The theme of today’s meeting was change. Getting sober puts you through massive changes, and in order to stay sober you have to continue growing, so you’re constantly in a process of change. It was a great meeting with a lot of interesting shares. As I was listening, it suddenly occurred to me that during the long years I spent years I spent in a very physically and psychologically abusive relationship, staying drunk didn’t drown my sorrows in the way people think--that you forget, the pain I felt was acute, but alcohol was the only tool I had for coping. And as long as I was drinking, I couldn’t change. I couldn’t ask myself, how do I, Sonia, feel about being treated this way? And what can I, Sonia do about it? Do I want to be treated like shit? No. Well what can I do about it?
I shared about this thought in the meeting. Afterwards, two men came up to me to talk about my share, and one suggested that I do my entire 4th Step on men. It had occurred to me recently, that the in 4th Steps I’ve done so far, I’ve left out men in my resentments list, and that it would me necessary to deal with those resentments when I get to my next 4th. I’m going to follow the man’s suggestion to make my next 4th entirely on men, though I’ll include my mother. When I was married, I constantly made the freudian slips of saying “mon mari,” when I meant to say “ma mère,” and “ma mère,” when I meant to say “mon mari.” For some reason, I mixed my mother and my husband up easily when I was speaking French. If my husband had been exactly the same man, but we’d been in an English speaking environment, it would have taken years to figure out the connection between my husband and my mother. Anyway, you can see why I’m including her in my list of resentments against men. It’s not a purpose of this blog to explain the 12 Steps, but a brief explanation of the 4th will help here for those who aren’t familiar with the Steps. The 4th step is likened to a shop taking annual inventory. You go through the goods and see what should be kept, and what should be pitched. I like to think of it as a gigantic spring cleaning. Listing your resentments towards individuals, groups, and institutions, etc. and going through those resentments with your sponsor, helps you let go of them. Letting go of them is essential, since resentments are the main thing that lead an alcoholic back to drinking. That’s how I understand it at this point anyway. It’s a major healing process, and an emotional one at that. Going through resentments intellectually, on own, and even in therapy, hasn't helped much.
During the chat with the two men, I mentioned for years that I thought I had a healthy level of self-esteem, even a high level of self-esteem, but that it was based purely on my photography, writing, and other achievements. It wasn’t until I got out of my marriage and was going through counseling at a center for battered women, that it dawned on me that I had little or no sense of self-esteem, based on who I am, just being me, and not on what I do. At the center, I took a psychological test for self-esteem, and “failed” it with flying colors--I’m a walking, breathing, door mat. I remember my father’s surprise when I mentioned a bit about my marriage to him, he couldn’t believe that I, who had always been fiercely independent, and very rebellious, could have ended up so obedient. I'll be exploring how that happened in upcoming posts.
What I need to do now, is what I’ve been avoiding doing since I began this blog. While I’ve been avoiding writing about the abuse I went through as a child, I’ve been feeling like it’s imperative for me to do it, for myself. This is what I wrote about a week ago that gave me an emotional hangover--a bad migraine: one of the people who was abusive to me was Peter, and in part I’ve been afraid to write about the way he treated me because he has changed dramatically, much more than ordinary people do. He generally handles discussions, disagreements, and arguments quite maturely. And because aside from employees of the French government, such as my psychiatrist, psychologist, and payee, and from my sponsor and other members of my alcohol support group, he’s the only person who’s really fighting to help me today, who’s really ready to be there for me, who takes care of me. He respects how hard I’ve tried to work over the years, and how gets how much I’ve struggled with bipolar disorder, and for my long fight with alcohol, which he has really searched to understand.. He wants me to move to Spain because he would like to be able to help more when I’m not doing well. He flies me over twice a year, sets out breakfast, and my lunch which he’s prepared, cooks dinner, and loves to take me out clothes shopping....Staying with him is like staying in a 5 star hotel. So I feel like a traitor in speaking about the past, but the problem is that it continues to be the present for me--I can see that in my relationship patterns. I’ve been reliving repetitive, destructive patterns, that I really need, and want, to break free of.
When I was about seven or eight, Peter started pinning me down and beating on my breast buds, which was excruciatingly painful. I was to small to fight back or get away, so I told myself I’d be stronger, I’d win, by not crying, not showing the pain. As I got a bit older, that continued and he began to taunt me that my younger sister would get her period first, would have bigger breasts than I, and also that she was cut out for motherhood, whereas I was not. My sister and I remember my mother joining in on the taunts about my breasts and motherhood. If she didn’t also remember, I’d have a hard time beleiving it was really true. Now some people might see this as being less serious than incest, since it was my breasts rather than my genitals which were mauled, because the aggressor was a sibling rather than an adult, and because the abuse was as much or more psychological than physical. Interestingly, in studies of battered women, the relationships start with a pattern of the man psychologically abusing the women, and belittling is one of the common forms of abuse. A man can start with a woman who has self-esteem, lower it and lower it, rob her of it, until she reaches a point where she doesn’t feel she deserves any better. The results of the psychological abuse are often, if not generally, more destructive than the physical abuse, unless the physical abuse becomes life threatening. The belittling of my femininity has made it difficult for me to asume.
I firmly believe that what Peter put me through, put me in a position to be vulnerable to predatorial men. It contributed to my not to be able to say “No!” Even when I was shouting it loudly inside of myself. It made me not be able to stand up for myself when my ex-husband had been putting off having children until the point where it would soon be too late. I dress up in feminine clothes now, but I feel like I’m in disguise. Even my ex-husband, who knew me and got me better than anyone else has, would be shocked to see me disguised thus. Shortly before I left him, I changed my hair color, bought sweat pants with a feminine cut, and started wearing nail polish. He was worried that I was going through an identity crisis, which I was. Peter’s abuse with my was definitely incestuous, although we never had sexual relations. While he denigrated my femininity and glorified my sister’s, he abused her sexually. While the ways he abused us were different, the results are remarkably similar from what I can see. Though she will be telling her own story, in her own time and place. When you shut up about incest, it propagates like an untreated cancer, and your chances of recovery are unpredictable.
I was eleven or twelve when it became clear that something was disturbing my sister, and she was unwilling to talk about what it was, my mother who was to go on to become a therapist, instructed me to have my sister over to my room for therapy sessions. I was supposed to get her to reveal the secret that was troubling her. I felt bad because I couldn’t get my sister to talk, and I had no clue as to how. My mother must’ve put two and two together, but gone into massive denial--otherwise why ask a child to play therapist rather than taking your child to a real therapist? She didn’t want to know. While writing this paragraph, I have repeatedly mistyped me and my. I’ve been writing me instead of my, (and I think writing my instead of me?) for at least the past thirty years. I have to be constantly vigilant to correct the mistake. I wonder if it has something to do with my sister, after all this paragraph deals with her.
When I was thirteen, I went into a major depression overnight. One day I was a “happy” kid, and the next day, I couldn’t stop crying, I got tinnitus which is a permanent and constant source of discomfort, and I started getting severe migraines on a daily basis. The treatment available for migraines was primitive at the time: caffeine pills and high doses of aspirin. By the end of the year, I had an ulcer, perhaps due at least in part to all the aspirin I was taking. I was required to attend school but usually the teachers took one look at me and sent me to the nurse’s office. I saw a parade of neurologists, ear doctors, and other specialists. At the end of a the year, I went to see my pediatrician with my mother. They had a long discussion in my pediatrician’s office behind a closed door. Then my pediatrician came out and announced to me that the cause of my migraines was my guilt over having known about my brother’s incestuous relationship with my (me/my, again) sister and not having told. I was outraged because I had learned of the incest through my mother, and I was convinced that my migraines were my own problem--not somebody else’s. Then my pediatrician told me she couldn’t treat me any more. I told myself that I wouldn’t let un-based guilt get to me, but it did. Ever since, people have pointed out that I apologize for things over which I have no control, or had nothing to do with. Right down to the weather! Peter who was fifteen at the time, was kicked out and left to fend for himself, which I thought was a poor solution and terribly unfair. I found myself trying to help my sister however I could. For example, when she was having self-image problems, I convinced my mother to enroll her in a modelling school and agency. Which probably wasn't the best solution--I was too young to have her well-being placed on my shoulders in the way it was.
The reason I was blamed was that when I was told of the incest, I was asked what I knew of it. What I told them was that when I was six or seven, Peter invited Ingrid and I over to his room to play a game: we were going to make a porn film and he was going to be the director and we were to be the stars. Uncomfortable with the idea, I left, but Ingrid stayed. She’s a year and a half younger than I am, so would have had that much less of an idea of what a porn film was than I did. When I was twenty-eight and back home for a visit, at dinner, my father brought up how it had been my fault. I was amazed that they hadn’t dropped the charges after all these years.
When I was about forty-two, I ran across a bit of information in the press, which said that in the US in the 60’s, all of the porn came from Sweden. Immediately I thought of that game, and the fact that Peter must have been introduced to porn by an adult, and probably by an adult who had abused him. Quickly I deduced the family friend who was the most likely suspect, and called Peter to ask him if that man had abused him, he confirmed the abuse with some reluctance, which I can understand, since I still have my fond childhood memories of him. When I called my mother and told her, she said that when we were children the man had been accused of pedophilia, but that everyone had told each other that pedophiles don’t strike in middle class families, they strike in the working class--that there kids were safe even if he was a pedophile. They’d asked Peter if he’d been abused, and he denied it. When the man had to go to court, my father, a lawyer, successfully defended him, apparently convinced by my brother’s denial. When I told my father the truth, he was horrified. But maybe they still blame me, who knows? It’s still easier. My mother still insists regularly that she would have prevented my marriage if only she had known, but she did know--I’d called her asking for help and telling her in detail. Only to be met with the same denial that we were met with as children.
The thing is that when Peter was kicked out of the house, I felt strongly that it was neither the best nor a just solution. Even though I didn’t know yet that he too was a victim, I knew that while at the time all of this story began he was too young to have any idea of all the potential consequences of his acts, he was tried as an adult. He hadn’t been a good parent, but he had certainly tried, at a time when my parents were absent. The abuse didn’t just stem from the abuse he’d undergone, but also from our parent’s emotional negligence.
When we were young, my father had to put in long hours at the firm, and my mother abandoned ship when I was eleven or twelve. Years later, she said that at the time she’d just wanted to get into a car and drive as far away as she could. What she did instead was get a job with a long commute, and spend her hours at home in the garden. (Not to say that she was present before that--my sister and I remember her as being very distant, not touching us, and the terrible loneliness we felt) Peter, as the eldest, did his best to step in and take on my mom’s role. I don’t say my “parent’s roles,” because my while my dad was around, it never occurred to us to go to him for help. Her voice and opinions drowned out his. He doesn’t have the dominant, controlling, and bullying personality that she’s got. (Oh, now she’s sounding like my ex-husband!) We kept telling Peter that we didn’t need two mom’s, and telling her that we didn’t need two moms. He of course wasn’t in a position to take on her role, so that may explain why he was very bossy and often violent. The bigger he got, the scarier he got. Ingrid, Kristian and I each went individually to our mother, pleading with her to intervene, not knowing that the other had gone, only to be told that we were “ganging up on him to get him in trouble.” We were met with a wall of denial. Although I tried my best to be a model student, I made sure to get into trouble once a day, knowing I would be kept after school, miss the school bus home, and have to spend a lot more time getting home by public transportation. It was a way of staying safe.
I often tell myself, “Lot’s of people have rough childhoods. Was that all that happened?” No it wasn’t, but it was enough for me. It’s been twelve years now since I left my ex, and I’m not ready to be with someone else. I need more therapy to work through childhood trauma and the abuse in my marriage. I also need more sobriety--I learn as much through the program as through therapy--the two serve sometimes different but always complimentary goals.
I shared about this thought in the meeting. Afterwards, two men came up to me to talk about my share, and one suggested that I do my entire 4th Step on men. It had occurred to me recently, that the in 4th Steps I’ve done so far, I’ve left out men in my resentments list, and that it would me necessary to deal with those resentments when I get to my next 4th. I’m going to follow the man’s suggestion to make my next 4th entirely on men, though I’ll include my mother. When I was married, I constantly made the freudian slips of saying “mon mari,” when I meant to say “ma mère,” and “ma mère,” when I meant to say “mon mari.” For some reason, I mixed my mother and my husband up easily when I was speaking French. If my husband had been exactly the same man, but we’d been in an English speaking environment, it would have taken years to figure out the connection between my husband and my mother. Anyway, you can see why I’m including her in my list of resentments against men. It’s not a purpose of this blog to explain the 12 Steps, but a brief explanation of the 4th will help here for those who aren’t familiar with the Steps. The 4th step is likened to a shop taking annual inventory. You go through the goods and see what should be kept, and what should be pitched. I like to think of it as a gigantic spring cleaning. Listing your resentments towards individuals, groups, and institutions, etc. and going through those resentments with your sponsor, helps you let go of them. Letting go of them is essential, since resentments are the main thing that lead an alcoholic back to drinking. That’s how I understand it at this point anyway. It’s a major healing process, and an emotional one at that. Going through resentments intellectually, on own, and even in therapy, hasn't helped much.
During the chat with the two men, I mentioned for years that I thought I had a healthy level of self-esteem, even a high level of self-esteem, but that it was based purely on my photography, writing, and other achievements. It wasn’t until I got out of my marriage and was going through counseling at a center for battered women, that it dawned on me that I had little or no sense of self-esteem, based on who I am, just being me, and not on what I do. At the center, I took a psychological test for self-esteem, and “failed” it with flying colors--I’m a walking, breathing, door mat. I remember my father’s surprise when I mentioned a bit about my marriage to him, he couldn’t believe that I, who had always been fiercely independent, and very rebellious, could have ended up so obedient. I'll be exploring how that happened in upcoming posts.
What I need to do now, is what I’ve been avoiding doing since I began this blog. While I’ve been avoiding writing about the abuse I went through as a child, I’ve been feeling like it’s imperative for me to do it, for myself. This is what I wrote about a week ago that gave me an emotional hangover--a bad migraine: one of the people who was abusive to me was Peter, and in part I’ve been afraid to write about the way he treated me because he has changed dramatically, much more than ordinary people do. He generally handles discussions, disagreements, and arguments quite maturely. And because aside from employees of the French government, such as my psychiatrist, psychologist, and payee, and from my sponsor and other members of my alcohol support group, he’s the only person who’s really fighting to help me today, who’s really ready to be there for me, who takes care of me. He respects how hard I’ve tried to work over the years, and how gets how much I’ve struggled with bipolar disorder, and for my long fight with alcohol, which he has really searched to understand.. He wants me to move to Spain because he would like to be able to help more when I’m not doing well. He flies me over twice a year, sets out breakfast, and my lunch which he’s prepared, cooks dinner, and loves to take me out clothes shopping....Staying with him is like staying in a 5 star hotel. So I feel like a traitor in speaking about the past, but the problem is that it continues to be the present for me--I can see that in my relationship patterns. I’ve been reliving repetitive, destructive patterns, that I really need, and want, to break free of.
When I was about seven or eight, Peter started pinning me down and beating on my breast buds, which was excruciatingly painful. I was to small to fight back or get away, so I told myself I’d be stronger, I’d win, by not crying, not showing the pain. As I got a bit older, that continued and he began to taunt me that my younger sister would get her period first, would have bigger breasts than I, and also that she was cut out for motherhood, whereas I was not. My sister and I remember my mother joining in on the taunts about my breasts and motherhood. If she didn’t also remember, I’d have a hard time beleiving it was really true. Now some people might see this as being less serious than incest, since it was my breasts rather than my genitals which were mauled, because the aggressor was a sibling rather than an adult, and because the abuse was as much or more psychological than physical. Interestingly, in studies of battered women, the relationships start with a pattern of the man psychologically abusing the women, and belittling is one of the common forms of abuse. A man can start with a woman who has self-esteem, lower it and lower it, rob her of it, until she reaches a point where she doesn’t feel she deserves any better. The results of the psychological abuse are often, if not generally, more destructive than the physical abuse, unless the physical abuse becomes life threatening. The belittling of my femininity has made it difficult for me to asume.
I firmly believe that what Peter put me through, put me in a position to be vulnerable to predatorial men. It contributed to my not to be able to say “No!” Even when I was shouting it loudly inside of myself. It made me not be able to stand up for myself when my ex-husband had been putting off having children until the point where it would soon be too late. I dress up in feminine clothes now, but I feel like I’m in disguise. Even my ex-husband, who knew me and got me better than anyone else has, would be shocked to see me disguised thus. Shortly before I left him, I changed my hair color, bought sweat pants with a feminine cut, and started wearing nail polish. He was worried that I was going through an identity crisis, which I was. Peter’s abuse with my was definitely incestuous, although we never had sexual relations. While he denigrated my femininity and glorified my sister’s, he abused her sexually. While the ways he abused us were different, the results are remarkably similar from what I can see. Though she will be telling her own story, in her own time and place. When you shut up about incest, it propagates like an untreated cancer, and your chances of recovery are unpredictable.
I was eleven or twelve when it became clear that something was disturbing my sister, and she was unwilling to talk about what it was, my mother who was to go on to become a therapist, instructed me to have my sister over to my room for therapy sessions. I was supposed to get her to reveal the secret that was troubling her. I felt bad because I couldn’t get my sister to talk, and I had no clue as to how. My mother must’ve put two and two together, but gone into massive denial--otherwise why ask a child to play therapist rather than taking your child to a real therapist? She didn’t want to know. While writing this paragraph, I have repeatedly mistyped me and my. I’ve been writing me instead of my, (and I think writing my instead of me?) for at least the past thirty years. I have to be constantly vigilant to correct the mistake. I wonder if it has something to do with my sister, after all this paragraph deals with her.
When I was thirteen, I went into a major depression overnight. One day I was a “happy” kid, and the next day, I couldn’t stop crying, I got tinnitus which is a permanent and constant source of discomfort, and I started getting severe migraines on a daily basis. The treatment available for migraines was primitive at the time: caffeine pills and high doses of aspirin. By the end of the year, I had an ulcer, perhaps due at least in part to all the aspirin I was taking. I was required to attend school but usually the teachers took one look at me and sent me to the nurse’s office. I saw a parade of neurologists, ear doctors, and other specialists. At the end of a the year, I went to see my pediatrician with my mother. They had a long discussion in my pediatrician’s office behind a closed door. Then my pediatrician came out and announced to me that the cause of my migraines was my guilt over having known about my brother’s incestuous relationship with my (me/my, again) sister and not having told. I was outraged because I had learned of the incest through my mother, and I was convinced that my migraines were my own problem--not somebody else’s. Then my pediatrician told me she couldn’t treat me any more. I told myself that I wouldn’t let un-based guilt get to me, but it did. Ever since, people have pointed out that I apologize for things over which I have no control, or had nothing to do with. Right down to the weather! Peter who was fifteen at the time, was kicked out and left to fend for himself, which I thought was a poor solution and terribly unfair. I found myself trying to help my sister however I could. For example, when she was having self-image problems, I convinced my mother to enroll her in a modelling school and agency. Which probably wasn't the best solution--I was too young to have her well-being placed on my shoulders in the way it was.
The reason I was blamed was that when I was told of the incest, I was asked what I knew of it. What I told them was that when I was six or seven, Peter invited Ingrid and I over to his room to play a game: we were going to make a porn film and he was going to be the director and we were to be the stars. Uncomfortable with the idea, I left, but Ingrid stayed. She’s a year and a half younger than I am, so would have had that much less of an idea of what a porn film was than I did. When I was twenty-eight and back home for a visit, at dinner, my father brought up how it had been my fault. I was amazed that they hadn’t dropped the charges after all these years.
When I was about forty-two, I ran across a bit of information in the press, which said that in the US in the 60’s, all of the porn came from Sweden. Immediately I thought of that game, and the fact that Peter must have been introduced to porn by an adult, and probably by an adult who had abused him. Quickly I deduced the family friend who was the most likely suspect, and called Peter to ask him if that man had abused him, he confirmed the abuse with some reluctance, which I can understand, since I still have my fond childhood memories of him. When I called my mother and told her, she said that when we were children the man had been accused of pedophilia, but that everyone had told each other that pedophiles don’t strike in middle class families, they strike in the working class--that there kids were safe even if he was a pedophile. They’d asked Peter if he’d been abused, and he denied it. When the man had to go to court, my father, a lawyer, successfully defended him, apparently convinced by my brother’s denial. When I told my father the truth, he was horrified. But maybe they still blame me, who knows? It’s still easier. My mother still insists regularly that she would have prevented my marriage if only she had known, but she did know--I’d called her asking for help and telling her in detail. Only to be met with the same denial that we were met with as children.
The thing is that when Peter was kicked out of the house, I felt strongly that it was neither the best nor a just solution. Even though I didn’t know yet that he too was a victim, I knew that while at the time all of this story began he was too young to have any idea of all the potential consequences of his acts, he was tried as an adult. He hadn’t been a good parent, but he had certainly tried, at a time when my parents were absent. The abuse didn’t just stem from the abuse he’d undergone, but also from our parent’s emotional negligence.
When we were young, my father had to put in long hours at the firm, and my mother abandoned ship when I was eleven or twelve. Years later, she said that at the time she’d just wanted to get into a car and drive as far away as she could. What she did instead was get a job with a long commute, and spend her hours at home in the garden. (Not to say that she was present before that--my sister and I remember her as being very distant, not touching us, and the terrible loneliness we felt) Peter, as the eldest, did his best to step in and take on my mom’s role. I don’t say my “parent’s roles,” because my while my dad was around, it never occurred to us to go to him for help. Her voice and opinions drowned out his. He doesn’t have the dominant, controlling, and bullying personality that she’s got. (Oh, now she’s sounding like my ex-husband!) We kept telling Peter that we didn’t need two mom’s, and telling her that we didn’t need two moms. He of course wasn’t in a position to take on her role, so that may explain why he was very bossy and often violent. The bigger he got, the scarier he got. Ingrid, Kristian and I each went individually to our mother, pleading with her to intervene, not knowing that the other had gone, only to be told that we were “ganging up on him to get him in trouble.” We were met with a wall of denial. Although I tried my best to be a model student, I made sure to get into trouble once a day, knowing I would be kept after school, miss the school bus home, and have to spend a lot more time getting home by public transportation. It was a way of staying safe.
I often tell myself, “Lot’s of people have rough childhoods. Was that all that happened?” No it wasn’t, but it was enough for me. It’s been twelve years now since I left my ex, and I’m not ready to be with someone else. I need more therapy to work through childhood trauma and the abuse in my marriage. I also need more sobriety--I learn as much through the program as through therapy--the two serve sometimes different but always complimentary goals.
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