joyful's journal

[Wife#2]

 

[jdcooper]

I have read your journal joyful.  I am so sorry you are currently in the midst of things.  You are brave for facing these demons and coming on here and posting.  I understand about scant memories, I am working on recovering those myself.  I hope you can get your independence soon and pull away from that unhealthy dynamic.  So glad you are doing it at this age.  Those of us that are older, we let it go on too long.  You have already pulled things into your awareness and are on your way out.

[joyful]

  to you too Wife 2

Thank you jd  I hope that you can also recover and heal from your repressed memories. *hopefully* (unless something goes very very wrong which is entirely possible) I should be living on campus by fall. At which point I hope to go as LC as possible, because healing while still stuck in it and just getting more hurts piled on everyday really slows the process.

Thank you both for caring about me 

I have things to flush out today, but am not feeling strong enough at the moment. I will come back later. (writing the commitment to come back helps me.) I want to write the stuff but can't right this second

[joyful]

I know I said I was gonna come back yesterday, but by now most of what was on my mind then has passed and been replaced by new stuff that's weighing on my mind more. So now I'll write about that.
I can't decide whether to put this here or under sexual abuse where more people will see it, but I'm not too sure about it yet, so I'll put it here.

**tw**

Yesterday I got triggered by my own body. Just like seeing myself brought feelings of shame and revulsion. That's not a new thing for me, I'll just have weeks where it's bad and happens a lot, and others where I'll be fine. but yesterday when it happened something else came up, something i did when I was younger.
Between the age of like 6 or 7 and 10 or 11 I was like (i can't think of the right word...) Seductive? I wanted attention for my body. In third grade. I wanted to be "sexy" i wanted to show off and for people to see me like that.    I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that's not normal. I didn't do anything like super inappropriate, but I did things that were kind of inappropriate. (Man there is a tight ball of shame around this). I used to dance a lot and be quite flexible. I went to a private school where we had to wear skirts. I'd stretch and do things that exposed my entire leg  in a place where everyone could see me  and how flexible I was and what good legs I had.
I can't believe myself! I am so embarrassed for how uncomfortable I must have made everyone. I don't know if this behavior was a result of sexual abuse? If i thought that that would make people like me and pay attention to me? (I was EXTREMELY anti-social and like unhealthily introverted... I guess i still am, but I think it's more healthy now)
And what confuses me is i'm not like this AT ALL anymore. Something changed from me thinking i was pretty hot stuff when I was little to now cringing whenever I get looked at and hating my body and feeling disgusted and ashamed of it.
I'm pretty emotionally detached as I write this...
I can still feel shame coming through the cracks. Intense shame.
Maybe that is normal and I'm freaking out over nothing, but I have no idea. Maybe I'm just making a big deal over nothing.
I don't know. I'm getting kinda mad at my inner child for this behavior. I'm trying to tell myself that yeah i am accountable for those things, but they came from hurts and I wouldn't have acted that way if my history had been different. It's not working really. 

[Wife#2]

Joyful, I think what you were doing may have been just for simple attention. Normal stuff by kids who want to be seen as someone special, worth paying attention to. Of course, you wanted to be seen! To be liked. To be part of the group, yet also special somehow. THAT IS COMPLETELY NORMAL. At both ages!

As a little girl, you wouldn't have been capable of really understanding seduction. Not as an adult would. It would have been about attention, the only way you knew. Plus, as a little girl, it would have seemed pretty cool that you could make your body move in ways most girls couldn't - you were built for gymnastics!

As a pre-teen, you may have understood seduction, but most girls that age are just starting to understand flirting, making boys blush. There is power in that, and while girls are learning that they CAN use their bodies to get reactions from others, they (we) seem to do it in spurts, because they would still be learning. Just as the boys were learning that they had more strength than girls and enjoyed showing off.

To me, the biggest tell that these episodes were more about showing off, getting attention and normal kid development is that you didn't keep with the seductress attitude. And, in my opinion, that shame may have been a growing awareness of just how 'wrong' your childhood may have been. Which means you don't own that shame - your father does. Your mother does. Not you. YOU didn't shape your childhood family dynamics. YOU didn't come up with sexual ideas before age 13 without it coming from SOMEWHERE. Whoever didn't protect your childhood innocence, THAT is the owner of the shame.

Of course, that's real easy for me to say and almost impossible for you to convince yourself. I know. Still, I stand by the reality that you don't deserve that shame. You deserve anger instead - anger that the people who were supposed to protect you didn't. Shame on them.  for you!

[joyful]

thanks Wife2  Thank you for that reminder and helping me to see reality (can't think of the right way to say that)
This really stood out to me:

YOU didn't come up with sexual ideas before age 13 without it coming from SOMEWHERE. Whoever didn't protect your childhood innocence, THAT is the owner of the shame.

*Giant exhale*

That is a SUPER important realization for me. (triggers ahead!!!)
When I was eight I had what I now consider like a flashback. I was being orally raped (in the flashback). I was eight, and it's not like that's just something eight year olds imagine (i really hope..) it was complete with like feeling it in my mouth. lots of fear, but then a TON of shame that I had just thought that.
Now i realize that people can't know things unless they either are taught it or observe it. Which at least is comforting in the sense that I didn't have a "dirty mind". It was an awful flashback that I really couldn't control.
another giant exhale.
that was hard to write...

[Wife#2]

You are right. No 8-year-old could even conceive of such a thing. It just wouldn't be on his or her 'radar' so to speak. Even if it had been put on the radar by seeing inappropriate things, the sensations that were part of that make it seem as if it was a real memory of a real action committed against you.

Are you OK now? That was a hard flashback. It sounded as if you were back there completely for a while. You're safe as a person right now, but are you ok?

I care a lot about you! I think you are an amazing person, very strong and self-aware. It's just so wrong that your childhood was stolen from you!

Please be careful at home and stay as safe as you can. I'll be sending good, safe, healing thoughts to you!

[Blueberry]

Joyful, standing right beside you, if that's not too close, as you go through this. 8 year olds don't just imagine that out of the blue.    as you relive this, remember and talk about it.

I can relate to your feelings of shame about the other, because I feel ashamed of things I did as a child too. But, as wife#2 says, we're feeling the shame that belonged to somebody else! In your case your F. In my case my M, and in a wider sense (non SA) my M and B1. They were continually ashamed of me, my very existence and I'm still projecting that onto little Blueberries, still ashamed and unforgiving of how I was as a child in various different ways and situations. I believe that people who grew up in healthier environments can look back at the way they were as a child and feel love, empathy, affection and possibly more along that line, whereas we feel shame. It's not our shame. But I'm not over it yet either.

[joyful]

Thank you Wife2 and Blueberry.  You are both so kind
It was a hard flashback, one that I've been dealing with for a while now but was just brave enough to post about. I had a midterm i had to take that day, which kept me in something kinda like the present enough to focus.
Blueberry I'm so sorry for what you have gone through also  I hope that we can get over and rightfully attribute that shame eventually 

Sooooooooooooo...last night i was really sad and angry at all the things that have been taken away from me. even to the point where I don't think i have a personality, just like a codependent robot. I was trying to just let myself be upset and grieve the things I lost, the things taken away from me. I think I did an alright job of feeling it and working through it (still working through it) I realized I don't have to grieve all the losses right now, jsut as they come up and I can start with the little things. I can mourn all of the activities I missed out on, that's not too hard.
But the thing is: F is trying to take away my job!!!  Hearing him say how he really just wants me to come on vacations with them this summer and how family time is most important sent me into a full on EF. i felt so threatened, and i'm so afraid i'll just be like oh ok, whatever, i don't care. I'm so afraid i'll be weak and let him take that too. He just wants little joyful that he can control and manipulate forever. He will cry his manipulative tears. I'm so upset. He talked to me about it and how he would 'rather i didn't work' and "he'll just keep paying for everything' and not to tell my mom about it, he'd talk to her. (probably cuz if i talked to her he wouldn't be able to manipulate her to his side......)
it's making me so upset and scared. i can't let him make me quit, but i'm so afraid i'll jsut act in the way i've been trained to.

i'm sorry this is so incoherent, i'm really not in a good place right now. I'm pretty flashback-ed plus my body aches and i'm getting a migraine  ugh

[joyful]

I know I just barely posted, but this is all i'm capable of right now, so i'm back. i might not even post this, i might just end up deleting the whole thing depending on how it turns out.
i was doing alright yesterday, i was willing ot do the work necessary for healing, i was willing ot be patient wiht myself. but then. my sibs and i got a load of brainwashing about how we have so much to be grateful for how we have no reason to be anything but happy. a few years ago (shoot, even last year!) i wouldn't have thought much of this talk, but last night it set me off so bad.
(this is gonna be pretty much a rant, so feel free to stop reading here)
It's all just extinguisghing our fight responses and feeding our inner critics. the more we are taught that we have no reason to be anything but happy the harder it is for us to heal, because from what i understand, healing means feeling the emotions that resulted from the trauma so you can process and slowly move forward. but those are not happy emotions. they're sad and angry. I can't even get myself to say that i feel "angry", it feels like a swear word. sure, we've always had a house and food and gone to school, but it's all the little things in between. making us feel guilty for bothering F with our hunger or our desire to be on time to class. blaming us for the cost of school. telling us that everything in your life is our fault when really it's the other way around. plus innumberable other things i can't even count. subtle things, that are hard to realize the terrible damage they do. when i first realized i was being abused it was hard to see the manipulation, the gaslighting and all the other crazy making, but now i see it in every interaction. everything is about how we are wrong, he is right. we are less. we are dependent. we are so lucky. (i know that we are lucky, and I am grateful that we live comfortably, but using our comfortable living situation to guilt us out of our emotions is not ok) we can never do anything right. we're stupid, he is smart, we need him to save us and help us. He has our lives perfectly planned out so that we can continue paying homage to him forever. and then we're so ungrateful and bratty and mean if we decide we want to do something normal like move out when we start college or...anything. Nothing I do will ever be right for him. He loves me inasmuch as i fulfill his vision for me, his needs. MY needs mean nothing. my desires, my dreams...all nothing.
i'm terrified i'll slip back into the cycle. he'll offer up that i can just keep living at home in the fall, how he'd love to spend just one more year wiht me. it's the same thing as work that i jsut posted about. fawn response will take over and i'll be trapped forever. i'm trying not to feel hopeless, but it's really hard.
i'm feeling so overwhelmed, everything around me seems so noisy.
Sorry for posting again, just needed to let off more steam. I think i'm done for now.

[Blueberry]

Standing right beside you 
I'm glad that you could at least let off some steam. You're going through so much realisation at the moment. For myself I find that really difficult, sometimes even worse than memories floating up. Might just be me though for whom it's worse.

However things turn out, we're here for you! Even if you're swept back into your family's 'antics', as many of us e.g. me have been, even that is not 'forever'. We do get out of  the bad place eventually, and then out of the bad cycles you can get into even when you're no longer living with FOO.

I wish you good luck and a whole load of strength for resisting your F's manipulation.
Keep posting if you need it, that's what we're here for and that's what this board is for. 

[joyful]

Thank you Blueberry 

it's definitely been one of those weeks...but i'm feeling alright at the moment.
will post more later when i can get my thoughts in order

[Elphanigh]

Joyful, I just read your journal. First have all of the hugs  you want, and know that I care very much about you and your experiences. I can relate to a lot of them actually. It was people that were close to me that sexually abused me. Like your father, they liked to do things like that publicly. As a child that is something that is life altering because as least for me it meant I wasn't safe anywhere. I am really sorry you had to go through it. Know that your feelings on it are valid and important.

Don't worry about some of the things you did as a child. Needing attention is normal, I did some similar things and it took me a long time to know it was normal at that age anyways. I find that maybe we are a bit more prone to it because someone has introduced a sexual layer of life to us that someone so young should never have.

Know I am hear for you, and am glad you are finding such courage to write as you continue to go through this journey

[joyful]

Thank you Elphanigh 

I find that maybe we are a bit more prone to it because someone has introduced a sexual layer of life to us that someone so young should never have.

I agree. I see it in my younger sister also, it makes me wonder what has happened to her 
Thank you for caring about me and validating me 

[Blueberry]

I find that maybe we are a bit more prone to it because someone has introduced a sexual layer of life to us that someone so young should never have.

I agree. I see it in my younger sister also, it makes me wonder what has happened to her 

to you Joyful.