It is A Lot
***CW: mention of childhood sexual abuse and suicide***
I don’t know if the hardest feeling was the disgust I felt for what had always been done to me, or the disgust I thought others would feel for me as if I had asked for it. I don’t know what was in my six year old mind that thought it was my fault, but I did. I knew I never liked it or sought it out, but by the time I knew it shouldn’t have been happening, I thought it was my fault for not telling anyone sooner. I don’t even know when it started. As early as I can remember, I can remember being sexually abused by my oldest brother.
I remember watching a movie, where a woman killed herself by cutting her wrists. I had never heard or known anything about suicide, but at six years old it gave me something to think about. I remember staring at my wrists and crying, because I was so depressed and just wanted to escape, but I didn’t know what it meant to die, and it seemed scary, too. Not only did my oldest brother sexual abuse me on a regular basis, he also tormented me with verbal abuse and beatings. On a daily basis he reminded me that I was fat, I was ugly, and I was stupid. I remember him sitting on my chest, so I couldn’t breathe for what felt like an eternity, when I was four. I ran crying to my mother, gasping for breath. She brushed me aside like it was no big deal, and to go play and leave her alone. I never felt like I could come to her for protection, because she was never interested in giving me any. My dad wasn’t present much with work, and wasn’t much of a caregiver when he was at home, because to him it was easier to pass it off as women’s work. I understand my mother, who basically raised us by herself, was stressed out and overwhelmed, with three children all born around two years of each other.
My oldest brother is four years older than me. All of the years of abuse I endured from him, and it supposedly doesn’t count as adverse childhood experience, because he isn’t five or more years older than me. I’m pretty sure I have the complex PTSD to prove it did affect me. Molested from my earliest memories until I was 8 or 9, physically abused until I finally fought him back at 15, and verbally abused until I left home at 19. I was formed in abuse, but it’s okay, he was only four years older, so it doesn’t count. I have anxiety, panic disorder, depression, and severe ADHD like symptoms (never been diagnosed). I am a people pleaser to the extent of my own detriment. I spent my life in blatant denial that I was gay, because I don’t think I could handle one more thing to make me feel like an outcast. It wasn’t until the support of a loving and caring husband that I was able to come out. Another loss.. my husband.
I’ve been processing my childhood, the rapes and violations I’ve had throughout young adulthood, and now the eventual separation of my family unit now that I know I am gay. I’ve been spiraling into a deep depression lately, and I feel guilty for it, because I have support. I still have to wrtie this all out to see it really is a lot. It is a lot that I’ve been through, and it’s a lot I am going through, and will continue to go through. I feel so inadequate as I can barely function as a homemaker, and now having to move on with the separation without an education, skill, or a career. It is a lot. I don’t want to die, I really don’t. I just want living to not be so fucking hard. I am focusing on everything I have to live for.. which is a lot.
