I need to get this out of my head

[Tobin S.]

Trauma, anger, and heartbreak are about to ensue. This is going to be harsh. If you think that might put you in a bad place, by all means exit right on out of here. Don't let me ruin your day. I wrote the other day that I've been doing pretty good, and I am okay. What I'm about to relate comes to a head every once in a while like a perpetual sore that goes away for a little while, but comes back and never really gets better. That's where I'm at tonight.

There has been some debate in here in the past about how much events in your childhood contribute to your mental health as an adult. I'm of the opinion that it counts and that your parents can make you sick. I'm going to speak from personal experience. I think mine have made me ill and I'm about to make a pretty good case for it. I also need to get this shit out there. I've never told anyone about any of this. It should have come out in talk therapy, but I didn't have the courage at the time, I guess. I'm probably going to need to work through this with a therapist at some point, but I don't have time right now.

I'm a long haul trucker and I just took this position a couple of months ago. I needed to get away from my hometown and my family. I've had my condo for sale for a long time now and it just ain't moving. So, here I am in the Utah desert writing to you guys.

I'll start from the beginning. My mom and dad always fought when I was little. My dad was particularly verbally abusive toward my mother. I asked my mom when he started being like that, one time, and she said right after I was born. I was their first child. They would fight a lot after my sister and I went to bed. At a very young age, as far back as I can remember, I developed my own fantasy world to try to block out the yelling. I would lay there in bed and fantasize about having adventures with an imaginary friend. We were on our own in my world; no parents...not even any adults. We always managed to get what we needed and we would have the coolest adventures. My imaginary friend liked me for who I was and didn't judge me.

When I was 8 the verbal abuse escalated to physical violence. My mom and dad were having a heated argument right in front of me and my dad hauled off and smacked my mom very hard. I was horrified and started screaming. My mom quickly took me and my sister out of there and to her mother's house. That was the end of their marriage.

The whole divorce was traumatic to me. I loved both of my parents and my biggest wish in the world was that they could be together and be happy. Instead the family was torn apart. My mom started using me and my sister as little pawns in the custody battle and that continued for many years. She didn't want me or my sister to see my father ever again. She wanted to use us to punish him. We were not to refer to him as "dad" but "father." A year after the divorce there was a new man who became my step-father, and I was to refer to him as "dad." The implication was that "dad" was a more loving term and "father" sort of a back-handed slap.

My dad did get visitation rights. He was allowed to have us every other weekend. Every weekend he would ask me and my sister if we would come to live with him one day. Of course, we always said yes. It never happened, though. Don't put your kids in a situation like that. Don't force them to lie.

My dad re-married at about the same time as my mom, but with pretty much the same results as his first marriage. He had one child with her and the marriage went to hell. She got out before she got hit. My dad finally figured out that he did not like women and he is a much happier man now without one.

I guess I'm kind of getting ahead of myself now. During the custody battle while my mother and sister and I were living at my grandparents' place, my grandfather molested my sister while I was present. It would be many years later before this would come out. It turned out that he had done the same to one of my cousins.

A short time after my mother and step-father were married, my father and step-mother took me and my sister to an amusement park on a day that wasn't on his normal visitation time. My mom agreed to it as long as he would have us back by 6 pm.

We were at the park and having a really good time. My dad couldn't remember whether he was supposed to have us back by 6 or 9. I knew it was 6, but I wanted to ride more rides so I told him it was 9, not thinking what the possible repercussions might be. He said okay.

When we got back to my mom and step-fathers, my step-father came barreling out of the house, drunk and cussing. He was 6'4" and built like a brick shit-house. My dad was a flabby 5'6". My step-father laid him out right at my feet with one punch. That one was more terrifying and traumatic than the one with mom and dad. Because not only was it more violent, it was my fault. That man was ready to shoot my dad. As mom hurried me and my sister to our rooms I saw a gun laying in one of the living room chairs.

By my and my sister's reactions my step-father new he had fucked up bad. A little later he came into our rooms drunker yet, but this time crying and apologizing. I can smell the beer on his breath right now. That man drank like that all the time. When we went somewhere as a family he would have a cooler with him and be drinking while he was driving. Some role model, eh? Some "dad."

He never treated me right, and I think it's because I look exactly like my dad. He couldn't pass me off as his own, but there I was calling him dad. To this day he treats me like I don't know shit. He feels like he always has to contradict everything I say.

All this violence is probably going to rub off, right? Right. The neighbor lady used to watch me and my sister in the mornings and take us to school. She had a daughter who was a year older than me, and at 12 years old she was already a very big girl. About twice my size. She didn't like me and she was always giving me shit. As I was getting in the back seat of her mother's car to go to school one day I wasn't moving fast enough for her and she shoved me face first into the floorboard. I swung my fist around and hit her in the stomach without even thinking about it. Something just snapped in me. She started crying and told her mother what had happened.

The neighbor lady told my mom what had happened when my mom got home from work. They were there in the living room and I came out. A soon as my mom saw me she ran over to me and hit me in the face as hard as she could knocking me down. I looked at the neighbor lady as I was getting up and she was smiling. I was 11 and I felt like something inside of me had died as I laid there in bed and cried. My mom tried to make it better, but it wasn't just that one event. It was the culmination of all that other shit and it had just become too much to bear.

I had to deal with that girl's father next. The next day he sat me in a chair in the middle of a room and walked circles around me as he verbally abused me for about a half hour. I started crying and he called me a pussy. Mocked me by calling me a "big man crying." It would be two more years before I would start puberty. I probably wasn't even 5 feet tall and 120 pounds.

I know I was wrong and deserved to be punished. I don't think the punishment fit the crime.

Sexual abuse at the hands of my mother when I was 11. Alcohol was involved there, too. That's all I can say about that. Even after all I've said above, it's just too embarrassing.

It's almost as if all of the adults in my life conspired to see just how fucked up a person they could produce. If that was their goal they did a fine job. The shit hit the fan when I was 20 as far as my psyche goes. I had denied reality my entire life and it would be denied no longer. I turned into a monster.

Those are the highlights. Top it off with treating a kid like he's a toy day in and day out for years and you have me. My mother still treats me like a piece of property. I have a hard time being around all of them now days. I don't know if I would care if I never saw them again.

I feel much better now and thanks for hanging in there with me. I just re-read this and I couldn't help but hear the voice of a child reading the words.

[laylah]

1. You are a brave man,

Tobin. Thank you for trusting us enough to tell your story. :hug:

Jenn

[Tobin S.]

4. Thank you

I appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me for a little while. :hug:

[HereSince1628]

2. Glad that you feel better

I accept the notion that much of my dysfunction has to do with patterns of thinking and being that helped me survive a childhood that I experienced as difficult. On reflection the quirkiest aspects of my personality seem to be mechanisms that insulate me from threats/provide escape or give emotional release, and I have memories of being aware of employing them beginning in grade school. Those things are also what tend to get me into the most trouble.

I've found reflecting on the development of my 'schema' a mixed bag and something I've got to keep to myself. These entrained patterns lead me into behavior that is bad and I recognize that. Yet, understanding of how they originated makes me feel less guilty. I like having a sense of understanding myself and I like to feel less guilty. Yet, when I talk to my SO about that she seems to think that I'm trying to scapegoat the blame for my misbehavior.

[Tobin S.]

3. It's important to recognize where we've been

I don't think mental illnesses are all about biological problems and brain chemistry, although that may play a role in how we react to trauma and how we develop. I suppose that alone could lead to mental illness, too.

I also suppose that someone else given the same circumstances growing up could have turned out somewhat normal, but I think that they would be lucky.

The fact that the stuff in the original post still hurts me at 37 years of age is a sign that it's important. I can't just forget it. It has shaped me and made me who I am.

"I've found reflecting on the development of my 'schema' a mixed bag and something I've got to keep to myself. These entrained patterns lead me into behavior that is bad and I recognize that. Yet, understanding of how they originated makes me feel less guilty. I like having a sense of understanding myself and I like to feel less guilty. Yet, when I talk to my SO about that she seems to think that I'm trying to scapegoat the blame for my misbehavior."

If you have been wronged and/or victimized, it is not your fault. When I woke up this morning, I felt a little shameful for what I had written last night, but that's actually blaming the victim, and being made to feel guilty for things that are not my fault and are beyond my control is a part of my illness.

I also respect your desire to keep such matters to yourself. We all deal with our own situations in our own way.

[mopinko]

5. boy, i wish i could give that 11 year old kid a hug.

i hope you find your way with this. i think writing about it is really a good idea. anything to take it out of your head and place it somewhere else.

i don't blame you for not wanting to see your family. i grew up in a pretty dysfunctional family myself, and just don't see them any more. my folks are gone, but the same shit that we learned as kids- a pecking order that made some of them feel safe, and those at the bottom feel helpless and hopeless is still there in us as middle aged adults. i just cut it off. i don't need it. i don't need them. it leaves a hole, for sure, and sometimes i really have to work to remember that the shape of that hole is not the idealized family, but the real family. everything that a family could be is huge. everything that they are is a little pile of bullshit.

to me, the trouble with placing so much on other people is- how do you get control of that? as long as it is out there, how do you beat it? would it be different for you to say to yourself- i wasn't strong enough to deflect this hurt then, but now i am strong, and i can throw it away because it is mine. that was what i had to do. to say- i will not think about who they are, what is wrong with them, what they did to me. i said- i am just not the kind of person who can be around that stuff. that does not mean weak. it means i am strong enough to wrap a coat around myself to block them out. they can be whoever they are, and they can cope with having one less sister. i am too strong for them.

keep writing. keep trucking. you'll get where you need to be somehow. you are a fighter.

[mopinko]

8. and just a real quick add on

you can hate them for the asses that they are, and for having this morass for a family, and still not find them to be the cause of your illness. those can be 2 separate things for you. and you sure can be angry that they fueled all that left you with no one to lean on when you needed them, for erecting a fence full of pain, where there might have been a bridge made of love.

[elleng]

6. Dear Tobin S,

:hug: :hug: :hug:

[knowbody0]

7. we can either inspect and dissect the past,

or run from it. it takes courage and self love. you da man, baby!

I severed all ties 15 years ago with my dysfunctional clusterfuck of judgemental abusers and have not regretted a minute of that decision. for me, it was my own children that I needed to protect from them all, and in doing so liberated myself.

I call mine an amazing journey and hold my head high now days, feeling light and very blessed.

[Odin2005]

9. I was shocked to hear that stories like yours are VERY common among Gen-Xers.

Abuse, using one's kids as a way to "get back" at ex-spouses, the whole sick gamut. :( That is fucking AWFUL!