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A personal musing while I grapple with a childhood of bullies and almost-abuse. |
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Casual Epiphanies: Grappling With A Childhood of Bullies and “Almost-Abuse” What do I mean by “almost-abuse”? Honestly, I'm not sure. I'm not a professional head doctor. I'm just a young woman getting started on her life, realizing all too suddenly and a little too late that some childhood events may have taken a greater toll on me than I realized, as I begin to dive head-first into personal relationships. The question comes to mind: If I shared a mostly equal part in the aggression, even though the physical situation was unfairly mismatched, was what I experienced technically abuse, or am I'm just being a whiner? This isn't me trying to create a pity-party for myself. In fact, that the last thing I want to do. I'm just sitting here at my computer, talking to myself, trying to sort out my life. I suppose I'm only making this public on the off-chance that someone might read and toss me that magical golden nugget of wisdom that will change my life. (And sure, I have a great talent for getting needlessly verbose.) I can't, of course, go over the specifics on a public online forum. That's just bad form. But I decided to start this blog because I needed someplace for my thoughts to go. If they get lost out in cyberspace anyway, I still see it as better than the unsent letters I typed and then deleted. I just don't know what I'm doing. My head isn't right. But I do know that my loving, devoted, patient husband deserves more from me than what I currently am. I only started realizing what I'm depriving him of after going back home for Thanksgiving this past winter. Before that, I thought just about everything in my life was golden. I drove hundreds of miles to greet my first niece into the world when she was a month old. I was all too thrilled with the idea that my family now has a new baby, the first since... well, me. It didn't occur to me that something had changed in the chemistry of my relationship with my brother – or, rather, unchanged. It had been that way before: the greeting of, not a pleasant hello, but a “playful” shove against the refrigerator. Later on in the weekend my family was visiting a department store and he pushed me into a display of shoes in front of a middle-aged woman. Please, bear in mind, my brother is a retired veteran twice deployed in combat. Shy of six feet and, although slender, about 99% of his body is made up of muscle. I'm a couple years younger, shy of 5” 2' and weigh, at my highest, 106 pounds, with about no arm strength to speak of. I exaggerate in the obvious places, of course, because the emotional side of me is irrationally upset. We spent some year apart after graduation. We've barely seen each other at all since. In that time, I learned to stop being violent. In that time, I thought we both had changed. When I was about sixteen and met his drill instructor, I silently thanked him for beating whatever behaviors out of him that let him believe it was okay to keep fighting with his teenaged sister, even after the playing field grew too uneven. We used to be about the same height, and scrawny. We'd fought our entire lives. For most of that time, it didn't seem like it mattered. Then, when he got taller, and stronger, and literally every defense I had to protect myself got me grounded or worse, the fights were habits so deeply ingrained we didn't know how to be people to each other. Actually, I don't remember many moments when we could be called “friends”. I don't even remember a lot of times when we weren't at each other's throats, unless we were being watched, distracted, or in separate rooms entirely. When he went off to boot camp, that all changed. He was bouncing all over the world, I was moving about the country on my own adventures, and when we did get a couple of days together, we didn't have time to get into fights. We hugged, technically, although the gesture has always been forced and awkward on both ends. I lost the one person I always had to work out my aggression on, but when he was largely the source of that aggression, I couldn't find it in me to call it much of a loss. I was in love with the peace. Then, Thanksgiving happened. Something was different, or things never changed the way I thought they had. I'm still puzzling over that. Since last November, little pictures have started popping up in my head of things that have gone on in my childhood with this distant sibling I grew up with but know nothing about. I don't understand him as a person, nor do I expect that he understands me. Since November, I can't stop connecting my behaviors in my current adult life to problems we had as children. Perhaps, through writing out my thoughts, letting myself feel like a real person in the fullest sense of personal expression: a public diary, maybe I'll be able to dig deep enough to find some genuine peace in my familial relationships. Thanks so much for lending an ear. |
Perspective Is Relative May 19, 2015 at 11:02pm I was driving in my car yesterday, listening to music like I always do. I was feeling pretty good. I was on my way to buy art supplies. I've decided to start teaching myself how to paint.
Over the weekend I talked with a friend who survived immense abuse during the early part of her childhood, and without provocation went into detail about those events with me for the first time. It made me feel like my relationship with you, and my family life as a whole, was normal in comparison. I felt... [Read more] Maybe Someday We'll Be Human Enough May 13, 2015 at 9:05am I almost said something nasty to you today. It was a gut reaction, and the honest truth. It probably wouldn't have struck you as anything out of the ordinary, since that's how we usually talk to each other, when it is that we do actually converse.
But it wouldn't have helped me feel better except for in the moment. It wouldn't have helped us in the long run. I thought about making that snide comment when you replied to my two-second question a week after it's relevancy, an... [Read more] "Stupid" Choices May 5, 2015 at 8:43am My epiphany today began with work. The business I work at has undergone a set of major changes in the last month, and I have never been happier and more fulfilled on such a personal level by any other job I've worked. My boss has sold the tiny tailoring shop to another owner. I am in love with the changes. Most of them, actually, have been internal.
My former boss, as sweet a woman as she may be outside of our shop's unwindowed walls, is a witch to work under. Don't get me wrong ... [Read more] |
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