(This post was originally made friends only… I don’t see any reason to hide this)
So, while working on bugs my sister decided to send me a message through an old IM account that I leave logged in at the office.
we need to let this hate go, already
I started typing. I started typing a response…
While typing she added:
fine, when u need family, noone will be there to help..I tried and I’m tired of the lagging, pathetic, lame fighting..There is more to fight in Iraq than in family
Then I finished and sent:
We need to stop starting conversations with what you believe I need to do. You need to acknowledge that this isn’t hate this is indifference. You need to realize it’s going to take more than you telling me to ‘put behind me’ what you and my birth mother by name have done to me over the years, to make me care about what you want. I have a happy, healthy, and drama free life now. Every interaction with you and her has only lead to more personal drama, grief, stress, and sometimes debt. Until such time as you realize that… I really don’t have much care about what you think, “we” need.
As for ‘when I need a family’, the reason I walked away was because when “I needed a family” I got the above problems. I have made my own family. And I can depend on them. Thank you for your time. Please contemplate what I’ve written. Good bye.
Then I logged off.
My name IS Andrei.
I refused to be a victim and I refuse to be a victim now.
I’m a survivor of emotional abuse.
No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.
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Very well said. All of it.
Here’s to chosen family! *clink*
– donna
amen, sister.
Well said.
To Chosen Family. *clink*
Ditto!
*clink*
AMEN.
Hooray for you!
My family has been pushing for years for me just to b”put the past behind me” and “let bygones be bygones”. Sure, I’ll do that, as soon as:
They unite in protecting their children from the abusers in the family whom thy all know are abusers;
they go back and pay the psychiatrist bills they refused to pay for when I had a breakdown because of their abuse; and they ADMIT it happened and quit trying to get me to visit just so they can take an expensive group family photo, put it on the mantle and thus pretend nothing ever happened.
Until then, all pretenses at us being one big happy family are simply shams which depends on me being a compliant victim and complicit in any other abuse which is still going on (I’d be foolish to think they have suddenyl all become enlightened people who never hurt each other anymore.)
Like I said yesteray in my journal – you can’t help other people who are drowning when you are barely floating yourself. Take care of yourself first, not the people who threw you in the water.
Huzzah! I’m right there with you. My family refuses to acknowledge the pain they put me through. They’ve accepted the abusers as family members, while I was cast aside to whatever fate befell me.
I’ve since cast THEM aside, and they can all live together in their little miserable pretend world.
It is so sad that this story is so… common. I’ve never understood, then or now, how a family can cling to the asshole and throw out the one who dares to complain.
My cousins raped me from the time I was 13 til I was 16 and had had enough. I never encouraged it. I never wanted it. I often fought and went to great measures to bar my door at night. I KNOW their mother knew…she slept in the living room and my room was right there next to it.
I was raised to be a silent and complacent female. And I had it drummed in my head since I was a child that if something happens to you, no one will believe you.
When I did try to tell my mother the first time it happened, she proved that as a fact.
They protested and swore I was the whore that went to them. I was only 13. I was a virgin and didn’t even know what a man’s penis looked like or had any idea of the sex act at all.
She listened to them and I was beaten literally black and blue with a belt while they hid their grins and glee. And they still kept at me.
So no wonder it took me 3 years of utter misery to finally get the nerve up to tell my mother again.
The end result after a few months, was me out on the streets at 16 and they all had a happy little life together.
I wrote my entire story once..from the earliest memories til I was 17. It brought up a lot of pain and hurt, but it was very cathartic in the end.
I’m barely able to talk about what happned to me, but I have a secret journal where I am writing the whole thing. Maybe when I am done I will print it out and send it to every family member of mine.
I have 4 very long chapters. By the time I finished I had enough to publish a book with. And I actually thought about it. Publish it and make let the whole world know the kind of people they are.
well said, bro’
Kudos to you for standing up and speaking your mind.
They want you to put the past behind you, because their conscience can’t handle the guilt. They put the blame on you, because they can’t handle the blame themselves.It seems to me they are pressuring you to put the past behind you because, if they can succeed, it makes THEM feel better. This is a very common manipulative tool that abusers of all kinds use.
They’re extending an olive branch of “peace” to you, but it’s really a badly disguised thorn bush and you’ll be on the receiving end of the “pricks”.
Screw that.
Good for you. Let them lead by example. (Silence.) Yup, thought not.
Very cool. Good for you.