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Some of you have been following the Facebook page and the blog for a while. Hell it has only been up for a few months. I am amazed at the response. Aside from a few unhinged people, we have had some great people here in the community and I am grateful for each of you. I am saddened by the fact that you feel the need for this community, that this fills a need. On the other hand, it sure has opened my eyes to so many things.
As I have been trudging through my life, struggling with unnamed symptoms, I have done the best I could. I have done what I could to survive and to fight to avoid being like my biological mother. My adoptive mother helped immensely and we just did the best we could. It was and still is hard.
I had this image of my biological mother as a monster. Someone who was dedicated to destroying my life. What I did not realize, and I am starting to, is that she was a human being herself. Unfortunately I will never be able to sit down with her and talk about her struggles and let’s be honest, I have no true desire to do that. She was a fanatical religious nut job. I would not really be able to stand being in the same room with her without losing my shit. “I’ll give you something to cry about you bitch!” Don’t you just love that statement. I sit here like you just threw my ass across the room, beat me with a fucking switch and you think that is not reason enough to cry? Ugh, getting sidetracked.
At the same time, I loved her with every ounce of my being and I wanted to please her and I wanted to protect her. I was loyal. I would fight for her. Imagine a little girl standing up to adults who made fun of my mom because she was different. I remember the rage I would feel when she came home crying one day because people had been mean to her and I wanted to know who they were. I was prepared to run out the door and go after them. Keep in mind at the time I was about 5-6 years old.
I hated to see her in pain. Suffering. I wanted to fix it and I wanted to hurt anyone who hurt her. Meanwhile she was abusing me and traumatizing me and killing me slowly with her obsessive love and fanaticism.
It was not all just her. The foster homes helped. The system helped. They all helped fuck me up more and more until I turned into a rage filled teenager who felt like she was losing her mind because at her core, at my core was love. So much fucking love.
The rage was and still is a way to protect myself. It scares me. I do not want to be that person, yet a part of me does, which is why I relate so much to the Suicide Squad of Harley Quinn. (and this is not the place for a fucking argument about fandoms. So fuck off if you do not like her.)
Frankly, I do not know what is real anymore and what is the faulty memory of a child. Swiss cheese memory, years, months all missing because my brain decided it need to protect me.
There was so much going on. All I saw was what I experienced. My pain. My hurt. My trauma. My neglect. I remember that we once had fleas so bad that when I went to the bathroom the tile floor was covered in them. These little black fuckers jumping up and biting me.
So what it the point of this post?
The point of this post is for me to vent. To tell all of the people who stood on the sidelines and did not do a damn thing to protect me you suck donkey ass and frankly you can all go fuck yourselves.
I watch how my friends are with their children. I watch how my coworkers are with their children and my heart blossoms and breaks at the same time because I will never have what they have.
These kids will never know what it is like to go hungry. They will never know what it is like to be scared to go home after school because they are not sure who will be there waiting for them. Which version of their mother would greet them.
They are loved. They are nurtured. They have friends and bedrooms filled with toys and they get to go to one school and build relationships and I fucking hate that I was denied that. I love that they have this. It fills my heart and I think about what wonderful parents these people are to give their kids such a good start and then I think of me and what I had and what I lost and what was taken from me.
Hey world, here is a fucking clue, it was not my fault I was born into the family I was. It was not my fault my biological mother kept having psychotic breaks and it was not my fault she pissed on the walls to anoint them and spent our money on fuckling candles rather than food so she could worship her fucking god. It was not my fault I was dirty and angry and hurt and swore like a fucking sailor.
These were all fucking clues you assholes. My own family gave up on me. Gave up on her and left me to the system. Because they could not see through the anger and the pain and I hate them for it. I hate them and I love them and I wish they would have protected me and they would have given me the lives they gave their kids.
Listen, I know I am fortunate. Things could have been so much worse for me if my mom had not adopted me and stuck it out with me through those tough years and even know while I try so hard to recover and become whoever I am going to be. She saw me. She always saw me. She saw the good, the love, the pain and the abuse. She saw it all. And she loved me through it all.
C-PTSD Triggers
Those fuckers can hit us at any time. This one hit me because of one of my biological cousins birthday and it hit me like a punch to the gut. The pain at what I lost, at what I was denied. At what I lost.
What was wrong with me that no one wanted me? What was wrong with me that they could not see me. They saw the surface and looked no further and I was alone. I was never apart of anything. I could not even be a part of my biological siblings lives even though I reached out several times throughout the years. Fuck em. Fuck em all.
None of them ever really knew who I was. They had these assumptions, these ideas but they never once truly knew me. And they can suck it because it is their loss.
I always wanted a big family
I always cry when I watch My Big Fat Greek Wedding because that is what I always wanted. A family that would always be there for you, even if you might not want them to be.
I can’t trust anyone. I am so broken that I look at everyone with suspicion and wait for them to leave me for them to hurt me so I isolate myself because it is easier.
My cousin is all grown up now but when we were kids we were kind of close and I remember envying them because of everything they had that I did not. It was not fair. I was starving because we had no food and they got to go to Disneyland. They got bomber jackets and I had shit.
My mom beat me. My mom told me I was evil and was going to hell. Nowhere felt safe and we always lived in these shitty apartments. We walked everywhere because we did not have a car. We had no food. She would not let me go to the doctor because her god would heal. Every Sunday I would get beat for something the preacher said because somehow it had something to do with something I did or did not do. She refused to let me have a tutor because they wanted me to work alone with the tutor and she would not let me out of her sight. I have a high fucking IQ but because of my trauma I struggle. I have lost so much. I have missed so much.
So when I saw that my cousins birthday was today, all of this came flooding back and I felt like I was being split in half. I felt the familiar rage, the rage at not being protected. The rage that I was abused and that no one helped me. The rage that my innocence was taken from me. The rage that my family never tried to contact me, that they never gave a shit about me.
I also felt genuine love for her and hoped that she had a happy birthday surrounded by the family that was never mine. Surrounded by the friends that she knew since childhood.
Triggers are a bitch. I am struggling enough as it is and am having such a hard time keeping my shit together that this hit me hard. It brought back those feelings of worthlessness. Of not being enough. Of being too loud, too nosey, too much, never what anyone wanted me to be.
My grandmother often told me to let the past lie in the past. That is not how it fucking works people! The body keeps the fucking score.
So, triggers are a bitch.
I am still trying to process this healing thing. I think confronting these emotions are a big part of it. I think learning to understand triggers are also a big part of it, no only know what a trigger is, but how to deal with them. To accept them and work through them and do your best to prepare for the next time.
This is an ongoing process. It takes time. It takes commitment. It takes strength, even when we feel we do not have it. We just keep pushing further and further and pulling up what we have and we keep going. One step at a time.
Healing is different for everyone. My process may not be yours and that is okay. This blog, this Facebook page is about my journey and today I needed to express this. I needed to get it out.
I know it is so useless but I often wonder who I would be had I been adopted as a baby, taken away from that woman who had no right in being a mother. I still carry all of it with me, even that which I cannot remember.
My heart is aching right now, but it will pass and I am not going to stop this process. I have to keep going. I have to believe that I can heal. That we all can heal. We will never be who we would have been had we never gone through our various traumas but we can decide who we are going to be. And we can work towards that.
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