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