M_P90Senior Contributor
Truth telling with family members: such a distressing, unhelpful experience
Content warning: Childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, domestic abuse.
I've lived with complex mental health issues for most of my adult life, and I've gathered a collection of diagnoses. I've had trouble with emotions, eating, alcohol, relationships, etc. I've been through 5 years of therapy and I've done a lot to help myself. I have a history of holding back and burying my true feelings in relation to other people, and the weight of all the unsaid things has made me unwell. This is how I see my mental health journey. The reason I haven't been forthcoming with others is because of relationships in the past where there was an imbalance of power, and the trauma of being part of this cycle of coercive control that runs through my family.
I witnessed domestic abuse growing up, and ended up victim to domestic abuse as an adult. There was a crucial window of time in my life where things turned to absolute s***. My parents had been a bitter acrimonious relationship for my childhood and early adolescence. When I was around 14/ 15 years old, they separated for good and pursued new relationships. I know their perspective of this time because I have read my late father's journals and I have heard my mother describe it. Now in my 30s, I get their perspective. They were desperately unhappy and then finally felt fulfilled in new relationships (even though my mum chose an alcoholic bankrupt serial cheater). There is a journal entry of my Dad's where he is obsessing over his new partner while mentioning briefly keeping an eye on me in the backyard. There's one line in his entry about me, in a sea of mushy sentimental crap about his new girlfriend. This image represents everything from that time.
Unfortunately, their preoccupation left me extremely vulnerable. I had grown up witnessing abuse and I was not a well adjusted kid: I was timid, had no self esteem, painfully shy, dangerously compliant and I was hurtling into adolescence. I got in with "the wrong crowd", I was being emotionally abused by my "friends", and we were hanging around the streets late at night. You can only imagine what happened next. I was groomed, molested and even sexually assaulted.
My parents always spoke to me about my childhood and adolescence with pain, they knew they messed up. When I was a wayward teen, my mum did send me a psychiatrist, counsellor and youth centre, so they didn't do nothing. I hadn't told her what was happening, she just said I'd become "aggressive and abusive" towards her, so these efforts were to fix my behaviour but I do believe she was genuinely concerned. Both have apologised to me in a very superficial way, they would sort of talk with regret, I would say nothing and then they would say "I'm sorry I was a bad dad/mum." I always found it a burden to manage THEIR feelings even as a kid, so I would feel BAD FOR THEM and try to reassure them.
Today, I reached a point of no return. I have vowed to myself to be honest with people, and also I was angry. I have been bubbling up with anger for a while now every time Mum prattles on about my teen years. Her version of events recently has been, "I knew I had to get out of that marriage with your Dad. We were both depressed and we couldn't be good parents like that. We both needed to be in happy relationships, we thought this would be best for you, we separated and got re-partnered for you." Previously, she had described my teenage years as "the happier" she had been since before I was born. Today, I erupted.
I told her I can't sit back and listen to her lie to herself and lie to me anymore. I understand my parents had to meet their own needs, they needed to find happiness somehow, they needed companionship and support etc. They pursued new relationships for them. I said, "Don't tell me it was for me! Just be honest with me and be honest with yourself!" I also said, "the TRUTH is because they were preoccupied with their new relationships I was left vulnerable and what happened to me was that I got groomed, molested, assaulted and bullied. That's the truth." This is the first time I have said this aloud to either of them (can't with Dad as he's passed).
I also told her it cuts me when she describes how happy she felt at this time, because I was in hell. I said that's OK that she was happy, she can think that, but don't say it to me given the context.
And then began the PITY PARTY, my parent's favourite move. The reason she doesn't learn from her mistakes. I told her at least three times I am not saying this to blame her, but she basically said she couldn't take it as anything but blame. My mum is really concrete and black and white, and i suspect she has undiagnosed autism. She just abandoned the conversation altogether taking it as blame. She often just abandons me in big painful emotions because she can't handle it.
I don't know what to do, I honestly don't know. I needed to say what I said. And I told her I needed to say it and I needed her to acknowledge it. She said, "I already know what happened, we don't need to talk about it anymore." Wow, that hurt. I didn't know what to say, I just had to protect myself again by going silent. Often I don't speak frankly with her because it only hurts both of us and that's it. Today seemed to be the same old. But I build up with rage when she tries to put her narrative onto that time (she brings it up, by the way, not me!) and quell her own guilt. "But I was happy" is her way of rationalising that she dropped the ball and I got hurt.
I don't know what to do. I can't be silent, but it doesn't help to confront her. And I know I wasn't very skillful in how I did it because I was angry, so I could have said things in a better way. But, honestly I don't know how much that that would have helped. It was easier to close myself off and not tell the truth, but also not easier because it makes me sick in mind and body. Just want to cry.
