I remember it like it were yesterday. After weeks of hearing my step mom telling my dad to “get rid” of me, I knew before I was told what was happening.
Nightly, well after I was supposed to be asleep I was the topic of conversation downstairs. Less than a year into their new relationship (and less than 6 months of living together), I was an unwelcome burden to my new step mom. She wanted rid of me bad. She pushed and pushed making statements such as “We were a happy family until she came along. Pack her up and ship her back”.
OK, I have two major issues with those statements. #1-WHO was a happy FAMILY? She moved into MY home with MY dad, MY brothers and MY dog. #2-“Pack her up and ship her back”. Those words ring in my ears so loudly. What the fuck am I? Some piece of bad furniture you got?
Nevertheless, she triumphed. Ironically, it was when the talks of me quit that I really knew what was coming. Talk about the quiet before the storm. You can just feel it.
That night was a Tuesday night. I was in the middle of a four day school week, a four day exam week. Two days of my week down and only two to go. Arriving home from school, my step mom did not come home from work as usual. When my dad came home, she was still not there. At dinner, I was silent. I guess maybe in some way I thought if I was perfect nothing would happen.
We were told that Terry would not be home until much later. Coward. She couldn’t even face her own doing. Instead, we were told that we were going to mom’s after dinner. Now, we barely went to mom’s. This included her actual weekends with us. She lived a half hour away also. That meant that, on a school night, we would be traveling one hour very close to our bedtime to visit a woman we barely saw. I asked why even though I knew. “We just are”, my dad stated. Not another word from my mouth the entire dinner or car ride to her place.
The scene is so vivid in my mind. My dad sitting in the recliner by himself directly across from me. I was sitting on the end of the sectional, my mother in the middle and my two brothers side by side on the other side. My heart sank. I knew the doom that was coming. I had no idea how much it would break me though.
Then it came. “We’ve decided that you are going to move in with your mom”. Anger quickly filled my body as I asked “why?”. “We just feel it’s for the best.” That’s all I got?!?! Instantly, I broke down in tears. These weren’t just your normal tears. This was a young girl who was completely broken. “Why”, I asked over and over. I received the same exact response. His face was so cold, his voice so uncaring. Not one person in the room came to me. Not one person asked me how I was doing. Not one person showed me any love or concern. I begged and pleaded, “Just tell me what I did wrong. I’ll fix it. I’ll do whatever you want.” Again the recording played, “it just won’t work”.
The car ride back to his place (I was permitted to finish the week at his place) was hard. The only communication I received was to hear the story about how his brother had to go live with his dad while he and his siblings stayed with his mom and he turned out fine. I muttered, “I’m not your brother” only to be met with anger and a threat of him turning the car around to drop me off right then and there. So, I learned to shut my mouth that night.
I went to bed, spent the next day at school and when I got home-I packed up my little suitcase and took off across the park to my grandma’s house. I couldn’t bear a moment in that house in front of any of them. It was too hard. It was too painful.
As much as that scenario still hurts, I repeat this same situation over and over again in my life. I’m trying to break the pattern. However, I never grieved about what happened (until recently in my abandonment recovery process). When I cried the way I did, only to be met with such coldness, I closed up. I put on my armor and moved forward.
People wonder why I’m so closed up, including those in my family. As hard as I’ve tried not to be, the times that I’ve been open since then have proved to be hurtful. I know and understand completely that this is because I have not completely worked through all that happened. That’s what I’m doing now. However, it’s HARD!
Opening those feelings, pulling down those walls is incredibly painful. So, I go slowly. However, as I continue to go through the process-feelings rise to the surface. They play out in my life. I keep saying never again. Yet, I keep going through it again and again. I don’t want to. Yet, I know I have to.
You see, when we have unresolved trauma such as this that we never handle-it will play out time and time again. You are seeking out those people in your life that will create the same scenario and feelings. On some level, you are doing this so that you can “get it right”. On some level, you are doing this to play out the scene in a “safer” way. After all, nothing could match the pain I felt that night. So, if I re-enact it with someone else-I’ll be able to release my feelings in a way I couldn’t then. None of this is a conscious thought process though. Your sub-conscious is attempting to “fix” you.
Awareness is a crucial step in getting over this pattern. However, awareness is only the first step. I’m aware. I will tell myself over and over to stop what I’m doing. “Stop begging him to love you”. Yet, I can’t do it. My mind fights me.
That’s when you have to decide if this is what you want for yourself. If not, you’ve got to take the extremely tough steps to face that which you fear the most. You have to allow yourself to “feel” the pain of what you’ve buried. This can be especially hard if you have closed yourself off completely. Push through and pull it up though.
Once you decide to do so, it will be a hard journey. I’m not going to lie and say it will be easy or that you will feel better right away. Aside from this “trauma”, I also have the abandonment of my mom and the loss of my young sisters 3 years ago (my mom decided that I could no be a part of their life). When I began my journey, I literally had panic attacks so bad that I couldn’t breathe. Imagine a dam in place, keeping those feelings down. Then, the dam bursts and you get flooded at first.
That “flooding” will be unbearable. So many times I wanted to re-repress my thoughts and feelings. I’ve gotten physically ill so much in the last year and a half. There were times where I thought I could not mentally or physically handle it any longer. I still have moments like that. The difference now is that they are much less frequent and when they do happen, I am able to pull through them quicker than before. It may not be a big enough difference for others to see, but I do and that’s all that counts.
I’m still working through all of this. I’m still struggling quite a bit. In fact, I’m writing this post due to events tonight that have taken place that put me right back where I don’t want to be. Previously though, I’d be in a much different state of mind at the moment. I’m gaining strength ironically through the re-enactments (I’m NOT encouraging anybody to go that route!).
I often wonder if the pain of these trauma’s will ever “go away”. Will they just lessen so that I can live a better life or will I be able to completely move forward? I worry about the answer to those questions.
This is what I’m working on now………………
Related articles
- Still Breathing (kvolpe2006.wordpress.com)
- Missing People Just Plain Sucks (tokenhippygirl.com)
- Life’s Not Fair. Get used to it. (parentalalienationnj.wordpress.com)
- Is My Past “Haunting” Me? (messymarissa.wordpress.com)
- #MovingForward (walkinfaith81.wordpress.com)
- The early years and how neglect manifested itself (losthersh.wordpress.com)
- Placing your partner to the same level of importance as you? Yeah, you can do it…. (destinyreachers.com)
irishbutterflyprincess.wordpress.com 