Thursday: Today I’m grateful for feeling…

Desperate to invalidate my abuse. I keep searching for evidence that negates, I crave denial. I see this pattern in myself: I spend a couple days in reality, then a weekish in denial. A lifetime of denial is so fucking hard to shake. I also feel like no one believes me even though I sense that everyone does. In my meetings, at no point do I suspect someone to be making something up, especially when they’re earnest. Why would I? WHY WOULD I?!? I don’t fucking lie, I work so hard to be honest and have for over two decades now. For a long time I didn’t tell anyone, so it would be lying to myself? How could I be attention seeking if this is largely a secret? Did he gaslight me?

Wretched, forced back out of denial and into my reality after listening to a podcast episode about narcissism. I’ve known my dad was a narcissist but wasn’t entirely sure of what the disorder entails: how they act, how they treat others, what behavioral patterns they fall into and which common manipulation tactics they use. The episode could not have described him better if they tried, it was awful. I spent the next 30 minutes googling: narcissism and sexual abuse/child sexual abuse/sex and porn addiction/pedophilia/trafficking/grooming. What exactly is love bombing? What exactly is gaslighting? All the while hoping to be invalidated yet finding only confirmations. In a desperate attempt I googled: confirmation bias, false memory syndrome. To my dismay, neither of these fit. I even asked my therapist and she said those last two were really rare in PTSD and more specific than they seem. So there it is. I don’t think I can have more evidence than I do: implicit memory, some explicit “memories”, my mom’s confession last week, the psychological profile of a narcissist, my gut feeling.

Renewed in my horror and forced acceptance of my trafficked past. Towards my dad, I feel horrified, revolted, appalled, nauseated, hostile, furious, betrayed. I feel this frequently, this collection of emotions is all hiding under the umbrella terms of angry, fury, rage. How fucking dare he. HOW FUCKING DARE HE. He didn’t even give a shit while it happened, remorselessly using people, harming them for gain, was his m.o. I was not his daughter, I was his property. How could he profit from this? What was the going rate for a sexual experience with a child? It must be high, higher than a regular prostitute. He was a pedophile. Did he sell my brother?

Devastated and immobilized in the clarity of my truth after my therapy session confirmed it and uncovered other things. Why am I the only person who doesn’t believe me? Why is this voice so vicious and why doesn’t it sound like my own? “You’re a liar, you’re a drama queen, you’re just doing this for attention.” Nobody in my life would call me any of those things, even a little bit, especially not my rational self. My therapist asked what this voice has to gain by disillusioning me, whose could it be if not mine? A small voice, tiny, whispers among the screams: “we’re protecting him”. I was protecting him. 

Fury because I remember this! I remember the need to defend him, to villainize my mother when he wasn’t around to do it, to protect his image as a loving parent, to uphold his right to be my father. Putting together with the past that I feel, my mom’s experience of my dad, and typical narcissistic behavior I can know that I was gaslit. He love-bombed me to forge a sense of loyalty and gaslit me into disbelieving my own experience to keep him and his income safe. Oh yeah, that came up in therapy too. I had always thought he was fighting for custody of us in court all those years out of a sense of propriety. And it was propriety: she, a woman no less, was taking away something he felt to be his by right. But when relaying this to my therapist she hits me with: he may have fought especially hard because he’d be losing out. WHat. The. FUCK. I WAS A SOURCE OF INCOME. MY MOM THREATENED HIS SOURCE OF INCOME. I’m on fire. What can I do with all of this, where do I go??

Loved and heard after I shared parts of this revelation with my Po4. They were there for me even though it wasn’t related to codependency. We were all crying before I was even halfway through it. How lucky I am to have stumbled into such a fantastic, compassionate, empowering group of women. A lot of the seething is still there but I feel cradled and that has been such a balm. 

Loved, so so loved. Cubu scheduled cute animal photos to be sent to me every minute for the past hour. It’s been a flood of ducklings, cats, capybaras, frogs. He knows me so well and puts in the work to show it. I’m so grateful.

Serendipitous, fortunate, and excited. I have been thinking that it might be time to practice my Spanish in person but I didn’t know where to start. Today I ran into an acquaintance that I know speaks Spanish. I have been avoiding her for a while because I quit the crocheting group we were both in two years ago. I forced myself to say hi to her, to not run away. We spoke in Spanish! She told me there’s a small group that meets on Fridays for lunch to practice Spanish conversation for an hour! It seems too good to be true: is aligned with my goals, fits into my schedule, not everyone will be a stranger. I’m excited to try it out tomorrow.

Sad, very sad, and very self-compassionate. When I ask myself why we protected him, why we kept his secrets for so long, a certain and unyielding voice in my head says “because he would kill us.” I was sexually abused, groomed, sexually trafficked by my malignantly narcissistic, alcoholic father for years and kept it a secret because my parent would kill me if I didn’t. No wonder I’ve felt what I’ve felt. No wonder I didn’t let myself see it. No wonder I wish it was all untrue. 

Murderous but grateful that my potential victim is already dead. Dad was immobile in his final days, with black gangrenous feet and a trailer stuffed floor to ceiling with grocery bags full of trash and literal shit. So much methane in there. He smoked a pipe. I have never thought anything truly murderous in my life against anyone but myself. I’m grateful because I think if he were still alive and in those conditions, I would have set his trailer on fire with him in it. He lived in the boonies, was a smoker, and no one would come after me because he had a lot of enemies. I can almost taste the satisfaction. But maybe his actual death was punishment enough. It will have to be, it’s all I have to hold onto during this anger phase.

Grateful for the SSRI’s. This week has been rough, the past couple weeks really, since the trafficking stuff. The last time I was hit with a memory I was in bed, taking off work, not working out, not interested in things I loved, not functioning. I can tell by the level of trauma this memory brings up that I should be incapacitated. I believe the meds are between me and being catatonic. I’ve gotten used to the idea of living a content, stable life and that it’s worth the discomfort. So not to say that life is peachy, but these meds are great and most days I am content, even when I’m also sad. There’s space for both now.

Accomplished after finishing uploading all of July! August is half prepped. Things are happening!