by Band Back Together | Nov 17, 2015 | Abortion, Abortion Recovery, Hospice, Rape/Sexual Assault, Trauma |
I saw the lights on the ceiling. I felt the tear. The nurse held my hand with saintly love as I sobbed. A part of me died in that moment, a ripple through the eons.
I was 21 and a newly graduated nurse when I went through my abortion and had landed a prestigious hospital job. My mum was accidentally pregnant at the time at 40 with my brother who I later helped to deliver with the midwife (after I had undergone my abortion)
I freaked out. I couldn’t move back home in a small town with a pregnant mother. My boyfriend said he wasn’t ready for a child and we couldn’t afford it (I later discovered he was wealthy and had not been honest with me). He was living far away at the time going to university.
As he slept in my room one night at the nursing quarters against the rules of no men, we were discussing what to do. I got caught with him in my room and I was kicked out by the nun. Pregnant, I went to house hunt by day after my night shift work. The nun who found us gave me one week to find a place after I begged her. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t tell a soul.
My boyfriend booked a hotel for the week as I was homeless and I went through with the abortion. I didn’t want to go through with it but I was so scared, alone and overwhelmed. I always said I would have a child if I accidentally became pregnant, but I just didn’t realize what it was actually like to be in that position.
The first doctor I approached rejected to care for me due to his religious beliefs so I had to hunt for a doctor who would.
I went to get counselling afterwards and was paired with another religious man who rejected me so I had to keep searching for help. I gave up.
I went back to work and it was a very hard year. I saved a few lives and I decided to work in hospice to become more familiar with death. I nurtured people through their losses.
Many hard, lonely years accompanied me with multiple instances of sexual assault and trauma I started to have difficulties coping. I always comforted myself with the idea that losing a child to help others may be excusable as a choice but when I left my career, in those last days I sat down by my friends nieces side who was losing her new baby that had just been born. It was dying in her arms and her tears dropped on that babies face. I watched that baby die as I said goodbye to my career. She didn’t know of my past and now I hear she wants to be a nurse. The chain continues.
My whole family said I was always the mothering, nurturing type and I would have the most kids. I am childless and not married. Tortured by bad memories. Too lost for words.
You don’t forget but you learn to live with it. Its a silent shame for me but I see now with my history of abuse I needed to feel some control over my body. I don’t feel it was the answer now, and in retrospect I would like to say I had all this courage to stand up to this invisible community who bad mouthed people but I was a young vulnerable frightened girl. While I was being accused of being a baby murderer I was saving their lives in hospital.
I think now about it more in philosophical ways. The things we should terminate in our minds and and how a new beginning can start for us to live a happier life. My God believes in redemption and love.
by Band Back Together | Nov 16, 2015 | Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Pediatric Cancer, Perfectionism, Self Injury |
I learned about narcissistic parentification today. I’d been aware of narcissism and parentification as separate things prior to this, thanks to my son’s father, but I didn’t realize these two things often went together.
Yesterday my 6-year-old son attempted to stab himself in the eye with a pencil. This occurred after being asked not to throw paper.
He decided he needed to punish himself.
Thankfully, my husband caught the pencil and it never touched our son’s eye. Still, it was terrifying. This is not exactly new, although this is the most extreme self-punishment to date. Often when my son thinks he is in trouble for something, he will self-discipline by hitting himself or knocking his head against something. I’ve asked him why he does this, and he tells me that it’s so that he remembers what not to do.
We have an extreme perfectionist on our hands. This, too, I’ve known for a while. He has always been the kid who won’t try anything if he’s unsure he has it mastered. I had to get down on my hands and knees and physically SHOW HIM how to crawl when he was a baby! He wants to do everything perfectly the first time, and he will hide the fact he knows how to do something until he feels he can demonstrate the skill perfectly.
We’ve told him again and again how much we love him and don’t want him to hurt himself. We’ve told him it’s okay to make mistakes, that it’s expected and even necessary in order to learn and master new things. We’ve emphasized the fact that he isn’t in TROUBLE when things like this happen – that we are just reminding him to help him learn for next time. Yet, it doesn’t seem to register. He hurts himself anyway.
He is a 6-year-old self-injurer.
Lord knows he has plenty of reasons to behave this way. He is fighting cancer, has changed schools and residences in the last year, and is about to become a big brother.
And then, well, his dad is narcissistic…
Since my son’s self-injury has escalated even though the rest of our life has calmed down, I looked up the effects of narcissism on children today. And that led me to narcissistic parentification.
I learned that children of narcissistic parents are more prone to pediatric anxiety and depression. They can be self-destructive, have an irrational fear of failure, and either have difficulties in school or strive to be perfect.
Everything I read reminded me of my son.
by Band Back Together | Nov 13, 2015 | A Letter I Can't Send, Blended Families, Coping With Divorce, Divorce, Emotional Abuse, Estrangement, Family, Loss, Psychological Manipulation |
Dad-
I don’t think that I can ever forgive you. I want to so badly, but I don’t think that I can. We’ve come through so much together. You didn’t have to be there for me; you didn’t have to be my father. You didn’t have to love me. You chose to. You chose me. You chose me for a long time. I hate that you let things change. I hate that you were so blind to what was happening around you. I hate the words that you said to me.
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
I want my dad back. I want the man who loved me despite my illnesses, despite what my birth certificate said, despite all the shit I put you through.
I hate you for choosing a woman over your daughter time and time again. I hate you for it, but after many years, I forgave you.
I forgave you for it, but I stopped putting up with it. I will never forgive you for the actions that you took once I put my foot down. I hate you for saying those horrible things about me. I hate you for saying them about my mother. I hate you for not realizing that both of us were, and are, suffering from mental illnesses. I hate that you look away. I hate you for placing all of the blame on me. You say that your wife has done nothing wrong? You clearly are also suffering from some sort of mental illness.
You are the most passive man I’ve ever known. That used to be something that I loved about you. But it seemed so easy for you to tell me that you were done with me. That you couldn’t have a relationship with me. That you were once and for all choosing your wife over you daughter.
Do you feel anything at all?
Did this choice hurt you like it hurt me?
I’ve listed a million things that I hate about you, but I could just as easily list a million that I love. Those things will never change. I will also love the man that you were, just as you will love the girl that I was. But we will never have the relationship we once had. No matter what happens, I can never forget the words. They are scars on my soul. I think about them everyday.
Your words were horrible. They were not words that would ever come from the man I knew. I’ve done some digging, some looking around and I’ve learned a lot about you. I’m amazed at the things you’ve said and done. I guess you were just sheltering me. Now I know the real you. I don’t like that person. You said that if I didn’t change, you couldn’t have a relationship with me. I’m saying the same to you. Just know that even if you do, I will never trust you again. I can’t.
Of all the people in my life, I never expected to lose you. It is a loss that I will never recover from.
by Band Back Together | Nov 12, 2015 | Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Family |
My mother might be one of the strongest people I have ever encountered. That woman has been through more in her 50 years than most people have in a lifetime. She isn’t perfect, by any means, but she is mine and I am furiously protective of her.
My mother was raped by her stepfather when she was 11 years old. She never told a soul (except for me) so no charges were ever brought against him. My grandmother did end up leaving him because he threw her through a glass door.
It’s amazing how much you can hate someone you’ve never met.
I hate him for what he did to her. I hate him for the pain it still causes her. I hate him with every fiber of my being.
I recently came across his name while doing some family tree research and low and behold, there was his family’s information – even his address.
Now all I can think about are ways hurt him. Not physically of course, but emotionally. I want to spray paint “child rapist” all over his house. I want to contact his entire family and tell them just what kind of man he is. I want to ruin his life. I just hate the thought of him living a normal life when my mother has had to live with the pain and scars he caused.
What do I do? No pain I inflict on him will make what my mother went through any less traumatic, or help her – or I – forget.
by Band Back Together | Nov 11, 2015 | Brain Injury, Health |
I used to be really good at writing.
And thinking.
I could think out an essay or a plot line or a response in 5 points all at once. It felt like my brain fired on 6 different cylinders and I could see from multiple perspectives at once. I could be writing an introduction knowing how it was going to end and where the body would fit into this. I never lost my train of thought. If I learned a fact once, I could recall it instantly and know where I heard it.
What I’m saying is, I used to be (or at least, feel) smart. I was an A student, the A student who is awkwardly quiet in class because she knows the answers and has answered every question and it feels weird when you answer every question, don’t people get annoyed?
It would be comforting if I was getting dumber because I was getting older. That would at least be normal. To have spent the last five years knowing I’m not as smart as I could be and wondering is it because I’m on this brain medication or is it because I’m not a 20 year old college student anymore just makes everything worse.
If nothing else, it succeeds at it’s intended purpose, but I’ve failed out of school, been accused of anorexia, can’t focus for shit, and can’t multi-task, so who even am I anymore?
I miss being smart.
