My story has taken a bit of a pause. The reason for this is that I am trying to recall my lost memories. I am trying to separate from what reality really was and what my parental figures forced me to believe it was. I don’t remember some years and in order to tell my story I have to work through those moments my mind blocked out in order to protect myself then.
I want to discuss for a moment what’s it like coming into adulthood and realizing that all of the life you had lived was not as wonderful as you were gaslit or manipulated into believing it was. I always knew something was off, especially if I got a chance to be around people my age other than my siblings. The other kids got to spend time inside, their parents didn’t have screaming/physical altercations almost every day of the week, they were fed regularly, and they weren’t taught to physically fight their siblings for food or love. The list could honestly go on and I paid attention to this as a child which is one of the reasons, I took my education into my own hands.
As a child, I was still in an almost stalk-home syndrome trance to do and say what my mother mainly told me to do. Up until I joined the military, I was too afraid to say something without her direct direction, if I did, I would receive a mental reprimand from her most of the time in such a way that I was just the worst failure on the planet.
When I left her side and I joined the military something happened, I would watch and listen the same as when I was a child, and many things didn’t add up. So, I tested some things I would tell a story from my home life that was a pretty common occurrence in my day-to-day life and watch what the people in my dorm would say or react regarding it. For instance, my mother would guilt-trip me into plucking every single leg hair with tweezers. She would have me pick at her feet, she would have me pick through her head, etc. For hours even though my eyes would get tired, or my back would hurt and even though I openly expressed I hated doing it and that I was uncomfortable. She would always tell me that I didn’t love her if I didn’t do that, or she would try to bargain with me by using my education as a tool. I would ask her to teach me something regarding reading and she would always say “Because you pestered it's not happening maybe if you left me alone it would happen” When telling that story to them they told me it was not normal at all.
After a while, I started to formulate an understanding that maybe things weren’t good at all they were actually very, very bad. This was extremely confusing, On one hand, I had my mother’s ideals and forced ideas leading me to believe that life was perfect or better than it could be she would always say “I could be a lot worse, I am actually a wonderful mom compared to other moms” and at the other hand I started observing things like why don’t I know things that everyone else knows? Why do other people talk about their family and not have screaming, and yelling come up as just a normal Tuesday? Why did these other people have food and water whenever they wanted it? The questions went on. As they went on, I began becoming more confused and a little angry because something wasn’t right.
It was like I was stuck in tar my whole life and I finally started to see that it wasn’t healthy or good. It took me three and a half years to finally separate her from me but not physically, or mentally. My stepfather physically hurt us but my mother she did more damage than he could have ever done. She was a master of manipulation. She is dangerous in the sense that she doesn’t know she is doing the things she is. I found out later that it almost was second nature for her to bend reality in a way where she never did any wrong, and where she was always the victim.
Because of her mastery manipulation, I am still struggling through my story and reclaiming my memories. I do think I also suffered a few concussions from my stepfather making my memory a bit foggy.
It is hard to realize the faults in the ones around you and the faults in yourself as well. I struggled with the concept that to free myself from their evil I had to understand it was as much a part of me as it is them. You can have the ability to do horrible things we all do the difference is whether you choose to use it or not. Thank you so much for reading this, reclaiming your story is a painful and long process. If you are a cycle breaker in your family, I want to say a good job! Keep going and in order to see the rainbow you have to walk through the rain.
Comments