all over again

hello everyone.

i was just released from a partial hospitalization program. and diagnosed for the first time with ptsd from something that happened a really long time ago. i also am diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (which is what got me into the hopital: i was making suicidal threats and plans). i also show many symptoms/traits of avoidant personality disorder.

also i have never ever sat down and wrote about what happened to me all those years ago. i haven't even talked about it on this forum yet. actually, i have done everything within my power to deny and suppress the damage it has caused me since the day it ended. so there you go: a little info to help you understand where i am coming from right now. please be patient if this gets long or boring or confusing or whatever.

when i was eight years old, one of my mother's many husband's son (my step-brother now) came to live with me and my two younger siblings. he was fourteen at that time. he was a very masculine and mature teenager, who lifted weights in his room every day, went hunting with his dad often, and had a collection of various bowie knives and rifles and even a bow and arrow.

now at this point in time i was a very quiet and vulnerable kid. i had just been through a very ugly divorce between my mother and father (that lasted from when i was six years old until she married again when i was eight), in which i and my siblings were used as bait and bargaining tools between my parents. more than a few times things got very violent between them. and we would get the nasty end of the whole deal. in between all of this i suffered extreme emotional neglect from both of my parents.

when my step-brother first moved in, i was pretty excited. i had never thought of getting an older brother before, and considering that i had no adult figures around giving me the attention and care that i needed, i somehow felt that my new big strong handsome brother would come to sweep me off of my feet. yes, i had a very deep crush on him.

i wanted to be around him all the time. something that he sometimes seemed to enjoy, and at other times seemed to irritate him to the utmost degree. at those times i would feel devestated, desperately heartbroken. i so needed and wanted the attention. and no one else was giving it to me.

but soon i realized there was something different about him. he had a real bad mean streak. i watched him torture animals: cats. mice. snakes. and soon, about the time i turned nine years old, that mean streak was directed at me. putting his hands around my neck and squeezing until i would pass out became a fun game with him. locking me in a dark closet was also a fun game. once i couldn't come out until i had finished drinking a full bottle of nail polish remover. he would push be down the stairs into the basement and lock me in there. sometimes come in and get on top of me and bang my head into the floor. or get one of his knives and cut my leg were no one would see it. once he ripped my shirt off and beat my back with the bottom half of a broken baseball bat. there are more instances than i can list right now. and even though i would like to get them all off of my back at once, i don't think i can do that right now. so i need to move on...

eventually it became sexual too. when i was eleven and he was seventeen he started molesting me. it became a nightly ritual. if it didn't happen, i would stay wide awake in my room, masturbating furiously, all night. i was so confused. i just wanted to make the loneliness and the pain and emptyness go away. i didn't know what to do without the abuse.

during that time things got even more chaotic. he would hold me up against the wall with a knife to my neck. tell me mean nasty things about myself. call me nasty names. threaten me. tell me never to come near him again. that it was all my fault this was happening to me. that i was sick in the head. i guess i was.

the whole ordeal lasted for four years: partially because i so loved the attention. and partially because i didn't know there was anything wrong with what was happening. it really hurt sometimes. sometimes i was really scared. but other times i would just shut completely down emotionally. it felt normal to me. it felt comfortable and good. it just never occured to me to tell anyone. and even if it had, i wouldn't have been able to. there was no one to go to. i continued to be ignored and neglected by my mother even though i was doing very poorly in school, losing a lot of weight, began pulling my hair out, scratching and stabbing myself with safety-pins, refusing to socialize with anyone, and hyperventillating or vomiting when i had to be in public. obviously something was going on. but maybe everyone just figured i was just disturbed (my mom took me to see a counselor at my grandparents' church a few times, but even then everyone seemed to miss the clues).

when my mother finally divorced his father (because he was emotionally and physically abusing her as well), i was twelve years old and my step-brother was going to be eighteen.

the night before we moved out, the last time i saw him, i stayed in his room all night. it was the longest nightly ritual ever, and after all of it was over i felt a calm come over me. i realized that i felt loved. cared for. i decided that i loved him too. even if he had hurt me so many times before. i layed there in his bed until the sun came up and my mother found us there together the next morning. she didn't seem to think much of it. just told me to go to my room.

we moved that day into our new house. and that night, after many tears and much agony over the loss of my "best friend and brother and lover" the only person who had ever showed me attention in my life. i decided to kill myself. the idea had never crossed my mind before. but as soon as it came to me i knew that it was the right thing to do. after all: i deserved it. all of the pain was my fault. i let it happen. i wanted it. i deserved it. i was a sick disgusting peice of sh*t, barely worth enough to be called a human being, and i just didn't deserve to live.

the next morning i was taken to the emergency room for od-ing on asperin, ibuprofin, and sleeping pills. i had emptied every bottle i could find. i don't really remember what transpired after that. but everyone found out about what was going on.

but no one fu*king cared that's for sure. i talked to a social worker. started seeing a therapist. started on medications. for the nightmares and flashbacks and episodes of severe depression or paranoia and anxiety and all of that. but none of my family, not even my mother, ever talked to me about it, asked me what happened, asked me how it made me feel, told me it was wrong, that it wasn't my fault. there were even people in the family who were saying that it was my fault. that i just wanted attention. even worse: that it didn't really happen (which is what HE told everyone of course). no one sought to press charges or get justice for all that i had been through.

and so i stuffed it all inside. never talked about it. never thought about it. it was too painful. too hard to have to question myself everyday: "why did it happen? was it my fault? did i deserve it?". i just couldn't do it anymore. instead i went on to have as much sex as i could from ages thirteen and up. was in and out of hospitals. tried to kill myself a few more times. was in and out of therapy. on all kinds of different medications. was becoming increasingly more isolated and self-destructive. became addicted to burning myself. was a social outcast. my life was utter chaos.

and the cycles are still repeating. maybe all of this is how i came to develope borderline personality disorder and avoidant personality disorder. maybe all of this is the real reason for my suffering and i have just been denying it.

oh god it is so hard! it is so hard to think about. to try to answer all of the questions in my head. to live it all over again in my mind. to try to figure it all out. why am i still so messed up? why can't i just get over it already?

i am so confused and lost. and lonely.

does anyone understand how i feel?

erin

I do understand. My parents still ignore my sexual abuse after 24 years. PTSD and your other diagnosis are hard to deal with. You have to take it one day at a time otherwise it will be too ovherwhelming. Don't to sort it all out at once. I hope everything looks up to you and remember you are not alone.
Enola

I don't think people ever really get over it, but they do learn to get through it and function with strong coping skills.

You've survived a lot and, unfortunately, didn't have a great support system.

You needed attention and love and your step-brother gave you what you thought would make up for that missing part of your life. He abused that, though, and turned your need into a weapon. I'm so sorry he did that to you.

Seeking it out through promiscuous sex isn't uncommon and it seems you recognize a lot of what's going on.

Of course it's understandable for you to feel the way you do. For some reason you felt you needed to turn to him for love and affection. Do you know why at this point? I know you said it was emotional neglect, but have you talked to your parents about this and clarified why they felt the need to treat you like that?

It might not help and confrontation should really be a long ways off because you may need some really good supports and coping skills in place before you do that. And that's only if you need to and can't resolve the fact that it was NOT your fault on your own.

I'm so glad you were able to finally talk about what happened to you. I think that's such a huge first step and I'll be hoping you're well on your way to making great strides in your recovery. Best of luck.

stronger_daily wrote:Of course it's understandable for you to feel the way you do. For some reason you felt you needed to turn to him for love and affection. Do you know why at this point? I know you said it was emotional neglect, but have you talked to your parents about this and clarified why they felt the need to treat you like that?

other than the neglect and abondonment experienced by my parents, the only reason i can think of for wanting his attention would be just a mental deficiency or something in my head. maybe i was always just a little screwed up anyway. i really don't know.

i don't have a relationship with either of my parents. my mom may call me every once and a while to say hi and ask me how work is going. but nothing beyond that. i don't think confrontation is something that will ever be in my future. i don't think that it would be worth all the effort and pain on my part, when they don't even have enough of a relationship with me to care about what is going on in my life. i guess i do just need to learn the coping skills and learn to forgive. maybe not forget. but at least forgive.

i don't know...i guess things can only get better now. i am in therapy. so the healing processes are beginning. it is just so hard figuring things out. it is still really confusing.

thank you both for your kind responses.

::hugs::

erin