by Band Back Together | Oct 5, 2010 | Abuse, Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Alcohol Addiction, Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Incest, Psychological Manipulation |
I lived a childhood full of secrets. I could not tell anyone outside of my family about what was really going on in my life.
My step-father was an alcoholic.
My step-father physically abused my mom.
He abused his step-children.
He didn’t abuse my younger sister, who was his biological child, although her seeing what he did to the rest of us was powerful abuse in itself.
He sexually abused me.
He went into drunken rages.
He humiliated us by showing up at our school drunk, demanding we leave with him.
He thought of new ways to inflict pain, thrilled when they “worked”.
We lived on eggshells. We lived in fear. Fear of him. Fear of tomorrow. Fear of five minutes from now.
But I could not speak. It wasn’t done.
So I kept the secrets.
I kept them for a very long time.
I kept them until I was married.
Then I told some of them.
Eventually, I sought counseling and told all of them.
ALL. OF. THEM.
I learned something valuable.
It isn’t a cliché.
The truth really DOES set you free.
It frees your soul from the weight you have been carrying.
It frees you to work through the secrets and move beyond them.
If you have secrets you have kept because someone told you that you can’t tell –
You can tell.
If you are keeping a secret to protect someone else-
Who is protecting you? Tell someone the secret.
If you have kept secrets because of shame or guilt –
Tell someone, set yourself free.
Make sure you tell a very trusted person.
Tell a close friend.
Tell family.
Tell your spouse.
Tell your religious leader.
If they are too painful or shameful or scary to tell someone you know –
Tell a therapist.
(I found a wonderful therapist. It cost money*, but there is no price too high for freedom and healing.)
It is time to heal yourself instead of protecting someone else.
You deserve it.
You need to release that burden you have carried for far too long.
It is frightening to think of telling a secret you have kept for so long.
I know it scared the hell out of me.
My entire body shook with tremors when I began bringing the secrets to the light.
But I have to tell you – I am so grateful I found the courage to tell.
When a secret is out in the open, you can examine it.
You can see it from a different point of view.
My secrets were from the viewpoint of a child’s understanding.
A child does not have the capability to understand a lot of things we adults understand.
Seeing them out in the daylight, as an adult, I was able to examine them.
I could see who held the responsibility for the situation.
I could see it wasn’t me.
I could see a future without that weight on my heart.
I read a quote once that I have stored in my heart.
I keep it in mind so I’ll NEVER keep a secret that is detrimental to myself again.
The quote is:
We are only as sick as our deepest secret.
A secret loses it’s power when you speak it in the light.
If you are keeping a secret, I encourage you to find a safe person, take a deep breath and shine a big, bright light on that ugly old secret.
It will set you free.
*Many communities have mental health centers where the fees for counseling/therapy are on a sliding scale, based on your income and expenses. Our local mental health center is where I found help. It is where I found the wonderful counselor who helped me work through the past and find my future.
by Band Back Together | Oct 1, 2010 | Addiction, Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Alcohol Addiction, Anger, Blended Families, Child Abuse, Child Grooming, Child Sexual Abuse, Childhood Fears, Fear, Incest, Rape/Sexual Assault, Shame, Therapy |
I was the first girl in my family. Six older brothers, one younger sister from my mother’s second marriage.
The man who became my stepfather was an alcoholic. He was abusive. He would beat everyone except my sister. After all “she was his” but we weren’t angry about her being spared. We were thankful. She was safe.
He would think of ways to inflict more pain during our beatings. He would gloat about his “latest idea”. He was so excited when he created a board for our beatings that had circles and lightning bolts cut out of it. Thrilled when he saw that his plan worked. The cut-outs left circular and lightning bolt blisters on us where he had hit us with it. Our butts, our legs, our back. Wherever his newest invention connected with our flesh.
We couldn’t control our stepfather. We couldn’t control his drinking. We couldn’t control his beatings. And by God, you had better cry when he beat you. One of my brothers tried to control the only thing he could. He decided not to give him the satisfaction of seeing the pain he was causing. When he didn’t cry, he was beaten harder. Then harder still. Then harder, until the rest of us were screaming that he was going to kill my brother. He finally gave up in disgust and went to the bar. My brother was home from school for a long time after that beating.
There were days that he felt “fatherly.” He would take me, at three or four years old, to the bar with him to show off his “little girl.” There I would sit, hours on end, surrounded all the other drunks who weren’t home with their families. Even at that age, I knew this wasn’t the right place for me. I didn’t like the way the men looked at me. Asked me to sit on their laps.
I was scared.
When I was seven, my stepfather upped the ante and found a way to scar my soul. He began sexually abusing me. He didn’t start out with other things to gain my trust, or tell me how special I was, or try to make me believe this was because he loved me, like so many other abusers do. No, he did what he wanted with no preamble. He took what he wanted violently. HE was angry with ME afterward. HE was disgusted by ME afterward. He had found a much more efficient way to destroy me than a beating.
This abuse went on for years. I started walking to a little country church every Sunday. It began as a way to get out of the house. It became my only source of hope.
He tortured my brothers and I. He waved guns in his drunken stupors. He humiliated us by bursting into our grade school classrooms drunk and demanding we leave with him. (This was in the 70′s. The school let him take us when he could barely stand. I would hope that wouldn’t happen to children these days.) He would be gone for days or weeks at a time. We would learn not to relax when he was gone, as soon as we did he would return. It was as if he knew we were suddenly feeling safer in our home and he couldn’t have that.
When I was in sixth grade, my mother divorced him. I felt guilty for the internal relief I had over him leaving our lives. After all, the Bible says to honor your mother and father. I struggled with that for such a long time. Now I know that I couldn’t be expected to honoring a man who was so unhonorable. No loving God would ever expect that.
I haven’t seen him in the 30 something years since the divorce. Thank God I haven’t seen him again.
I followed the Family Rules for a very long time. I didn’t tell anyone outside the family. I took on the shame. I took the responsibility. I took the burden. I took the pain.
But eventually I grew up. I married. I told my husband some of what happened after we had been married a little over a year. I regret that, I should have told him sooner. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready. Thankfully, he is a wonderful, gentle soul and understood why I didn’t tell him sooner. And he didn’t run from my pain. He didn’t run from my past. He didn’t see me as the damaged goods. He was supportive. He was awesome. We have been married 30 years now.
We had children. A boy and a girl. As my daughter grew, the childhood I tried to forget started pushing itself forward in my mind. First a whisper, then a speaking voice, and eventually screaming YOU CANNOT IGNORE ME! I was a mess. So emotional, so raw, so frightened to face it – to speak the truth.
Eventually, I had to seek counseling. I could not get through a day without the memories forcing themselves front and center, in my dreams at night, in my day with flashbacks. Horrible, painful, frightening memories.
I was blessed. I found a wonderful counselor on my first try. She guided me. She gave me a place to speak. She encouraged me when I felt overwhelmed (most of the first year). She HEARD me. She didn’t judge me. She showed me that the shame and disgust didn’t belong to me. They belonged to HIM. It took a while for me to believe her. That pain, shame and disgust had been mine for so long.
Eventually, the shame and pain was transformed into anger. No, that isn’t quite right…it turned into ANGER! Anger that frightened me with it’s intensity. But finally I was feeling the anger at what he had done to the little girl I once was. Once I found the anger it was a very good thing that I didn’t run into him (he lives in another state). I would have ripped his manhood from his body and shoved it down the throat that used to tell me it was my fault.
I went to therapy for a year and a half. I won’t sugar coat it, it was a very tough year and a half. There was a lot of hard emotional work to be done. But oh, what a gift that therapy was for me.
I KNOW it wasn’t my fault. I KNOW I didn’t deserve what he did. I KNOW it wasn’t the clothes I wore, the way I acted, the choices I made. It was HIM. He is a sick perverted person.
Therapy made me a stronger person. My hard work transformed a victim into a survivor. It helped me become a better mother, a better wife, a better human being. It helped my soul to be set free from my past.
My younger sister? The one that was “really his”? The one he spared the abuse? She grew up to feel horribly guilty for what her birth father did to us. (We are all still thankful she didn’t suffer along with us.) She couldn’t escape the pain of her guilt. She began abusing drugs as a teen. She is forty three now. She has spent the last 27 years in a deep pit of drugs and alcohol trying to escape the past. She lost custody of her son when he was five, due to her addictions. My husband and I adopted him. We couldn’t stand to let him go to strangers and lose everyone he had ever known. We couldn’t stand to lose him in our lives either. We continue to help him battle the demons his past have created. Spared her? I don’t think so.
I am no longer angry. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t want to ever be anywhere near my stepfather. But I don’t want to harm him anymore either. Growth. Now, if I think of him, I feel pity for the twisted, dark, hurtful person he is. But I don’t feel sorry for him either. He made his choices. If what he did haunts him when he least expects it, that is his consequence. Somewhere deep inside of him he knows what he did, who he is.
I don’t want to give him one more minute of my life. A minute I spend hating him, is one more minute he owns. He took enough. He took too much. He can’t have any more.
by Band Back Together | Sep 23, 2010 | Abuse, Addiction, Alcohol Addiction, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Helping Someone In An Abusive Relationship, Psychological Manipulation |
Dear Girlfriend #3,
I wish I could give you this warning in person, but I know that you would confront your new boyfriend about it. And if he found out that I warned you, I wouldn’t be here at all…
That being said, there are some things you need to know.
Your new boyfriend is abusive. He will not show you that now. I didn’t see it until about three months into our relationship. I am sure he has told you about his ex-wife and I. How we are “crazy” and “evil.” I’m sure he has told you how badly we have fucked up his life and broke his heart.
Please take this opportunity to look him up online, in every capacity you can conceive.
He has had two restraining orders filed on him. He is registered as a batterer at four different domestic violence shelters in this state – those are just the ones I am aware of.
I had to move a state away to hide from him.
He is charming and he is handsome. He will make promises that he will never keep. His family enables his abusive behavior and will never turn on him if you say something. They have, and will continue to, sit idly by while he hurts you.
Stay away from him when he is drunk as that is when he is the worst. He will humiliate you, degrade you, and do whatever he feels is appropriate while he is inebriated.
I’m sorry I can’t tell you this directly. I wish there was more I could do without risking my own personal safety.
Watch for the red flags. The weird text messages, the unusual possessiveness and questions about your friends and whereabouts. Question his previous relationships and what happened. Try and talk to his exes.
See what you find out.
We’re on the same team, you know. Womankind and all of that. It took me years to get out and it will take me years to heal. You don’t deserve that.
Nobody does.
Sincerely,
Girlfriend #2
by Band Back Together | Jul 7, 2010 | Addiction, Addiction Recovery, Adult Children of Addicts, Alcohol Addiction |
I am an adult child of two alcoholics, and although there are nifty acronyms used to refer to us, I prefer my real name: Becky. The Internet knows me as Aunt Becky and I blog over at a seemingly incongruently named site: “Mommy Wants Vodka.” Perhaps you have heard of me, mixed into articles about Diane Schuler, the lady who killed her kids, bashing me for being a Cocktail Mom.
My blog was named as a tongue-in-cheek joke, which is easily lost in the negativity swirling about the tragedy. Perhaps on paper (or computer screen) this is how I sound: like a lousy drunk who is unfortunately a mother. When, you know, I can sober up enough to actually, you know, parent my children. I hate to shatter expectations to those looking for a quick target to let their anger at alcoholics out on, but I am not a drunk. Humor–tasteless to you, perhaps–is the way that I cope.
In reading up on the other issues facing my cohorts, my fellow children of alcoholics–who also, presumably, have names–I think that in spite of the flack that I get, humor is the far healthier way to handle it. I’ve somehow, by the grace of God, perhaps, been able to avoid many of the nastier lasting effects of my childhood. I am not shy, I do not suffer from low self esteem, and I don’t obsessively hoard china cat figurines.
I do have anxiety and guilt, and I frequently blame myself for things that never had anything to do with me. I cannot trust even my husband with certain things, not because he wouldn’t be unfailingly kind, but because it is ingrained in me to not trust other people.
For all of the controversy surrounding me on The Internet, on the sites that bash me, nothing–NOTHING–can compare to what swirls within me. Every day, every single day that I wake up, I wonder if today will be the day that it hits. We adult children of alcoholics are four times more likely than the general population to develop issues with substance abuse. FOUR TIMES.
For someone like me, who has not one, but two alcoholic parents, this number must be infinitesimally higher. So I wait. Somewhat impatiently, I wait for the day when I will feel the need to become staggeringly drunk and fall down the stairs. Or take to my bed, weeping at what has become of me.
It’s exhausting, this waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But I don’t think that drinking is Of The Devil, no matter how much I hate the smell of scotch and the scent memories that live on, well beyond their lifespan. While I do not recall the last time I had a drink, I have had one and I will continue to have them now and again. The liquor cabinet is well-stocked at my house, and always has been. I’ve not felt the urge to drink myself to obliteration in at least five years and I don’t longingly wait for a cocktail at the end of a long day. Frankly, for as uncool as I will no doubt paint myself now, forever banned from the tattoo-biker moms, I’d be horrified to drink at a playdate.
So I sit and I wait, and while I do this, I build a life for myself: I’m a mother, a writer, a wife and a friend. A daughter. A sister. A niece and a cousin.
My name is Becky, and I am not an alcoholic.
by Band Back Together | Jul 7, 2010 | Addiction Recovery, Adult Children of Addicts, Alcohol Addiction, Codpendence |
I was so tragically glib about how evolved I was; how I’d managed to escape my past unscathed. I called myself the Energizer Bunny, joked that I was made of Teflon, and marveled that someone could grow up as I did and become a mostly functional adult child of two alcoholics.
My home life as a child was far from simple. I pretended my family was like those I saw on television because in the television, the mothers loved their daughters every SINGLE day. Those children had meals cooked for them, had parents they could talk to, parents who took them to swimming lessons, parents who cared about them, parents who loved them no matter what.
They had what I wanted: parents who behaved like parents.
I had the illusion of a family, two parents, a much older brother, some cats and dogs, and then there was me. Caregiver. Cleaner-upper. Parent to myself. In reality, I was alone and I knew it.
I learned what so many of us children of alcoholics do, trust no one but yourself. It became a way of life. Carefully, I constructed a facade that even I began to believe. A life that I so desperately wanted, I could attain if I lied enough about it.
Eventually, I grew up. Waiting for the day when I itched to have a drink, and then another, and then another, I was surprised when it never came. I had a child out of wedlock, a happy accident, I changed my life around to accommodate that of a single mother, then I got married. I had another child. Then another.
I knew that I bore some of the scars of my past–who doesn’t?–but it twenty years for me to realize that I’d grown up to do the precise thing that 8-year old Aunt Becky always swore she never would do: I put myself in the same position that I would have done anything to get out of.
I married an addict.
We always joked about it, The Daver and I, his addiction to his work–Workahol, we called it, back when we still joked around about it–but for the past five years I’ve watched as it went from working to live to living to work.
It was all that he ever wanted to do, work, that is, and that’s where he got his joy, his rush, his feelings of accomplishment, his ego, and we were just periphery. Background noise. Particularly loud and unbelievably adorable background noise, but background noise nonetheless.
As he worked more, he needed more and more to feel that rush, that thrill, and his hours grew until he barely saw us. When we’d dare interrupt him for something like, oh, maybe the HOUSE being on fire, we’d get a terse, snappy reply, and stung, we’d walk away hurt.
I consoled myself that he was working so hard to support us, and when I’d bring it up, he’d swear that he was doing it all for us, but it wasn’t quite the truth. What we needed was a husband, a father, a friend, and someone who didn’t place something else above us every second of the day.
I’d never considered it a real addiction, not like gambling or drug addiction, because it was one of those things that we did, you know, NEED to do.
But there it was, from Adult Children of Alcoholics:
We either became alcoholics ourselves, married them, or both. Failing that, we found other compulsive personalities, such as a workaholic, to fulfill our sick need for abandonment.
When I read that, I dry-heaved, and then I bawled my eyes out. It’s a bitter pill to swallow to realize that your past is never as far away as you thought it was.
I finally brought it up to The Daver, and this time, rather than trying to pass it off as something else; my problem, money issues, whatever, he listened. He listened and he realized that it was a problem.
I explained that I had lived my entire life with addicts, always walking around on eggshells, and that things in our house had to change. I simply couldn’t–and wouldn’t–put my children through what I had been through.
We both started individual therapy this weekend. He’s looking for a balance, and I’m, well, I’m looking to put the ghosts of my past to bed. For the first time in many, many months, I feel hopeful about the state of my union.
Perhaps this is where the sidewalk ends and a road begins
by Band Back Together | Feb 9, 2008 | Addiction, Alcohol Addiction, Anger, Cirrhosis, Coping With Losing A Friend, Grief, Loss, Sadness |
One of my oldest friends died last night.
She died and I am angry.
I want to kick the dog. I want to scream at the baby. I want to pull out my hair and punch holes in the walls. I want to ram my car into something, anything. I want to choke the birds who are singing and tell the Universe to fuck off because how dare it be a sunny and beautiful day today. How dare the world keep spinning now that two little boys are to grow up without a mother. I have this untapped chasm of rage that I didn’t know I could possibly feel.
I’ve never felt so angry in my entire life.
My oldest friend died last night.
She was 26.
