Ceremony, I agree. I remember my mother once telling my sister that bruises and broken bones eventually heal, but words cut forever
James, mine were two separate things. Sexual abuse from my cousin, emotional abuse from my family in general and at school in the form of persistent long term bullying.
I've spoken before about my sister, but she's close enough in age to me that I feel like it's not right to say she was consciously being emotionally abusive - she had no more control over her words, actions, and impulses than I did. My parents both lived in dysfunctional homes - my mother's mother is bipolar and wasn't around much of her childhood. My mother's sisters were distant and didn't spend much time around her or really acknowledge her, and my grandfather on that side was a *raging* alcoholic. Early on, my father had a "normal" childhood as far as 1960's standards. My grandfather on that side may have been pretty strict on account of being a marine (shoes were NEVER allowed to be dirty, had to be able to bounce a quarter off the bedsheets), but by all indications it was all good. Then he get a neurological disease and had to stop working, and it all went downhill from there.
Unbeknownst to me, I had both of my parents walking around not realizing fully that their own lives had been touched in that way. I had my mother being emotionally explosive growing up towards really any of us, my father being a borderline zealot and trying to motivate me through what he thought was "tough love", but was really telling me how disappointing I was, why I couldn't I do xyz? I "had the ability" (or so he said), I was "just too lazy to work at it". Yet, I would go to school where I had no friends and catch flak there. Sports practices? The only one I actually wanted to do was Judo. After a year my parents pulled me out and forced me to do soccer, which I hated (mostly because I had no talent for it, didn't understand it, and constantly had kids telling me how bad I was at it) and scouts, which I also hated, but my Dad forced me to do because he was into it. I also had no talent at that.
By the end of elementary school, I barely had any friends, was pudgy and poor at sports, had realized what was up about my CSA and terrified people would find out and use it to label me as any number of pejorative terms for a homosexual male (which they had already done anyways cause kids just do shit like that all the time), and generally had come to see myself as this kid who was good at NOTHING and was liked by NOBODY.
Sister was everything I wasn't, and by then had already decided I was a massive embarassment, so I'd get all the "you're a burden to the family"/ "nobody likes you anyways"/"we'd be better off if you were dead"/"if you ever find anybody you'll probably beat her up and be an abusive husband, but it won't matter cause nobody likes you anyway" types of comments regularly. She'd also try to incite me to violence, or really to just try to stand up for myself, because she knew my parents would punish me and let her slide. Mom and Dad viewed everything she did as "just kids being kids, our siblings said mean things and teased us and we were fine", etc. When I went into specific details the other night with my mom, she broke down and apologized profusely, saying she never knew...the fuck?! She was right there LISTENING TO IT the entire time. I also kind of low key hate that my parents, whether they knew it or not, basically taught me to just roll over and let people use me as a door mat. I couldn't ever stand up for myself, because "I was big and I might hurt somebody". This is especially weird to me, as my Dad seemed to otherwise be entirely disappointed in me. I'd have thought he'd have been proud for standing up and kicking somebody's ass, but I never did - too afraid of getting in trouble. The one kid he told me to go after was 5'8" and 170lbs in 5th grade, and despite the occasional argument, was a friend of mine (I was big for a fifth grader, but not even CLOSE to being that big).
Eventually, my parents got divorced - Dad got a lot cooler all of a sudden. Mom, who I stayed living with, got worse. There was MS at first, and so the meds she took for that had her all over the place mood-wise. I don't remember most of my childhood from around that time, just that I tried to stay with friends as often as possible. By then, I had four of five other guys in the neighborhood who were close friends then and are still very close, but that was about it.
Shit at school didn't change - if anything, it got worse. I didn't know how to deal with all the shit going on in my life, everybody hating me at school and trying to fit in(which caused me to try and be funny, which only made shit worse), and then going home and trying to isolate myself only to have either my Mom ask me to help her with something my Dad used to do, and then fucking BERATING me if I couldn't do it or if some accident happened, like the time I was helping her take screens out and a deck board broke on me - didn't even ask if I was OK, just started screaming about "AND NOW THE DECK'S BROKEN, AND I STILL CAN'T GET THIS SCREEN OUT" blah blah blah. Happened all the time.
My sister had gone full on "It's my life and I'll do what I want" mode, and Mom would ask me all the time what she should do about her. I usually suggested just basic accountability, and then I would get screamed at if she didn't like what I had to say. When I was at home trying to keep to myself after having people treat me like shit on the bottom of their shoes every day, my sister would come home and do whatever she could to seek me out and make sure I knew that I was lower than dirt, usually making sure to know that everybody would be happier if I was dead, or that I'd probably grow up to be an abusive maniac who beat his wife and kids if anybody ever pitied me enough to marry me.
All this, and my parents claimed they never had any idea what was going on at all. Mom still tries to minimize everything I tell her, though I have heard from my sister that she has acknowledged all these things to my sister, but can't talk about them with me. I guess she feels guilty, I don't know. I suppose I would too if I accidentally raised my child in a manner that caused them to not trust anybody and feel unlikable and undesirable at their most basic level - a burden, if you will.
I wonder on some level if the three of them (Mom, Dad, and Sister) all realize how badly they helped fuck me up, and that's why they're all nice to me now. But yeah, I feel like every time I start to think, "Hey, I'm getting good at this!" it falls apart. Every time I think I find a group of people where I'm like, "Hey, these people actually like me!", they turn out to not be the nicest people. Relationships are basically not possible - it takes me so long to open up and trust people (and I never truly trust) that they often move on before I can accept them into my life. There are people I've known for 4 or 5 years as good friends who openly tell me all the time how much they appreciate me and value me, and I can't help but wonder when exactly it is that they're going to stab me in the back or betray me. If friends or coworkers so much as seem mad around me, I automatically assume I did something to set them off. At my core, I still don't believe myself to be capable of anything worthwhile.
The slightest gestures of basic appreciation almost bring me to tears - a group of students I taught 5 years ago for about 6 months invited me to their graduations this past June. I was floored they even remembered me, and to be thanked, asked to come visit, and treated like I was actually valued blew me out of the water. I thanked as many of them as I could, but at the end of the day, I assume that in time they'll forget about me.
Don't know where the time went, but it's a work day tomorrow - goodnight guys.
