Why Do We Survive?

I am about to go to bed and I thought that I would write what was on my mind.  I keep wondering why we survive.  I have had some very bad things happen to me in my life.  I suffered severe neglect and was a victim of terrible torture at the hands of my step-father.  I have always taken it with a grain of salt as an adult, just passing it off as,"what happens, happens. That which does not kill us makes us stronger."  I have always believed in that saying and have quoted it many times as an adult.  The problem is what really is the source or beginning of my C-PTSD really is about surviving being smothered.  I had it happen to me more than once, two people were responsible for it.  I know that I survived incest from these same two people also.  But why now? Why is it so bothersome to me today?  It is so on my mind that I have had to increase the medicine I usually take because I am having such a tough time getting through the afternoons. I cannot go to sleep without it and I am going to sleep before it gets dark because I am so afraid.  I am back to sleeping in the closet where it feels safe.

Do you think that just because I was one of those children that didn't die before the age of five, that I am meant to do something?  I know lots of children don't make it through to adulthood, for Christ's sake I am not sure how we make through childhood.  The funny thing is we do.  Why?  What could saying what I had suffered from now make a difference in today's society or world. And for whom? 

I am troubled by this because it seems I am not the only one that knows.  I think that this troubles me even more. I am bothered that we fight so to live to be treated so terribly by our family and friends.  I know that my mother talks to much but I really did not feel that this would be something that would end up being common knowledge. I feel strangely odd and I don't like knowing that the people that had been close to me in my life know that this happened to me because it has been extremely traumatizing my entire life.  I had to have survived for some reason, it can't just be happenstance, can it?

I cannot imagine that we come all of this way to be worried about our weight, worried about what other people think about us and all we are meant to be concentrating on is what makes us happy.  I know that the advice is to put things down and try to live your life.  The thing is I have been living my life, I just have never shared my darkest fears before.  So up to recently I have been rather silent on this accord.  But the more it is pushed upon me to put everything down, the more my mind relates back to these very awful incidents.  I walked with death and I never knew how to explain to anyone what happened to me.  I am still not sure how to explain an "out of body" experience that I has as a kid. I was afraid that if I did talk abou it that I would be beaten and worse.  Even though I never spoke on these accounts, at least that is my recollection, I was still called the spawn of Satan and told I was full of demons the entire time I grew-up and on into being an adult.  This in itself was very taxing on my own psyche, let alone it is not something that you ever share with anyone.

The uncomfortable feeling I am having these days is that I feel my family knows of these very disturbing times. Like they are privy to me being suffocated. The more I think about it, it would make sense because I was a very small girl.  I do remember lots of yelling and screaming.  I remember not wanting to talk anymore about anything and I remember my father leaving, then my brother leaving, then my older sister leaving, none of them ever returned.  I was left with my mother, the cult whore, my step-father, the nanny S&M bastard, my two younger "perfect" siblings and that was it.  Basically I knew no one anymore.  My entire life in a very short time was completely replaced by new human beings that hated me.  I felt a lot like Cinderella, in fact, I was made to do all of the things that you would do or would be expected of that sort of position in the family.  You are lower than the dogs and you are an embarrassment that they seem to have to explain.

I don't speak on my mother being anyone I readily knew because I really don't know her at all.  I, of course know of her in the family dynamics but as far as a relationship or close family bond, that never did happen for me.  At the same time they replaced old friends with no friends, changed my school and moved me to a new neighborhood in San Francisco.  I would say that this was all disorientating but truthfully it was not.  I was more disturbed by being suffocated by a plastic bag and my brothers hands and  I was really afraid that it would happen again. In fact when I was sixteen my brother moved home for a short amount of time.  During which he held a gun to my head and played Russian roulette with live ammunition. This was really terrifying stuff. I ended up with no friends that I knew and there were no children in the neighborhood that we moved too.  All I know is that now I think of my father and he puts more fear in my heart than my brother.  It seems that this wanting to kill someone runs in the family.  I must say I don't feel very related to that side of them family at all.  In fact I never really have felt like my Dad is meant to be my Dad.  It doesn't help that every time we visited my Grandparents that Nana would ask my mother, "Who does she belong to? She doesn't look like the other two." 

I would say to you in all earnest that my family thinks that I am an idiot and that I don't remember everything that has happened to me.  That is a lot like asking you if you remember or don't remember Nursery School, 1st grade, 2nd grade, your first tricycle, going to the Zoo, etc.  Of course you have early childhood memories, why wouldn't you?  The difference my mind has been on record for sometime and now through flashbacks and what seems to be held inside of my body, (Memories,) it is all coming back with greater clarity.  It is not as if I have ever forgotten being smothered, I just never knew what to say or how because I kept being beaten left and right by my now step- in, step-father who used to be some guy who took us out on excursions.  We went to Playland, the beach and other like places.  So if I can remember the slides at Playland that burned the crap out of you if you did not sit on the gunny sack, why would I not remember my home life?  That is impossible to have happened.  I remember laughing Sal, the other nightmare of my life, I hated her.  It was like somebody knowing my little life, rocking back and forth just laughing at me personally.  I am 46 years old, so you can do the time line yourself with Playland and its closing date of Labor Day Weekend, 1972.  I am not off in the ability to remember what is real and what is not.

I hate that this is real in my life. I hate my father and my brother for doing this to me. I hate my sister for poisoning me with stuff from under the kitchen sink. I hate that I have had to hold this inside for so long. I hate my mother for never attending to my well-being or even acknowledging I was alive, leaving me to the care of my older siblings.  I hate my step-father for lying all this time to my younger siblings about his entry into this sick family.  I hate that two and a half years ago, my step-father put his arm around my neck and tried to break it as he dragged me around the dining room landing on the floor.  I hate my younger sister for telling me to take a gun and blow my head off because it would be the best thing for the family.  I hate that nobody is even upset that she said to me and I hate that no one knows the power that words can have on you. To tell me to do such a thing should shock you.  But it doesn't and I hate that you do not think it is that bad to have said.  I hope for your sake you never meet a malignant narcissist that says something like that to you.  I hate that nobody has ever helped me get through anything.  I hate that my mother is still spreading lies about me being a drug addict and incapable of caring for my two youngest children.  I hate that people gossip about my life and they have not been privy to my life at all in the past two years and certainly were never privy to what I am writing on here today.  I have never named them like I have in today's blog.  I hate that they are believed off the cuff and I hate that when you discover they are as wicked as they are, that you turn and run for the hills.

I hate that people in general do not find out the story of a person before the spread mean and defaming rumors about their life.  I would love to have my children in my life today but I have run out money to go back and forth to court with my ex-husband who seems to be financed by my mother.  I would love to be able to tell them, I love you in person, but nobody ever answers the phone or returns my letters or emails.  So, when you are all alone and you finally give-up and begin telling these very dark secrets about your past, maybe a stranger will step up to the plate and help you to do the next right thing.  Press charges in court for defamation of character, the last legal reprisal that I have against my family. 

To still feel the sweat of my brothers hand or the clinging bag on my face is surreal.  The fact that I remember my father slapping plastic bags out of the air and saying, "Don't ever put this over your head you will suffocate and die," sickens me.  My family has tortured me my entire existence, its now becoming the time to switch the roles around.  The torture is not mine, the memories are mine and as they refuse to allow all of these things to go by the wayside, I refuse to step aside but rather continue the vigil of the exposure of real, live monsters that probably live next door you and yours.

I think that we may survive to tell our stories.  We might survive to do what others cannot because they have been taken so early in life.  We survive not to live our lives in peace, that is quite impossible until you tell your story. I feel better as I spill the truth but I fear it must also be heard by somebody. I think that is why we survive, we need somebody to know that we existed and fought so hard just to take another breath of air.