Yes.
I've told my story here so if you want to search my posts, you'll see details recently, I think within the last month or so. I don't want to re-tell it right now as telling it in detail brings me back to that place of despair and I have a very very rough couple/few days.
I did not think it was abuse because my idea of abuse was a child who was never fed, or who routinely landed in the hospital with broken bones. The irony is that I did in fact suffer a broken arm at age 2, but did not remember it. A family member later told me about it. I was also partially drowned h(IOW, obviously I survived it, so I did not literally drown, ultimately...if that makes sense) in an attempted murder by my parents at approximately age 4. I had images of this, snippets of memory, with some shadowy images mixed with some very sharp details, but I had the idea that it was just some sort of very negative daydream. This too was later confirmed by a family member, my sister, who witnessed the act.
Another reason I thought it couldn't be abuse is that in the odd movie or TV show where abuse was portrayed, the child always behaved and was perfect, but the parents just turned around and randomly took a swing, shoved the child or what-have-you. I was told I deserved it based on the fact that I "refused to act normal," and I knew that indeed I didn't act like the other kids, or think like them for that matter, therefore that was something I was "doing," rather than, say, me coming home with straight-As with my clothes looking freshly ironed, handing my mom a bouquet of flowers and she punched me for no reason or something. I hope that makes sense the way I just explained it.
It was not until I was 29 years old that I actually realized I had been abused, despite some truly awful things that were done to me in the years in between. At that time my mother died and something clicked for me - I was no longer afraid. I hadn't had any literal reason to be afraid for the eight years prior, as during those years I no longer lived with my parents, but the death of my mother apparently lifted that perma-fear I'd had from earlier than I can remember, so it had been basically just "deep in there" even despite logic (i.e. that they could no longer physically injure me).
Therapists had occasionally hinted (I went intermittently during my 20s) at abuse but in a very, very careful way which I now assume was because they sensed that I wasn't ready to literally use the word "abuse" or to accept it and they probably thought it would be too much of a shock to force me to face it. I can only see that in retrospect, though.
25 Sep 2015, 4:27 pm
