just stopping in to thank y'all for praying. survived the anniversary day.
exhausted so much and feeling like i just survived a war, but still here.
will post more when i get my breath back, for now i'm just holding on to the shore and being glad not to be drowning.
thanks again to all of you for praying. so much. i mean it.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
(crying)
ok so i brought yesterday's post to therapy yesterday. been three weeks since my last appointment due to the flu. felt unable really to speak because of all the emotion, so i just printed and brought it to her.
now reeling. here's her reaction:
she said, based on what she knows of my story and such and my descriptions of my dad, that she (a phd in pyschology) believes that my father was a sociopath on the same level as the man who held jaycee dugard captive all those years. she said that she's glad to finally see me stop pulling punches and trying to protect him and really seeing things as they were. she expressed how proud she was of me for the conclusions i've reached and has just encouraged me to spend the next week reinforcing those realizations.
i left my appointment empowered and feeling strong. enjoyed almost a whole day of good stuff before her comments sunk in.
a sociopath on the same level as the man who hurt that little girl for 18 years. i don't watch the news so i googled her story. spent the next several hours and half of today sobbing my heart out. how could my daddy be that bad?
it HURTS!
but she's right. this man took that little girl and kept her captive and did awful things and fooled the world. held orgies. had men lined up to take turns with her. no, my dad didn't steal me - i was his to begin with. but he DID keep me under his violent thumb. he did bind and harm me. i had no tent compound but i had a table in the woods. and he did have friends and they did take turns. he met every diagnostic criteria for sociopath - self centered, lacking empathy or self control, obsessed with causing fear and pain, hurting animals and putting on a face to the world that was very different than the one behind closed doors. wow.
and she's got such a point. why was he enabled to hold her for eighteen years? because people just can't fathom that these things happen under our noses - that these things exist. why would they not think to look for the compound? because who fathoms that such places exist in our neighbors backyards?! so where is the hope for kids who live through that - things like this happen a lot more often than we think or want to believe.
and for the reporters? i know why she never cried out for help. why she didn't try to escape. why she bonded and became loyal to her captors. when you are entrenched in a way of life that includes extreme torture and fear and awful horrible things that the world doesn't believe are true, it's very easy to be convinced that YOU are the crazy one and that really things are "normal" and you have no room to complain. and that if you do, you'll pay DEARLY. to the point that a spirit is broken and you cease to even try because it's been proven it's pointless. and when they twist the world to make it seem like you really are the bad one and they are the hero - and you are forced to serve in order to survive, yeah, pleasure will naturally come from when those people view you positively. after years and years, it's difficult to distinguish that from love. i loved my dad. even to the point of literally offering my life to save his face. and no - i never dared say a word - no matter HOW bad it got.
amazed to consider that i fit in this category. broken. crushed. shocked.
next week friday is the anniversary of the worst of the worst and also of his suicide. i don't know what to feel. i want to hate him. but right now all i feel is grief for the loss of the hope that i will ever have something positive to think about my dad. i wanted a daddy. all i wanted was a daddy. i know i'm 36, but i still have that hole left behind. i lost my dad. i lost hope of ever having one. i deal with guilt because on the one hand, his death was a relief for me, but on the other hand, he was still my dad. who in their right mind can rejoice that another suffers? especially death at their own hands? and then there's the blame game. suicide makes things so much more complicated. and letters left behind leave so many messed up twisted questions. what do you do when so many opposing emotions run so strong all at the same time?
i'm still fighting. i'm still working. i'm still pushing. i won't give up.
at the same time, i'm so tired. and all of this is so unbelievably difficult.
IT HURTS.
now reeling. here's her reaction:
she said, based on what she knows of my story and such and my descriptions of my dad, that she (a phd in pyschology) believes that my father was a sociopath on the same level as the man who held jaycee dugard captive all those years. she said that she's glad to finally see me stop pulling punches and trying to protect him and really seeing things as they were. she expressed how proud she was of me for the conclusions i've reached and has just encouraged me to spend the next week reinforcing those realizations.
i left my appointment empowered and feeling strong. enjoyed almost a whole day of good stuff before her comments sunk in.
a sociopath on the same level as the man who hurt that little girl for 18 years. i don't watch the news so i googled her story. spent the next several hours and half of today sobbing my heart out. how could my daddy be that bad?
it HURTS!
but she's right. this man took that little girl and kept her captive and did awful things and fooled the world. held orgies. had men lined up to take turns with her. no, my dad didn't steal me - i was his to begin with. but he DID keep me under his violent thumb. he did bind and harm me. i had no tent compound but i had a table in the woods. and he did have friends and they did take turns. he met every diagnostic criteria for sociopath - self centered, lacking empathy or self control, obsessed with causing fear and pain, hurting animals and putting on a face to the world that was very different than the one behind closed doors. wow.
and she's got such a point. why was he enabled to hold her for eighteen years? because people just can't fathom that these things happen under our noses - that these things exist. why would they not think to look for the compound? because who fathoms that such places exist in our neighbors backyards?! so where is the hope for kids who live through that - things like this happen a lot more often than we think or want to believe.
and for the reporters? i know why she never cried out for help. why she didn't try to escape. why she bonded and became loyal to her captors. when you are entrenched in a way of life that includes extreme torture and fear and awful horrible things that the world doesn't believe are true, it's very easy to be convinced that YOU are the crazy one and that really things are "normal" and you have no room to complain. and that if you do, you'll pay DEARLY. to the point that a spirit is broken and you cease to even try because it's been proven it's pointless. and when they twist the world to make it seem like you really are the bad one and they are the hero - and you are forced to serve in order to survive, yeah, pleasure will naturally come from when those people view you positively. after years and years, it's difficult to distinguish that from love. i loved my dad. even to the point of literally offering my life to save his face. and no - i never dared say a word - no matter HOW bad it got.
amazed to consider that i fit in this category. broken. crushed. shocked.
next week friday is the anniversary of the worst of the worst and also of his suicide. i don't know what to feel. i want to hate him. but right now all i feel is grief for the loss of the hope that i will ever have something positive to think about my dad. i wanted a daddy. all i wanted was a daddy. i know i'm 36, but i still have that hole left behind. i lost my dad. i lost hope of ever having one. i deal with guilt because on the one hand, his death was a relief for me, but on the other hand, he was still my dad. who in their right mind can rejoice that another suffers? especially death at their own hands? and then there's the blame game. suicide makes things so much more complicated. and letters left behind leave so many messed up twisted questions. what do you do when so many opposing emotions run so strong all at the same time?
i'm still fighting. i'm still working. i'm still pushing. i won't give up.
at the same time, i'm so tired. and all of this is so unbelievably difficult.
IT HURTS.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Defeating the Why's (long!!!)
MAJOR WARNING!!! (uncensored processing of really hard stuff!!!)
ok - so until now, my healing journey has been drowning in the why's.... why was i ever born. why did my daddy never protect me. why was he instead the one i needed protection from. why did he do those awful things. why did his friends not only approve but participate. why did my mom never protect me. why did she never take the time to see the pain i was in. why did things get progressively worse on such a huge scale. why did everyone hate me. why didn't he kill me. why didn't i kill me. why does life have to hurt so bad. why can't i get free. why do i continue to live under his orders. why can't i shake this. and why do people bother to care about me if i'm such scum... why, why, why, why, why... too many why's...
this week, in the midst of all of the flashbacks, i had an awful glimpse into how he saw me. how sick my father really was. how he was so stuck in his own sexual addictions and perversions and need for dominating control that i was not a person in his eyes. for just a moment, i saw the situation from his point of view. he was trying to be all powerful. and proving that power by degrading and controlling me. i was not his daughter. i was not even a child to him. i was his animal – a dog. his scapegoat. his proof of his power. nothing more. his motivations were not because of hatred or even revenge on me - simply domination, degradation and control. his anger was not because of my misbehavior. and no amount of love or obedience or apologies could ever have satisfied him. what he wanted was total and complete control of my life - even down to my bodily functions. what he wanted was to raise and own his own single minded robotic slave. what he wanted was for me to play out his fantasies and cease to exist for anything else. it had nothing at all to do with me. only his own self-centered, sadistic addictions. and really - even if i had figured out how to be his perfect slave - i don't know that even then he would have been satisfied - it probably would only have made his thirst for power and pain larger. realizing this...it was devastating. i don't know if i've ever felt that low - that awful - that... that... degraded... humiliated... even when i was living it. because although i lived it then, i didn't fully understand the implications of it. seeing it for what it really was... there just aren't words for the emotions swirling through me.... HE WAS MY FATHER!!! MY OWN DADDY!!! truly. it started when i was maybe 4?! dear God!!!
while coming out of the shock of it, i had a second glimpse. this time into my own heart. and i've realized some things i never considered before. as i've pondered them, and allowed them to sink in, i was thinking that maybe they might cement better if i shared them. so here goes:
after all this hit, when i got my breath back, all i wanted to do was hide in the closet in my head. no human contact. no kind words. no positive reminders. no hugs or sympathy. i wanted no niceness at all. it almost hurt more to hear expressions of love then it did to sit with the pain. and now i understand why.
all this time, i've never let anyone in because i have been afraid that if anyone REALLY knew the real me that they would truly be repulsed and run away in sickness and hatred or if they stayed it would only be to cause pain because that was all i deserved. because truly underneath, i believed that. i see that i've kind of held in my mind two identities - the one i show the world of this kind person who cares and obeys and always tries to do the right thing, and the one i feel inside of who my daddy made me. and i've believed that the real me is who he said i was. and that after all he did, and all he made me do, that it was cemented in stone and that's that. that no matter how much i was good on the outside, it would never overcome the filth on the inside. that i would never cease to be what he made me - what he called me... a rotten, filthy, fat, ugly, stupid, worthless b****.
i am beginning to realize now that it's not true. that i am not what he said. that all that he said and did and made me do and say and believe... all THAT was the lie. his lie. i was not his slave, not his prostitute, not his property. i was not, nor am i now, an animal... a dog. i am a human being. i was a child. i had no choices in what my life was like then. nothing was within my power to change. and try as i might, there was no way i could have defeated him in the ways that i've been trying. BUT! i DID defeat him. part of the reason he was always so mad was because i didn't behave like his little sex slave. much as he tried to program me to obey without question, and even when i did those things, it was NOT a definition of who i was. i could not have satisfied his needs because i was not able to think or conceive of his sexual or sadistic fantasies. i was so little. it just was not in me. I WAS A CHILD! I AM A HUMAN BEING! HE CANNOT OWN ME!!! much as i did not have choices then, i cannot be defined by the choices that were made for me. i am reading and re-reading this as i write it because i know i have to get this into my head - i know if i can understand this - really believe this - really know this is true - if i can do that, then i can beat him. i can quit being his victim and become my own person - a survivor. i can define for myself who i really am. i like that. i never imagined that i would be allowed that option. free to be who God intended and clean and whole and accepted as such – washed of the filth and horror.
here is the picture in my head that is helping me to win back this perspective:
if i were driving down the road and someone jumped in and hijacked my car and forced me to drive them to the bank, this would not make me a chauffer - even if i participated in the act. if that person took me inside and forced me to hold up the bank, it would not make me a bank robber. not the bankers, nor the customers, nor even the courts would hold me liable as my life was at stake and i was no longer in control. being a child forced into the things i was does not make me liable to the labels for them either. although i was drugged, i do not label myself a user of drugs. neither should i allow myself to accept the other labels forced upon me. they are not who i am. and i did not chose them for myself. and i do not assume those labels with my actions now, either. if i choose, as an adult, to allow myself to enjoy my husband, this does not prove or reinforce any of the things either - just as if the scenario above was true about the robbery - if i go into that same bank withdrawing my own funds from my account there, even with a man at my side, i am still not a bank robber - just because the two acts have things remotely in common, does not make them the same. i need to get this into my head.
i declare this day my independence from the world of why's and of labels and of shame. i finally see his why's for the sick excuses they really were. and my why's for the painful responses that they are. and choose this day to take back this ground - my identity - as my own. i realize that i am in the midst of a war to establish this, but i choose to wage it. i choose to allow myself to be worth the fight. i choose to believe these new realizations - that i CAN be a real person and that I AM NOT what i was labeled so long ago.
even though this is the middle of the worst month of the year for me, my new life starts TODAY!!! I WILL NOT PUT UP WITH MY FATHER'S GARBAGE ANY LONGER!!!
i am Angie a real live person. and i will allow myself to be loved. and to give love. and to feel it. from my husband. from my children. from my confidant's. and eventually, from others later as i choose to let them in.
i hope this helps in the long term as much as it's helped me to put it into words.
looking at the world through newly human eyes,
Ang
ok - so until now, my healing journey has been drowning in the why's.... why was i ever born. why did my daddy never protect me. why was he instead the one i needed protection from. why did he do those awful things. why did his friends not only approve but participate. why did my mom never protect me. why did she never take the time to see the pain i was in. why did things get progressively worse on such a huge scale. why did everyone hate me. why didn't he kill me. why didn't i kill me. why does life have to hurt so bad. why can't i get free. why do i continue to live under his orders. why can't i shake this. and why do people bother to care about me if i'm such scum... why, why, why, why, why... too many why's...
this week, in the midst of all of the flashbacks, i had an awful glimpse into how he saw me. how sick my father really was. how he was so stuck in his own sexual addictions and perversions and need for dominating control that i was not a person in his eyes. for just a moment, i saw the situation from his point of view. he was trying to be all powerful. and proving that power by degrading and controlling me. i was not his daughter. i was not even a child to him. i was his animal – a dog. his scapegoat. his proof of his power. nothing more. his motivations were not because of hatred or even revenge on me - simply domination, degradation and control. his anger was not because of my misbehavior. and no amount of love or obedience or apologies could ever have satisfied him. what he wanted was total and complete control of my life - even down to my bodily functions. what he wanted was to raise and own his own single minded robotic slave. what he wanted was for me to play out his fantasies and cease to exist for anything else. it had nothing at all to do with me. only his own self-centered, sadistic addictions. and really - even if i had figured out how to be his perfect slave - i don't know that even then he would have been satisfied - it probably would only have made his thirst for power and pain larger. realizing this...it was devastating. i don't know if i've ever felt that low - that awful - that... that... degraded... humiliated... even when i was living it. because although i lived it then, i didn't fully understand the implications of it. seeing it for what it really was... there just aren't words for the emotions swirling through me.... HE WAS MY FATHER!!! MY OWN DADDY!!! truly. it started when i was maybe 4?! dear God!!!
while coming out of the shock of it, i had a second glimpse. this time into my own heart. and i've realized some things i never considered before. as i've pondered them, and allowed them to sink in, i was thinking that maybe they might cement better if i shared them. so here goes:
after all this hit, when i got my breath back, all i wanted to do was hide in the closet in my head. no human contact. no kind words. no positive reminders. no hugs or sympathy. i wanted no niceness at all. it almost hurt more to hear expressions of love then it did to sit with the pain. and now i understand why.
all this time, i've never let anyone in because i have been afraid that if anyone REALLY knew the real me that they would truly be repulsed and run away in sickness and hatred or if they stayed it would only be to cause pain because that was all i deserved. because truly underneath, i believed that. i see that i've kind of held in my mind two identities - the one i show the world of this kind person who cares and obeys and always tries to do the right thing, and the one i feel inside of who my daddy made me. and i've believed that the real me is who he said i was. and that after all he did, and all he made me do, that it was cemented in stone and that's that. that no matter how much i was good on the outside, it would never overcome the filth on the inside. that i would never cease to be what he made me - what he called me... a rotten, filthy, fat, ugly, stupid, worthless b****.
i am beginning to realize now that it's not true. that i am not what he said. that all that he said and did and made me do and say and believe... all THAT was the lie. his lie. i was not his slave, not his prostitute, not his property. i was not, nor am i now, an animal... a dog. i am a human being. i was a child. i had no choices in what my life was like then. nothing was within my power to change. and try as i might, there was no way i could have defeated him in the ways that i've been trying. BUT! i DID defeat him. part of the reason he was always so mad was because i didn't behave like his little sex slave. much as he tried to program me to obey without question, and even when i did those things, it was NOT a definition of who i was. i could not have satisfied his needs because i was not able to think or conceive of his sexual or sadistic fantasies. i was so little. it just was not in me. I WAS A CHILD! I AM A HUMAN BEING! HE CANNOT OWN ME!!! much as i did not have choices then, i cannot be defined by the choices that were made for me. i am reading and re-reading this as i write it because i know i have to get this into my head - i know if i can understand this - really believe this - really know this is true - if i can do that, then i can beat him. i can quit being his victim and become my own person - a survivor. i can define for myself who i really am. i like that. i never imagined that i would be allowed that option. free to be who God intended and clean and whole and accepted as such – washed of the filth and horror.
here is the picture in my head that is helping me to win back this perspective:
if i were driving down the road and someone jumped in and hijacked my car and forced me to drive them to the bank, this would not make me a chauffer - even if i participated in the act. if that person took me inside and forced me to hold up the bank, it would not make me a bank robber. not the bankers, nor the customers, nor even the courts would hold me liable as my life was at stake and i was no longer in control. being a child forced into the things i was does not make me liable to the labels for them either. although i was drugged, i do not label myself a user of drugs. neither should i allow myself to accept the other labels forced upon me. they are not who i am. and i did not chose them for myself. and i do not assume those labels with my actions now, either. if i choose, as an adult, to allow myself to enjoy my husband, this does not prove or reinforce any of the things either - just as if the scenario above was true about the robbery - if i go into that same bank withdrawing my own funds from my account there, even with a man at my side, i am still not a bank robber - just because the two acts have things remotely in common, does not make them the same. i need to get this into my head.
i declare this day my independence from the world of why's and of labels and of shame. i finally see his why's for the sick excuses they really were. and my why's for the painful responses that they are. and choose this day to take back this ground - my identity - as my own. i realize that i am in the midst of a war to establish this, but i choose to wage it. i choose to allow myself to be worth the fight. i choose to believe these new realizations - that i CAN be a real person and that I AM NOT what i was labeled so long ago.
even though this is the middle of the worst month of the year for me, my new life starts TODAY!!! I WILL NOT PUT UP WITH MY FATHER'S GARBAGE ANY LONGER!!!
i am Angie a real live person. and i will allow myself to be loved. and to give love. and to feel it. from my husband. from my children. from my confidant's. and eventually, from others later as i choose to let them in.
i hope this helps in the long term as much as it's helped me to put it into words.
looking at the world through newly human eyes,
Ang
Thursday, September 3, 2009
i hate this month
alright, for the record, this is the worst month of the year for me. this is the time when things were worst - this is the time of so many painful anniversaries - and i am struggling hard again.
so. for the record, i'm renaming this month. i'm no longer calling it S*****ber, it is now "Nine". It's a socially acceptable alternative. People call things by date numerically all the time. so this is now the month of nine. and that's given me the strength to get thru the first three days. yeah. twenty seven to go.
prayers appreciated. and patience if i don't write a lot. or if i whine more. or whatever it takes to get thru. especially as the eighteenth draws nearer. the whole month is bad, but that one is the worst. anniversary both of the last rape and of my father's suicide.
just really feeling the loss right now. and going through some things i just don't know how to put into words.
sorry. :-(
so. for the record, i'm renaming this month. i'm no longer calling it S*****ber, it is now "Nine". It's a socially acceptable alternative. People call things by date numerically all the time. so this is now the month of nine. and that's given me the strength to get thru the first three days. yeah. twenty seven to go.
prayers appreciated. and patience if i don't write a lot. or if i whine more. or whatever it takes to get thru. especially as the eighteenth draws nearer. the whole month is bad, but that one is the worst. anniversary both of the last rape and of my father's suicide.
just really feeling the loss right now. and going through some things i just don't know how to put into words.
sorry. :-(
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