Hi, I wanted to share my story *Triggers (maybe? it's just mild to me)

[OOTS11]

I don't get to do this since I decided not to tell everybody what I've been through in order to protect myself. The times I did, people didn't want to believe me, they didn't understand and it turned out awful.
I lived with my mother till age 14. The last year I stayed with her was *. I cried almost every night, as silently as I could so my little brother wouldn't hear (his bed was next to mine). I felt hopeless, I didn't know how I was going to get out of there, I felt like drowning.
I'm sorry if what I write doesn't have much order, but whenever I try to write it down it's just a mess, I don't know where to start. 
She abused physically and emotionally of me (the emotional abuse was the worst). She hit me, kicked me, scratch me. She called me names (almost anything except son-of-a-b*tch, which would've been self-insulting). I tried to tell her to stop it, that it hurt me, but she said that how could she not do it? I was the cause and it was justified. She kept on. I try to summarize, because there're so many details, important, but too many. Sometimes I can't remember some until something triggers it and I'm like "yeah, that's it! I know that! I remember that now!". Sometimes I remember things that I can't.. I don't know what to call them, a definition I mean, until I find somewhere that describes the same thing. Like "Gaslighting". I found the term in Out of the FOG. First time I ever heard that word. I'll talk about that a little later, but you can imagine..
I felt I was near the bottom of a pit, and a part of me felt like just letting go and lying there. But another, a stronger one, wanted to fight its way out, it wanted to survive and that's all it cared about. Did anyone hear Bryan Adams's song "Sound the Bugle"? I just couldn't put it better. I always get watery eyes when the song reaches the part that says "there's not a road I know that leads to anywhere- Without a light I fear that I will stumble in the dark (...)" That's how I felt. Lost, confused, like a part of me was dying inside. But my feet decided to walk. It's strange to explain, but it was like my mind switched to an automatic mode, a surviving mode, and though I felt an aching emptiness in my chest, all I could think about was getting out, not in that kind of desperation where you can't think clearly (panic, I think that's what you call it), but just the exact opposite. That's the best I can put it, and still not enough to explain it well. I don't know if anyone lived that, but that's how it was for me. That impulse to live, I don't now where it came from. I mean, I wanted to live, but that was like something in my gut woke up and started beating. I'm still very thankful for it, I really am. Maybe it sounds exaggerated, but I was like that because earlier on I tried to ask for help from the people I thought I could trust, I tried to tell them what was going on in my house, I tried to tell them how bad I was. Damn'em. I feel like clarifying this I bit more: my pain was such that I started to think about suicide (no, I'm not lying, no, it's not exaggerating, I'm not being a f*cking drama queen!); I didn't want to end my life, I wanted the pain to stop, I wanted it all to stop! but I was terrified of feeling pain, more pain. The thing is, I've had this phobia since a little child. Anything that caused me physical pain I was terrified of. Especially needles and hot things or fire itself (like irons and matches). I didn't fear the thing, but what it caused when it touched me: pain. I liked fire, I liked warm things, but to hot and to near and you get burned (which I got once while a kid, it was traumatizing, and tried to avoid since). Vaccines. Yeah, you should've seen me. Everything went smooth.. till it was pricking time. I freaked out. I ran and cried, tried to escape, I was little and not too strong but still 2 or 3 people had to hold me tight cause they needed me to stay still, which I couldn't. Matches? Couldn't light a single one, I felt the flame was way too close to my fingertips, every time I tried to push myself to light one I'd always drop them. It scared the sh*t out of me, both things, one thing: pain. So all the ways of suicide that I knew of were awfully painful. To that, add that death looked like a cul-de-sac... It's a balance between bad and worst, so I never attempted to kill myself, though I did have recurring thoughts about it. I only told one person about this at the time, the one I thought I could trust on, an adult, a church counselor: she told my mother. Really?! Are you f*cking kidding me??!! But it's not only that, she did absolutely nothing about my mother's abuse: she didn't truly validate it and gave me no advice on what to do, whom to call, even if she personally couldn't do anything, she could've told me about resources that I could use to stop it. But no, she prayed and called my mother (who was outside the room) in, and told her right away. This person didn't tell about it to authorities, she just left me on my own again. I still hear about her, since she's my mother's friend. I hate her.
Now, do you think my mother, having heard this, stopped abusing me? If you said no, you guessed right. It got worse.
This got long, wow. I think it's too much to summarize. I'll finish and leave this as an introduction. I don't want to cut out details, but like I said, way too many. These are the major parts... come to think that it's like a broken vase or archaeology. Again, it's been a while since I decided to tell what happened. I thought maybe someone could relate to it, and understand me, and that maybe someone wouldn't feel alone in something like this, like I did.
I moved with my father. I know many kids don't have that choice, I was lucky. He could've left me, but fortunately he didn't. It wasn't happy ever after, but that's another story. Just a detail, that surprised me 'cause I thought it wasn't going to stop: I stopped biting my nails, for the first time since I can remember. I'd tried everything before to stop it, but I couldn't, and then, without even trying, I stopped, for the very first time ever.
Sorry for my grammar/spelling errors, I hope you get it anyway. I ran out of time today.

[VeryFoggy]

Hello OOTS11 - I just want to say welcome, and please know most of what you have felt and thought, we have all felt and thought. That may be hard to believe right now but it is true.  We are a community of people who have suffered as you have suffered, and felt what you felt and thought what you thought.

I will just give one quick example.  When I was 16 I knew I had to get out, to get away or I was going to die. I knew the longer I stayed the worse it would get.  So like you I did not panic.  Something, some will to survive, welled up in me and I got methodical, made a plan, a really good plan and I got out.  I had a boyfriend who wanted to be with me.  I made the price of being with me my freedom.  If he would help me escape?  I would be his.  I figured it could not be worse, it might be better and he loved me.  So I pretended to sell Avon products for a month.  I smuggled my clothes in my little Avon case out of my parents home for a month in preparation for our departure. Until all I wanted to take with us was gone.  Then we left.  We were very smart.  Ran to Alaska to some friends of his. I knew we could not be found in million years (this was 1974 pre obsessive behavior about people who fly). So I know what you mean about feeling your heartbeat slow down and kind of going on autopilot to survive.

Anyway I am so sorry you have gone through all that you have, you did not deserve it, none of us did.

It is very hard and it takes a long time, sometimes a lifetime I think to really understand what happened and to put it behind us, and move on.

But we are glad you are here and I hope you find hope, healing, and help.

Have you read Pete Walker's book Complex PTSD From Surviving To Thriving?  It has helped a lot of us, so maybe you will give it a try?

Again welcome and thank you for being brave and sharing your story.

[mourningdove]

I believe you, OOTS11, and I'm so sorry for the way your mother treated you and for the church counselor's betrayal. I also relate to how difficult it can be to give ones story in broad brush strokes. I know that when I try, I usually get bombarded by memories and emotions and quickly overwhelmed. And, yes, I know how painful it is to tell and not be believed. I think most people here can probably relate to these experiences. I have found this to be a safe place, and I hope you will, too. 

[OOTS11]

Hello VeryFoggy and mourningdove, thank you for your words, I think it's the first time someone understands and validates my story.... ever. My chance to get out was going for a month to my father's on vacation (my mother sent me, it was supposed to be a punishment). I haven't thought about staying with him before, I didn't see it as an option, but then I stayed for the month and at one point I started telling him what was going on, and he offered me to live with him. So I did. It was legal, since with 14 I could choose with which parent to live. My mother tried to tell me otherwise. She tried to scare me saying that the kids who runaway where put in a correctional, and that all sorts of bad people were there, and that it was a horrible place, and blah blah blah. I knew it wasn't true. No cops would come to get me, like she tried to make me believe. She begged me to go back, said all kinds of things like if I went back she wouldn't retaliate, tried to make me see myself as the prodigal son, she must have tried everything, but I saw it for what it was: someone desperate and willing to try anything to regain control over me. But I was in a high ground now and she couldn't get his claws on me, and I knew it.
I'm sorry, my posts are always so packed, they're long, even when I try to make them shorter. It's like mourningdove said, it's difficult to tell it in broad brush strokes.
Thank you for the warm welcome, I feel that in this place people understand.
What I'm not so sure about is if I have CPTSD, or if I do, in what stage am I. I don't feel comfortable saying it, because I feel like maybe I could sort of be cast out, I know it's a severe condition and I don't take it as a joke or anything like that (please, don't take it the wrong way). It's just that it's the first place I find where people went through the things I went through, or somewhat similar. Sometimes I doubt about if what my mother used to do was abuse, since most of the times it didn't leave a physical mark, and I start questioning myself and feel like I better stop before I go crazy. Because I'm the only one who lived it, and when other people doubt me, if I too start to doubt myself, I feel like in quicksand. One of my favourite books is Gabriel García Márquez's "One hundred years of solitude". There's this part, a long one, where there's a massacre and only one man survives, and when he returns to the town, no one, absolutely no one, "remembers" or acknowledges that the massacre ever happened. The people who're gone? They just left one day for X reason and never came back. "It never happened. Period." So this man, the only witness and survivor of that horror, consults some old manuscripts and gets confirmation. But still, no one ever acknowledges it and never will (so is the story), except for him. I was speechless. It shocked me. I felt a pressure in my chest, and my breathing changed. I guess it resonated deeply somewhere inside me. I couldn't say anything, if I let myself I'd stayed like that for an hour or more. It was something in the middle of my chest, like a weight in my lungs. I don't know how to explain it.
I was determined, even if I was the only one, to call it for what it was and not let anybody tell me otherwise again (since it happened a lot, and from people whom I thought had understood). But sometimes I falter a little. Still I try to hold on to it. It just wavers a bit, sometimes. (I'm thinking "that doesn't make me a fake...(does it?)") And most of the time I tell my story bravely, and don't get overwhelmed. I'm not sure if I have or had CPTSD, but I remember the time I was living with my father like more spacious (le'me explain), I think I got to mourn for all the things I went through (I remember I cried sometimes, I did feel overwhelmed) it's like I naturally (or somehow) started to cure myself a bit. I don't know, you tell me. Just that, if I don't have CPTSD, will I still be able to tell my story?
(again, sorry for my grammar/spelling errors)

[OOTS11]

Just one more thing...ajemmhh... after living with my father 3 1/2 years, I had a situation where I knew that the only one who could help me and give me what I needed for it was my mother. It's not a hoovering situation, I really had to choose (once again) what was best for me at the time, and I knew it would cost me, I knew her. So I moved with her again (I know it sounds like willingly going back into the wolf mouth...yeah, maybe it is, wish me luck). By the way, I know that if, eventually, you do the maths you'll know what my actual age is, I just didn't feel sure about saying it. The thing is...I know that now I'm somewhat trapped (I didn't leave in good terms with my father), it scares me a bit, but if something were to happen again, I'll always find a way (somehow). It's complicated. I knew and know and never doubted about my unchanging-mother. She can't fool me. Still, strategically, I know that my position it's not the best, and she knows it too, and I know that she knows and she knows that I know she knows (hey, there's nothing like family, right?!). And I knew all this, I'm not stupid, but I had to choose, and these were my options. I'll manage, it's not new, I'm not the same person anymore, and my age allows me things I couldn't really do back then that will help me through this now. I'll figure it out, still I know it's somewhat dangerous. So I sort of have a foot on OOTF and a foot in OOTS. Support really comes in handy, I didn't have this back then, now I do. Thank you very much (don't worry).

[VeryFoggy]

OOTS11 - I am sorry you are left with limited choices at your young age.  I know what that feels like, and it is not a good feeling. But, I am also encouraged to hear you feel stronger as you are getting older.

There are a lot of resources on OOTF that may be helpful to you in dealing with your mother for now, as it seems you must. Have you tried the Tool Box on their site?  Have you considered you mother might be Personality Disordered, and if so, what sort of Disorder it might be?  Sometimes collecting information on what we are dealing with, and how to deal with it if we must can be helpful. There are a lot of resources there on OOTF. Medium Chill comes to mind where you simply do not engage.  And conversations run along the lines on your part of "That's nice." or "That's too bad."
 
I once had a conversation with my NPD sister for an hour, and that is all I said.  And she was happy.  She was a bit disappointed to not get anything out of me?  But I listened to her, for an hour, and either said "That's nice." or "That's too bad." So she could not complain.  It's a way of disengaging, and not getting caught up in drama and arguments and fights.

Also, setting boundaries, which is very difficult at first can help. The best book I ever read on this subject  is called Respect Me Rules. It is written by a brother and sister team called Marshall. This book is a life saver, and has literally saved my relationship with my own son. It took a while, and CONSISTENCY, but it works. I have been using the tools on him for about 2 months, and our relationship has drastically improved.  I suspect he is NPD as well, but he is not as entrenched, as he is only 31. So I highly recommend that book. It has helped me tremendously to deal with tough people.

I wish you the best on your journey, and I pray your mother is not Disordered, but if she is, you will have to find a way to deal with it, and STILL move on with your own life.

This why I recommended Pete Walker's book, as that one is for you alone, and possibly a therapist if you can swing it, so you have somebody to talk to face to face about all of your problems. We are here, and we care, but we are not professionals. But, we can offer hugs and support and ears!