November 12, 2012

Abandonment - I Them, Them me



Noun


1.
This is me, in one word, A-B-A-N-D-O-N-M-E-N-T.

abandonment - the act of giving something up      
rejection - the act of rejecting something
2.withdrawing support or help despite allegiance or responsibility
defection, desertion
withdrawal - the act of withdrawing
3.the voluntary surrender without attempting to reclaim it or give it away
disposition, disposal - the act or means of getting rid of something
throwing away, discard - getting rid something that is regarded as useless or undesirable
discard - (cards) the act of throwing out a useless card or of failing to follow suit



The holes in my heart and mind.

I have never felt anything else.  Do I take responsibility for some of the people who have left my life, yes.  I can say though that the reason those certain individuals are no longer in my life was not because I abandoned them.

I was born in 1970, and I don't remember much of the first decade of my life.  I don't remember whether we sat around the dinner table all together to eat each night, or being bathed, or tucked in, or reminded to brush my teeth.  I don't remember Christmases, or having friends over to play, or being sick and my mother taking care of me.  I remember what life wasn't. 

There are six kids in my family; I the youngest and I don't remember being close to any of my siblings.  I know my second oldest sister seemed to always be holding me in photos and she was fond of me when I was 8 to 10 years old, but when she left home for university I was still little and I felt desertion. 

I had no friends growing up, as I was bullied everyday in elementary school. I was always scared and alone. I felt again, abandoned, and this time by God, since I never did anything to deserve to have no friends.  I'm not a person of faith, so I don't do well with the 'spirtual journey' aspect of healing.  It's not me.

My mother abandon me emotionally I think the moment she birthed me.  I was the last child, surely I wasn't planned, we were not a well-off family.  I don't remember my mother ever reading to me, or walking me to school, or ever standing up for me.  My mother was a narcissist. 

My father abandon me physically when my parents divorced when I was 12.  Though in the seventies, well I can't say what most father's were like, I can only speak about my own, but I use the line "back then" in terms that dad's were providers financially, you did what they told you to do or you'd get a spanking.  He wasn't hands-on, like a lot of fathers are today.  He wasn't mean to me, I remember we had food, shelter, running water most of the time, electricity.  He was a good person and I felt his role was what it was supposed to be in those days.


My siblings left home one by one, sooner than most, 17, 19, 15, 18, 16, and me, at 14.  As each one left, not that I remember, I felt left behind with mother.  The withdrawal from me by all of them started very early on, leaving me feeling, again, abandoned.

Every time I needed my mother she did nothing.  The bullies at school, she did nothing.  She didn't call the principal, she didn't go to the school, she didn't call the parents of these kids.  When she caught my brother molesting me, she told me to take a shower.  I have no idea if she talked to him because he tried to touch me again that same afternoon.  When her father was molesting me every time we went to my grandparents house, she did nothing.

When it was just me and her living together, while I was out being promiscuous, she was busy enjoying sex with all kinds of men, them dinning her, charming her as she used them for money, gifts and sex.  She didn't give a dam about me, how I was skipping school, doing drugs, drinking alcohol and being sexual.  She wasn't worried sick about her baby.  She never went out driving around looking for me and finding me and removing me kicking and screaming ever.  She provided no structure, no boundaries, no consequences.  She was rid of me at 14 when I ran away. 

Abandonment does not have to be the physical removal of a person from ones life because clearly my mother's actions were all of a 'discard' nature, like discarding a Kleenex.

I ran away because she made me move away with her to another city, with a new school for my senior year.  It wasn't even 24 hours that I was missing, I had stole money from her to get a bus ticket right back to my home town. I spent the night in the lobby of an apartment building trying to keep warm, since none of my so-called friends were able to convince their moms to let me stay with them, and when I was finally kicked out, I ran the streets to my sister's house a snuck inside.  My mother never cried for me or begged that I come back home.  She was glad to have me not cramping her wanna be free, single lifestyle.

I never made any lasting friendships in high school either.  Friends came and went, I was never a part of any group.  I was used for sex.  Guys would give me attention and we'd hangout, most times I didn't even have sex with them.  I never had many girlfriends.  When I did, they never lasted.  They always ended up not liking me, or just abandoning me.  Put it this way, there is no one from high school that I want to find on Facebook.  College was not much different.

I lived with my oldest sister when I left my mother at 14.  It worked for awhile and then we began to fight and I was breaking the rules, and it dissolved.  Then I lived with my third oldest sister in another town, same thing, worked for a bit then started to fight when a guy came in the picture.  I ended up moving in with him at 18.

Domestic violence entered my life at this time from 18 to 21 when I lived with him.  He was 20 and had a really good job.  He used his money as power and he was possessive and abusive to me.  His mother was in the same thing with his dad, so she knew and she was his robot.  So I guess he learned that from his dad.  I finally got out of that when the bottle of pills were in my hand.

I then lived with another sister for awhile until I met my husband at 22.  I moved out from her place on a fight as well, though. 

One Christmas, I think it was 1996, my husband, his two children and I were at a my side of the families gathering at my sister's house and my mother started freaking out that she was hungry.  I tried to calm her down and said make a snack.  She prepared celery with cheese whiz for herself.  Only herself.  My step-kids and there were other grand kids in the house and she didn't even offer them any.  She just stuck her nose up.  She was still so selfish.  She was still freaking out that the turkey was supposed to be ready.   She was saying don't say were going to eat at six if were not!  A few minutes later she's downstairs where the tables are set up for all of us to eat and she is still screaming and ranting that her blood sugar level is this and that!  She's not diabetic.  She starts to swear the F word.  This is all happening in front of the kids.  We stay for dinner and when we leave and get into the car my husband says to me we will never be part of this again.  And we weren't.  It just wasn't healthy.  My step-kids should not have been subjected to this woman. I didn't have a holiday with them again until Easter 2000, when my son was born.

When my son was eight months old, we went to my father's home for Easter.  Another sister and her husband had moved in with my father.  My mother always managed to be invited to these meals even when my parents were divorced for years and she was remarried, she would bring her husband with her.  My mother asked this question "How much does he weigh now"?  I said 20 lbs.  In a high pitched response, she says "Oh my God, I wouldn't be able to lift him!"  You have to know mother, oh how frail and fragile she tries so hard to portray herself.  I just rolled my eyes.  She could have sat down on the couch and held him on her lap!?  Not that she'd paid any attention to her grandson since that first few days when he was born.  She stopped by for 10 minutes to goo over him and hold a baby.  During this same visit I noticed a plastic, leftover type container under the coffee table filled with weed.  My sister's.  I didn't want to be a part of this.  I was a mother now, and I work with law enforcement.  This was our very last holiday with my side of the family.

Not long after this, my sister stopped by with her husband to visit.  I brought the pot thing up to her and asked her to give it up, to quit.  She said she had quit smoking, but oh no, with a smile on her face, no, no she couldn't give up that.  I tried to explain to her that it was me and my son or the weed.  That I wasn't going to put him at risk, or my job.  She'd been busted before.  You never know, she could be raided and were there at the house, my son get taken to the Children's Aid Society, even for 12 hours until I could explain...it happens.  I don't want to associate with known people doing illegal activity.  So from that day on I couldn't go to my father's house because she lived there with her choices.  My dad never did anything or said anything.  Again, I felt angry that she discarded my feelings, and was more committed to her habit than to me and her nephew--and abandoned, again, by her and my father.  The rest of my siblings including my sexual abuser and my mother, I am now 100% estranged from because I don't participate.  None of them have ever asked what happened, or why I am the way I am.

Then when my father died in 2011, I had to see them all at the hospital for those seven days (see that post) and not one of them asked, or even attempted to resolve any issues, or bring anything up.  I looked at it as an opportunity for someone, perhaps mother to ask one give a dam question or say something heartfelt to me, her daughter, but no, nothing.  She sat there reading her book, doing crosswords, eating her snacks saying nothing to me.  It was so awkward.  I ended up making small talk, minimal, as my anger was just boiling inside of me, and all she could say could do was brag about her trip to Florida as she showed me pics of my oldest sister's house, her granddaughter etc on the viewer of her camera.  As if I cared.  Hello, you haven't spoken to me in near 10 years and you're wasting my time not talking about anything important, I wanted to scream at her. Having to be in the same room with my brother was making me ill; fake hugging him, as our dad lay brain dead from a stroke.  I haven't heard from any of them since June 2011, when my dad died.  Abandoned again, no one gives a fuck, that hey, I'm your sister, I'm your daughter and when I die DO NOT COME, to like as if, pay your respects! Fuck Off!

I know I won't be a hypocrite and attend any other deaths in any way.  If you can't be here in the present with the living, why would you when they're dead.  There's no obligation because were related, to me that's unfortunate that I was cursed with that family tree.

Does it hurt me, yes.  When I see other people sharing happy times with their extended families, when people talk about their loving parents, I am envious, I fantasize briefly of such ideals.  Do I wish, often. 

My first counsellor made a comment to me once, "maybe it's you abandoning them".  Is it me?  I'm a very emotional person, no one would no that though because I am mostly this person in hiding.  My emotional filters and often my maturity, I've been told by my current therapist, are lacking.  I've never been the type of person that thinks of a good or fair excuse for some one's lack of commitment, loyalty or honesty towards me.  I've been told I'm paranoid.  I always think the worst of people.  I do because my childhood was destroyed and I can rely on no one--there's not one single person that I trust on this planet 100%.  Not even my husband.  I did trust him, but haven't for the last few years.

People's actions or lack of action speak volumes to me.  Human beings have instincts like no other.  Our guts are usually right.  When what you expect of a person doesn't happen, I think you should be able to question that.  Why?

Since I've been off work this go around, since May 2012, with my back pain, none of my peer co-workers have called, emailed or stopped by to visit.  When I email them, I get no response.  You know when you are being ignored and judged.  Again, I feel abandoned by my workplace.  I've spent a decade working with these people; you know even if it's not genuine you'd think someone would fake care out of etiquette purposes.  What have I done to deserve this treatment?

My own son is pulling away from me.  I know it is hard for him; a mother in pain.  I've changed so much.  A mother who no longer is working, a dropout from society.  He says I'm no fun.  I'm not.  I've abandon him.  I'm no better than she.

The single person that I thought would be with me 'til the end, the person...it was all just a fantasy.  Trust?  Did we ever have it?  Respect? I doubt.  It's always been a struggle emotionally with my husband.  I've hurt many times with his insensitive remarks.  I can't do it anymore.  Everyone abandons me...eventually, it's just a matter of time.


Tyla






November 2, 2012

What Sexual Abuse Really Is

A mind torture chamber. 
Years loss because of overwhelming shame.
Day after day of guilt ridden feelings.
Struggles of endless confusion.
Grieving a life that could've been.
Stolen true personalities.
Loss and never finding you.
Questioning, who are you?
Destroyed trust, loyalty.
Forever issues with relationships.
Tears of pain and worthlessness.
Encompassing depression.
Faking smiles and laughter.
Forcing normalcy.
Hurting physically with the burden.
Secrets owning us, dark and disgusting.
Afraid of crowds, being alone.
Paranoid tendenies.
Lack of filters.
Guarded boundaries.
Non-believers crushing the soul.
Abandoned by loved ones.
Always drowning in flashbacks.
Triggers sinking in without warning.
Unsettled memories covered in Bandaids.
Violation and interruption of childhood.
Never knowing what, who supposed to be.
Changes the path the first moment of trespass.
Craters of loneliness linger.
Definitions of love entangled with caution.
Supporters near, very distant.
Details unnecessary to give weight.
Broken dreams, fantasies became.
Years of therapy, or not.
Talk to heal.
Who will listen?
Lean on who, no one's there.
Haunted by every corner.
Crushed under years of shame.
Generalization to spare those unharmed.
Graphic discretion sparing self.
No more less true.
Head in the sand.
I never knew.
Doesn't make it less true.
Forgetting, impossible task.
Forgiveness, not in the path.
Tell that someone, may regret.
Worse off than before.
Damage is done.
Do overs, there are none.
Freedom, may never come.
Protection, unsurpassed, child thy own.
Neutral, never in.
Really, what IT is.
Is you.

Tyla

The Keyhole to My Mind's Closet

The Keyhole to My Mind's Closet
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