Bermuda's Memories - Overflow Journal 1

[Snowdrop]

I can relate to the feeling of trying to be invisible, Bermuda.

I think you're right, there are more people talking about mental health concerns now and taking them seriously.

[Bermuda]

I was recently reading over my own posts as I do far more frequently than I think is healthy. 

I had this emotional reaction to my posts thinking they make me sound very angry lately, that my reflections on my life are negative. It was odd, I had this feeling that I needed to change how I am expressing myself. I thought this feeling through while I was in the shower...

I spent half of my life in terror, fear, with so much just grief and sadness. I never once reflected on my emotions thinking that they were wrong. I didn't like how they showed themselves (panic attacks etc), but I didn't relate to those feelings like I do the ones I have read in my recent posts. It's strange. I think a lot of it has to do with religion. Growing up in an environment where forgiveness is a necessary act. That even if someone's transgressions were purposefully harmful and without remorse, forgiveness is the only option. In a religious environment in which everything you say and do must be with grace and submission there is no room for natural stages of healing.

So, I've come to the conclusion that what I feel isn't hate, because it was never love. I'm not that empassioned. It's deep resounding resentment. It's anger. It's unforgiving. It's the fuel that keeps me safe, and it's totally fine. It's not only justifiable given the extreme hardship I had to endure but it's also healthy. I feel bitter. I will communicate here in all truthful bitterness, because that's why I use this forum. So, just wanted to say that.

[Armee]

For what it is worth, anger and bitterness are not what come through when I read these. More like reckoning with the truth. Because they are legitimately terrible truths I can see how the negativity would be noticeable when you reread them, but I guess my interpretation is the negativity is the things that happened.. those are what are negative. YOU are not negative. Always looking at the brightside is not healing. Sometimes we have to see the darkness we've been through. I appreciate your posts.

[Bermuda]

Thanks Armee for saying that. Sometimes it's hard to remember that just because we are the sum of our experiences that doesn't mean we are our experiences. Water ≠ a swimming pool

The equation is more like
Biology + experiences + more experiences + reflections and alterations = humankind

[Hope67]

Hi Bermuda,
I related to some things you said in your journal - and I felt emotional as I read some things you wrote. 

I like your equation too.

I'd like to say more, but my words are drying up.  Sorry - but I wanted to just say those things.
Hope 

[Bermuda]

I regularly go incognito to check up on my past life. It helps me to feel safe and it validates my memories and experiences. Unless I discover something concerning safety-wise I don’t tell anyone about it. I really wish I had someone to talk to about these things.

Today I learned where they are currently located and that makes me feel a lot safer. About a year ago my mother had been posting some things about being disowned and saying she was homeless. She had even started a crowdfunding campaign to earn money to relocate. Of course she also used the platform to phish. Now, my mother is not a trustworthy source of information so I have to extrapolate what might actually be true out of these things. What I saw today confirmed my suspicion that it was all likely a lie. I read some product reviews she had written 24h ago, and easily located her. In any case, she is narcissistic and dangerous.

She always posts memes directed toward me, knowing that I will see even though I am completely removed for 18 years from everyone and even geographically so. No one knows where I am. It’s such strange behaviour. She has accounts on various websites dedicated to me. Some to finding her long lost daughter, and others with creepy messages to me that have nothing to do with reality. It feels disgusting. At one point she actually lied about finding me and chatting with me and hoping to meet her grandchildren. I didn’t even have children.

Her current message profile meme: “She left you because you didn’t make her feel she was worth it.”

Something about that feels so deeply disturbing. I think it’s her trying to garner sympathy again, but as always so twisted.

Worth what? Worth the pain YOU went through? Her words to me were, “Get the f out of my house, and when you leave I never want to see your face again!” Worth what? The pain that me secretly making and hiding money from you to try to escape put you through? Or is this meant for me only to read it the other way around. She kicked me out because I didn't make HER feel worth it? It wouldn't surprise me if that's intentional.

I have no one to tell these things to. I brush them off and keep going, but the truth is she is still out there and she is using me to get sympathy, information and money from people to benefit herself without any consideration for me.

I always thought she was purely hateful, but in this I am just nothing. I am the unfortunate tool to get what she wants out of life. Respect. Validation. Admiration. Trust. Security.

It’s the same things I want. Maybe the same things everyone wants… but I try to do well, to be honest to a fault, to be kind, to be compassionate and understanding. She just tries to win at all costs. That scares me. I hate to watch her take advantage strangers.

Many many many years ago I did try to anonymously stop it. The campaign that is. But I can’t.

Now I just watch to make sure that I at least know if I am in danger.

—

Unrelated, I have been reading all the new welcome posts but have been finding it difficult to reply. I want others to know that if it says someone read it was likely me. I’m sorry. You are heard.

[Armee]

She sounds deeply disturbing and deeply disturbed and delusional. It makes complete sense to me that you investigate undercover to double and triple check you are still safe.

[Hope67]

Hi Bermuda,
I also think it makes sense that you investigate undercover - to double and triple check you're safe.  I am glad that you are safe, but I can see how you'd feel like things were unsafe - as a result of her behaviour.

I am glad that you are safe.

Her words to you were painful and hurtful.  I am so sorry that you had that treatment from her.

Hope 

[CrackedIce]

Hey Bermuda!

Thanks for sharing that.  I've always hated those kind of people on social media.  I can usually smell them from a mile away, and can hardly believe when anyone falls for their c***.

I hope you feel like you can vent here about these kind of things.  If anyone understands how a parent can mistreat, abuse, and take advantage of others its us, and verbalizing this kind of stuff is much more healthy than trying to keep it in.

I hope you have a good week!

[Bermuda]

Thank you all for replying.

I just go back to the same thoughts. She hated me for all the behaviours she created in me. Those behavioural patterns have become me, not just my cPTSD, but an integral part of my identity and in the ways I interact with my environment. As much as I heal, and I am clearly healing, I have this voice that reminds me of where I originated. I am the product of her careless design. I am silent. I am withholding. I am just learning to feel outward anger for the first time in my life. It's not that I was bottling things up. There was nothing to bottle up. I was nothing. I was sad and hurt. I internalised everything around me. I tried to create a me that lacked fault in that I still have no sense of self-identity. All I have is her undoing of what would have been Bermuda. I wish I had gotten the opportunity to meet Bermuda.

CrackedIce, you are absolutely spot on. It is shocking to me that people don't see these behaviours for what they are. People take things at such face value, whereas I always see the underlying intent or motive. It drives me insane. It makes normal social interactions extremely difficult because I often get frustrated that others can't read a conversation in the way that I do and may come to conclusions that I find extremely odd as if we were in completely different conversations. I am also poor at understanding non-literally meaning to words or commands. I'm the one on another planet. My husband (then boyfriend) has a friend since childhood, and I remember meeting him for the first time in a group of his other friends and telling my husband that this friend is a bit... different... and I didn't really want to hang out with him. My husband started questioning me as if this friend had said something rude or treated me badly. He hadn't. He just talked about himself differently than the others had and had non-mirroring body language, like sat up, posed. Fast forward a few years, and all the friends were catching up over a Skype call, now adults, and I heard that friend say that he wanted everyone to know he had been diagnosed with NPD, and that he was going to therapy for it with his girlfriend. Everyone sounded shocked. (Me walking around the background, not shocked at all, maybe surprised he willingly shared that and was seeking help. Good on him.)

Imagine your new girlfriend saying she doesn't want to hang out with your childhood friend because he sits weird.

[Armee]

Maybe even it's not that she hates you for the behaviors she created in you, but she is just demented. She would hate you - her daughter - no matter what you did or how you were. Simply because she is who she is. The words I have for who she is are not nice.

I completely relate to most of what you wrote.

[Bermuda]

Thank you Armee. Really. It might seem obvious in retrospect, but I have never thought of it that way. So much of my journey is about accepting that it was not me. I don’t blame myself in the same way I once did, but I still haven’t put the blame where it belongs either.

I may have written this memory before so I’ll keep it short. I remember my mother once switching faces suddenly in conversation saying very hatefully, “Who said I ever loved him?” to me referring to my father. That really shocked me as a 13 or so year old. I thought she was just being intentionally hurtful… The cold expression on her face is just burned into my mind.

You know, she may not have been exaggerating at all. Maybe she never loved him, nor anyone else. She was different. She is different. She hates everyone who cannot benefit her, and those who benefit her she thinks nothing of. Love or even just caring was never on the table.

[Armee]

Yeah, that's my mom, too. Including the creepy cold expressions. I'm sorry. Kids deserve better.

[Bermuda]

A memory, a vague mention of bullying, possible trigger.

I was reading over some journaling prompts Kizzie posted, and although I don’t know how to answer most of them one jumped out to me. (Hah! A pun and foreshadowing, two points for me!)

3) When I was sad, my mother would

The memory: I was bullied in school. Jumped, beaten, I was often lured, set up. After a particularly violent encounter and coming home crying I remember my mother calling me to her room where she was laying in bed. She motioned me to sit. I did. She asked me to tell her what had happened, and I did. She told me with a judgmental look that if I didn’t give them a reason to beat me than they wouldn’t. She told me that if I didn’t fight back that eventually they’d give up and find someone else, then she told me to draw her a bath and make her a cup of coffee.

So, according to my mother if I hadn’t given her a reason to bully me than she would never have been my worst bully. I never fought back, and she still hasn’t given up.

As far as the kids, they beat me while screaming slurs about my light complexion. No amount of sunlight could have changed that. As far as not reacting, I never had. I eventually earned quite the reputation for not feeling pain and kids from all over the school would come up and punch me. Some even sheepishly asked to, to find out if it was true that I don’t cry or even flinch. I said yes and instructed them to punch me in the back because I had no boundaries and knew that it wouldn’t hurt at all to have a child relatively my age punch me as hard as they could in my back. How did I know that? Experience.

Anger. I think it makes me feel angry. My mother always exploited me, exploited my vulnerability. I believed her. I truly believed that I was to blame for the horrible things that people did to me.

[Papa Coco]

Bermuda

I know you didn't deserve to be beaten on at school. I was beaten on and bullied also. When I told my mom about it, she said something similar. "They're just jealous because you're better than them. Ignore them and they'll go away." When I tried to tell her they weren't going away she basically told me to stop bringing my problems to her. She told me to ignore them and that was that.  So, I know something about the anger you're feeling. And my bullying was in a cathoic school. I begged her to let me go to the public school where my friends all went. She said, "No matter what's happening to you there it will be far worse in any other school."  Heavy sigh. No-win scenario.

Our moms gave us bad advice because they didn't want to deal with our problems. Or maybe they just wanted to have obedient little patsies for sons. It's easier to control a victim than a self-assured young man.

When MY two sons got into Jr High and started telling me of bullying, I immediately enrolled all three of us into Tai Kwon Do classes. I obviously didn't know how to deal with bullies, so I paid teachers to help all three of us find our strength. It worked for them. The minute they showed up to school with faces that somehow lost their fear, all the bullying stopped. No one ever had to throw a punch and no one ever bullied them again.

That sometimes makes me even angrier at dear old mom who could have found someone somewhere to teach me how to fight so bullies would see the confidence in my face. But no. In her mind, if I were to fight at school, she'd get a call and she'd be humiliated that her son was "being disobedient." She'd most likely have made me apologize to the bullies for having the nerve to stand up to them. It was far more important to my mom to be seen as a good catholic than it was to be a good mother.  If I just took the beatings, no one would ever call HER into the office.

So I feel your anger. I validate that what you went through really was a bad, bad experience. You did NOT deserve it. You absolutely did NOT deserve it. Not by any logic on any scale.