that. I had to be lady-like." Which led to a discussion about the sorts of things I did do. Climbing, tricycling, these things would not have been included. I can't imagine being allowed to turn lights on and off. I did learn how to cook, and clean, make pottery out of bread, and twirl paper into flowers. When my husband heard that he laughed because that is very much not the sort of adult I have become.

It's hard to constantly be bombarded with these feelings, especially when it's really small things that trigger it. I guess this is one of the positive aspects of C-PTSD though. Everything I do is thoughtful and intentional. I see people carry on doing the same things that are familiar to them, but I never do. Constant self-confrontation can be maddening, but it can also be wonderful and rewarding.