Category: abuse

Cloak of Guilt

A journal entry from 1.3.2013

All day today I have been hearing that Mary J. Blige song “Just Fine”.  I made it through a tumultuous year.  If you had told me everything that happened in my life was a promise I would have laughed.  I believe I can be more than a survivor.  I can thrive.  I know how to hold on to my Joy.  (still holding 3.25.2013)

I am still in therapy and I plan on staying for the long haul this time.  I am truly falling in love with me.  I had told myself that I deserved bad things to happen to me as restitution to what I thought I had done to people I love.  My therapist had me look at and what I found was that I was quick to take the blame for everything that went wrong in my children’s’ lives, the people I was in relationship with or any other situation.  It was easier to be the scapegoat that way I did not have to address the issues.

Our society conditions women to wear guilt like a cloak of honor.  A case in point is my divorce and the custody battle.  My ex husband had one of the best and most expensive lawyers in Missouri and they had plotted their plan of action against me months before I ever spoke to a lawyer.  The Legal Services of Eastern Missouri  http://www.lsem.org/ could not help me  in the late 90’s, I hope the patriarchal stupidity has stopped
because they used his income to decide if I qualified for help.  Although,  it was documented that he was physically abusive.

Of course he won custody but I am still treated as if I abandoned my children.  Not once has anyone said anything negative about a man who would take his children from their mother when there was no history of anything negative.  As I look back I can understand his perseverance  to keep them away from my incestuous family.  He knew all about the Sexual abuse of me and my siblings and was determined to keep his children from that and I don’t blame him.  Looking back with 20/20, things happened the way that they were supposed to.

But I do blame myself and allow others to guilt trip me.  (working on changing my thoughts)

It showed up in my relationships.  Particularly the most recent involvement with a woman that triggered me to relive my trauma and neglect.   I clung to her with my life, and would not let go because doing so meant I had to stop blaming myself and do the hard work of healing.  I willing allowed her to tell me all of our problems were because “I had issues”.  She was abusive and I made excuses for her so I could live in denial, but that is another story..

I am grateful to know that I can be alone with myself and have peace.  That was something I had lost last year.

I am still free from the fear of being alone.  3.25.2013

Emotional Boundaries? Girl,I am doing my work!

It has been a while since my last post. I have been putting my mental and physical health first. I seek to be whole. I am ready for truth. I await my teachers. Bring me my answers, show me how to go in and bring out the gift. This is my prayer.

I have been reflecting because my homework from my therapist is for me to look at my emotional and physical boundaries. All of my relationships with men and women have been abusive in some way, except for maybe two, and those two people are still a part of my life.

I am asking myself some hard questions lately. Why do I partner with abusive people? Why do I partner with people who need me to take care of them? I am seeing the patterns. I am committed to taking the time and energy to do what is necessary to change my thinking so I make better choices. My relationships have not been healthy but that does not mean future relationships are doomed to be a repeat of the past, especially if I do the work.

So much has happened since my last blog post. This journey is mine uniquely. Others may have been able to endure what I have and not be as affected. Others still, did not survive and have severe mental illness, addictions or have committed suicide. We do not know why some are affected more or less than others.

I have given up feeling guilty because it appears to have been harder for me than someone else “getting over it”. We all have own limits. PTSD is Post/After Trauma Stress Disorder the very name describes a disorder in the way a person handles stress physiologically, psychologically and certainly emotionally get so tired of people saying, “Let it go, it happened so long ago, get over it, and move on”

I am now finally learning how to move on. I started taking care of people at the age of eleven. I married at 17, again at 25 and again at 38 along the way having twins and triplets. This is the first time in my life the only person I have to take care of is myself. Now is the perfect time to devote to “getting over” this. I am creating my best life. My likelihood of having a healthy, loving, and honest relationship increases every time I go to therapy even when my body is taunting me with pain.

Any way I may have digressed, I think one main reason that my partners turned out to be abusive, (they did not seem abusive in the beginning), is I do not have well established emotional boundaries. I never even considered this concept until my therapist brought it up.I am an open book and I was proud of it until now. Being too emotionally open has allowed people into parts of me they did not deserve access to. I gave them a map to my buttons by telling all of my darkest secrets and fears. All the things I felt guilty about or felt ashamed of were deliberately used to their advantage. Well, not anymore. I am a survivor. I always figure out the way through difficult situations.I am strong enough to write about the past and still live in the now.

I still have some work to do, but the hardest part is over. Now I can work on the side effects. The images, memories, and the feelings that accompanied them don’t take me hostage while robbing me of my breath.

I will definitely tell y’all about it when the time is right. But, it will be soon. I am now working on the final touches for the book. I have a feeling that now is the time to give my gift away to the world.

by mozayik “the souls’ poet”

Related articles

Repeat

you see I am holding on the best I can

but I don’t see you there extending

the hand that rubbed my body

and released it from pain

the hand you held out to me

has now changed

where it was smooth and healing

it is rough and cutting and cold

tearing my secrets apart

I have to take care of me

I was wrong to offer myself incomplete

I will go to make myself whole

but I know I wont need your hand anymore

I want and deserve more

I will never change you into what I need

you will forever let me chase and bleed

I am strong enough now

so go ahead take your bow

out of this, is what I need

if I am ever going to get back to me

I was born with what I need to take care of me

my biggest red flag should have been

“Baby, I want to take care of your every need.”

silly ole me

tired of the trickery

no longer able to see the difference

between me and we

again

here I am

with me

and I’ve learned the hard way

this is the safest place to be

ill be glad when I stop trying

to recreate what she

did to me when I was three

so off I go to therapy

by mozayik “the souls’ poet”

I am learning much about myself in therapy. I am looking at my patterns and why they are there. This therapy stuff is no joke if you really do the work.” I am doing my work” (in my Iyanla Vanzant voice). I go every Monday now since school started. I have not been able to really get into the Childhood Sexual Trauma therapy yet because I had to deal with my family crisis. My assignment this week is to take an event that was abusive and write about it. This is going to be hard because just talking about in therapy I started to hyperventilate, my heart started racing and I had pain in my chest. If this is what I need to do to stop repeating the same scenario in my life then I will do what needs to be done so I can have the healthiest relationships I can. Especially the one I have with self. I will keep y’all posted. I am finding my truth in therapy.