10/15

I heard something today that shocked me - an old friend and I were visiting and during our 1-2 hour conversation she brought up her mom. She said her mom was tallking about my family and said "Becky's sister(s) could do no wrong but Becky could do no right. Nothing she did was ever good enough. She couldn't even breath right."

I've talked about it before but,as a recap,  spent my entire childhood and most of my adult years being told how fat, stupid and ugly I was. Several (many, many) times I was told "you're in the way", "we'd be better off if you were dead", "no one wants you here", "you're useless", "you;re a fat gorilla" - I was the brunt of a lot of anger, abuse and venom and  my family had me thoroughly convinced I deserved every single horrible thing my parents, my sisters and my brother in law said and did to me. It's taken me YEARS to get to the point where I feel confident enough to not care about those people any longer but I have to say - it's a relief to hear that an outsider saw what was going on - it wasn't in my imagination.

Only two other people have acknowledged the constant abuse, one being an old friend of one of my sisters who was giving me a ride home after my car had broken down. On the way home, out of the blue, she stopped her car and said "I've always wanted to tell you this - out of everyone in your family you had it the hardest. They hated you.  R (sister) thought she had it so tough but you had it much tougher." The 3rd comment came from a woman who was a very close friend of my mom. We had to stay with this woman once in a while when my dad was drinking. I can't repeat exactly what she said here but it took me by surprise and helped me to understand that I was being abused.

This is probably something I shouldn't blog about but if you've ever lived with abuse or with a family  who treats you like a punching bag or mistreats you for their own entertainment or if your family makes no bones about simply hating you because you're alive  - you'll understand how significant it is to have the situation acknowledged by an outsider. For years I tried to figure out how to get those people to like me or to just be nice to me and I spent years spinning in the wind, depressed and angry because they couldn't be botherd to simply extend an ounce of familial grace but now I don't care. I really don't care. I don't even think of them often. Since my mother's death, the sisters have been happy to move on and leave me behind and I'm more than happy to do the same. Being left behind used to be the worst thing in the world to me but I don't have to worry about being constantly criticized, ostracized and caught up in their fucked up, venomous personalities. They can't physically, mentally or emotionally touch me anymore.

It is however a huge relief to have the shit I went thru everyday acknowledged by people who were there.