Category Archives: Random Thoughts.

Birthday Wishes

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5

I find that the people that touch us the most are the ones we don’t expect to come along. They pop up like surprise and leave you feeling great inside. Maybe that’s their purpose, maybe it’s our purpose to pop into each other’s lives and make them better. If we stay or go, I don’t think it matters, but as long as the footprint that gets left behind is one of love and kindness, that is what is important.

Last month I received an email that touched me in such a way, from a wonderful young girl who had read my books and taken to them so much that she wrote a fan fiction. It felt so amazing to mean that much to a reader, that she would spend time on something and message me about it.

Today is her birthday. I wanted to make sure that she knew how much I appreciated what she had done and loved what she had written. She truly is an amazing writer.

Happy Birthday Nafisa!!! 

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I hope that your day is as wonderful as you are and that you enjoy it to the fullest. It’s your day, this one and everyone after it. Make them your own and thank you for taking the time to write and to message me. I hope that you keep writing, you work was so great to read.

Happy Birthday once again,

Much love and care.

JD

Covert Incest.

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18

Covert Incest.

I had never heard this term before, not once. It’s also known as emotional incest, but because the name states the word, incest, I should clear up that it does not involve any sexual activity at all.hug

Often, a part of child abuse that is overlooked, is the emotional side. It’s hard to realise that the years following abuse, are usually far worse than the incidents themselves. However, the emotional side is much harder to understand. As a victim, it is more difficult to realise that this abuse is what had also occurred.

I learnt about this concept earlier this week. I read it with my mouth hung upon, my mind uttering, oh my god, several times, and the realisation that everything my parents did, was one form of abuse or another.

What is covert incest? Exactly that. A relationship between family members that shouldn’t happen. Be it mother and son, father and daughter, mother and daughter, father and son. It is when the child is not treated as a child, but an adult and is put upon by the actual adult and his or her emotional needs. Often, it’s a biased relationship on the adults side, with the child really having little understanding of what is happening or what is expected of them.

They play the role of the parent’s emotional support. It is the parent crossing boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed. Roles are reversed and the child ends up being emotionally responsible for the needy parents well being.

I realise that this is something I endured with both my parents. Perhaps, this added to my feelings of being responsible, and the idea that I cannot shift, of making my parents the way they were. They gave me the responsibility by putting an adult world into my child mind.

My mother often sat me in the bathroom with her for hours at a time, using me as her sounding board. When we were out, it was my job to look after her and when she was afraid, I would get her home safe, and reassure her that everything was fine. I tried to hug her when she was upset. I complimented her and encouraged her. It was I who made her feel better about herself, and listened day after day, to her imaginary affair with one of our doctors.

Where was she, for me? She wasn’t, and I was only used if the family needed a scapegoat, if something was wrong, or if my mother was feeling bad.

Of course, by doing this, I learnt that if I said the wrong thing, I was beaten. I learnt the answers she wanted to hear. I learnt what made her feel good, what got her up in the morning.

Maybe this is why I feel responsible for my father’s wellbeing after I have told him to leave me alone, because they made everything my responsibility and my fault. How do I undo that?

The Long Term Effects (from CovertIncest.org):

Relationship problems are endemic amongst covert incest survivors. They often fall for the wrong type of partner—someone who is a replica of their invasive parent. Thus, their emotional needs remain unfulfilled which leads to unhappy relationships.

 

Because of the conflicting emotions that result from growing up with an invasive parent, survivors usually find themselves both attracted and repulsed by members of the opposite sex (or same sex, depending on their sexual orientation and gender of the invasive parent).

 

In addition, since the atmosphere in which they were raised was sexually charged, it is common for survivors of covert incest to use sex as a means to intimacy. This can result in sexual addiction or other types of dysfunctional behaviors as an adult.

 

Some Days

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10

Some days, everyday feels like a fight. Usually, I have had a trigger when it gets this way that goes like a snowball. One thought and my mind is off for days until it gets to a place where it can rest, or perhaps, I simply have too much and it gets too big and I can’t carry it on.

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A couple of weeks ago, I got stuck in the snow on the way to University. Every day, I have to drive through the area I grew up in; so many places, so many memories. Some good and some bad.

While driving a road that normally takes less than five minutes, and took me almost forty-five through the snow, my mind wandered. I spotted the fish and chip shop my Nan would take me to when my parents had left me. I saw the shop owned by my Nan’s friends. She would drive me insane as she chatted about all the boring things adults say, while I, a seven year old, just wished she’d say goodbye. I got to the main part of the road where my Nan used to walk along each day, and that was when my mind got stuck.

She’s been gone almost thirteen years now, but I remember her face, the way she walked, her voice. I can hear it perfectly in my mind, and on that day, it was almost like being able to see her walk along that same road as she had done when she was alive.

I reminded myself that she was gone, but of course, that led me on to remembering when she died. I was twenty-four.

She had collapsed in her house, but luckily, she was by the telephone and called for help. She had a blood clot in her lungs and was taken to hospital. My dad called me up to tell me and inform me that she was probably going to die. Of course, I didn’t waste time in going to see her.

Every day, he would call me to say, your Nan is sick, maybe she will die today and she will be by herself, and each time, I would panic and get there as fast as I could. By Friday, she had been there for five days. I went to the hospital and my father was there with my brother.  I didn’t want to stay with him and have to listen to what he would say after, about her. I don’t know why I gave her a hug and a kiss. I hadn’t done that in a very long time, but I had just wanted to.

The next morning, was the same scenario. A call from my dad to tell me my Nan was going to die alone.  I was going to see her anyway. I was going early because my partner and I had a young baby and we were house hunting.

I knew the moment I walked onto the ward that she was gone. I felt it; like emptiness. The nurse caught me before I got to her bed and ushered me into a side room. I didn’t want to hear the words. My dad sat there with his fake tears and fake grief, getting all the attention and pretending that she had been like a mother to him. He had loved her and  spoke whatever lies he could think of. The kind nurse asked him if he would like to see her and say goodbye. He said yes please, through his sobs and asked me if I was coming. He sent my brother out for a walk, so he didn’t have to deal with it.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see her. My last memory had been me saying goodbye and that was enough, right? He stood at the door to her room. I stood to the side and couldn’t see her. He started to cry again at the sight of her and told me she looked like she was sleeping and smiling.

I agreed to go in, but she didn’t look like he said. She looked dead. Her cheeks had sunk, she was pale, and cruelly, she was still warm as my father carried on his performance of the grieving son in law.

He took her personal possessions from the nursing staff, including her purse, which he emptied and spent the money on my brother. I went home and kept my grief inside because he stole it from me.

The biggest part of this memory is that I remember thinking, what if now she can see the truth. What if she knows what I had done with my father all these years? Now, she would hate me. Now, she would know I am a monster. She would know that everything about me was a lie and that I was some sick human that engaged in sexual contact with my parents.

I realised that this is when I buried everything and I became sick within my mind. This is when my OCD really began to peak because it needed an outlet.

This week has been like opening something I didn’t know I had sealed, and feeling it.

Legacy

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12

Legacy

An odd word really, it conjures up a happy image perhaps when someone says they were left a legacy. The word legacy itself means a gift, or to have something passed down.stethoscope

Yet, for an adult who suffered a form of child abuse, the legacy is far from happy. Often, at least I have found, the legacy I am left with is far worse than the experience itself.

Legacy, like a shadow I cannot lose.

I am sure I am not alone in this, that the gift that was passed to me, haunts me in my every days. Whether it is something as simple as smelling something, or seeing a story on the news that is triggering or a child walking past me that still has his innocent smile. There is always something.

I find because of this I pretty much alienate myself from everyone in every way possible. My family does not know the real me, they see smiles. I do everything; I function as I am meant to. As I said before, I have perfected the happy external image.

I don’t keep friends in my real life because I can’t talk and if I could, they would not understand. Maybe a day I am hugely triggered and I cannot do something that was planned, I have to cancel. I lost my high school friend this way, he got tired of me cancelling plans and perhaps the other way around I would have too. I am at university, but I do not make friends because I don’t fit. People talk to me of course, but I am more comfortable sitting with my head in a book and being lost in a fantasy world, than talking to real people. Yet sometimes I watch them from over my book, the way they are so free to laugh or be sad, to talk or cry. To do whatever it is that friends do. I wish in many ways I had that.

I think I do a good job of driving my online friends away too. I get quiet when I am not feeling good in my mind. Something’s I will say, but too often I feel like a burden, because these things in my head are stuck, but I don’t want to be that friend that people dread, because I never seem to be happy. Who really wants a friend that every time you speak to them, they make you feel depressed with their issues?

I had to go to the doctors this week, for a cough that I have had since October or November time, it got to the point that I can’t sleep, so I gave in and called. Doing that was hard in itself; I don’t like to go to the doctors. Not because I am afraid, but because it is so triggering, weekly my mother would drag me there with various ailments I was meant to have, all because she wanted to see the doctor herself.

According to her, I was ill so much because she was meant to be with the doctor as his wife and so fate, made me ill so that she might see him often and work on being in a relationship with him. She taught me that he was never interested in making me better, but more in entering into sexual relations with her.

This is what I think about when I need to go. When I am sat in the waiting room like, I did as a child and being made to tell her for the umpteenth time, that she looks good, and after, the grilling, I would receive. Did he look at her nicely, did he smile. Do I think he was happy to see her? And my answers dictated how the rest of my day would go. If I made her happy, I was fed, I could watch the television.  My father wouldn’t beat me. So I sat in the doctors waiting room on Monday, probably looking like I was afraid to move.

Then there is the going into the doctor’s office itself, I hate to say how I feel, but I have to, and I have to remove my top so that he can listen to my chest. He put his hand on my shoulder, while he stood behind me and like any doctor, he listened to my breathing. My mind was going haywire because he had hold of shoulder and he was behind me, I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible, he said he wanted to try some antibiotics for a week, but perhaps they will have to x-ray. I sheepishly asked for the medication in solution form, because even more thanks to my mother, I cannot get myself to swallow tablets.

The doctor sighed and I know he wasn’t happy, he had that ‘tone’ like I’m being a pain and I couldn’t explain to him why I can’t take tablets, I just had to sit there and receive that look as if I was being difficult on purpose. He did what all doctors seem to do, he tells me, he’ll give me a solution, but because I won’t take tablets, I have to have this specific one that will probably make me vomit.

And there it is, a giant trigger for me, if anyone has read my books, medication that is likely to make me vomit is so huge for me. I took the prescription from him, thanked him for his time, but the prescription was in the trash can on my way out the door and I wondered why I just endured all that trauma.

I get home, and my children ask me what the doctor said, I just told them I have a cough and got medication and then I went to cook them dinner, they are content with my answer. Inside I am shattered from a simple trip to the doctors, that felt like retracing my steps through hell and there’s no one to tell.

The legacy of childhood.

A Bed

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5

I feel like someone different today. I’m not sure I can work my moods out. I guess numb is probably the word for it. A sort of pre occupied, don’t care kind of mood.

I’ve had a strange thing in my mind of late. Perhaps it’s weird.

My grandfathers bed.

He had it for years and took to it for about a month before he died on it. It was old and broken and the springs were coming through the mattress on both sides, but it never got changed.

I didn’t have a bed. Not for the first nine years of my life. The only time I slept in a bed was with my parents or when they put me up on a fold out sun lounger at the bottom of theirs. I don’t know why I didn’t have one. I never really questioned it.

My parents moved out behind my back when I was seven and then took me back when they got a new house when I was nine. I even got my own room in their new house, and rather than buy me a bed, they gave me my grandfathers.

I’ve never been able to work out if that’s wrong of them. Should I have been given the bed, mattress and all that my grandfather died on? Was it strange of them to do that? Perhaps it’s just another example of how I was nothing. They couldn’t even get me a new bed, or at least replace the mattress. I used to wake daily almost with my leg torn to shreds from where the sharp bit came through, of course I learnt to avoid it in my sleep somewhat and the wounds got less.

Does this just prove how little I meant? I wonder, if my grandfather hadn’t died, would I have got a bed at all?

Whatever

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19

Whatever.

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(Sometimes I just write to get things out, this is one of those times.)

I want to hurt because it’s there. I want to scratch it out and make it go away. I want to make me go away. I want to turn it all off. I can’t cry it out enough, shout it, say it, or do anything to get it all out and gone.

It’s anger and aloneness, all at the same time. I want to curl up so it will go away and leave me alone. Then I don’t have to feel it any more.

I want him to take it away, say he was sorry, and know what it feels like. I want him to feel it so he really does feel sorry, not just words, but for him to understand. I want him to go back and fix it.

I want to be normal, go back, and make me be normal then. Why couldn’t I have proper things like food or clothes or just to feel safe? I do not know whose fault it is. It’s a mess.

I can’t think. It makes me want to put my head through a wall. There doesn’t seem to be a point. I can’t undo any of this. I just hide. It’s all a secret. People think I am one thing and really, I am something else inside.

My brother said when he moved out of my father’s house that it would be the end between them, but instead, he gets a normal relationship. His father coming to his house to help with DIY projects. My brother pops to our dad’s for things, he has a key, and he just walks in like a normal son. He gets everything and I have nothing.

I keep my dad away and I feel bad for it, but if I don’t, then it doesn’t change. He touches me, he hurts me, he leers at me and reminds me it’s all my fault because I was a ‘nice’ child. It was me. I turned him on. I flirted. I was the one with the smile and the face that promised more.

That is how I get everything.

That is all anyone ever wants.

It was me who climbed into his bed and I never said stop, not when he started to remove my clothes. I could have. I wasn’t afraid. I could have got out of the bed but I didn’t because I wanted that and he knew it. He knew it all the time. When I would come home from school and get changed; the way I got changed and that he could see me, made him want me. When I took a shower or a bath and walked passed him in just a towel.

It was all me, not him. Not him, because he didn’t make me. I got him to do those things. Not him. Me. It was me.

That’s why I don’t get things, because I’m the bad one and my brother is innocent. I am hard faced and I don’t feel anything and I don’t care. I am bad.

 

New Therapy

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9

New Therapy.

I met with a new therapist today. He was pleasant enough and direct which I think is what I need. Not someone that will aww and pacify me. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not for me.

It was very hard to talk and tell him the things I did. He asked me if I wanted justice and my answer was no. I don’t. I don’t see the point. My father is sick, what would ripping a family apart to label him whatever achieve?

Then my therapist explained it and I’ve never had it explained before. He said if I sought justice it’s more symbolic. The blame gets given to him. The words are said out loud. It would officially not be my fault.

What a thought. I can’t even begin to explain how it feels. That maybe I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t make him do it like he said.

There’s a child inside down on his knees crying because maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe he wasn’t bad inside. Maybe he was really loveable. Maybe he wasn’t made evil. Maybe he didn’t make them do it. Maybe it wasn’t the way he was made.

Maybe it wasn’t his fault at all.

And the adult on the outside, I feel such anger and frustration, I can’t ease those feelings. I can’t bring myself to gain justice for that child. All I can do is watch the child suffer and not be able to put it right.

I keep him where his father put him.

I wish it had been someone else and not my father. I wish it was just a no one that treated me badly all the time, maybe then I could hate him enough to not care.

There isn’t anything I can do.

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I can’t reach.

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10

Some days, like today feel as though I have just come out of a hole and the whole world moved on and I didn’t recall it happening. It feels like it’s been weeks, not just days since I have posted here, or written anything at all. I thank all those so much that did reply to my two forgiveness posts. I will reply to you, because the support I feel I get is so huge. I wish I could show each of you.

My nights have been long this last week and filled with nightmares, more than I am used to. One night I even woke screaming and I was sure that I was a child and I was in my room and the man, I named in my books as the bad man was there. He was so real to me, although his face and identity still remains hidden.

Perhaps some part of my mind wants to show me something. I have never had nights as bad as these all night and every night. I wake and I am little in my mind. He’s there and it’s taking me a few minutes to realise, no he isn’t and I am safe.

Safe.

I wish I knew what that actually felt like. I can tell myself I am safe, that I am an adult and he can’t get me.  I feel like I am going crazy.

I have many people to apologise to, so many since my last posts on here that I still haven’t got myself to talk to properly. I’m finding it hard to talk. People want to chat about the ordinary things and all I can think is why does any of it matter? But then who am I to ask that?

My self harm hasn’t stopped, twice today. I can’t dig in deep enough to cut away what it is I’m trying to remove. I don’t even know what it is that I am trying to reach. I can’t get clean. Not in the germ dirty sense, but somewhere inside I feel something. I can’t wash it away, I can’t cut it away. It’s driving me insane.

Talking here, or talking to anyone, I just want to tell myself to shut up. None of it matters.

 

Forgiveness, The Afterthoughts.

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19

Yesterday I wrote about forgiveness and how to do it, almost after I had posted it and replies came in, it occurred to me that perhaps it isn’t my father or even my mother that I have to forgive. Perhaps it is the little boy himself that needs the forgiveness. 

I’ve hated him for a very long time, to the point if anyone asked me I would say, I would happily push him down the stairs and hope it hurt for the things he did.  But I have to ask myself, if he were a real child stood in front of me, if he was anyone but me, would I do that to him and no of course I wouldn’t  I would never hurt a child.

In a way it is like I am on the side of my mother and father, I help them to abuse him even more because I blame him. I get asked many times if I think I could confront him about the things he has done and I can’t, not that I am afraid of him, but if I confront him, then he will know that he abused me and I don’t want to hurt him. How strange is that? But it’s what I feel and I think, points to I actually have to accept that what my parents did was abuse, because I don’t, and I only call it that for the sake of here. When I was in therapy I could never say it out loud, it felt like I was lying, not about the events, but about the label.

I found myself nodding a lot to the replies I received yesterday; one of them was from someone named Lil, her words were so very true. Especially about my recent issues. I have a very hard time right now sticking to the decision of having my father out of my life. He doesn’t make it easy because he keeps emailing me and messaging me, of course none of them are nasty, in fact most of them are so nice its heartbreaking, because he is teasing me with exactly what Lil mentioned the answer to my craving for a parent.  He’s showing me what I have longed for my entire life, but part of me knows that if I go back, he’ll snatch it right back again.

And here I am, full circle in my thoughts, I don’t accept that what they did was abuse, I don’t accept it because it’s my parents., I can’t let go of the belief and hope for the parental love back. I blame the little boy for what he did and making me who I am today, because if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have been abused and would have the relationship I so clearly want.

I need to forgive that child. I need to forgive myself.

Forgiveness

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15

Forgiveness.

It’s a strange word and while I do know what it means in theory, knowing what it means in feeling it is a completely different thing. I am not even sure if it is something that is possible. How exactly do you forgive someone?

I am not a religious person; I don’t believe in God, I know a lot of people will answer with regards to their faith of God and forgiveness. I think if I did believe in God I wouldn’t know how to forgive him either.

I guess forgiveness comes in many shapes and sizes; it makes hypocrites out of us. Me especially. I haven’t been very good with keeping up with people this last month or so. Not that I have ignored anyone, or not replied, I just haven’t had it in me to talk. Messages have gone unanswered, my phone has been left, emails not responded to. Yet I in some way expect and hope that these friends will understand when I say I am sorry. Many of them have thought they have upset me and that isn’t the case. It’s just a bad time and I hope they forgive me for my lack of communications.

But forgiveness is probably part of why I have been quiet. I wonder if discovering forgiveness would be the key to removing or at least healing the pain inside. It was my birthday just a couple of weeks ago. It’s never a good time; it makes me anxious and afraid. I’d happily ignore it if I could. This year was worse, added to that is my decision to not have my father in my life. It’s made me very ill these past few weeks.

My hands are very sore through the overwhelming feeling of not being able to get clean, though I know some part of this is my minds way of coping with everything else. I do suffer from OCD and when it is at a point that my hands are bleeding, I know I have something bothering me. The fact that even my wrists are cut and bloody tells me I have a problem. I have had days of not eating and over eating. Nights of no sleep or nights plagued with bad dreams, but the biggest one is, in ten days I have only had two days where I have not self harmed. Some of myself harm days have been multiple occasions.

I look at all of this and why I do these things. I feel sane on the outside, but my actions feel far from it. None of my insanities can ease the pain I feel inside. I wish if I could give my father anything, it wouldn’t be confrontation, but it would be a day of feeling what I feel.

Forgiveness might be the key, but how do you do it? I’m not sure it’s possible. I wonder if forgiveness is real at all, or is it just something we convince ourselves of?