Post by FeelingStuffIsTough on Aug 6, 2015 0:36:23 GMT -8
I had never heard or read the term Covert Incest before my (ex?)girlfriend texted me the Wikipedia article several hours ago. Now I'm certain this is what was happening between my mother and I for pretty much my whole life. Maybe just one of many things, really.
My mom and dad had their first child as late teens in the 70's. They stayed together (are still together), and proceeded to have four more over the next ten years. Two daughters, a son (me), then two more daughters.
Up until less than a year ago, I always thought of my childhood as being full of love, caring, laughter... all the cliches that go along with years of denial. I wanted to be just like my dad. He had been my role model as a father, a man, and a person in general. It wasn't until my little sister (who I have objectified and sexualized in my head for the past ten years or so) (and who remembers everything about our home as kids) and my girlfriend got together and started talking, then started poking around in my head, that I realized how unbelievably, utterly, insanely wrong I've been. My father has always talked repetitively of "love" and "support", and I now realize that's really all it ever was. Just words. For all of his lectures to me as a child and teen about how much my mother and he have loved and supported me (despite my repeated failings to earn it), there was never any to be found.
(Note to myself, this is likely why "love" is little more than a buzz word to me as an adult. Something to be thrown around to surreptitiously violate the boundaries of the people I claim to care about.)
Over the past several months of painful digging and actual support from people who really do love me, I have come to realize my father is most likely a sociopath, and more or less totally incapable of love. What he is more than capable of, though, is manipulation, mostly through shame and fear. I have had memories surface of sexual abuse that I was forced to watch, and I have begun to understand how resisting my parents'... invitation? demand?... to participate in the abuse of my sisters, and the mental gymnastics I did in order to stay sane and bury the thoughts has shaped (stunted) my relationship with reality. Particularly the way I deal with emotions. I've started to realize what an enormous role shame has played in my life, and what a devastating affect it has had on my ability to cope with emotions, especially with empathy and fear. (Both of which leave me feeling profoundly powerless, which I lash out against, either insidiously or violently, but always destructively.)
After reading many of the articles and forum posts on this site, I have begun to understand the role my mother played in all of this. My sociopathic father didn't provide the emotional... whatever it is she craves (due to overt incest and whoknows what else in her past and possibly present)... so she turned to me for it. I only remember two sexually inappropriate situations, but there might be others I haven't faced yet. (There was certainly sexual inappropriate behavior from one or both of my older sisters.)
The ones involving my mother:
I got spanked a lot as a kid. Always by my dad, often with a thick wooden paddle, and often with my pants pulled down. After these spankings, when I'd been sent to my room and laid on my bed crying, my mom would come in to comfort me. I always thought of it as a sort of good cop bad cop kinda thing. "Your dad and I love you, we want to see you succeed, etc. etc..." while stroking my hair and my back, which I used to think of as a mother comforting her crying child. I now believe she was getting off on it somehow. I believe this because of the time that, after a particularly rough paddling (I had said more than one thing to intentionally piss him off), her hand moved from my back to my butt. When she asked me if it felt good, I started to say "mmmhmm" (because it did, physically, I think), but caught myself, lifted my face off the pillow, and said, "NO!" She jerked her hand back as if I had slapped her, abruptly stood, and left the room. The paddlings briefly became more frequent, but every time she would come into my room and ask if I wanted her to rub lotion on it, I emphatically said, "NO!" and they stopped soon after.
The other overtly sexually inappropriate situation was when she walked into my room while I was masturbating. At the exact moment I began to climax, in fact. Growing up in a house with seven people, I had learned to have emergency plans in place, so I was already covered by the time the door was open, but she still managed to walk the short distance to my bed and in the pretext of a goodnight hug, let her arm land (on top of the blanket) directly on my still ejaculating penis. After smiling at me and telling me goodnight she loves me, she left the room. I told myself over and over that she didn't notice. I never let myself wonder how she made it down the noisy stairs without my teenage-masturbating vigilant listening behavior noticing, or why she hadn't knocked when knocking was an absolute must in our house.
I've been realizing more and more just how little she actually cared how I felt. When she "stood up for me" and fought with my dad when he wanted to send me to military school, it wasn't because I didn't want to go, not because it would've been a nightmare for me, it was because she didn't want me to be away from her. When she broke down at the airport when I was leaving for Asia, it wasn't from any motherly concern or protective instinct, it was because she wouldn't have me close. When she said she missed me and that I should come home literally every single time I talked to her for the four years I was there, it bothered me that she was laying so much guilt on me. Now I'm starting to understand what she wanted me to feel guilty about. Not that my family missed me, and not that she was worried about me. She wanted me back so I could continue to be her emotional dumpster. Some kind of container that didn't actually have any right to not want to be dumped on. Not want to be used as a replacement for her emotionally vacant husband. Some sort of narcissistic feed of emotional pain and isolation that her neuroses depended on.
I haven't spoken to either of my parents (or anyone else I'm related to aside from the one sister that remembers everything) in months. By FAR the longest I've ever gone. I emailed them all in a state of rage and fear and shame, and their replies only poked at the shame as hard as they could.
As I've dug at the emotions and the shame and the pain, it has only intensified. I've discovered the lengths I have gone to (continue to go to) to keep that shame and fear at bay. The manipulation tactics I have adopted to the point that I don't even think about it, and I have to concentrate to avoid slipping into the same patterns of shaming, intimidating, violating abuse over and over.
I'm on the very razor edge of losing everyone who actually loves me. I've pushed them so far that I don't know if I can get them back. I don't know if they'll ever trust me again. Everyone I give any kind of crap about... so f**k**g close to deciding I'm not worth it because I have shown over and over that I am okay with hurting them to avoid feeling the shame and guilt of my own choices and my own actions.
I'm living in my car more often than not because I'm not welcome at home, and I don't have anyone else. I don't know how to deal with this sh*t and it feels so overwhelming that SO MUCH of me just wants to give up. Just go to sleep and stay asleep.
What the f**k do I do? How do I figure out who I actually am? How do I learn to be a decent, honest, loving person who protects the boundaries of the people I care about instead of violating them again and again? I don't know where to start or how to fix things. I have no f**k**g idea how to fix myself.
My mom and dad had their first child as late teens in the 70's. They stayed together (are still together), and proceeded to have four more over the next ten years. Two daughters, a son (me), then two more daughters.
Up until less than a year ago, I always thought of my childhood as being full of love, caring, laughter... all the cliches that go along with years of denial. I wanted to be just like my dad. He had been my role model as a father, a man, and a person in general. It wasn't until my little sister (who I have objectified and sexualized in my head for the past ten years or so) (and who remembers everything about our home as kids) and my girlfriend got together and started talking, then started poking around in my head, that I realized how unbelievably, utterly, insanely wrong I've been. My father has always talked repetitively of "love" and "support", and I now realize that's really all it ever was. Just words. For all of his lectures to me as a child and teen about how much my mother and he have loved and supported me (despite my repeated failings to earn it), there was never any to be found.
(Note to myself, this is likely why "love" is little more than a buzz word to me as an adult. Something to be thrown around to surreptitiously violate the boundaries of the people I claim to care about.)
Over the past several months of painful digging and actual support from people who really do love me, I have come to realize my father is most likely a sociopath, and more or less totally incapable of love. What he is more than capable of, though, is manipulation, mostly through shame and fear. I have had memories surface of sexual abuse that I was forced to watch, and I have begun to understand how resisting my parents'... invitation? demand?... to participate in the abuse of my sisters, and the mental gymnastics I did in order to stay sane and bury the thoughts has shaped (stunted) my relationship with reality. Particularly the way I deal with emotions. I've started to realize what an enormous role shame has played in my life, and what a devastating affect it has had on my ability to cope with emotions, especially with empathy and fear. (Both of which leave me feeling profoundly powerless, which I lash out against, either insidiously or violently, but always destructively.)
After reading many of the articles and forum posts on this site, I have begun to understand the role my mother played in all of this. My sociopathic father didn't provide the emotional... whatever it is she craves (due to overt incest and whoknows what else in her past and possibly present)... so she turned to me for it. I only remember two sexually inappropriate situations, but there might be others I haven't faced yet. (There was certainly sexual inappropriate behavior from one or both of my older sisters.)
The ones involving my mother:
I got spanked a lot as a kid. Always by my dad, often with a thick wooden paddle, and often with my pants pulled down. After these spankings, when I'd been sent to my room and laid on my bed crying, my mom would come in to comfort me. I always thought of it as a sort of good cop bad cop kinda thing. "Your dad and I love you, we want to see you succeed, etc. etc..." while stroking my hair and my back, which I used to think of as a mother comforting her crying child. I now believe she was getting off on it somehow. I believe this because of the time that, after a particularly rough paddling (I had said more than one thing to intentionally piss him off), her hand moved from my back to my butt. When she asked me if it felt good, I started to say "mmmhmm" (because it did, physically, I think), but caught myself, lifted my face off the pillow, and said, "NO!" She jerked her hand back as if I had slapped her, abruptly stood, and left the room. The paddlings briefly became more frequent, but every time she would come into my room and ask if I wanted her to rub lotion on it, I emphatically said, "NO!" and they stopped soon after.
The other overtly sexually inappropriate situation was when she walked into my room while I was masturbating. At the exact moment I began to climax, in fact. Growing up in a house with seven people, I had learned to have emergency plans in place, so I was already covered by the time the door was open, but she still managed to walk the short distance to my bed and in the pretext of a goodnight hug, let her arm land (on top of the blanket) directly on my still ejaculating penis. After smiling at me and telling me goodnight she loves me, she left the room. I told myself over and over that she didn't notice. I never let myself wonder how she made it down the noisy stairs without my teenage-masturbating vigilant listening behavior noticing, or why she hadn't knocked when knocking was an absolute must in our house.
I've been realizing more and more just how little she actually cared how I felt. When she "stood up for me" and fought with my dad when he wanted to send me to military school, it wasn't because I didn't want to go, not because it would've been a nightmare for me, it was because she didn't want me to be away from her. When she broke down at the airport when I was leaving for Asia, it wasn't from any motherly concern or protective instinct, it was because she wouldn't have me close. When she said she missed me and that I should come home literally every single time I talked to her for the four years I was there, it bothered me that she was laying so much guilt on me. Now I'm starting to understand what she wanted me to feel guilty about. Not that my family missed me, and not that she was worried about me. She wanted me back so I could continue to be her emotional dumpster. Some kind of container that didn't actually have any right to not want to be dumped on. Not want to be used as a replacement for her emotionally vacant husband. Some sort of narcissistic feed of emotional pain and isolation that her neuroses depended on.
I haven't spoken to either of my parents (or anyone else I'm related to aside from the one sister that remembers everything) in months. By FAR the longest I've ever gone. I emailed them all in a state of rage and fear and shame, and their replies only poked at the shame as hard as they could.
As I've dug at the emotions and the shame and the pain, it has only intensified. I've discovered the lengths I have gone to (continue to go to) to keep that shame and fear at bay. The manipulation tactics I have adopted to the point that I don't even think about it, and I have to concentrate to avoid slipping into the same patterns of shaming, intimidating, violating abuse over and over.
I'm on the very razor edge of losing everyone who actually loves me. I've pushed them so far that I don't know if I can get them back. I don't know if they'll ever trust me again. Everyone I give any kind of crap about... so f**k**g close to deciding I'm not worth it because I have shown over and over that I am okay with hurting them to avoid feeling the shame and guilt of my own choices and my own actions.
I'm living in my car more often than not because I'm not welcome at home, and I don't have anyone else. I don't know how to deal with this sh*t and it feels so overwhelming that SO MUCH of me just wants to give up. Just go to sleep and stay asleep.
What the f**k do I do? How do I figure out who I actually am? How do I learn to be a decent, honest, loving person who protects the boundaries of the people I care about instead of violating them again and again? I don't know where to start or how to fix things. I have no f**k**g idea how to fix myself.
