I literally just wrote a novella on here and it got deleted, grrrrr! I guess that might be the universe telling me not to expose so much so soon. I'll start out light this time. I'm a 37 year old single straight female, no kids, one cat, and a shit pile of issues I'm processing. I am loving this podcast so much. I know I don't have to tell you guys how great it is to finally connect and make some headway with the baggage that's cluttering my brain. The short version of my struggles is this...
emotional neglect by my parents, physical neglect by my mom, codependency, PTSD, late night binge eating, and intimacy issues, oh and i recently remembered i was raped when i was 19 (read about it in a journal I just found)
I feel like if you took the Wheel of Fortune wheel and replaced the numbers with mental health issues, you could spin it and I could personally relate to every single one. I feel overwhelmed trying to sort through all the trauma and issues in my past. I'm in a phase of seeking and this podcast is helping so much to that end. It's also triggering memories that have been buried for so long and I'm feeling like I can't process them fast enough. I keep digging up more and more shit! God, we (my sister and I) went through a lot. I'm working with a therapist once a week and she's great. Here's to doing the work so we can all be happier and healthier versions of ourselves!
loving this podcast and website!
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FrecklesMcGee
- Posts: 22
- Joined: April 10th, 2016, 6:50 pm
- Gender: female
- Issues: emotional and physical neglect, codependency, PTSD, anxiety, late night binging
- preferred pronoun: she
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FrecklesMcGee
- Posts: 22
- Joined: April 10th, 2016, 6:50 pm
- Gender: female
- Issues: emotional and physical neglect, codependency, PTSD, anxiety, late night binging
- preferred pronoun: she
Re: loving this podcast and website!
Okay, here's the gist of what I had written before it was lost last night...
I keep picturing myself standing on top of a hill, searching for shit nuggets buried in the sand. The nuggets are my repressed memories and they are every where. I find one and put it aside for processing, but before I can process it, I find three more. Every time I think, okay that’s it for now, I look around and see others. The pile of shit nuggets is growing and I can’t keep up. And now the ones I found in the beginning are covered back up and I fear I’ve already forgotten them again. I trust that my brain has kept me from seeing them until I was ready. This means it’s time to get dirty in this place. And yes, I do feel strong enough to go there and process them now. I am finally in a good place.
Some basics about me…
My mom went into heart failure after delivering my younger sister. She was unable to care for us so we bounced around friends’ and family’s homes when my sister was a newborn and I was 1 year old. My dad worked full time so he needed the help. I realize now that he was also drinking. We bounced around between babysitters for many years. My dad’s drinking increased and his alcoholic behavior drove a wedge into their marriage. At the same time, my mom had slipped into a major depression due to her poor health. My folks divorced when I was 9 and my dad moved out. That was when things really took a turn. My mom’s depression grew out of control. She stayed in bed all the time and started neglecting responsibilities, including her daughters. I can remember pouring meal worms out of the cereal box because she stopped buying food for such a long period of time. I can remember losing electricity, phone, trash collection services because she just stopped paying the bills. I can remember the cats food in the bowl had maggots crawling around because she stopped paying attention. I remember our clothes would sit in the washer for weeks and get moldy before she would decide to dry them. We must have had such a bad smell at school. It breaks my heart to write these things down. Eventually, my sister and I realized we needed to start caring for the house and each other and for our mom. We started looking at her bank account statements are realized she was financially capable of paying the bills, but she just wasn’t doing it. She started using her heart failure as a manipulation, saying it made her “forgetful” or “too tired to pay the bills”. When I was 14, my dad, having seen the neglect and instability, moved us into his house with him, my step mom and step sister. It was a contentious time, that resulted in a very painful custody battle in which my sister and I had to tell our mom and the judge that we preferred not to live with her. When I was 15 I began working and my mom would take my paychecks to pay her bills. She said we owed her because she had raised us. It was a terrible time and I had such rage for her. I was also unknowingly perfecting my codependency. My mom continued to spiral and still, to this day, is completely dependent on others to care for her. She has detached from reality about the past and sees herself as having provided for us, physically and emotionally, neither of which is true. Last year we moved her into assisted living after an overdose caused some brain damage (in the interest of space, I’ll just leave that story for another time). The move was the most liberating thing that has ever happened to me in my life. It was the first time I ever felt free of her daily care and more importantly, free of my anger that came with her dependency.
I viewed my dad as the hero in this whole scenario, and in a lot of ways he was. But because I had created that mental framework in which to house him and our new home, and because my mom continued to be such a needy and dependent life suck in my world, I never allowed myself to see the damage that was happening in my dad’s home. I didn’t think there was any damage to see. Until now. I am reflecting back now and seeing that I was forgiving so much stuff because at least my basic physical needs were met. If you look at Maslow’s hierarchy, I finally had stability in the bottom tier of needs. I couldn’t celebrate it enough.
At my dad’s, my step sister became the primary role model. She was older, “cooler”, and “wiser”. She encouraged a partying lifestyle with sexual promiscuity. I was 12 the first time she gave me alcohol and 13 when I started regularly smoking pot with her. I became reckless though my dad didn’t know it. I think he preferred not to know, honestly. He built us a bar in the basement and the message was “if you’re going to party, we’d rather you do it here”. So we did. And my parents rarely came down there. It was probably around that time that my dad’s addiction shifted from alcohol to gaming. He and my step mom would game all the time (and still do), and completely tune out the rest of the world. This whole time my step sister had been simultaneously cool and also very difficult to be around at times. She had spontaneous, unprovoked rage and it would be directed at whoever was in her way. It was hurtful and confusing. And I’m a very calm, level headed person, so it really was startling and damaging. Eventually, she crossed the line for the last time and we stopped talking about 15 years ago. She was diagnosed bipolar a couple years ago but I actually think she probably has borderline personality disorder.
Last week I found an old journal in which I had written about a sexual assault. I was 19 and drunk and high at a party. I was asleep on the floor with other people who were also spending the night. This guy (I have no idea who he was) picked me up and carried me to the bedroom. I wrote that I had flickers of memories about this whole event. He proceeded to attempt to have sex for four hours and I fought him off that whole time. Actually, that’s not true. At first I think I engaged with him, but then decided it was too forceful and scary and then began fighting him off. He penetrated vaginally and anally with “just the tip”. That part is important because that clarifier is the reason I didn’t consider this rape until last week. In fact, I had forgotten all about it until I read about it. When it happened, I was repulsed and scared, but when I told my step sister, she shamed me for putting myself in that position. I guess I didn’t want to think about it anymore so I just buried it. It terrifies me to think that I could forget something so intrusive. What the hell else have I forgotten??
These are some of the biggest things that shaped my childhood. I’m going to leave out my adult traumas for now since this is just an introduction and I already feel like I’m probably losing your attention. I am currently in therapy weekly because I was having difficulty getting into healthy relationships. Surprise, surprise. When we started digging around into my childhood, it initially all focused on my mom but now that we’re looking more at the rest of the stuff, I can see so much other crap that created a dynamic where I shut down my emotions and needs. I am the ultimate people pleaser and it has cost me a lot over the years. But, I’m here to work on my issues and get healthier. Thanks for reading this and if any of it resonated with you, please say hello. I love connecting with people.
I keep picturing myself standing on top of a hill, searching for shit nuggets buried in the sand. The nuggets are my repressed memories and they are every where. I find one and put it aside for processing, but before I can process it, I find three more. Every time I think, okay that’s it for now, I look around and see others. The pile of shit nuggets is growing and I can’t keep up. And now the ones I found in the beginning are covered back up and I fear I’ve already forgotten them again. I trust that my brain has kept me from seeing them until I was ready. This means it’s time to get dirty in this place. And yes, I do feel strong enough to go there and process them now. I am finally in a good place.
Some basics about me…
My mom went into heart failure after delivering my younger sister. She was unable to care for us so we bounced around friends’ and family’s homes when my sister was a newborn and I was 1 year old. My dad worked full time so he needed the help. I realize now that he was also drinking. We bounced around between babysitters for many years. My dad’s drinking increased and his alcoholic behavior drove a wedge into their marriage. At the same time, my mom had slipped into a major depression due to her poor health. My folks divorced when I was 9 and my dad moved out. That was when things really took a turn. My mom’s depression grew out of control. She stayed in bed all the time and started neglecting responsibilities, including her daughters. I can remember pouring meal worms out of the cereal box because she stopped buying food for such a long period of time. I can remember losing electricity, phone, trash collection services because she just stopped paying the bills. I can remember the cats food in the bowl had maggots crawling around because she stopped paying attention. I remember our clothes would sit in the washer for weeks and get moldy before she would decide to dry them. We must have had such a bad smell at school. It breaks my heart to write these things down. Eventually, my sister and I realized we needed to start caring for the house and each other and for our mom. We started looking at her bank account statements are realized she was financially capable of paying the bills, but she just wasn’t doing it. She started using her heart failure as a manipulation, saying it made her “forgetful” or “too tired to pay the bills”. When I was 14, my dad, having seen the neglect and instability, moved us into his house with him, my step mom and step sister. It was a contentious time, that resulted in a very painful custody battle in which my sister and I had to tell our mom and the judge that we preferred not to live with her. When I was 15 I began working and my mom would take my paychecks to pay her bills. She said we owed her because she had raised us. It was a terrible time and I had such rage for her. I was also unknowingly perfecting my codependency. My mom continued to spiral and still, to this day, is completely dependent on others to care for her. She has detached from reality about the past and sees herself as having provided for us, physically and emotionally, neither of which is true. Last year we moved her into assisted living after an overdose caused some brain damage (in the interest of space, I’ll just leave that story for another time). The move was the most liberating thing that has ever happened to me in my life. It was the first time I ever felt free of her daily care and more importantly, free of my anger that came with her dependency.
I viewed my dad as the hero in this whole scenario, and in a lot of ways he was. But because I had created that mental framework in which to house him and our new home, and because my mom continued to be such a needy and dependent life suck in my world, I never allowed myself to see the damage that was happening in my dad’s home. I didn’t think there was any damage to see. Until now. I am reflecting back now and seeing that I was forgiving so much stuff because at least my basic physical needs were met. If you look at Maslow’s hierarchy, I finally had stability in the bottom tier of needs. I couldn’t celebrate it enough.
At my dad’s, my step sister became the primary role model. She was older, “cooler”, and “wiser”. She encouraged a partying lifestyle with sexual promiscuity. I was 12 the first time she gave me alcohol and 13 when I started regularly smoking pot with her. I became reckless though my dad didn’t know it. I think he preferred not to know, honestly. He built us a bar in the basement and the message was “if you’re going to party, we’d rather you do it here”. So we did. And my parents rarely came down there. It was probably around that time that my dad’s addiction shifted from alcohol to gaming. He and my step mom would game all the time (and still do), and completely tune out the rest of the world. This whole time my step sister had been simultaneously cool and also very difficult to be around at times. She had spontaneous, unprovoked rage and it would be directed at whoever was in her way. It was hurtful and confusing. And I’m a very calm, level headed person, so it really was startling and damaging. Eventually, she crossed the line for the last time and we stopped talking about 15 years ago. She was diagnosed bipolar a couple years ago but I actually think she probably has borderline personality disorder.
Last week I found an old journal in which I had written about a sexual assault. I was 19 and drunk and high at a party. I was asleep on the floor with other people who were also spending the night. This guy (I have no idea who he was) picked me up and carried me to the bedroom. I wrote that I had flickers of memories about this whole event. He proceeded to attempt to have sex for four hours and I fought him off that whole time. Actually, that’s not true. At first I think I engaged with him, but then decided it was too forceful and scary and then began fighting him off. He penetrated vaginally and anally with “just the tip”. That part is important because that clarifier is the reason I didn’t consider this rape until last week. In fact, I had forgotten all about it until I read about it. When it happened, I was repulsed and scared, but when I told my step sister, she shamed me for putting myself in that position. I guess I didn’t want to think about it anymore so I just buried it. It terrifies me to think that I could forget something so intrusive. What the hell else have I forgotten??
These are some of the biggest things that shaped my childhood. I’m going to leave out my adult traumas for now since this is just an introduction and I already feel like I’m probably losing your attention. I am currently in therapy weekly because I was having difficulty getting into healthy relationships. Surprise, surprise. When we started digging around into my childhood, it initially all focused on my mom but now that we’re looking more at the rest of the stuff, I can see so much other crap that created a dynamic where I shut down my emotions and needs. I am the ultimate people pleaser and it has cost me a lot over the years. But, I’m here to work on my issues and get healthier. Thanks for reading this and if any of it resonated with you, please say hello. I love connecting with people.