Post by trjumpet on Jun 2, 2016 20:27:47 GMT -8
I wrote my story, and I'm not sure if it goes here or some other place. It's about covert and overt sexual abuse, and other things too. Please give it a read if you'd like---Trjumpet
The girl lay in bed, waiting. As if on cue, the blankets pulled back and her hulking frame lay down. What would it be tonight? Touching, slowly down the girl’s side, down around her clit? Maybe still fingering, the wrinkled, long nailed fingers running over the outside, then finding their way clumsily within the folds, searching for the clit, the girl stock still then beginning to moan. Of course the girl hated it, but the feeling felt so good, and she felt herself become wetter at the touch. Or maybe those whispered syllables, “Do not tell,” echoing in the child’s ear, that dry tongue and those cracked lips finding hers, then the tongue sliding its way through the girl’s mouth before stopping. Then what? Rubbing vaginas, the girl moaning again.
My name is Carla, and the above is what I went through until the age of 18.
Twice in my life, until I went to college, I had my own room. That arrangement didn’t last very long, and very usually I was sleeping in the same bed as my mother. It was a Queen Size mattress, and she smelled of smoke and piss. She exposed herself to me every night, treating it like no big deal, and we got ready for bed together, and those large breasts and that C-section scar were always on display. I never learned privacy issues, or that watching someone undress was not done, so I watched her and she watched me.
It wasn’t just my mother and me in the small house, but it was also my aunt and uncle, and their two children. The children always had a room of their own. There were times when we didn’t live together, but most times we did. And they always had their own room. But there never was space for me.
The story my mother likes to tell of my birth..” I was drunk once in my life, and that is the result.” What a hateful and harmful thing to say about your daughter in front of the first man she has ever brought home to meet her parent. I was an unplanned child, and my life bore that out. I was neglected, abused so many different ways (I never ate lunch at school after 4th grade. I just pawned it off as I was writing plays about my friends) Then when I got home I gorged myself. I never had breakfast, but the others did. I was never asked if I wanted food, and no one checked to make sure I was going to eat lunch. I never questioned the “only eat until you get home” mantra.
Sometimes my mother and I took showers together. We washed ourselves, I don’t think she touched me in the shower, I think she reserved that for the bedroom. We would dry off and then either get ready for bed or the day. It seems like the showering together happened right before bed. Showering alone happened during the day.
There would be times I went to sleep quickly, hoping the night would hurry up so that the day would come and I could leave that bed. Other times her snoring kept me awake, and I remember looking at the far wall, listening to her, just waiting until sleep took me.
Most of the abuse and molestation happened right after getting into bed. Get the urges out of the way, and then go to sleep. When I started masturbating, I kept to the edge of the bed, I was very quiet, I did not allow myself to moan, and at the first orgasm I stopped and then fell asleep. I didn’t want her to know I was touching myself, maybe because I didn’t want her touching me.
It was drilled into me to never talk about home stuff outside of the family. Even inside the family, you just didn’t talk about it. I had no one I could talk to—no one in the family would believe me about what my mother was doing, and no one on the outside would have ever been told, because of the code of silence.
With intimate contact, I shut down. I went to Carlaland, the fictional land where sunshine, rainbows, and clown farts existed, the place in my mind I could retreat, and I just let the world pass me by. I was on auto pilot and standby mode a lot, if I didn’t need to be present for something, then I wasn’t. I learned these avoidance behaviors in dealing with the abuse, and the bullying.
My cousin bullied me mercilessly. She told me to punch her, so I did, and so she hit me back with everything she had. After all, she didn’t start it, and she was just defending herself. She verbally abused me, calling me fat, she taunted me, she made fun of me for being a mama’s girl, she would stop in the hallway abruptly and I would crash into her. She would purposefully tear my paper towel just to see my reaction, it usually felt to her to get the paper towels for everyone at dinner, and she made sure everyone else’s was perfectly pristine, and she would rip mine almost in half, and I would start crying, and no one did anything or even cared, and she did this right in front of everyone. In short she used me to feel better and have power over her hopeless situation. She was being raped regularly by her father, my father had molested her, and we were living so many people crowded into such a small house, my aunt, her husband, my two cousins, me and my mother, everyone knew what was going on, and everyone was a molester maybe with the exception of my aunt, my cousin’s mother. My cousin’s father was a molester, my dad was a molester, and my mother is a molester.
I always hated my cousin because my mother loved her more. That’s why I rationalized sleeping in bed with my mother as a mark of privilege, as price of place, as oh my god my mother actually loves me and loves me more than her.
God the lies I told myself, the lies I still tell myself.
Sleeping in the bed was not a mark of honor, it was against the duty of care, and I never told a teacher or a counselor what was going on. Why? Because I didn’t think about it. Everything was for the family, what was best for the family, and it was made very obvious that the opinions of this fat ass didn’t matter to them, at all.
I thought if I could be nice enough to them, if I could fetch and carry enough, they would love me.
They are users, and they just used me like sh*t. Go get this, pick these up, here have fun
.
Did I get spending money? No. Did I dare spend money I had not cleared with my mother? No.
When another cousin couldn’t make it home and needed money for the plane ticket, the clan came to me, and I asked how much it would be, and I coughed up the $250 or so dollars. I never saw a dime of that back, this happened in college and no one else contributed to the ticket. It was just me alone footing the bill.
I took my first loan in college to help my mother after her radiation. $1500 and I gave it to her, thinking she would pay me back. No, not she didn’t. Then she asked me for money, because it was just setting in my bank account so she thought she could use it better. And I gave it to her. Years later, when the relationship began to sour, and I pointed to this act as me helping, my mother told me I never helped that much, and that I knew I didn’t.
One time I took a carrot and f**ked myself f with it, and the watery remains of my hymen got on the sheets. I had watched a racy-ish baseball movie and women were f**k**g themselves with cucumbers, carrots, handles of hair brushes. I did also insert a hair brush handle and gave it a few thrusts.
By the time high school rolled around, the sexual abuse seemed to subside. The exposure, the sleeping in bed together, and the lack of privacy remained.
When I went away to college, I went back about every other weekend. It never occurred to me to spend money on a motel room because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Because I thought I could just zone out and get through it. I was after all doing my duty as a daughter, by seeing my mother and well, I was bored out of my mind by the time I had been there for at most one hour.
I thought if I loved her, if I showed her love, if I took the abuse, I thought she would love me, but she never will, because she’s a user and an abuser.
To heal, I have to get on with my life. I cannot get on with life by having my abuser in it.
One of the last times I remember eating lunch at school, it was fourth grade, and I had seconds of fish chunks, fried fish chunks. I remember getting off the bus at my grandpas house, we were living there, then, and I ran through the garage and down the hall and hit the bathroom and started puking from one end of the sink to the other, and then finally in the toilet. It was pink puke, and it was gross.
I was at my aunt and uncle’s and we were eating dinner there and they had spinach from a can on the plate, and the spinach tasted gross and I wouldn’t eat it my aunt made me sit up at the table for at least an hour after everyone else was finished eating but I still wouldn’t eat the spinach and she finally let me get down.
When my grandpa was in Enid for his cancer treatment, my mother and my aunt were over there, and my uncle was watching me and my cousin one night, then we stayed at my aunt’s friend’s for a few nights, I guess he was out on the rig. Well I remember I was lying on a palette behind her bed, and her door opened and it was my uncle silhouetted in the light, and she said something like “stay behind the bed” and then maybe something to her father like “not tonight,” or something like that and my uncle left and went to sleep in his bed next door. Who knows, maybe my appearance gave her a brief respite from her sexual abuse. That’s what I believe anyway, I don’t know it for a fact.
My male cousin was always quiet and angry. I don’t know for sure but I bet he was abused as well. He was dishonorably discharged from the navy.
No one ever asked me what I wanted, or did we ever do what I wanted so I learned to subsume my wants and desires and just go along with whatever the majority wanted, or whatever my cousin wanted because she always got what she wanted.
There was no big birthday party for me every year; my friends were not invited over. My birthday dinner was usually spaghetti and meat sauce, and angel food cake. I received re, if any, presents on my birthday, and there was one time my mother and I were at Walmart and she actually asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told her a cheap Sugarland CD would be fine and she threw it in the cart and seemed pretty pleased with herself. This happened in college, I should mention, and I listened to the hell out of that CD because it was something that she got for me.
It’s like the laptop I’m typing this on. In October 2007, she told me to go to Dell.com and get me a laptop for about $1000. I would need a laptop for graduate school. That was something nice she did for me.
The niceties do not outweigh the years of emotional, physical, verbal, and sexual abuse.
When we got a computer, when I got a computer in 1999, I started going into MSN Chatrooms, then I was invited over to a DnD based chat. Well, I was a 15 year old girl, and to protect myself, because I knew it would be easier on me to be a twenty something guy than a fifteen year old girl because I didn’t want the creeps and weirdos messaging me, I created a family of brothers and a cousin. I flirted with women as these men and created a backstory worse than my own. These fictional brothers in the narrative I wrote had a sister, whom their father strangled on Christmas day. The boys then killed their father. I led on so many people; I wanted to feel better about my life so I created an even worse world. Sure, I was found out and or admitted I was lying years later, but it felt good being someone playing a character playing a character. It was more of the Carlaland escapism, where I would pass the time after class in the evenings at home, or after I went to college be on every waking moment I could be. That was how I did it. Chat plus 15 hours plus marching band plus three jobs, and I didn’t have much time to myself. I didn’t want to think, I didn’t want to slow down, to process my childhood or my abuse.
I led people on and lied to people because it was me controlling some part of my life. I told friends from a college club about Sean, and I remember hearing on one road trip, I was snoozing in the backseat, and I came to enough to hear someone ask someone else “kill, f**k, marry—Carla, Carla as sean, or (unintelligible).”
I never had sleepovers, and I never really went to friend’s houses until I was in high school and actually asked to do so. I went over to two houses a lot. Sometimes I would drive my mother’s car to their houses and sometimes they would pick me up.
In 2010, February or march or so, we went to Woodward and my fiancée spoke up to me and said that no wife of his was going to be treated like a fetch and carry servant. So I started to stand up for myself. Get your pop yourself. No, I will not bring you food because my headlight is out. I will not get off my fat ass and get my headlight fixed to bring you food.
Then things exploded, and my mother called me and complained about how I was treating her and then my aunt and my cousin too k the phone and yelled at me that I should be treating my mother better and I ended that phone call in the fetal position on the floor, crying my eyes out. In that same call, after chewing I disagree, my mother demanded a bigger role in the wedding.
You see, what had happened was that I stood up for myself and started being an adult and my mother portrayed herself as the weak and defenseless victim and the whole family turned against me and the calls started but I wouldn’t answer because I would just end up crying but I answered text messages and everyone was like how dare you treat your mother like sh*t and I was like how did I treat her like sh*t.
The fiancé’s folks weighed in and my mother told his mother that she would still have a daughter if it hadn’t been for her pervert son. And his dad weighed in, and portrayed himself as an elder with the church and tried to talk with her but that didn’t work either.
I got a text from my male cousin, the same one I was the only one to foot the bill for for him to come home years before, about that I needed to come and spell my aunt for a while because she was tired of looking after my mother who was in the hospital. I was busy with my job and working on my master’s degree. Jason was like look, I know you’re busy planning a wedding and all but you really to spell my mom at the hospital. In addition, my husband was TAing for a summer course, so we could not make the drive to the hospital because of our commitments. It was June 6th, a rainstorm in my fiancé’s hometown, we were in for his mother’s birthday. I remember taking the phone out on the front porch and crying and screaming KHAN.
My uncle (another uncle) died in March, and my fiancé’ and his family went to the funeral as a sign of respect for me. When the family met, he stayed outside but the other cousins brought in their SOs. At the graveside another aunt whispered that I had to end this between myself and my mother, and he and I were treated like hostile outcasts.
Only three members of my family came to my wedding, and they were not even close members. My mother, aunt, and cousin did not show. When pressed about it years later my mother blamed me for it, saying that I forbid her to show, which I did not, I just told her she wasn’t walking me down the aisle, his father was. She kicked me off the car insurance and didn’t tell me, she stole $700 which we stole back, and after she called my husband a pervert, I wrote a f**k you email and told them all where they could go. I wanted my cousin, the same person who bullied me, as my maid of honor because it was expected, because she expected and demanded that her children would be the flower girl and ring bearer. I said no and my mother supported her decision not mine. It was a wedding they wanted to control, and a wedding we weren’t going to let them control. I thought if they abused me a little bit more it would all be worth it.
And I wish it were that simple, but I kept wanting her. Because there has to be something redeemable in her, right? I didn’t talk to her for six years, and I have seen her three times in two years, and I hope to never see her again, because I don’t need abuse and negativity, and b*tchiness in my life. She does nothing good; everything in contact with her is contaminated.
And…the honeymoon was amazing and we got back and I changed, and I have been going downhill for six years now and I believe it’s because I haven’t looked into the abyss that is the abuse.
My mother came up in May 2010 to try and break us up. We were living in a small one bedroom apartment. It’s lived in, it’s not like pristine, and she walked in and the first thing she said was something to the effect of she would have cleaned the place better. There were cobwebs and she didn’t like them. I got her a pop and we talked for a little bit, with seemingly every other word being an insult to us and how we lived, then she went to her motel room. The next day I went to her motel room for hours and we talked and she was watching her shows as always and I fully believe this was a ploy to break us up. The fiancé was not invited over, and I didn’t text him that I was still over there and he was worried about me.
We drove from my fiancé’s hometown, through our hometown, to the hospital shew as staying in. She needed a ride home and I was ever the obliging daughter. She cornered me in the bathroom of the hospital room and said that I knew that I didn’t really do anything to help her and I told her about the loan and she discounted it. Then we drove her to her home, which was three hours away, and she was in the backseat, in an orange housecoat. And she was always talking about where to turn. Well thanks to the miracle of GPS, and his family buying it for us, we knew where to turn. Then I had to take her into a few gas stations in her housecoat so she could use the bathroom, and I waited in the bathroom there with her. Why? Because I fell for the weakling mother. I was so embarrassed. We then get on the road and she goes quiet and I’m sure she was texting people because we drove up to the house and she assured us my aunt was not there. So I walk her inside and my aunt was in the backroom. Then my cousin and her kid’s show up immediately, so the fiancé drives to a gas station, and I get a call. My mother had left her prescription in the backseat, so he drove back over, walked the scripts up, put them in the mailbox, the cousin was watching through the window blinds, and he drove me home, and we stopped at the chili’s in another town and b*tched and complained. As we were leaving I got a text from my aunt in the city and I just turned off my phone. We got new phone numbers the next day. The family just immediately started their sh*t with the text messaging and I just turned my phone off.
In April, 2010, my fiancé defended his master’s thesis. I told my mother that I would be unavailable on one specific date. And it was on that date that she scheduled oral surgery. I live 150 miles away; I was not going to miss my fiancé’s defense. I was naive and called after the defense to tell her about his passing and I got chewed out by my aunt because my mother fell over a phone book and hurt herself, later revealed to be a broken back. I was expected to take off and drive in to help her, but my cousin who didn’t have a job couldn’t help nor could my aunt. It was a setup to force me to pick her and it failed. I picked my fiancé.
I walked for graduation in May 2010 and my mother did not come because she had just had dentures put in and she was too vain to be seen. I think that was a cover for she didn’t want to go and she was angry that she was not the priority.
I have been in therapy since March 2010 for the family situation. The first therapists were children and family therapists and after filling in ginger bread men with feelings and having my husband being yelled at, my husband was suggesting it wasn’t going to work with my mother and the guy yelled at him, we switched to another therapist. I saw him for five years off and on, mostly on and then switched to my current therapist. I saw a psychiatrist for a little while as well. Never once did I talk about sleeping in the same bed, until very recently, until February 2016, or the sexual abuse. It was all focused on the family blowout; I never thought to talk about the abuse. I wanted to patch it up with my mother, and I see now I can never do that. After what she’s done to me, there can be no reconciliation, only moving forward with life.
May 2015 going there bribed with CC Ancients. He stayed in the car, we talked for little while, she insulted me and pissed me off though I don’t’ remember what she said.
In December 2015, she suggested that I come up because my aunt and cousin would be out of town. So I dropped everything and my husband and I drove up. I walk in, he stayed in the car, and the first words out of her mouth were “did you forget to put on deodorant?” I told her I was on my period and I was bleeding heavily and she was like you should have changed at the gas station. I sit and stayed and took the abuse, for a solid hour, then I walked out crying and we floored it out of town. Well, our engine block dismounted and we met a nice trooper who called a wrecker and we were stranded for three days. We could have walked to my mother’s house, it was a mile away, the whole reason we dropped everything and drove 150 miles, and she offered to drive up but I didn’t want to see her and I was scared they would come up and start sh*t. Then on the day we left we swung by and he came in the house this time and we talked and the day before she had called and talked about douching because of my smell and then that day she was like if she doesn’t shut up just hit her over the head, my husband called her on the carpet and she had the stupefied look and rationalized her decision with well she hits you, she said this to my husband. We left and I was angry and didn’t want to speak with her.
Then in April we had a fight and I drove in by myself to see her, and I showed her wedding photos and she didn’t care and they all said she had to be my priority and I told them that my husband was and I left and then later on after I reinforced that my husband was my priority my mother sicced her sister and niece on me, had then yell at me and told me o never come to the town again, on pain of being beaten up, and then I wanted to know what I had done, and so I asked my mother and confronted her about the abuse and she pleaded OH MY HEALTH, and my number his blocked and she stopped talking to me, my cousin called me at work and asked if I was working and I told her I had time and she was like don’t call your mother again, don see her again, if you come to town I will be notified and I will kick your ass in my mother’s front yard. Stay away from your mother because her health is horrible. Then I called again and my aunt answered the phone after several rings and she was like no you are not going to talk to your mother.
This was after I didn’t drop everything and living in a waiting room when my mom was hospitalized with pneumonia, but I called her damned near every night and showed that I cared, and I was supposed to drop my life and be there for her? Sorry, that was not going to happen.
Then I called my mother a few more times from my husbands phone and railed into her about the abuse and why I didn’t have a bed and how she treated me horribly and she hung up on me or put the phone down and let me rant.
Where are we now?
It’s 2016, my mother is 67 and living in her hometown, living in the same house with her sister, (also across the street from her childhood home) who is 59. The cousin lives with her fiancé and his children, while her children live with her ex-husband and his girlfriend and her kids.
I am 31, I have four degrees, I teach government and history, I am the assistant coordinator to a multi thousand dollar business, my husband is a Doctor, and I do not want for anything.
And I hope through getting my story out there I will help myself finally see that my abuser is not worth it, that she is horrible, and that I do not need my molester in my life.
I still struggle with wanting to pick up the phone and calling her and just seeing how she’s doing. I know I shouldn’t, and I won’t get anything out of it, but I want to so badly that some days I have screamed about it, or hit my head into walls because of these issues.
I also hope that my story will help others who have been the victims of emotional incest, physical, emotional, verbal, or sexual abuse. You are not alone.
The girl lay in bed, waiting. As if on cue, the blankets pulled back and her hulking frame lay down. What would it be tonight? Touching, slowly down the girl’s side, down around her clit? Maybe still fingering, the wrinkled, long nailed fingers running over the outside, then finding their way clumsily within the folds, searching for the clit, the girl stock still then beginning to moan. Of course the girl hated it, but the feeling felt so good, and she felt herself become wetter at the touch. Or maybe those whispered syllables, “Do not tell,” echoing in the child’s ear, that dry tongue and those cracked lips finding hers, then the tongue sliding its way through the girl’s mouth before stopping. Then what? Rubbing vaginas, the girl moaning again.
My name is Carla, and the above is what I went through until the age of 18.
Twice in my life, until I went to college, I had my own room. That arrangement didn’t last very long, and very usually I was sleeping in the same bed as my mother. It was a Queen Size mattress, and she smelled of smoke and piss. She exposed herself to me every night, treating it like no big deal, and we got ready for bed together, and those large breasts and that C-section scar were always on display. I never learned privacy issues, or that watching someone undress was not done, so I watched her and she watched me.
It wasn’t just my mother and me in the small house, but it was also my aunt and uncle, and their two children. The children always had a room of their own. There were times when we didn’t live together, but most times we did. And they always had their own room. But there never was space for me.
The story my mother likes to tell of my birth..” I was drunk once in my life, and that is the result.” What a hateful and harmful thing to say about your daughter in front of the first man she has ever brought home to meet her parent. I was an unplanned child, and my life bore that out. I was neglected, abused so many different ways (I never ate lunch at school after 4th grade. I just pawned it off as I was writing plays about my friends) Then when I got home I gorged myself. I never had breakfast, but the others did. I was never asked if I wanted food, and no one checked to make sure I was going to eat lunch. I never questioned the “only eat until you get home” mantra.
Sometimes my mother and I took showers together. We washed ourselves, I don’t think she touched me in the shower, I think she reserved that for the bedroom. We would dry off and then either get ready for bed or the day. It seems like the showering together happened right before bed. Showering alone happened during the day.
There would be times I went to sleep quickly, hoping the night would hurry up so that the day would come and I could leave that bed. Other times her snoring kept me awake, and I remember looking at the far wall, listening to her, just waiting until sleep took me.
Most of the abuse and molestation happened right after getting into bed. Get the urges out of the way, and then go to sleep. When I started masturbating, I kept to the edge of the bed, I was very quiet, I did not allow myself to moan, and at the first orgasm I stopped and then fell asleep. I didn’t want her to know I was touching myself, maybe because I didn’t want her touching me.
It was drilled into me to never talk about home stuff outside of the family. Even inside the family, you just didn’t talk about it. I had no one I could talk to—no one in the family would believe me about what my mother was doing, and no one on the outside would have ever been told, because of the code of silence.
With intimate contact, I shut down. I went to Carlaland, the fictional land where sunshine, rainbows, and clown farts existed, the place in my mind I could retreat, and I just let the world pass me by. I was on auto pilot and standby mode a lot, if I didn’t need to be present for something, then I wasn’t. I learned these avoidance behaviors in dealing with the abuse, and the bullying.
My cousin bullied me mercilessly. She told me to punch her, so I did, and so she hit me back with everything she had. After all, she didn’t start it, and she was just defending herself. She verbally abused me, calling me fat, she taunted me, she made fun of me for being a mama’s girl, she would stop in the hallway abruptly and I would crash into her. She would purposefully tear my paper towel just to see my reaction, it usually felt to her to get the paper towels for everyone at dinner, and she made sure everyone else’s was perfectly pristine, and she would rip mine almost in half, and I would start crying, and no one did anything or even cared, and she did this right in front of everyone. In short she used me to feel better and have power over her hopeless situation. She was being raped regularly by her father, my father had molested her, and we were living so many people crowded into such a small house, my aunt, her husband, my two cousins, me and my mother, everyone knew what was going on, and everyone was a molester maybe with the exception of my aunt, my cousin’s mother. My cousin’s father was a molester, my dad was a molester, and my mother is a molester.
I always hated my cousin because my mother loved her more. That’s why I rationalized sleeping in bed with my mother as a mark of privilege, as price of place, as oh my god my mother actually loves me and loves me more than her.
God the lies I told myself, the lies I still tell myself.
Sleeping in the bed was not a mark of honor, it was against the duty of care, and I never told a teacher or a counselor what was going on. Why? Because I didn’t think about it. Everything was for the family, what was best for the family, and it was made very obvious that the opinions of this fat ass didn’t matter to them, at all.
I thought if I could be nice enough to them, if I could fetch and carry enough, they would love me.
They are users, and they just used me like sh*t. Go get this, pick these up, here have fun
.
Did I get spending money? No. Did I dare spend money I had not cleared with my mother? No.
When another cousin couldn’t make it home and needed money for the plane ticket, the clan came to me, and I asked how much it would be, and I coughed up the $250 or so dollars. I never saw a dime of that back, this happened in college and no one else contributed to the ticket. It was just me alone footing the bill.
I took my first loan in college to help my mother after her radiation. $1500 and I gave it to her, thinking she would pay me back. No, not she didn’t. Then she asked me for money, because it was just setting in my bank account so she thought she could use it better. And I gave it to her. Years later, when the relationship began to sour, and I pointed to this act as me helping, my mother told me I never helped that much, and that I knew I didn’t.
One time I took a carrot and f**ked myself f with it, and the watery remains of my hymen got on the sheets. I had watched a racy-ish baseball movie and women were f**k**g themselves with cucumbers, carrots, handles of hair brushes. I did also insert a hair brush handle and gave it a few thrusts.
By the time high school rolled around, the sexual abuse seemed to subside. The exposure, the sleeping in bed together, and the lack of privacy remained.
When I went away to college, I went back about every other weekend. It never occurred to me to spend money on a motel room because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Because I thought I could just zone out and get through it. I was after all doing my duty as a daughter, by seeing my mother and well, I was bored out of my mind by the time I had been there for at most one hour.
I thought if I loved her, if I showed her love, if I took the abuse, I thought she would love me, but she never will, because she’s a user and an abuser.
To heal, I have to get on with my life. I cannot get on with life by having my abuser in it.
One of the last times I remember eating lunch at school, it was fourth grade, and I had seconds of fish chunks, fried fish chunks. I remember getting off the bus at my grandpas house, we were living there, then, and I ran through the garage and down the hall and hit the bathroom and started puking from one end of the sink to the other, and then finally in the toilet. It was pink puke, and it was gross.
I was at my aunt and uncle’s and we were eating dinner there and they had spinach from a can on the plate, and the spinach tasted gross and I wouldn’t eat it my aunt made me sit up at the table for at least an hour after everyone else was finished eating but I still wouldn’t eat the spinach and she finally let me get down.
When my grandpa was in Enid for his cancer treatment, my mother and my aunt were over there, and my uncle was watching me and my cousin one night, then we stayed at my aunt’s friend’s for a few nights, I guess he was out on the rig. Well I remember I was lying on a palette behind her bed, and her door opened and it was my uncle silhouetted in the light, and she said something like “stay behind the bed” and then maybe something to her father like “not tonight,” or something like that and my uncle left and went to sleep in his bed next door. Who knows, maybe my appearance gave her a brief respite from her sexual abuse. That’s what I believe anyway, I don’t know it for a fact.
My male cousin was always quiet and angry. I don’t know for sure but I bet he was abused as well. He was dishonorably discharged from the navy.
No one ever asked me what I wanted, or did we ever do what I wanted so I learned to subsume my wants and desires and just go along with whatever the majority wanted, or whatever my cousin wanted because she always got what she wanted.
There was no big birthday party for me every year; my friends were not invited over. My birthday dinner was usually spaghetti and meat sauce, and angel food cake. I received re, if any, presents on my birthday, and there was one time my mother and I were at Walmart and she actually asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told her a cheap Sugarland CD would be fine and she threw it in the cart and seemed pretty pleased with herself. This happened in college, I should mention, and I listened to the hell out of that CD because it was something that she got for me.
It’s like the laptop I’m typing this on. In October 2007, she told me to go to Dell.com and get me a laptop for about $1000. I would need a laptop for graduate school. That was something nice she did for me.
The niceties do not outweigh the years of emotional, physical, verbal, and sexual abuse.
When we got a computer, when I got a computer in 1999, I started going into MSN Chatrooms, then I was invited over to a DnD based chat. Well, I was a 15 year old girl, and to protect myself, because I knew it would be easier on me to be a twenty something guy than a fifteen year old girl because I didn’t want the creeps and weirdos messaging me, I created a family of brothers and a cousin. I flirted with women as these men and created a backstory worse than my own. These fictional brothers in the narrative I wrote had a sister, whom their father strangled on Christmas day. The boys then killed their father. I led on so many people; I wanted to feel better about my life so I created an even worse world. Sure, I was found out and or admitted I was lying years later, but it felt good being someone playing a character playing a character. It was more of the Carlaland escapism, where I would pass the time after class in the evenings at home, or after I went to college be on every waking moment I could be. That was how I did it. Chat plus 15 hours plus marching band plus three jobs, and I didn’t have much time to myself. I didn’t want to think, I didn’t want to slow down, to process my childhood or my abuse.
I led people on and lied to people because it was me controlling some part of my life. I told friends from a college club about Sean, and I remember hearing on one road trip, I was snoozing in the backseat, and I came to enough to hear someone ask someone else “kill, f**k, marry—Carla, Carla as sean, or (unintelligible).”
I never had sleepovers, and I never really went to friend’s houses until I was in high school and actually asked to do so. I went over to two houses a lot. Sometimes I would drive my mother’s car to their houses and sometimes they would pick me up.
In 2010, February or march or so, we went to Woodward and my fiancée spoke up to me and said that no wife of his was going to be treated like a fetch and carry servant. So I started to stand up for myself. Get your pop yourself. No, I will not bring you food because my headlight is out. I will not get off my fat ass and get my headlight fixed to bring you food.
Then things exploded, and my mother called me and complained about how I was treating her and then my aunt and my cousin too k the phone and yelled at me that I should be treating my mother better and I ended that phone call in the fetal position on the floor, crying my eyes out. In that same call, after chewing I disagree, my mother demanded a bigger role in the wedding.
You see, what had happened was that I stood up for myself and started being an adult and my mother portrayed herself as the weak and defenseless victim and the whole family turned against me and the calls started but I wouldn’t answer because I would just end up crying but I answered text messages and everyone was like how dare you treat your mother like sh*t and I was like how did I treat her like sh*t.
The fiancé’s folks weighed in and my mother told his mother that she would still have a daughter if it hadn’t been for her pervert son. And his dad weighed in, and portrayed himself as an elder with the church and tried to talk with her but that didn’t work either.
I got a text from my male cousin, the same one I was the only one to foot the bill for for him to come home years before, about that I needed to come and spell my aunt for a while because she was tired of looking after my mother who was in the hospital. I was busy with my job and working on my master’s degree. Jason was like look, I know you’re busy planning a wedding and all but you really to spell my mom at the hospital. In addition, my husband was TAing for a summer course, so we could not make the drive to the hospital because of our commitments. It was June 6th, a rainstorm in my fiancé’s hometown, we were in for his mother’s birthday. I remember taking the phone out on the front porch and crying and screaming KHAN.
My uncle (another uncle) died in March, and my fiancé’ and his family went to the funeral as a sign of respect for me. When the family met, he stayed outside but the other cousins brought in their SOs. At the graveside another aunt whispered that I had to end this between myself and my mother, and he and I were treated like hostile outcasts.
Only three members of my family came to my wedding, and they were not even close members. My mother, aunt, and cousin did not show. When pressed about it years later my mother blamed me for it, saying that I forbid her to show, which I did not, I just told her she wasn’t walking me down the aisle, his father was. She kicked me off the car insurance and didn’t tell me, she stole $700 which we stole back, and after she called my husband a pervert, I wrote a f**k you email and told them all where they could go. I wanted my cousin, the same person who bullied me, as my maid of honor because it was expected, because she expected and demanded that her children would be the flower girl and ring bearer. I said no and my mother supported her decision not mine. It was a wedding they wanted to control, and a wedding we weren’t going to let them control. I thought if they abused me a little bit more it would all be worth it.
And I wish it were that simple, but I kept wanting her. Because there has to be something redeemable in her, right? I didn’t talk to her for six years, and I have seen her three times in two years, and I hope to never see her again, because I don’t need abuse and negativity, and b*tchiness in my life. She does nothing good; everything in contact with her is contaminated.
And…the honeymoon was amazing and we got back and I changed, and I have been going downhill for six years now and I believe it’s because I haven’t looked into the abyss that is the abuse.
My mother came up in May 2010 to try and break us up. We were living in a small one bedroom apartment. It’s lived in, it’s not like pristine, and she walked in and the first thing she said was something to the effect of she would have cleaned the place better. There were cobwebs and she didn’t like them. I got her a pop and we talked for a little bit, with seemingly every other word being an insult to us and how we lived, then she went to her motel room. The next day I went to her motel room for hours and we talked and she was watching her shows as always and I fully believe this was a ploy to break us up. The fiancé was not invited over, and I didn’t text him that I was still over there and he was worried about me.
We drove from my fiancé’s hometown, through our hometown, to the hospital shew as staying in. She needed a ride home and I was ever the obliging daughter. She cornered me in the bathroom of the hospital room and said that I knew that I didn’t really do anything to help her and I told her about the loan and she discounted it. Then we drove her to her home, which was three hours away, and she was in the backseat, in an orange housecoat. And she was always talking about where to turn. Well thanks to the miracle of GPS, and his family buying it for us, we knew where to turn. Then I had to take her into a few gas stations in her housecoat so she could use the bathroom, and I waited in the bathroom there with her. Why? Because I fell for the weakling mother. I was so embarrassed. We then get on the road and she goes quiet and I’m sure she was texting people because we drove up to the house and she assured us my aunt was not there. So I walk her inside and my aunt was in the backroom. Then my cousin and her kid’s show up immediately, so the fiancé drives to a gas station, and I get a call. My mother had left her prescription in the backseat, so he drove back over, walked the scripts up, put them in the mailbox, the cousin was watching through the window blinds, and he drove me home, and we stopped at the chili’s in another town and b*tched and complained. As we were leaving I got a text from my aunt in the city and I just turned off my phone. We got new phone numbers the next day. The family just immediately started their sh*t with the text messaging and I just turned my phone off.
In April, 2010, my fiancé defended his master’s thesis. I told my mother that I would be unavailable on one specific date. And it was on that date that she scheduled oral surgery. I live 150 miles away; I was not going to miss my fiancé’s defense. I was naive and called after the defense to tell her about his passing and I got chewed out by my aunt because my mother fell over a phone book and hurt herself, later revealed to be a broken back. I was expected to take off and drive in to help her, but my cousin who didn’t have a job couldn’t help nor could my aunt. It was a setup to force me to pick her and it failed. I picked my fiancé.
I walked for graduation in May 2010 and my mother did not come because she had just had dentures put in and she was too vain to be seen. I think that was a cover for she didn’t want to go and she was angry that she was not the priority.
I have been in therapy since March 2010 for the family situation. The first therapists were children and family therapists and after filling in ginger bread men with feelings and having my husband being yelled at, my husband was suggesting it wasn’t going to work with my mother and the guy yelled at him, we switched to another therapist. I saw him for five years off and on, mostly on and then switched to my current therapist. I saw a psychiatrist for a little while as well. Never once did I talk about sleeping in the same bed, until very recently, until February 2016, or the sexual abuse. It was all focused on the family blowout; I never thought to talk about the abuse. I wanted to patch it up with my mother, and I see now I can never do that. After what she’s done to me, there can be no reconciliation, only moving forward with life.
May 2015 going there bribed with CC Ancients. He stayed in the car, we talked for little while, she insulted me and pissed me off though I don’t’ remember what she said.
In December 2015, she suggested that I come up because my aunt and cousin would be out of town. So I dropped everything and my husband and I drove up. I walk in, he stayed in the car, and the first words out of her mouth were “did you forget to put on deodorant?” I told her I was on my period and I was bleeding heavily and she was like you should have changed at the gas station. I sit and stayed and took the abuse, for a solid hour, then I walked out crying and we floored it out of town. Well, our engine block dismounted and we met a nice trooper who called a wrecker and we were stranded for three days. We could have walked to my mother’s house, it was a mile away, the whole reason we dropped everything and drove 150 miles, and she offered to drive up but I didn’t want to see her and I was scared they would come up and start sh*t. Then on the day we left we swung by and he came in the house this time and we talked and the day before she had called and talked about douching because of my smell and then that day she was like if she doesn’t shut up just hit her over the head, my husband called her on the carpet and she had the stupefied look and rationalized her decision with well she hits you, she said this to my husband. We left and I was angry and didn’t want to speak with her.
Then in April we had a fight and I drove in by myself to see her, and I showed her wedding photos and she didn’t care and they all said she had to be my priority and I told them that my husband was and I left and then later on after I reinforced that my husband was my priority my mother sicced her sister and niece on me, had then yell at me and told me o never come to the town again, on pain of being beaten up, and then I wanted to know what I had done, and so I asked my mother and confronted her about the abuse and she pleaded OH MY HEALTH, and my number his blocked and she stopped talking to me, my cousin called me at work and asked if I was working and I told her I had time and she was like don’t call your mother again, don see her again, if you come to town I will be notified and I will kick your ass in my mother’s front yard. Stay away from your mother because her health is horrible. Then I called again and my aunt answered the phone after several rings and she was like no you are not going to talk to your mother.
This was after I didn’t drop everything and living in a waiting room when my mom was hospitalized with pneumonia, but I called her damned near every night and showed that I cared, and I was supposed to drop my life and be there for her? Sorry, that was not going to happen.
Then I called my mother a few more times from my husbands phone and railed into her about the abuse and why I didn’t have a bed and how she treated me horribly and she hung up on me or put the phone down and let me rant.
Where are we now?
It’s 2016, my mother is 67 and living in her hometown, living in the same house with her sister, (also across the street from her childhood home) who is 59. The cousin lives with her fiancé and his children, while her children live with her ex-husband and his girlfriend and her kids.
I am 31, I have four degrees, I teach government and history, I am the assistant coordinator to a multi thousand dollar business, my husband is a Doctor, and I do not want for anything.
And I hope through getting my story out there I will help myself finally see that my abuser is not worth it, that she is horrible, and that I do not need my molester in my life.
I still struggle with wanting to pick up the phone and calling her and just seeing how she’s doing. I know I shouldn’t, and I won’t get anything out of it, but I want to so badly that some days I have screamed about it, or hit my head into walls because of these issues.
I also hope that my story will help others who have been the victims of emotional incest, physical, emotional, verbal, or sexual abuse. You are not alone.