closure,,, can it happen and if so, is it worth it?
TexasCowboy
Registrant
On four occassions I tried to talk with my mother about the severe, if not criminal physical and emotional abuse I suffered every waking minute from this woman. It started from the time that I was 6 until I left home for college at 17. Even during and after college, this micromanaging control freak would seek my every move out, even though I made it a point to move 2000 miles away.
I tried on four separate occassions to express the anger, fear, hurt, frustration that I suffered because of her intolrable cruelty, combined with my having been sexually abused as a child to the pont that I did not even know I had been sexually abused until my late 20's, I had repressed these horrible, heinous acts and buried them so deeply that I still can't completely recall all of the sexual abuse I endured.
It is difficult for any parent to think that she could be guilty of being a bad mother, but to sneak into my bedroom at 5am every Saturday morning armed with a belt, which she used as a whip to get me out of bed to begin saturday's chores, combined with the verbal humiliation she pounded into me every moment I was awake, in private, in front of friends, aunts, uncles, cousins, it didn't matter. Her constant slapping me in the face with her hand after she had picked an argument would leave bruises on my cheekbones. Her constant iron fist was reinforced with her hatefulness; never allowing me to leave the house without permission, and then for only a few hours, not allowing me to have friends over, not even allowing me to drive.
My family had inheited wealth. When my siblings graduated from high school each was given a new car. When I finished high school(with honors, Natl' Honor society, scholarship recipient) I asked if I could get a car, which I was told that "only girls get new cars when the finish school, boys have to work for and pay for their own." Oddly enough, my older brother had just received his third new car from mom and dad. Even more odd, I had been working on my father's ranch since I was 8, and never paid a dime to do what ever task I was given. My sibs were lavished with Christmas gifts each year. I usually got one or two, along with new boots.
Then there were the night raids, as I called them when this woman would sneak into my room, rummage through my drawers and closet, go through my wallet and my pants pockets. then there were the nights she would come in to my room while I was asleep and throw everything out of my closet and drawers and make me rehang and fold every item at 2am in the morning on a school night. The whole time I was told what a worthless individual I was, how usless I was, and how I would never amount to anything. This was a recurring litany that was chanted so much, it didn't even register any longer. I just assumed that all the above was true, eventhough I excelled academically, and whose only outside involvement from the ranch was being master counsellor of my local deMolay chapter, an acolyte in the local Episcopal Church. Otherwise, I was not permitted to leave the ranch.
If it all sounds like something out of Dickens, you're not entirely off. All the timne I thought this was normal behavior to be treated this way, and I deserved what ever abuse I was given.
The four separate times that I tried to express my anger and hurt I was shut out, made to feel like the most evil, cruel person this side of the Mississippi for even thinking such thoughts against the person who spent her whole life giving and doing for her children, especiacially. Her responses were so mechanical and planned it was impossible for her to even remotely see the autrocites she committed. She died. I felt no remose. I have no closure as a result of her death because she could never confront, admit, or understand the irrevocable cruelty she shoveled out. I just wanted to know why, and what a 6year old child did to deserve this treatment all the way through high school with a teenager most parents would have jumped through Hell on Sunday to have, an honor student, a hard worker who only wanted to please his physically and emotionally abusive mother, and his sexually abusive father, an active deMolay who was in church almost every Sunday. The only closure I have is how amazing it is that I am as sane as I am considering the hell I have been through. Sometimes it is my only respite. What a hell of a legacy. Yet I feel that closure would never have been an option even before her death, one I do not mourn nor do I feel much loss for.
I tried on four separate occassions to express the anger, fear, hurt, frustration that I suffered because of her intolrable cruelty, combined with my having been sexually abused as a child to the pont that I did not even know I had been sexually abused until my late 20's, I had repressed these horrible, heinous acts and buried them so deeply that I still can't completely recall all of the sexual abuse I endured.
It is difficult for any parent to think that she could be guilty of being a bad mother, but to sneak into my bedroom at 5am every Saturday morning armed with a belt, which she used as a whip to get me out of bed to begin saturday's chores, combined with the verbal humiliation she pounded into me every moment I was awake, in private, in front of friends, aunts, uncles, cousins, it didn't matter. Her constant slapping me in the face with her hand after she had picked an argument would leave bruises on my cheekbones. Her constant iron fist was reinforced with her hatefulness; never allowing me to leave the house without permission, and then for only a few hours, not allowing me to have friends over, not even allowing me to drive.
My family had inheited wealth. When my siblings graduated from high school each was given a new car. When I finished high school(with honors, Natl' Honor society, scholarship recipient) I asked if I could get a car, which I was told that "only girls get new cars when the finish school, boys have to work for and pay for their own." Oddly enough, my older brother had just received his third new car from mom and dad. Even more odd, I had been working on my father's ranch since I was 8, and never paid a dime to do what ever task I was given. My sibs were lavished with Christmas gifts each year. I usually got one or two, along with new boots.
Then there were the night raids, as I called them when this woman would sneak into my room, rummage through my drawers and closet, go through my wallet and my pants pockets. then there were the nights she would come in to my room while I was asleep and throw everything out of my closet and drawers and make me rehang and fold every item at 2am in the morning on a school night. The whole time I was told what a worthless individual I was, how usless I was, and how I would never amount to anything. This was a recurring litany that was chanted so much, it didn't even register any longer. I just assumed that all the above was true, eventhough I excelled academically, and whose only outside involvement from the ranch was being master counsellor of my local deMolay chapter, an acolyte in the local Episcopal Church. Otherwise, I was not permitted to leave the ranch.
If it all sounds like something out of Dickens, you're not entirely off. All the timne I thought this was normal behavior to be treated this way, and I deserved what ever abuse I was given.
The four separate times that I tried to express my anger and hurt I was shut out, made to feel like the most evil, cruel person this side of the Mississippi for even thinking such thoughts against the person who spent her whole life giving and doing for her children, especiacially. Her responses were so mechanical and planned it was impossible for her to even remotely see the autrocites she committed. She died. I felt no remose. I have no closure as a result of her death because she could never confront, admit, or understand the irrevocable cruelty she shoveled out. I just wanted to know why, and what a 6year old child did to deserve this treatment all the way through high school with a teenager most parents would have jumped through Hell on Sunday to have, an honor student, a hard worker who only wanted to please his physically and emotionally abusive mother, and his sexually abusive father, an active deMolay who was in church almost every Sunday. The only closure I have is how amazing it is that I am as sane as I am considering the hell I have been through. Sometimes it is my only respite. What a hell of a legacy. Yet I feel that closure would never have been an option even before her death, one I do not mourn nor do I feel much loss for.