Laying Demons To Rest

I'm in the inenviable position of finally coming to terms with the things that make me tick. I have great respect for womyn (and men) who successfully fight their internal battles early in their adulthoods, giving themselves the permission to live the balance of their lives on their own terms.

I tried, as a much younger adult, to work through the traumas of my childhood. I failed, at that time, quite miserably, and gave up healing as a lost cause. So I crashed through life, bull-in-a china-shop style, never feeling "okay", never feeling "real", allowing myself to do stupid things, dangerous, thoughtless and sometimes awful things, and justifying my bad behaviour, my carelessness, my lack of responsibility by blaming everything on the abuse.

Not to diminish the effects of the abuse. It was horrific, and I can now look back at my child self and say, with absolute truthfulness, that I could not survive that level of violence, terror, pain and cruelty now. I was a much tougher kid than the adult I grew to become. That I escaped my childhood at all amazes me, to have escaped with my intellect intact, and to have accomplished any meaningful and healthy goals is a small miracle.

Our house had no interior doors. There was no privacy, no place to hide. My father was a functioning alchoholic who was given to flying into fits of rage with little or no warning. He was an angry, deeply unhappy man who blamed everyone but himself for the life he led. Nobody in "his" house was safe from him. My mother, my siblings and I were at his mercy. Except that there was no mercy.

My mother grew up being battered, emotionally, physically and verbally, by her mother. Her father was a happy drunk, seemingly oblivious to the torture endured by my mother and her sisters. In reality, he chose to abdicate any responsibility for the safety and well-being of his children, and my mother, in turn, chose to hide in a bottle and let my father brutalize his children. We were violated in every way that one human being can be violated by another, often in full view of other family members. My father seemed to enjoy finding new ways to cause pain, ours was a world of hurt.

The difference between my mother and her father is that my mother was not a happy drunk. She slept a lot, but when she was awake, she was almost as vicious as my father. She hated my younger brother with a passion. There was something about him that caused her to lose any control she ever had of her temper. I spent years trying to defend my brother from her, and from my father, with various degrees of success. Sometimes he escaped, most times he didn't. I deflected their violence when I could, but more often than not, we were both left bruised and bleeding, clinging to one another, bound by our shared misery.

My brother hasn't spoken to me in many, many years. I'm a Lesbian, and regardless of the number of times we spent long nights hiding outside together, regardless of the number of times I intercepted blows that were meant for him, regardless of the number of times I held him while he cried, I no longer exist to him because I love womyn, and to him that is unforgiveable. I stood by him during his self-destructive years of drug and alchohol abuse. I bailed him out of jail, lied for him, cried for him and almost died for him, and his last words to me were "I hate you." Too bad I still love him as much as I did when he was five, too bad I would still give my life to save his, too bad I can't turn my back on someone who no longer exists.

I developed into an angry, fearful, defensive, reckless and scary adult. I don't drink, I don't do illegal drugs, I'm not a sexual predator and I don't hit people, but other than that, I am a lot like my father. I'm passive-aggressive, I blame others for my failures and shortcomings, my temper can be violent and I often hurt the people to whom I am closest. I use words, or silence, or emotional blackmail instead of my fists, but abuse is abuse, and I'm as guilty as he was of throwing my weight around.

The biggest difference between me and my father is that I don't want to live this way. I know there is help, I understand my thoughts and my behaviours are not acceptable, and I'm choosing to do something about it. He self-medicated and fed his hatred. I'm following the advice of a medical professional and trying to extinguish the hatred.

Wish me luck.