As We Are (TW)

by Charity

***TW Suicidal Feelings - We Are Safe***

As I've mentioned before, it's the adults in our system that have been having the most difficulty, and it's been this way for a long time.

I (Charity) tend to feel everybody's feelings and confuse them with my own.  Sometimes there's overlap, but it's usually hard to sort them out.

Deborah currently feels that we're "defrauding" outside people by "posing as an adult."  I understand this feeling and often share it.  None of us adults (with the possible exception of Mary) feels like an adult or wants to live as an adult.

Drew is constantly feeling suicidal.  What keeps us going is not want to cause pain for other people, particularly our immediate family.  It's hard to get out of bed when we're feeling like this, much less get through the day.  The feeling is always there.

***End TW***

Rachel is usually angry, but she's always functional.  She sees the rest of the world, including the system and everyone in it, as the enemy.

Right now we feel very needy, particularly with regard to having our feelings validated.  Oftentimes people, including those [on the forums], try to be helpful and suggest things like working on separating the past from the present.  We understand the desire to help and we appreciate the intent.  But right now we're not asking for suggestions.  We're asking to hear that we're okay as we are.

Why is it so important to hear this?  If we truly don't like being in pain, why do we want to have that pain validated?

We have no choice as to what we feel.  Feelings are automatic responses to our experiences, and these feelings just are.  If people tell us to work through those feelings before we're ready, it feels like they're invalidating those feelings, invalidating our right to have them, and therefore invalidating us as a person.

We're not ready to let go of what we feel.  We need other people to affirm that this is okay.  This is not being complicit in our pain, encouraging us to hang onto it, or making us feel worse.  It's just validation, but it's so important to our sense of well-being.

We didn't get this validation from our mother, at all, ever.  She was an undiagnosed multiple and completely unprepared for parenthood, to the point of being clueless.  Whether she knew it or not, she expected that becoming a parent would redeem her from the abuse she experienced, particularly from her own mother.  In other words, our mother wanted to relive her childhood through us.

From the earliest days of infancy, and throughout our childhood, we felt our mother's physical touch (which was rare) to be repulsive.  Not abusive, but repulsive.  We could sense her neediness and insecurity so strongly that we didn't want to be anywhere near it.  But at the same time, we had such a strong need for validation and nurturing, and it felt like a no-win situation.  We were angry at our mother, at our grandmother, and at ourselves, as well as at all other authority figures for not recognizing the problem and helping us.

This has been our life.  This is who we are.  And we need to truly know and believe that we are okay as we are before we can move forward.