by Band Back Together | Feb 10, 2015 | Abuse, Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Loss, Love, Lung Cancer, Parent Loss, Therapy |
This is a letter I wrote to my deceased abusive father. My father died in 2000 of lung cancer. I am now, 46, but as you will see, I always called him “Daddy.” I never matured to the name of “dad” or “father”. My therapist told me to write him a letter and it did help. I just thought I might share it.
Dear Daddy,
You shocked me, Daddy. You had me confused. Since I only visited you once a year, during the summer, and you were my real one and only daddy I would ever have; and boy did I love you, why did you do this?
That first night it happened, I was asleep and the pain awakened me. I’m guessing you felt my body tense up, so you quit and got off my bed. Then, two nights later, you started again. Once again I awoke with a start. This time I faked sleep and rolled over away from you on the bed. This is when the confusion really set in. Because I didn’t know the rules of a father, I wasn’t sure if you weren’t doing a duty all fathers perform. I knew about child molestation already, but I was not sure that applied to fathers, I was so young.
After you left my bed, and you went to bed that night, I woke up one of my step-sisters; whom you raised full-time. I pulled her into the bathroom with me and told her what happened. She just looked at me and shook her head knowingly. You had apparently been doing this to both of my step-sisters for a long time.
That is when it hit me! Daddy, you molested me! There was no so called “duty.” I may only have been a young girl, but I knew right then and there that what you did was wrong; and it would never never ever happen again.
I quit going to sleep before you did. Then, the situation changed to different offenses. I remember walking by the kitchen table where you were sitting, and I was wearing a tube top. You told me to lift it up so that you could see how my breasts were maturing. I adamantly and strongly denied your request. You just seemed to laugh like it was a joke. I was wary of you every day, for the rest of your life. However, amazingly even at that young age, I felt empowered that I did not take the abuse any more. But I still loved you, you were my Daddy.
During the next 20 years I had set my boundaries and kept them. For those 20 years, I waited for an apology. Over the years, I only told a few very, very close, trusting friends.
Then you got sick, Daddy. I couldn’t leave your side and stayed 24/7 at the ICU. My friends, who knew the secret, questioned my loyalty. They kept telling me that I owed you nothing. But you see, Daddy, I still loved you, all along. During those last few days, I thought just maybe the apology would come. It never did, even when you knew you were going to die.
I’ll never forget when the day came that you asked me to unplug the machines and let you go. We both expressed our love for one another. I did as you asked, and then crawled up in bed with you and held you until you died.
I know you did wrong, and I know you knew it too. But I always did and will love you. And I know you loved me.
If I hadn’t empowered myself so soon after the incident, I don’t believe we would have had the life-long love for each other. I believe the fact that you did not say you were sorry upset me more than the abuse. I didn’t realize your death would affect me so much, since you were mean and abusive.
But I love you and miss you Daddy.
by Band Back Together | Jan 29, 2015 | Abuse, Child Neglect, Fear, Guilt, Help With Relationships, Infidelity, Love, Romantic Relationships, Trust |
Dear Ex,
You did not see it, but my confidence in you stopped growing on a daily basis. I told you that I knew what I was hiding from everyday. I didn’t tell you that I was hiding from you. I didn’t tell you how scared I was of you. I always knew that we weren’t meant for each other, and you wanted to argue.
It is so great to see that you have moved on. So great to know that I have been released. I finally have what I wanted with us. I no longer have to question what I’ve been told. I no longer have to doubt the motives of my kind and nice friends. I no longer have to inspect everyone’s motives.
Is this just another cry for misplaced sympathy? Or is it an attempt to hurt me? The questions are irrelevant. You made sure of that when you abused my love, my trust, my friendship circles, my mind. They are, by far, not the worst forms of abuse that I was put through, but the persistence of them made them the most common.
I told you that you didn’t have to lie. I would stay by your side no matter what. I told you that I would forever hold a place in my heart for you. You tore that place out of my grasp when you decided to work with your friend to abuse me together. You looked at my kindness as a weakness, not for the strength that it is – the strength to give to those that are worth it, the strength to help anyone to heal from anything. My friends will forever be in my life, until death do us part.
I can and have always been able to achieve my dreams. That was the most terrifying part of your abuse, that you had no reservations in ripping all of them away from me, so that you could hurt me. I watched you spiral downward, into an abyss of vindictiveness.
Do you even remember why you started the abuse? Do you remember why you decided to let your dreams fall from your grip, and get fired from the job that you wanted since you were a child? Your abusive attitude lost you that job. It got you fired because you were more interested in self piety than in achieving something great, and being recognized for that.
To this day, I still blame your experiences as a child. I am guessing that no one paid attention when you did the right thing, but the moment you were crying, everyone was looking your way. Being starved for attention does that to a person. It’s not your fault, it is how you were raised. That is what you were taught was right.
I can only hope that you break the cycle of abuse, handed down to you by your mother, before our baby lives a life of toxicity, venom, and a lack of morals. I hope that you choose to change what you believe, and instead, aspire for attention for greatness.
You watch t.v. How many people watch when someone goes for gold in the Olympics? How many people are watching when the finals of X-Factor are shown? Do you want that, or do you want the hollow attention of someone that will forget you in a year’s time? I will forget you soon.
I forgot how it feels to love you a long time ago. I can’t even remember when I last had the desire to help you succeed. It could have been after you destroyed your own dream, the one I tried so hard to build your confidence to try. I hope you haven’t forgotten how to try. If you have, it’s no big deal because I don’t sympathize with you anymore. That is another thing you lost when you went on your vindictive, plague-fueled attack of my life.
You know you should have told me that you were “smiling and happy, bouncing off the walls,” that you had an amazing time, and he really made you feel special, the night you cheated on me. Instead you wanted to play the victim again. You wanted sympathy for the guilt of your actions.
Why did you feel guilty? It made no sense to me. I would have forgiven you, if you had been honest. I could not forgive you for playing the part of the victim when you broke my heart, like I was the one who did something wrong. Lying? Cheating? Your story never added up. The other guy’s story was consistent. You are the only one who can’t face what happened. You are the only one who claims to be the victim. You lost a lot of your friends because of your lies. You lost the last speck of my trust for you.
I felt my heart die when I finally accepted that I was in denial, and there was no reason to believe what you were telling me. I was ashamed that I let you control me again. I was ashamed to the point of not wanting to face life. But I got through it, and you didn’t hold me once. You didn’t sit by me, look into my eyes, take my hand, and say you were sorry, that everything was going to be alright. You withholding compassion, out of fear of the truth being exposed, was the worst part of your abuse. You knew you were lying from the start.
It will happen again and in the years to come. You will repeat the cycle of hiding the truth. You will repeat the pattern handed down to you by your mother. Your life will go back to Square One, and, like your mother, you will be unwanted by everyone.
Yours is the only dream I will not make come true. You fought it too hard.
My deepest condolences for the loss of your heart, empathy, compassion, a happy future, a life filled with people that will love you.
May they all rest in peace.
by Band Back Together | Jan 27, 2015 | Anger, Child Sexual Abuse, Fear |
How do you tell someone you love that you were molested by people he trusts with his life?
After 15 years, I finally told my mom I was molested. She believed me, and it felt so good. I felt relieved, but not completely satisfied. Not until I tell my big brother. He’s the one I’m afraid of telling. Why? Because he has a better relationship with them than with me.
I know he loves and cares for me, but I don’t know how far that love goes. He goes to them for everything, instead of me. I’m your sister. You should be able to be there for me and protect me, but somehow I feel that you won’t.
He won’t believe me. He will question me and ask why I didn’t say anything sooner, why I waited so long, why I tolerated their presence (kind of). I want to tell him because he thinks I’m such an asshole for not wanting them around. He thinks I’m being rude, but I can’t tell him.
It hurts to keep this from him, but it’ll hurt more if he doesn’t believe me. I’d rather be considered an asshole than tell him. I want to believe he’d be there for me, support me, protect me, and just tell me loves me.
Please, for once, be my big brother.
by Band Back Together | Jan 26, 2015 | Anger, Bullying, Compassion, Fear, Feelings, Sadness, Uncategorized |
I am the very last person to tell anyone when the right time for them to seek closure for any difficulty. I cannot speak for others when it comes to this process of healing one’s own self, because the truth is that no one else can say what someone else needs.
We think it would be as easy as saying a few magic words or thinking a few magic thoughts, and like magic, we would be okay again. Yet, every one of us here knows better than that. We all know that sometimes, there are things which hinder our healing.
Healing really is just another word for “closure.”
When we each think about the things that hurt us, for the most part, the majority of us simply want the pain to end. We know we cannot get rid of the memory. We spend so much time taking care of others, we forget that we have needs, too. When we forget that we have our own stuff to deal with, we take away our own good energy in exchange of someone else’s unbalanced energy, leaving us feeling depleted.
The one thing that we are seeking is not the lesson that is being taught, but rather, closure and an end to the pain. Yet it is through that very pain that we are able to heal and get closure. This is how Spirit works. The ache is like anything else that hurts us – to alert us that something is not right, that somehow we have been violated on some emotional level.
We have all been hurt from time to time. Other people can be jerks. The reason they behave in this manner is because it protects them from their own hurt. This behavior is not going to help with their healing.
The problem with bullies is they were not taught how to use empathy. Empathy, loosely defined, is our ability to walk a mile in another’s shoes. It is our ability to feel for someone else without our feeling sorry for them. Too often, we are told that we are feeling sorry for ourselves. Bullies feel it is disempowering to be able to relate to someone else. They have control over us if we are scared of them. I understand that fear because it became my own medicine, brought out of me in the form of the Medicine Dance, which for me is Hula.
I really don’t want anyone to think that by talking about Hula, I am trying to promote it as a way for everyone to heal. What I am saying is that there are means and measures by which you can gain your own closure.
Closure is a funny thing, really, because it demands the opposite of the thing that we seek, which is comfort from our pain. While it may well seem as though this is counter-productive, if we are wise to the reality that we don’t have to let others’ actions hurt our souls, we will be able to use the hurt they give to us as our own medicine. We will have the strength to move past the things that we have encountered in our lives. Closure requires our being able to accept that there are people on this planet who are not the nicest people.
Closure brings us wholeness. It calls on us to rely on ourselves rather than only on the shoulders of those closest to us. It takes some work, perhaps a whole lot of tears, maybe even a few bouts with rage, but it is all worth it. It is all worth it because true closure means we no longer have to live through that pain. Our pain becomes a lesson for the soul to evolve, and for us to become shiny examples of our own unique brilliance.
Once we can see our pain as our medicine, we become the most powerful being in our own awareness. When we understand that whatever we went through is not our fault, we become empowered.
…and being empowered rocks!
ALOHA!
by Band Back Together | Jan 23, 2015 | Date/Acquaintance Rape, Fear, Healing From A Rape or Sexual Asault, How To Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Rape/Sexual Assault, Therapy, Unemployment |
I was raped five months ago by a coworker.
I didn’t tell anyone for a month, because I was afraid nobody would believe me.
I thought it was my fault.
I lost my job. I have since found a new one.
I tried some counseling, but it didn’t really help. I’m taking things day by day, but it’s really hard.
I avoid the largest area of the town I live in because I know he lives there.
I find it a huge struggle to try to keep the flashbacks and guilt away. It’s hard. I’m trying, but I feel myself slipping away a lot.
by Band Back Together | Jan 22, 2015 | Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Anger, Anxiety, Child Sexual Abuse, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self Loathing |
We all have ghost from the past that haunt us. Things we’ve seen that we can’t shake off, and won’t let us sleep at night. There are choices we wish we never made. We are some times broken. Desperately gasping for air. We feel dead inside and our hearts go cold, but our faces wear a mask of happiness to avoid uncomfortable conversations.
Sometimes we walk around feeling hollow, pretending to be people we aren’t and to a certain point we don’t even know who we are. Our identities taken from us, or lost in an abyss. Lost souls looking to find home and peace within themselves. I know how I got to this point; it’s complex and dark, and hard to stomach. I was a little girl. There were things happening to me that I didn’t understand, or wished I didn’t understand. My space was invaded and I would suppress it. Pretending that it wasn’t me it was happening to, because things like that didn’t happen to innocent people. But it was happening and it was real.
For years I was told I was stupid, fat, and lazy. I was doomed from the day I was born. Raised by a sister who was constantly taken advantage of by different men. We lived in a house hold where secrets simmered under a blanket of lies. Each of us stained by men. Our innocence tainted. It kills us slowly. Trying not to think of it. Wishing it didn’t happen feeling dirty and used. Our minds feel empty. Like there’s nothing left because all of our thoughts were taken from us at a young age. I remember how scared I was. How I knew what was coming every time I came home from school. It became our routine.
There are times where I’ll be doing something and I think about everything that’s happened to me, the abuse, the different guys I’ve let inside me, how I was told I was nothing. How I let myself believe that I’m not worth anything, and I get pissed off. I hate myself for letting myself submit to so much mistreatment. Sometimes I can feel my sanity leaving, my mind withering away. I can’t think as clearly, I can’t speak properly, and I become more withdrawn from the world. I become lost in my own mind. I trap myself in dark thoughts and I won’t let myself escape.
I’ve literally become two different people. Problem is I don’t know which one is me. Who the fuck am I? I look into the mirror and I swear I can’t seem to process who’s looking back at me. It’s almost like I don’t know my own reflection. I continue to let myself used as some dishrag because I believe that’s what I’m worth. Like as much as I might desire love, I’m not worthy of it. I’m honestly pretty sure I’m cursed, because I’ve been fucked over by almost every guy in my life. Let’s save that for later though.
Sometimes I can see the person I was supposed to be, or the person I could be. But her image is kinda fades. I wish it was as easy as ripping all the bullshit from your heart. Kinda like when you rip a piece of duct tape from your skin like dusting of rubble and dust from a gold totem. I wish it would be that easy to take the unbearable pain away. I want the scars on my skin to fade away. Because I swear there are nights where I feel like all hope is lost. I’ve been fighting for six years to recover …and I’m just confused now. Maybe I’m confused because despite all this bullshit I’m rambling about, all the hate, anger,and hopelessness. I’m still fierce, fighting, and strong. I still have hope and my heart burns with a passion to live life to it’s fullest.
I just need it to get better.
I want to live.
