I didn't want to abandon this blog - I actually anticipated using it quite a lot, and for a very long time, as a sort of therapeutic tool. But, my life has changed tremendously, in ways that I intend on eventually elaborating on, plus I've been increasingly busy as my baby grew into a toddler. I am also opening another blog about just my regular life and opinions, where I will not speak so openly and in such great detail about having experienced child abuse (but will still brush up on it occasionally as it is relevant), so that more people would feel comfortable reading it.
For starters, I have been back in touch with my mom since last June, about a week after my last post on this blog. She left me a voicemail saying that she was moving back to our country, and I just bit the bullet and decided to contact her. I had no idea where she was going within that country, who she'd stay with, or if I'd ever be able to contact her again. I loved her, she'll always be my mother, so I didn't want to risk completely losing even the possibility of a relationship with her. And she did end up moving to our country for about half of a year, until she couldn't take living there anymore, for reasons that deserve their own post.
In the beginning, I was very apprehensive about any sort of relationship with her, but so far, she has been relatively receptive to any of my boundaries and it really does feel like she has learned a thing or two from her life and especially her recent experiences. It's a work in progress, but it's functional. She seems to be figuring out who she actually is as a person outside of just being the brainwashed Eastern European wife of a dysfunctional, mean alcoholic pervert. By the way, in one month, it will have been a year since my dad died. I still don't really know how to feel about all of it.
Additionally, I had to leave my church community of 10 years over long-term harassment that was never addressed by the parish authorities, and was in fact being promoted by them in secret. This happened about a month ago, but the months leading up to this moment were filled with targeted bullying of myself and my family, which caused me to become incredibly depressed and generally avoidant of social situations. The reasons for this are incredibly complicated and have a lot to do with my poor enforcement of boundaries, my tendency to jump very quickly into relationships with people, and the fact that I was an oddball among these people due to some of my lifestyle decisions and personal opinions (ones that had absolutely nothing to do with our faith).
I've been grappling with a lot of feelings related to the church issue, namely that a lot of those relationships were not what I thought they were. For months and even years in some cases, I ignored my gut instinct about some of these people. There was a discomfort that I intentionally stomped down. I was a vulnerable young woman who was desperate for a "found family" and for acceptance, and I feel like I was willing to walk into situations with glaring red flags in order to get this, years after I grew aware of the fact that I had a dysfunctional family and gravitate towards abusive situations. How could this be? It made me wonder - how much do I have left to work on? As I sat here writing posts about how much I've grown as a person and how much I've learned from being a victim of abuse, I was unknowingly still making the same mistakes that I was making at 16 years old too.
And this is awkward to say on a blog about having been a victim of child abuse - but I no longer feel a need to live 24/7 in the world of being a victim of child abuse. I obviously still think about it a lot. I plan to continue writing about it, but probably more sparingly than it was back when I posted regularly. Through therapy, my dad's death, and my focus naturally shifting to creating my own healthy family, I feel like I'm actually healing past it in a truly meaningful way. I don't think these things ever really go away, but I did remark to my mom the other day that there are more days where I don't have that panicky tightness in my chest, than there are days where I do have it. I used to think the panicky tightness in my chest was just the default setting for how human beings feel when I was young and lived with my parents.
I ended up getting formally diagnosed with PTSD, ADHD, and BPD. I have lost the vast majority of my pregnancy weight. I really want to start learning Spanish this year. I have gotten a bit into writing pen pals from other countries. And I also would like to have another child in the next year or two. Life with a toddler, having to travel two hours one way to a new church every weekend, rebuilding a relationship with my mom, and getting really settled into a relatively stable family life take up much of my time as well. And honestly, I'm very glad for it. The future is looking bright, and I feel like my abusive childhood is becoming more of a distant memory. Still one that requires analysis and talking about, but not to an obsessive degree.
I intend on making a post about reconciling with my mom, some of the difficult conversations we've had since then, some of her personal growth, some of my struggles with enforcing boundaries, my feelings about my dad's death, and so on... one by one, slowly, over time. Bye for now!
No comments:
Post a Comment