[identity profile] prettyrazor.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] multiplicity_archives
Trigger Warning: Talk of sexual abuse, death, brief mentions of SI, etc... Read beyond the cut if you're safe.


I don't know how to feel right now. The wife of my primary abuser (my father's uncle Ed) is dying. My uncle Jim (dad's brother) called yesterday to tell us. Uncle Jim knows my parents have serious issues with that side of the family, because my father actually told him what went on. Uncle Jim was cool about it because he was sexually abused when he was a kid, too, by someone else. Anyway, apparently, Aunt Brenda (Ed's wife) is on her death bed. I don't know what is wrong with her. My father didn't ask. She's pretty old, so it could be anything, really. Brenda knew I was being abused. She knew what went on, she even participated a couple of times, and now I find out that she's dying. Fuck. I don't know how to handle that. I really don't.

Am I supposed to be happy she's dying? Am I supposed to feel sorry for her? Am I just supposed to sit back and accept it? I don't know what to do here. Part of me is like, "Yay, let the bitch die," and part is like, "How sad; she has so many kids and grandkids who will feel this loss." (Ed and Brenda have six children, three daughters and three sons, and most of those kids reproduced like bunnies in heat, especially Ed Junior, who not only has his own kids, but foster kids he took in over the years... He's a bastard and shouldn't have kids, but I digress.) Brenda's often been regarded as the saint of the family, and Ed as the perfect patriarch. (If only people knew...) This loss will be felt by so many people, and a lot of them are good people. I mean, her youngest daughter just lost her husband earlier this year, and now she's losing her mother, too. She must be a wreck. And Uncle Keith, my Godfather, must be flipping. He's Ed and Brenda's youngest child, and he's a really good guy.

My mother refuses to go to the funeral when it happens. I'm pretty sure my father won't go without her. Part of me wants to go. Part of me needs the closure of seeing her dead body in a coffin. I know that's morbid and sick and wrong, but it's how I feel right now. I can't go. I can't face Ed. Or his oldest son. Or some of the other members of the family. I can't do it. I can't see them all again. Not with everything I've remembered. But part of me wants to. I wonder if I can find out where she's being buried... Maybe seeing her name on a headstone would be enough closure? I don't know. I know nothing right now. Part of me is a little bit sad. There are good memories of her, too. Not many, but a few. And it's wrong to be happy someone is dying. And I'm not happy. But I feel bad. I feel like I'm a bad person and I need to carve the word "bad" into my flesh and show the world.

I haven't cut over this. I want to. I'm very close to the edge, and I'm numb, but feeling everything at the same time. All I want to do is cut, but I'm fighting the urge. Why do I feel "bad"? I don't know; it's probably the programming. If anyone from that family dies, I feel like it's somehow my fault, even though I know it makes no sense whatsoever. I also feel bad because I am the one who stops my parents from going to the funerals. I'm the reason they won't go. And that isn't fair. And it makes me feel like a piece of shit.

I'm not okay. I am pretending to be, but I'm not. I'm so close to cutting right now. I don't know what to do except write it out, which I'm really trying to do. I don't know how to feel about all of this. I really don't. I'm losing it.

-Craig, but on behalf of the rest of The People (not so much myself, but it's hitting me, too)

Date: 2005-04-04 08:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shatterstorm.livejournal.com
Am I supposed to be happy she's dying? Am I supposed to feel sorry for her? Am I just supposed to sit back and accept it?

All you need to do is accept all the feelings that come thru. Acknowledge them and let them go. There is no need to hold onto any guilt, fear, rage... Death is complicated. Do any of you draw, write poetry, sing, etc? We've found our artistic types to be very good at helping us thru things like that.

When the guy who abused us died, we cried, laughed, shook, cheered... all the emotions were real and valid. We didn't go to the funeral, but we did have a private ceremony where we burned a candle.

Date: 2005-04-04 09:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ksol1460.livejournal.com
Why should you pretend to have feelings you don't have -- why should you deny your truth? Why inflict harm to yourself over this? Pay attention to what [livejournal.com profile] shatterstorm said -- they've got good sense.

You might want to check out For Your Own Good (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0374522693/astraeaswebmulti) by Alice Miller... one of the greatest books about the complexity of emotions felt by abuse survivors.

Yeah, we know about complicated relationships -- we have one with our birth father. I'm sure our stepmother will want to have some kind of memorial service, but if she expects us to get up there and eulogize the fucker she's got another think coming. On the other hand, Andy imagines writing something very brief that will fake everyone out thinking we're saying something nice about him, and people will get halfway home before they realize we just called him a catshit rattlesnake bastard from hell.

Remember, you really don't have to use trigger warnings or lj-cuts for anything here, no matter how upsetting it may seem; just if your post is over 40-60 lines. You can assume that everyone on this community is "safe" in the sense that they can handle upsetting messages -- they signed up with their eyes open.

Date: 2005-04-04 09:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sethrenn.livejournal.com
She was complicit in the abuse by allowing it to go on, and even helped him in it? That's a perfectly good reason to feel ambivalent. I'm curious how many of the children, grandchildren, etc. you mentioned may also have been abused by Ed and/or Brenda, and how many of them might feel ambiguous for the same reason-- or might not miss her at all. Molesters usually don't have just one victim; they tend to deliberately put themselves in situations where they can get close to young people, and it sounds like he had a lot of opportunities with all those kids. It sounds like his son has inherited his abusive behaviour-- the fact that he takes in foster children is very suspicious, and consistent with the same pattern. If someone goes public about abuse (which I'm not necessarily suggesting you should), yeah, there'll always be very vocal people going "That's impossible! I know him and he'd never do anything like that so you must be lying!", but often there are also quite a few people who knew or suspected it-- they just didn't want to say anything. There may be several others who will not mourn her, or be unsure whether or not to mourn.

Honestly, if you were happy that she was dying, I wouldn't blame you one bit. I don't see it as 'bad' or something you deserve to punish yourself for. There is a tendency in this culture to beatify the dying or the recently deceased-- to speak of them glowingly, how wonderful they were, even if it's a complete lie and they had as many enemies as friends. When students are killed by classmates in school shootings, usually there turns out to be a very consistent history-- the shooters were constantly teased, their victims the bullies and harassers. Now, while I'm not saying this in any way justifies killing, after it happens, the media tends to jump on the murdered students and make blameless martyrs of them, when in reality they were bullies and probably despised by several other students.

I'm getting pretty tired of people doing that, to be honest. Just because someone is dead and can no longer speak in their own defense (in any way most of us can understand, at least), that's no reason for others to make them out to be something they weren't. If someone was a complete bastard, or abusive, that should be weighed in along with whatever good he might have done.

Death comes as a relief to surviving relatives more often than you might think-- a lot of people are secretly glad when that old bitch or bastard finally kicks off. This even goes for people who weren't necessarily unpleasant-- some people, when they're very ill, can become extremely demanding and harassing, and for that reason their relatives are often relieved to finally see them go. Many people don't immediately feel an outpouring of grief when someone dies, and feel guilty because of it. They might feel it later on, and they might not. It doesn't mean you're a terrible person.

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