Stranger Than Fiction! *
“The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.”
― Augustine of Hippo
Somewhere around 5th grade, when I didn’t know yet that my child was a boy, he started puberty and then started to get extremely depressed. Refusing to get out of bed, refusing to go to school. My child went from this cheerful beautiful brilliant angel of happiness, beloved by peers, getting good grades, doing well, to this sudden nosedive of a downward spiral that I could not understand. I wracked my brain for solutions, wondering what I was doing wrong as a parent. Around this time, I was still in college myself, boot-strapping myself up with scholarships and grants and I could not afford to fail. I had a friend running a small private school in Rock Hill, and we bartered a deal (because I could not afford that school) that I would teach yoga and mindfulness and art classes at this school, so my son could attend there. There was no bussing, so I was knocking myself out driving him there at 7:30, then going to my classes in New Paltz, back again to pick him up at 2:30 and sometimes back to New Paltz again for my night classes. This went on until I couldn’t sustain it anymore, and we started to realize that this private school was not going to give him an accredited degree… and so I got him into an online accredited school for awhile. That worked temporarily, but my kid was back to not living a life, doing assignments from bed, barely getting up to eat and not playing outside or being with other children or having what anyone would call a normal life. I was worried. This went on through 6th grade. …
Just before 7th grade, we were together at the good ol Jersey shore, having a great time, just the two of us. Playing in the water, playing on the sand, and life seemed okay. We had gotten out of the water, were laying on the towels just resting, and I was reading or looking in my phone for a moment, and when I looked up, my child was curled up in tears on his blanket. I could not get an explanation out of him until we got into the car. He finally cracked and told me that he saw another trans boy on the beach, with a short haircut, wearing a binder and boy shorts, running around freely, and he thought to himself, why can’t that be me? And I said, what are you saying… and he told me that he felt he was a boy and that his developing female body was causing him great distress. It wasn’t an issue before puberty, I guess. Children are children and don’t think of or judge each other much in terms of identity structures yet, I guess. But puberty changes all that, as we know. So, I asked him, are you sure, because you know this will make your life much harder. He was adamant, and told me he had chosen a male name for himself, because it kind of sounds like his dead name (birth name) and has the same number of letters, and would be easy to transition into, and that a few of his best friends were already calling him that.
Now, even though I really thought I was the most liberal left wing open minded accepting of all types type of person you would ever meet — this hit a whole lot different when it was my own kid. I also had deep seated feelings from my own Christian upbringing that this was terribly wrong, and I didn’t know if I could bring myself to support this.
It was deep revolt in me. I dragged my feet for as long as I could. Every motherly instinct in me screamed that it was wrong to mess with my child’s hormones, natural bodily chemistry, etc. or god forbid surgery. I was the ultimate hippy chick naturalist and big believer in not messing with Nature. It was a long learning curve to start calling him by the right name or use the right pronouns. We found a great pediatrician who specialized in these sorts of things, and she interrogated my son for a long time, over many visits, while he was simultaneously in therapy.
It was a very slow and gradual process and I felt grateful for this doctor’s guidance. I educated myself on Gender Dysphoria, the symptoms of which are extreme depression and anxiety (what I was witnessing before we got him help).
Gender Dysphoria is classified as a mental health disease with no cure, and all we can do is make the patient as comfortable as possible and give them the best quality of life. Gender-affirming healthcare for a Dysphoric individual is suicide prevention, because there is a 57% suicide rate among such persons. I learned that even misgendering him with pronouns or calling him the wrong name was causing him great distress and pain. For a long time, I was the only person supporting him. I felt extremely uncomfortable correcting people on his behalf, at first. Over time, it got easier.
I went through a major disconnect during this time, where I felt like my daughter had died. There was a long limbo where I started to not recognize the child in front of me anymore. He didn’t fit into the identity I had ascribed to him from birth… every fiber in my being was in revolt. I was grieving a lost daughter.
I was not okay. Not by any means. And I felt completely and utterly alone. Not a single person in my family reached out to me during this time to ask if I was okay. I was treated like the devil, looked at with disgust.
I made a decision. I just made a decision to put my ego and my feelings and my pain aside, and do what my son needed me to do so that he could live. So, now that he has transitioned beautifully and is for the most part healthy, stable, and living a normal existence (graduated with a Regents degree and honors this past year!), hanging out with friends, going out, socializing, having relationships, I am still picking up the pieces for myself, going through my grief and healing.
I am kind of getting off the point, though. The point is, that I had to look through the identity I had ascribed to my child that was literally making him sick and killing him. I had to look past what I wanted him to be to see the person that he actually was. In time, I realized that the same kid was in there, the same beautiful heart and mind, beyond the identity I had prescribed him that he could not conform to. Now that it’s all said and done, even though I still feel tremendous pain and cognitive dissonance against my own conditioning, there is not a single person on this planet who could ever convince me that I did not do the right thing. My child was failing, and now he lives and thrives. The proof is in the pudding. That was the water that made this tree grow.
Sometimes, God sends us a child that is really hard to love. I was a child like that.
And the reason is that we are called to test the depths of our love. If I can look past what disgusts or revolts me deeply and love that child anyway… because more than anything I want him to live and grow and feel joy and freedom in his being… Then I have done what God called me to do by sending me this child that was hard to love.
Maybe “hard to love” is not the best words for what I am trying to say.
I did not fit into the identity my parents had prescribed for me, either, but that is a different and much longer writing yet to be written.
I have two major stage 5 suicide attempts in my past, the first one at age 12 and the second at age 21.
It is nothing short of a miracle that I stand and breathe today, and I am shaking as I type this to you.
I had a nervous breakdown at age 15, and almost immediately after my 16th birthday, I dropped out of high school. I was allowed to lay on the couch every day with a blanket on me and watch Comedy Central (back in the 90s when it was still funny). That was how I kept my brain alive, by watching comedy all day and maybe getting a laugh here and there. Nobody took me to a doctor or got me medicine or any kind of help. No one offered to send me to a private school. Later, when my brothers started to have some trouble in the high school, they were immediately whisked away to Burke Catholic school. I would have loved to have finished out my high school years there. Guess I wasn’t worth it for some reason in my parents’ eyes.
Ironically, after pulling myself up out of the pits of hell by myself with no help but in fact great opposition as the people around me spared no opportunity to remind me how ridiculous the pursuit of an art degree was, I am now the only child who has a terminal degree in my field, like my father. The one he threw away ended up being the most like him. Funny thing, that.
Now, I am a respected teacher at two schools in my community. Both of my bosses recently went out of their way to let me know how much they appreciate my work. Every semester, my students celebrate me somehow. I did not ask for or expect these things. But as they come, I slowly learn that the things that are of me in this world are good. The fruits I produce are good. The people in the world find value in what I have to offer them. It is only this very small group of people who have a poor opinion of me.
The wool is off my eyes. I’m not unlovable or worthless. I just needed to get away from the people who refused to see my worth.
The only reason I got divorced is that my husband was beating me and cheating on me. I begged him to go to therapy, to keep our family together. I had put on weight from the pregnancy and had severe postpartum depression for months afterwards. Rather than being helpful or supportive, he just took up with another woman. Didn’t even change a diaper for the first six months. Our fights got so bad, he started beating me. I ran home to my parents for safety.
My two younger brothers, at this time, had been triangulated and were getting into fistfights, so they were in separate rooms. So, I had to sleep with my infant on the dinette floor for a while in my parents condo in VERY public space, because nobody was willing to clear out the smallest bedroom for us. While people stumbled in drunk at 2 am to fix themselves snacks in the nearby open kitchen, lights on and doors slamming, while I was trying to sleep with my new baby. I could not even heal or rest from the trauma I had endured from my husband. Nobody cared, I was just worthless garbage in their way. They just stepped over me and my baby while we slept on the floor.
After awhile, my mother got my older-younger brother to leave by asking him for rent, so the baby and I got a room. That was a little bit better, but the baby’s afternoon nap coincided with my youngest brother coming home from work. He would invariably clomp up the stairs in his work-boots and wake up the baby. I asked him nicely, every day, to please take off his boots before coming up the stairs and be a little quieter, and explained that babies need to have uninterrupted naps for their brain development, and that it was the only time of the day I could take a shower or poop in peace and I was slowly losing my sanity from not having these very basic human needs met due to his inconsideration. He blew me off, refused, and continued clomping in his boots, even louder than before, because he had been taught by my father that men can do whatever they want regardless of how or who it affects and women are trash.
After about 9 straight months of this, one day I snapped and started raising my voice. My youngest brother responded to this by beating me. I was curled up in a ball on the floor while he punched and kicked me as hard as he could with his work boots on. My then 10 month old baby was standing up in the crib, watching as this occurred.
I called my father up in tears afterwards and begged him for help. My father said, “What do you want me to do? You must have said something to deserve it.” As if, there is literally anything at all that anyone could say to another person that would warrant assault—much less, a tired and traumatized new mother begging for some peace for her infant from a sibling who should have been raised better to be more supportive of new mothers and babies around him.
I said, I would call the police. My father responded by THREATENING me that if I did so, my baby and I would be kicked out of his house and could go sleep in the street.
On top of assault, now there was threat!
The next day, I went to my parents and showed them the blooming bruises all over my body, some clearly showing the tread on his work boots. I still have photos and audio recordings of these events, so all efforts over the years to tell me I am "crazy" or "making it all up in my head" have only served to prove what pieces of shit these people really are. My extremely mentally ill mother, upon seeing my battered body, waved her hand dismissively and said, “Oh, I had bruises worse than that when the nurses lifted me out of the bed after my hysterectomy.”
Three days later, my father took my youngest brother to a football game like nothing ever happened. They just partied. I’m not sure that he even got a talking to of any kind. Just, pure acceptance that this is normal and the way things should be. Totally acceptable behavior.
I went back to my abusive husband for a few months. It was not sustainable. He was also beating me, while the baby watched from a highchair or playpen. I made a decision to choose the lesser of two evils, and went back to my parents.
Living in a bedroom next to my attacker, I had no choice but to shut down and go numb. My mother reinforced the notion that I was worthless and no man would ever want me now, and since I had such poor choice in men I would probably pick someone who would sexually abuse my kid or something. I believed the narrative that I was the monster, that I was born this way, that I was a reject of life and there was just something so wrong with me, I should just shut up and be grateful that she would still take care of me because I couldn't even hold a job for very long or ever make enough money to support myself, much less myself and my baby.
I stopped going to eat at the dinner table. Stopped celebrating Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Stopped acknowledging birthdays. Nobody really cared. I existed like a ghost in that house for years, barely able to get out of bed. I stayed alive for my baby. I focused on my baby. All of my own needs went unmet. I missed major events like other people’s weddings, babies, etc. Because I had no job and no money, and thought I didn’t deserve to go to these things if I had no gift to give. So, I just missed out. My extended family has and continues to judge me very hard for that.
The only times I could process my pain and cry were when people left the house to go to work or go to holidays. Otherwise, I was numb with all my armor on. One day, I tried to talk to my youngest brother about what had happened between us. I tried sharing the story of why I left my husband that I just described above, and that I was just trying to survive with my baby now. I wanted him to see that what he had done had hurt me so badly, I wanted an apology, and to mend our relationship. He sat smugly on the sofa with his arms folded, while I implored him with tears, and said, “Your life is so bad, you should really just kill yourself.”
Knowing full well that I had real stage 5 suicide attempts behind me.
When my youngest brother was very little, he used to torture any small animals that he could get into his grasp. That is an early sign of psychopathy. If there was any doubt remaining, he proved it during these later events. My youngest brother is a bona-fide psychopath.
That doesn’t occur in a vacuum. He was also affected by the toxic family dynamic. He was taught that he didn’t have to develop empathy because he was the golden child who could do no wrong in my parents eyes. My father and mother have continually reinforced this, and my youngest brother has never been held accountable to any of his extraordinarily cruel and psychotic behavior.
For the next 18 years, I was numb and living in a perpetual time loop of this event. This is what PTSD is. I received the diagnosis about two and a half years ago when I finally got myself into treatment. I have chronic PTSD, like what war veterans have. Shell shock. My family gave me shell shock. I have to live with this every day for the rest of my life now.
So, sometimes abandoning the people who hurt you and don’t want to see that, acknowledge that, or care, is in fact choosing to not abandon yourself.
Oh, and since my parents had failed so miserably, I went to my grandmother and sat with her in her little apartment and cried my heart out, intimating all I have told you above. All she did was ask me if I was on my period.
I owe these people nothing. They owe me an apology. They owe me an acknowledgment that what they did, how they handled it, was utterly WRONG and they in fact crippled and disabled their daughter/sister for life. I am not holding my breath. But, I truly owe them nothing. I am parenting, saving, preserving, and loving myself, now. Giving myself the love and acceptance and support I never received.
They don’t value me or see me as a gift. My mother was delighted to kick me out last fall and offer my son the option to stay with her. We were out of sorts because my son had stolen something out of my bedroom, and I was holding him accountable to that. Since he had just turned 18, and I had long since stopped playing the game of being her emotional punching bag, she was done with me. Swooped in, kicked me out, and convinced my kid that she was saving him from me. I saw the delight on her face when she did it, too. I am in no way concerned with her final attempt to kill me, though. She is going to be very disappointed as I continue to not only live and survive, but thrive and be even more successful. I trained my son very well on how to deal with her. He is much more equipped than I was to live in a house with emotional and verbal abuse. My son barely speaks to me now, and I was the only one who defended him from everyone, including my parents. I am not worried, though. My son is strong. He is me to the 9th power. I equipped him with ever tool I had to draw his boundaries and protect himself. In time, the truth will be revealed. It can’t stay hidden for long. Just like you can’t hide severe and untreated mental illness forever.
My grief is very deep. I love my family very much. I empathize with their brokenness. In the same breath, I know that I cannot lower myself enough or make myself sick enough to save them. I owe it to myself now to live the second half of my life surrounded by people who love and value me. The second half will not be like the first half.
The statute of limitations on assault is 5 years. This assault must have occurred around 2005, going by my son’s age. So, at any time after 2010, my youngest brother could have grown as a person, gained perspective as he matured, felt remorse or regret, grown up and come to me with some words of reparation without any fear of me retaliating and putting him in prison. He has not as yet. In fact, all I have seen is continued smugness and arrogance at dad having “shut me down,” (his words). He continues to demonstrate that he is a remorseless psychopath lacking any capacity for empathy.
My parents have never offered me any remorse or regret. I have given up waiting. I am going to enjoy my life without them now, because I deserve that, finally.
My son is welcome to come live with me any time he likes. They are the ones who chose to go over my head and override my parental decisions. They made their own bed and now they can sleep in it. So, please know that any narratives about my mother shouldering the burden of my kid because I won’t take care of him are utter lies and garbage.
If they want me back in their lives, it’s up to them to show me how. I am not responsible for bridging that gap. They need to show me that they understand and acknowledge the deep harm they have inflicted on me. My Soul requires some validation of the extraordinary cruelty, pain and suffering I have endured on their behalf. It’s not my responsibility to bridge that gap for them. This is their call to grow and evolve their own Souls. I can’t do that for them.
I am hard for them to love, but that’s not my fault—it’s not because I am inherently unlovable or was born broken. Someone broke me. I refuse to be invisible any longer. I will not spend another moment of my life standing in the presence of someone who cannot see me. It makes me feel worthless. It brings back all the reasons I wanted to end my life in the past. I am not going back to those dark places. I grew up. It is their turn to grow up and meet me where I am. They either will or won’t; it’s not my work to do for them.
Now, I am not just surviving anymore, but thriving. I have the ability to write, paint, and be creative again. I have the ability to get into a creative mode and access myself again. I am not numb anymore. I can feel all of my feelings, good, bad, and exquisite. I have my life back, and I am not sacrificing that for anything ever again.
Written on Sunday, February 19th, 2023 in a series of text messages to a family member.
Just before 7th grade, we were together at the good ol Jersey shore, having a great time, just the two of us. Playing in the water, playing on the sand, and life seemed okay. We had gotten out of the water, were laying on the towels just resting, and I was reading or looking in my phone for a moment, and when I looked up, my child was curled up in tears on his blanket. I could not get an explanation out of him until we got into the car. He finally cracked and told me that he saw another trans boy on the beach, with a short haircut, wearing a binder and boy shorts, running around freely, and he thought to himself, why can’t that be me? And I said, what are you saying… and he told me that he felt he was a boy and that his developing female body was causing him great distress. It wasn’t an issue before puberty, I guess. Children are children and don’t think of or judge each other much in terms of identity structures yet, I guess. But puberty changes all that, as we know. So, I asked him, are you sure, because you know this will make your life much harder. He was adamant, and told me he had chosen a male name for himself, because it kind of sounds like his dead name (birth name) and has the same number of letters, and would be easy to transition into, and that a few of his best friends were already calling him that.
Now, even though I really thought I was the most liberal left wing open minded accepting of all types type of person you would ever meet — this hit a whole lot different when it was my own kid. I also had deep seated feelings from my own Christian upbringing that this was terribly wrong, and I didn’t know if I could bring myself to support this.
It was deep revolt in me. I dragged my feet for as long as I could. Every motherly instinct in me screamed that it was wrong to mess with my child’s hormones, natural bodily chemistry, etc. or god forbid surgery. I was the ultimate hippy chick naturalist and big believer in not messing with Nature. It was a long learning curve to start calling him by the right name or use the right pronouns. We found a great pediatrician who specialized in these sorts of things, and she interrogated my son for a long time, over many visits, while he was simultaneously in therapy.
It was a very slow and gradual process and I felt grateful for this doctor’s guidance. I educated myself on Gender Dysphoria, the symptoms of which are extreme depression and anxiety (what I was witnessing before we got him help).
Gender Dysphoria is classified as a mental health disease with no cure, and all we can do is make the patient as comfortable as possible and give them the best quality of life. Gender-affirming healthcare for a Dysphoric individual is suicide prevention, because there is a 57% suicide rate among such persons. I learned that even misgendering him with pronouns or calling him the wrong name was causing him great distress and pain. For a long time, I was the only person supporting him. I felt extremely uncomfortable correcting people on his behalf, at first. Over time, it got easier.
I went through a major disconnect during this time, where I felt like my daughter had died. There was a long limbo where I started to not recognize the child in front of me anymore. He didn’t fit into the identity I had ascribed to him from birth… every fiber in my being was in revolt. I was grieving a lost daughter.
I was not okay. Not by any means. And I felt completely and utterly alone. Not a single person in my family reached out to me during this time to ask if I was okay. I was treated like the devil, looked at with disgust.
I made a decision. I just made a decision to put my ego and my feelings and my pain aside, and do what my son needed me to do so that he could live. So, now that he has transitioned beautifully and is for the most part healthy, stable, and living a normal existence (graduated with a Regents degree and honors this past year!), hanging out with friends, going out, socializing, having relationships, I am still picking up the pieces for myself, going through my grief and healing.
I am kind of getting off the point, though. The point is, that I had to look through the identity I had ascribed to my child that was literally making him sick and killing him. I had to look past what I wanted him to be to see the person that he actually was. In time, I realized that the same kid was in there, the same beautiful heart and mind, beyond the identity I had prescribed him that he could not conform to. Now that it’s all said and done, even though I still feel tremendous pain and cognitive dissonance against my own conditioning, there is not a single person on this planet who could ever convince me that I did not do the right thing. My child was failing, and now he lives and thrives. The proof is in the pudding. That was the water that made this tree grow.
Sometimes, God sends us a child that is really hard to love. I was a child like that.
And the reason is that we are called to test the depths of our love. If I can look past what disgusts or revolts me deeply and love that child anyway… because more than anything I want him to live and grow and feel joy and freedom in his being… Then I have done what God called me to do by sending me this child that was hard to love.
Maybe “hard to love” is not the best words for what I am trying to say.
I did not fit into the identity my parents had prescribed for me, either, but that is a different and much longer writing yet to be written.
I have two major stage 5 suicide attempts in my past, the first one at age 12 and the second at age 21.
It is nothing short of a miracle that I stand and breathe today, and I am shaking as I type this to you.
I had a nervous breakdown at age 15, and almost immediately after my 16th birthday, I dropped out of high school. I was allowed to lay on the couch every day with a blanket on me and watch Comedy Central (back in the 90s when it was still funny). That was how I kept my brain alive, by watching comedy all day and maybe getting a laugh here and there. Nobody took me to a doctor or got me medicine or any kind of help. No one offered to send me to a private school. Later, when my brothers started to have some trouble in the high school, they were immediately whisked away to Burke Catholic school. I would have loved to have finished out my high school years there. Guess I wasn’t worth it for some reason in my parents’ eyes.
Ironically, after pulling myself up out of the pits of hell by myself with no help but in fact great opposition as the people around me spared no opportunity to remind me how ridiculous the pursuit of an art degree was, I am now the only child who has a terminal degree in my field, like my father. The one he threw away ended up being the most like him. Funny thing, that.
Now, I am a respected teacher at two schools in my community. Both of my bosses recently went out of their way to let me know how much they appreciate my work. Every semester, my students celebrate me somehow. I did not ask for or expect these things. But as they come, I slowly learn that the things that are of me in this world are good. The fruits I produce are good. The people in the world find value in what I have to offer them. It is only this very small group of people who have a poor opinion of me.
The wool is off my eyes. I’m not unlovable or worthless. I just needed to get away from the people who refused to see my worth.
The only reason I got divorced is that my husband was beating me and cheating on me. I begged him to go to therapy, to keep our family together. I had put on weight from the pregnancy and had severe postpartum depression for months afterwards. Rather than being helpful or supportive, he just took up with another woman. Didn’t even change a diaper for the first six months. Our fights got so bad, he started beating me. I ran home to my parents for safety.
My two younger brothers, at this time, had been triangulated and were getting into fistfights, so they were in separate rooms. So, I had to sleep with my infant on the dinette floor for a while in my parents condo in VERY public space, because nobody was willing to clear out the smallest bedroom for us. While people stumbled in drunk at 2 am to fix themselves snacks in the nearby open kitchen, lights on and doors slamming, while I was trying to sleep with my new baby. I could not even heal or rest from the trauma I had endured from my husband. Nobody cared, I was just worthless garbage in their way. They just stepped over me and my baby while we slept on the floor.
After awhile, my mother got my older-younger brother to leave by asking him for rent, so the baby and I got a room. That was a little bit better, but the baby’s afternoon nap coincided with my youngest brother coming home from work. He would invariably clomp up the stairs in his work-boots and wake up the baby. I asked him nicely, every day, to please take off his boots before coming up the stairs and be a little quieter, and explained that babies need to have uninterrupted naps for their brain development, and that it was the only time of the day I could take a shower or poop in peace and I was slowly losing my sanity from not having these very basic human needs met due to his inconsideration. He blew me off, refused, and continued clomping in his boots, even louder than before, because he had been taught by my father that men can do whatever they want regardless of how or who it affects and women are trash.
After about 9 straight months of this, one day I snapped and started raising my voice. My youngest brother responded to this by beating me. I was curled up in a ball on the floor while he punched and kicked me as hard as he could with his work boots on. My then 10 month old baby was standing up in the crib, watching as this occurred.
I called my father up in tears afterwards and begged him for help. My father said, “What do you want me to do? You must have said something to deserve it.” As if, there is literally anything at all that anyone could say to another person that would warrant assault—much less, a tired and traumatized new mother begging for some peace for her infant from a sibling who should have been raised better to be more supportive of new mothers and babies around him.
I said, I would call the police. My father responded by THREATENING me that if I did so, my baby and I would be kicked out of his house and could go sleep in the street.
On top of assault, now there was threat!
The next day, I went to my parents and showed them the blooming bruises all over my body, some clearly showing the tread on his work boots. I still have photos and audio recordings of these events, so all efforts over the years to tell me I am "crazy" or "making it all up in my head" have only served to prove what pieces of shit these people really are. My extremely mentally ill mother, upon seeing my battered body, waved her hand dismissively and said, “Oh, I had bruises worse than that when the nurses lifted me out of the bed after my hysterectomy.”
Three days later, my father took my youngest brother to a football game like nothing ever happened. They just partied. I’m not sure that he even got a talking to of any kind. Just, pure acceptance that this is normal and the way things should be. Totally acceptable behavior.
I went back to my abusive husband for a few months. It was not sustainable. He was also beating me, while the baby watched from a highchair or playpen. I made a decision to choose the lesser of two evils, and went back to my parents.
Living in a bedroom next to my attacker, I had no choice but to shut down and go numb. My mother reinforced the notion that I was worthless and no man would ever want me now, and since I had such poor choice in men I would probably pick someone who would sexually abuse my kid or something. I believed the narrative that I was the monster, that I was born this way, that I was a reject of life and there was just something so wrong with me, I should just shut up and be grateful that she would still take care of me because I couldn't even hold a job for very long or ever make enough money to support myself, much less myself and my baby.
I stopped going to eat at the dinner table. Stopped celebrating Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Stopped acknowledging birthdays. Nobody really cared. I existed like a ghost in that house for years, barely able to get out of bed. I stayed alive for my baby. I focused on my baby. All of my own needs went unmet. I missed major events like other people’s weddings, babies, etc. Because I had no job and no money, and thought I didn’t deserve to go to these things if I had no gift to give. So, I just missed out. My extended family has and continues to judge me very hard for that.
The only times I could process my pain and cry were when people left the house to go to work or go to holidays. Otherwise, I was numb with all my armor on. One day, I tried to talk to my youngest brother about what had happened between us. I tried sharing the story of why I left my husband that I just described above, and that I was just trying to survive with my baby now. I wanted him to see that what he had done had hurt me so badly, I wanted an apology, and to mend our relationship. He sat smugly on the sofa with his arms folded, while I implored him with tears, and said, “Your life is so bad, you should really just kill yourself.”
Knowing full well that I had real stage 5 suicide attempts behind me.
When my youngest brother was very little, he used to torture any small animals that he could get into his grasp. That is an early sign of psychopathy. If there was any doubt remaining, he proved it during these later events. My youngest brother is a bona-fide psychopath.
That doesn’t occur in a vacuum. He was also affected by the toxic family dynamic. He was taught that he didn’t have to develop empathy because he was the golden child who could do no wrong in my parents eyes. My father and mother have continually reinforced this, and my youngest brother has never been held accountable to any of his extraordinarily cruel and psychotic behavior.
For the next 18 years, I was numb and living in a perpetual time loop of this event. This is what PTSD is. I received the diagnosis about two and a half years ago when I finally got myself into treatment. I have chronic PTSD, like what war veterans have. Shell shock. My family gave me shell shock. I have to live with this every day for the rest of my life now.
So, sometimes abandoning the people who hurt you and don’t want to see that, acknowledge that, or care, is in fact choosing to not abandon yourself.
Oh, and since my parents had failed so miserably, I went to my grandmother and sat with her in her little apartment and cried my heart out, intimating all I have told you above. All she did was ask me if I was on my period.
I owe these people nothing. They owe me an apology. They owe me an acknowledgment that what they did, how they handled it, was utterly WRONG and they in fact crippled and disabled their daughter/sister for life. I am not holding my breath. But, I truly owe them nothing. I am parenting, saving, preserving, and loving myself, now. Giving myself the love and acceptance and support I never received.
They don’t value me or see me as a gift. My mother was delighted to kick me out last fall and offer my son the option to stay with her. We were out of sorts because my son had stolen something out of my bedroom, and I was holding him accountable to that. Since he had just turned 18, and I had long since stopped playing the game of being her emotional punching bag, she was done with me. Swooped in, kicked me out, and convinced my kid that she was saving him from me. I saw the delight on her face when she did it, too. I am in no way concerned with her final attempt to kill me, though. She is going to be very disappointed as I continue to not only live and survive, but thrive and be even more successful. I trained my son very well on how to deal with her. He is much more equipped than I was to live in a house with emotional and verbal abuse. My son barely speaks to me now, and I was the only one who defended him from everyone, including my parents. I am not worried, though. My son is strong. He is me to the 9th power. I equipped him with ever tool I had to draw his boundaries and protect himself. In time, the truth will be revealed. It can’t stay hidden for long. Just like you can’t hide severe and untreated mental illness forever.
My grief is very deep. I love my family very much. I empathize with their brokenness. In the same breath, I know that I cannot lower myself enough or make myself sick enough to save them. I owe it to myself now to live the second half of my life surrounded by people who love and value me. The second half will not be like the first half.
The statute of limitations on assault is 5 years. This assault must have occurred around 2005, going by my son’s age. So, at any time after 2010, my youngest brother could have grown as a person, gained perspective as he matured, felt remorse or regret, grown up and come to me with some words of reparation without any fear of me retaliating and putting him in prison. He has not as yet. In fact, all I have seen is continued smugness and arrogance at dad having “shut me down,” (his words). He continues to demonstrate that he is a remorseless psychopath lacking any capacity for empathy.
My parents have never offered me any remorse or regret. I have given up waiting. I am going to enjoy my life without them now, because I deserve that, finally.
My son is welcome to come live with me any time he likes. They are the ones who chose to go over my head and override my parental decisions. They made their own bed and now they can sleep in it. So, please know that any narratives about my mother shouldering the burden of my kid because I won’t take care of him are utter lies and garbage.
If they want me back in their lives, it’s up to them to show me how. I am not responsible for bridging that gap. They need to show me that they understand and acknowledge the deep harm they have inflicted on me. My Soul requires some validation of the extraordinary cruelty, pain and suffering I have endured on their behalf. It’s not my responsibility to bridge that gap for them. This is their call to grow and evolve their own Souls. I can’t do that for them.
I am hard for them to love, but that’s not my fault—it’s not because I am inherently unlovable or was born broken. Someone broke me. I refuse to be invisible any longer. I will not spend another moment of my life standing in the presence of someone who cannot see me. It makes me feel worthless. It brings back all the reasons I wanted to end my life in the past. I am not going back to those dark places. I grew up. It is their turn to grow up and meet me where I am. They either will or won’t; it’s not my work to do for them.
Now, I am not just surviving anymore, but thriving. I have the ability to write, paint, and be creative again. I have the ability to get into a creative mode and access myself again. I am not numb anymore. I can feel all of my feelings, good, bad, and exquisite. I have my life back, and I am not sacrificing that for anything ever again.
Written on Sunday, February 19th, 2023 in a series of text messages to a family member.
* "The characters in this writing are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental."
© Andrea B. Pacione, 2023. All Rights Reserved.
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One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice -- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voice behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life that you could save. Mary Oliver The Journey |
