broken pieces

i've had writers block since this summer. i've known exactly what was causing it but haven't wanted to face up to it. i've had the words. i've known what i wanted to say a thousand times over in a thousand different ways, but i just couldn't say it. and when you know there's something you need to say but you're being stubborn about saying it, well, it makes it really hard to say anything else.

i'm ready now.

i'm broken. i have a hard time in relationships so i avoid them. i thought i knew why for a long time but this summer there was a flat, bold face, plain as day answer given to all the things i've thought over the years. it's ugly and it's dark. but i know what it is now. what i don't have is a solution for it or a way to move past it yet. maybe finally saying it will help.

ok. so maybe i'm not ready to say all of it. part of the writing process you can't see: i've typed and deleted several paragraphs trying to decide what to include and what to leave out to get to the main point of this post. readers digest version that i'll get back to at some point when i'm more ready: my mom is married to a pedophile. her husband was inappropriate towards me growing up and i found out after moving away from small town USA that he had also been grooming my youngest son. i told my mom about it at one point when it was just me, and again when i found out it was happening to my son.

i'm sure you can imagine how much more is packed into that one paragraph if it was allowed to unfold itself.

when i told my mom about my experiences she looked at me and said: "well, what do you want me to do about it? it's already happened." when i told my mom about my son she told me that i was just projecting my own experiences on him and there was no way it could have happened.

perhaps now it's making a little more sense to some of you why my mom and i don't have the best relationship.

it's been really hard for me over the last few years to see her stand beside this pedophile at the expense of a relationship with my kids and i. as long as he is anywhere around, we won't be. my older brother has taken her side. he doesn't believe there's a problem and i'm just being the stubborn kid that i've always been for no reason. after losing my dad and my younger brother, it's unspeakably hard to not have any connection to what blood family i have left.

the biggest thing over the last few years: i felt like the one who was wrong. i felt like maybe i was being a little harsh or maybe it was all just in my head. maybe THAT was the reason i was so broken: i made things up and i was unreasonable.

this summer my mom asked me to go to therapy with her. she'd been trying to work out why she and i don't have a relationship and her therapist suggested that maybe i should come in to talk over some things. a mom is a mom and there's countless studies to show that no matter how bad things get, our primal instinct is to call out for our mothers. i want my mother. i do. so i decided to go. maybe we could work it out. maybe she would see my side and understand why i was protecting my kids. maybe she would say she loved me and chose me for once.

we sat in that office. i talked about what it was like growing up. i talked about why i had separated myself from her. i talked about how it felt having her chose a pedophile over me, her daughter. the therapist heard me. she pulled together my pieces with the things my mom had talked about. the therapist, a trained professional looked at the whole picture and i was honestly, truly shocked by what she told me: i wasn't crazy. my experiences were real. my decision to protect my children was the right one. knowing what she had worked on with my mom and then hearing my pieces, it made sense and fit together and i wasn't being the unreasonable terrible daughter i believed i was. the therapist flat out said if she had known the whole story from the beginning her work with my mom would have been totally different. she believed me.

i can't tell you how powerful that moment was. someone validated me. validated the things i knew to be true. feelings and experiences i'd been wanting someone to believe. the things i though made me crazy and broken weren't right. things i've hated about myself since i was a teenager weren't my fault. i didn't ask to be treated the way i was. i didn't cause things that happened to me. it wasn't right that i had been ignored. it wasn't right that i was made to feel bad for protecting my kids. the therapist told me i was reasonable and level headed and the things i was doing were on the right track and i shouldn't waiver or back down. it was so powerful to have someone on my side. there. in the same room as my mom. my mom HAD to hear it. she HAD to know. she HAD to see it and acknowledge it and it would be different.

but just as quickly, i lost that moment. just as quickly my mom looked at the therapist and said i was crazy and heard voices in my head (she literally said exactly that). that i made things up. my own mother said that none of my experiences, none of my memories are real. she was so scared of the truth that she flat denied it and just shattered me. she looked straight at me and said nothing i remember, none of my experiences will ever be right or true. ever.

THAT.

THAT MOMENT. that is the real reason i'm broken. as powerful as the moment before it had been of someone believing me and validating me had been, THAT MOMENT was a thousand times more destructive. my mother doesn't believe me. she doesn't think i'm worth protecting for fighting for. i'm not worth loving. my mother would rather protect a monster than love a daughter. in that moment she threw me away. my own family rejected me. my family thinks i'm broken and damaged and not worth fighting for. i am not loveable. i am not good. i am not worth anything.

and if my own family, my own flesh and blood feels that way, what hope is there of ever finding a partner in life to accept me?

NOW: I KNOW. i know i have friends that love me and accept me. i hope there will eventually be someone on the life partner level that will feel the same way. but there is a whole fucking canyon between hope and belief. and before i can even begin to cross that canyon i have to have even the smallest confidence that it's even possible. and i don't have that. i don't have even a small piece of that confidence. not even a sliver. the feeling of rejection is so ingrained in me that anyone who tells me they love me must lying. it's an instant deal breaker for me. they want something. they're using me. it CAN'T be true. it's not physically possible for it to be true. i wholly believe that. i know. fucked up.

so there it is. my broken pieces: what's left of my family has rejected me. i truly don't believe i'm loveable. i don't believe i will ever find someone that wont go away or let me push them away. i don't believe there will ever be someone to fight for me and with me.

there are my pieces. now. how do i fix them? how do i teach myself that those pieces aren't right? how do i teach myself that i am loveable and that someone will want me? how do i believe what that therapist saw? how do i teach myself not to destroy chances at good things because they're foreign? how do i make pieces that are right and put them all together?

i recently tried my hand at a true, talked about it, put a name on it, give it a shot, relationship. it didn't make it very far. among several of the red flags that i filtered through, the biggest one was that he dropped the love bomb on me. after only a few weeks. and i INSTANTLY shut down. instantly. something must be wrong. it couldn't be true. now, there was more to it. there always is. but i don't know if it was real. i don't know if he really did love me or if it was because we had a small argument and he thought it would make things better. i don't know because i didn't give it a chance. like i said, there was more to it, but i couldn't even look at any of the more because i was DONE. that moment i fully shut down, completely shut off because there was no way it could be true. he must have been lying because no one can love me. people who have know me my whole life can't love me. how could some one that's only known me for a few weeks say that? and so i destroyed it. it's done.

how do i NOT do that? how do i not shut down? how do i not instantly want to call someone a liar? how do i start to unbelieve that bad and really believe the good? i have to start to believe that i'm loveable. i have to. the hard part of that is i don't know where to start. and i don't know if i ever will believe it. i don't like that. i don't like that i'm questioning it before i've even started the process. it's going to be a helluva journey. there's a lot of damage to undo.