Flashback: Warden used to wear her panties while playing on her ipad all day, everyday. She said that she has so many things in her head so she needs to wind down. Thing is, she wind down all day, everyday. She would lay on her stomach in her bedroom and she would wear panties in front of me. She would order me what to do while not sending me to school though she had means to do so.
I was not in school, I was doing the chores for the apartment along with my twin sister. She forced me to be comfortable to change my clothes in front of her. She stared at me changing my clothes.
She is still around, facing no legal repercussions
I have been told that I can reach out. I did reach out. I reached out to my father, to my uncle, to my grandmother, to psychologists. But also I am told to reconstruct myself alone. How? Which one do I follow? I have been dealing with a criminal for as long as I can remember and yet no one is reporting her to the police. No one tried to save me from the abuse. The adults around me were to busy with their own affairs. The adults around me, today, are busy trying to defend themselves. They defend something indefensible.
Is it normal for me to expect that an abuser who has committed crimes be prosecuted? If it is normal then why no one is prosecuting her? Why people try to stop me? What did I do? I never ran over a homeless man in my car, I never abused my mother by forcing her to sleep outside. Why people stop me? Why don’t people stop HER? What is wrong with people I talk to?
She abused her ex husband, committing marriage fraud, kicked me out until I almost got raped and somehow I am the one being told to stop? Stop what? Stop speaking up for myself? Stop standing up to what is right? Stop standing up to justice? Justice is not done alone. It takes more than myself. I almost died, I was so near to death because of Warden and somehow I am told to:
Move to another city
Forgive and forget
Look at the positives
And yet this criminal walk around the city as much as she likes. It is sickening me, truly. It’s despicable. I can’t believe my reality. I can’t believe how messed up this is. I am trying to put myself together, hence this blog entry.
People said they care but .. I have never been saved. I got bruises, again and again, I saw my mother being beaten up, again and again. No one did anything. Where was the adults around me? Where did common sense went? Where were the adults when I needed them the most? They were not there.
There were times in my life where the only thing that bridges me to life was a pair of ears. I had moments in life where I have brought myself to suicide. Child abuse survivors need a support system. Need consistency. This is about repairing an upbringing. It does not take a day, it does not take one person, it takes willing, time, a strong support system too.
My journey of re-parenting myself requires outside help too. I do dwell for extrinsic things yes, because I am aware of my own limitations. I can be frustrated with my limitations. It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a village to re-parent a child that has been abused. May take more than a village.
Sometimes I feel like people only love me based on the idea that I am not broken. I am injured, physically and mentally from about 2 decades of abuse. None of it is my fault.
I am so traumatized. It is very easy for my anxious mind to create some absurd realities. Fear-based reality. My mind is alert all the time, almost anxious all the time. I grind my teeth in my sleep, so much that my partner worried if I would break my teeth and the noise disturbs his sleep.
I enjoy cognitive therapies. I like identifying my cognitive distortions. One of the most frequent ones is ‘Mind Reading’. I assume those around me think like my Warden. I assume those I deal with think exactly like her. Love is earned and has to be maintained, imperfections can lead to inhumane treatments, etc. The harm Warden caused during my upbringing cannot be underestimated. I am not sure how long this lasts. I am trying my best deal with myself.
Had a flashback earlier today. When I was 7, Warden used to ask for my arm to be pinched. She did this when she gets angry. I recalled some moments in the car where she asked my twin sister to give out her arm so that Warden can pinch it. It’s not really ‘asking’. We never had a choice to not give our arms. So my twin sister gave out her arm to Warden and warden pinched her and that second she burst in tears and screams in pain. I yelled to Warden that what she did is violent and that she is hurting my twin sister. Did she say sorry? No. She yelled at me not to defend my twin sister. She expects me to be calm seeing my twin sister being pinched until she left with bruises.
I tried to sleep off my flashback but I could not make it less intense than what it is. This is why I update my blog. I want the world to understand the impacts of Warden’s abuse to me. I never reported her to the police. Maybe I should, but I have no mental energy to do so. Blog is my best option to date.
I had moments in my childhood where I thought that parents are always right. Warden told me that she is always right. She has an endless need of being praised. It makes me think that she has no self-esteem at all. Thing is, she also does not seem to be able to show empathy. Warden told me that she is good at memorizing, she is good at school, she is so accomplished, etc. When I was little I thought that she is perfect. When I was younger and telling people that I am abused, no one talked to her. Relatives told me that I should be faithful to her and that she does not have empathy to me because she never had her own baby. Now, why would a child needs to be understanding to the abuser? A child needs to be safe, away from abuse. My anger towards those who told me to be understanding to my violent Warden would not solve anything. I should however articulate that I am disappointed with many of my relatives.
I learn a lesson that when a child confide in you, it is on their best interest that you listen and trust them.
Warden spent her days laying on the bed, on her stomach, play video games on her ipad for about 8 hours a day or more. She had a lot of money from the inheritance. I asked her why she did not help me to do house chores, also expressed my concern that she plays games too often and too long.
She said, “I am an adult and I have so many things on my mind. I deserve a break”. This break lasted about six years. This is how she would spend her day from when I turned 11 to when I turned 17. Me and my twin sister were the ones who would prepare her meals. I would laundry all her clothes and clean the bathroom. We were her servants from the day her husband goes abroad.
I could have been in school but two years within that six years, I was ‘homeschooled’. This is because I had to teach myself every subjects I took in school. She did not help me, she yells, fights, shouts, being violent and play games all day. She lies. She lies to everyone that she teaches me. She never did. I taught myself sciences, mathematics, history, religious studies from grade 6 to grade 8. Lucky enough I managed to achieve well on my national exams.
I asked her to move me to formal school but she never allowed me to go to a formal school since her husband goes abroad. She had enough money to send me to a school with good teachers. Not only I was forced to stay inside the building, I was not allowed to make friends. She would take my phone and check all my conversations. I had two friends, both lived just across our apartment unit.
Unfortunately the friendship did not last. I never had fights with them. Warden took my phone and insulted my friends. Obviously, their parents thought it was me who did it and so they never allowed my friends to talk to me since. I never had a chance to explain them that it was Warden who sent the verbal insults.
I asked my warden, “Why is it so hard to maintain peace with you?”.
Obviously she did not answer. Obviously she thinks everything is my fault even when my right arm has bruises from her. The log I created reveals that she have burst of anger every single day.
I keep a list of what made Warden angry, because I never recognized the pattern of her temperament. I tried to study her, see how frequent she would shout and be violent also what caused them.
I kept a log for about a year. The log tells me that she would be angry for almost everything. Any trivial things could turn into a drama. You could compliment her looks and she would be angry and turn violent towards you. You could grab some cutlery while she is in the kitchen and that would turn into a huge drama. There is no pattern, her violence cannot be prevented.
This left people who are closest to her to struggle just to love her. It is difficult, if not impossible to maintain a relationship with her. It is easy to like her when you are at a certain distance. Do not get closer.
This is perhaps the most useful insight I have gained from years of observation.
This made me go into a cycle.
I am in desperate need for a mother figure, so I view her as a mother.
There will be conflicts and drama, out of pretty much everything, I will try to de-escalate.
She will give silent treatments after being abusive, I will be heartbroken, betrayed. Silent treatment can last for two weeks.
My heart is broken and I would be reminded that she is not suitable for being a mother figure.
I long for a mother
Repeat to #1.
I still would consider myself to be mother deprived, I don’t always know how to deal with this. It is a loss, I haven’t recovered from it. This is my first and last heartbreak of my life. I long for a mother. Not a perfect mother, but at least not abusive and antisocial.
As a kid, I was violently punished for food-pocketing, for buying a yo-yo, for wanting to read my textbooks, for bringing glitter pens to school, failed to finish lunch on the time she expected, writing diaries about how I feel towards her abuse.
Living with Warden makes me used to be tensed during my development years. I would write things that bothered me in my diary and she would open them and read them. One of my diary entries writes,
“She is a monster. She is not my mother. She pinched me, she take my hobbies away from me. She is evil, she is merciless. I want to die”.
This did not make her feel remorseful. This made her yell and becoming even more abusive. I felt very remorseful to her to have written this. I remain to live without seeing her as a mother, caretaker, but as an older woman who is a monster and who has control over me.
After that incident, if she becomes more violent, she would say, “What would you write, huh? I am a monster right?”. All the sudden everything is my fault.
I told her that I would tell the police about all the things she had done. This is a conversation I had before I turned 10. She said, ‘Then tell the police that you misbehave too. Be fair”. I was scared, I felt intimidated with her response because I thought I deserved to be violently punished for almost everything I do. This kept me silent until now. I never told police officials the things she did to me and my biological mother.
I always felt responsible for Warden’s feelings. Though abused, I would draw her and write, ‘I love you’ and slipped the paper under the door when she locks herself. This was the routine until I turned eight when I started to sense that my love is not returned.
The Hypervigilant Child 