Another day, yet another week as passed and what a week it has been!

Last weekend was so hard for me, it started on the friday night with an arguement with my friend that ended in me crying until nearly 3am.. saturday morning came and another friend who is staying with us went into labour.. her baby was already two days late.. regular contractions every five minutes and not much happening, by 7pm we were heading fro the hospital only to arrive and be told to go back home, it was to early yet! so a restless night on saturday and by 6.30 am pains getting so strong she needed help and pain releif that we headed back to hospital once more.. by 9am the midwife decided to keep her in until she delivered, so headed home to await news, which finally came at 7.30 pm... she had 27 hours in labour with strong pains and had already had a week of slow labour! poor kid.. she stayed in hospital until tuesday afternoon when she came back here and is staying with us for a week or so whilst she gets back on her feet! So we have a new born baby in the house and the three of us that normally live here! Its lead to not much alone time for anyone, yet I yearn for it!

In therapy today we talked about me getting space to do what I need to do, be that write or just to be alone, I told my therapist that is pretty hard right now as so much is going on, but she insisted that somehow I find a way to get that space for me! I need time to think about where my life is going and how its going to get there! We talked breifly about last week and my mother and how most of my life I have been controlled one way or another, she asked me if I felt that I was still being controlled by anyone? I said 'not really' and she asked what I meant. I told her that my sister does try to control me and my siblings but slowly I am breaking that cycle by refusing to bow to her whims, she told me that was a good thing as I need to be independant at this stage in my life and not allow anyone to tell me what to do, including my siblings! But its so hard to break lifelong habits that I'm not sure how far I will go for fear of losing my family! Even at work at the moment their being controlling towards me, there was an internal vacancy that I applied for but my manager didn't even tell me when the interviews were as she didn't want me to get it! I found out today that they had all happened yesterday? and I've lost out as a result! Its not fair!

I'm so angry about it that I am determined to ask on monday why? am I not worthy of getting a better position and earning a more reasonable salary? I beleive I am and the department where the vacancy beleived I was as well! Yet my manager thinks not? I do my job and I do it well, I have helped out around the department when others are absent doing their jobs as well as my own, yet she stops me bettering myself? I really don't understand!

My therapist today asked me if I'd cried in the last week, after breaking down in her office last week, I had to admit that I have several time but couldn't tell her why! it is a private matter and I didn't feel I could talk about it with her. In fact I've cried several times on one occassion until 3am! although I felt better afterwards it was not necessary really, the reason for the tears could have been avoided so easily yet it wasn't! I guess I was just feeling vunerable and as a result I let the tears go! Sometimes the simplest thing can set me off whereby other times it can take a lot to make me cry, a result I guess of childhood where crying was seen as a weakness! Even now this many years later I feel weak when I cry so tend to lock myself away so no one can see me. One day maybe I will feel strog enough to allow my true feelings to show to whoever is around? when that will be though I have no idea, for now I will continue to cry only in front of a select few that I feel safe with and hide my true feelings from the rest of the world..

Don't be surprised if suddenly in here I start writing about feelings, true feelings of what it was like as a child being beaten and force fed daily, being made to remove my clothes to be hit in front of whoever was there at the time! I recalled some of these memories today and had to fight to hold back the tears again in my therapists office! even though she told me it was safe I didn't feel safe today, knowing maybe that when I got back home there were several people there. I'm used to coming back from therapy to find just my one friend here and she allows me the time I need to calm down, but today I returned to find my young friend and her baby, my daughter and my friend and it was to much for me, so now I am alone in my bedroom writing this whilst they are all downstairs watching TV.. Hopefully they will allow me a bit of me time tonight? I so need it!!

It's been two weeks since I wrote in here, mainly because last weekend the whole household was sick with the norovirus.

Today when I went to therapy it was hard, because today isn't an easy day for me .. it would have been my mum's birthday today if she had still been with us she would have been 74yr old today! Wow its gone by so fast I almost can't beleive that she has been gone for almost 18 yrs.. there are so many questions that I'd like to have been able to ask her now, at this stage in my life as I am trying to deal with my past I have so many questions unanswered! How do I find those answers? I really don't know. I seem to be missing her more now than I did the first few years after she passed away, I guess because I am attempting to deal with things and so many questions are coming up for me!

Today at work I have felt so sad and down, to the extent that I broke down in tears, not really knowing why or what reason there was for it.. it took me quite a while to calm down again and be able to continue with my day, but I have cried several times today including in therapy this evening, as we talked about what had been happening for me recently. My therapist advised me today that I need to acknowledge how I feel from day to day, to admit to myself that I am sad, happy, depressed, lonely or even unhappy.. by doing that I can then learn to accept that these feelings are normal and acceptable for me to feel and learn how to handle them without upsetting myself more than is needed. It is not a sign of being vunerable or weak to feel sad, or unhappy and often it is needed to enable a person to understand themselves.

For many years I have hidden how I felt, because to admit feelings made me feel weak! a condition that I grew up with I guess. To cry meant weakness and being vunerable to abuse so I didn't ever cry where anyone else could see me! Now as an adult not living in that situation anymore I still find it hard to allow myself to cry in front of other people. In therapy today when I spoke about how much I need and miss my mother the tears welled up and I felt myself trying to stop them, My therapist told me it was ok to let them go and I was in a safe environment but still I couldn't allow myself to let go for fear that I may not stop again before the session was over! again learned behaviour I guess? Something we are going to try and work on in the next few weeks/months to see If I can break the cycle.. somehow someday I hope that I will not feel so vunerable and be able to cry freely in front of anyone if I need to, but I feel that may take quite a long time. But regardless of how long it takes I have to persevere because unless I do I will never be able to move on in my healing.

Right at this time I have to admit that I am struggling with all the stuff going on around me! I am stressed out at work and stressed at home as well, yet in amongst all that I am trying to deal with my issues from the past which are pretty tough just now! I have so many things going on in my head at the moment that I don't know which way is up! I need to learn how to ask for help when I feel like this and let someone in! by telling someone I know I can trust what is going on for me I can get that help, I know who I will be trying to tell but can I do it?? I have never really let anyone into my inner thoughts before, maybe now its time ????

Friday once more, and here I am again!

After therapy each week I find it useful to come in here and write down how I feel the session went, hopeful that maybe it will help others understand just some of the pain experienced by an Abuse Survivor as they try to deal with it all, the only way I have found of dealing with it is by writing and talking it through with people who understand and do not judge!

The biggest thing a Survivor faces is finding someone to talk to who WILL NOT judge them, to be able to be open about what happened to them and feel safe in doing so is very very important. Its not easy these days finding people like that as so many beleive that if a woman is raped for instance she must have asked for it in some way! Maybe by wearing the wrong clothes, skirt to short or top to low for instance!
But that is not true! no matter how you look at it we should all be free to wear whatever we want to without being fearful of being attacked by men, NO man has the right to attack a woman because she wears low tops or short skirts..

Especially when that 'woman' is a child or a minor! how can a child of 7 or 8 years old be 'asking for it' by the clothes they are wearing? I can recall being sexually abused when I was about 7/8 yr old, is there anyway that I could be blamed for that by what I did, said or wore? NO!

The only person at fault there was the man who caused that abuse, the man I used to call my 'step father'. He made my life HELL ON EARTH.. and he is now the only person I blame for all the pain and heartache that I have suffered throughout my life... Today in therapy we discussed some of my earlier memories from that time in my life, I won't go into them here as they are just to traumatic to write down right now, In fact I'm finding the memories really hard to deal with and just telling my therapist some of it today, without the graffic details, of who did what, has made me withdraw into myself once more. I don't want to be around anyone apart from my really good friend who understands what I'm going through. It feels as if they would know what has happened to me in the past and WOULD JUDGE ME, just by looking at me, that somehow they would know and blame me for it!

A while ago I had written a poem about blame, and how not everything that happens is your own fault, I posted it on a poetry site I belonged to and someone replied... 'whatever happens to you in life is your own fault!' I can only guess they had never been abused! But their words caused my a lot of heartache as I was struggling at the time to come to terms with my past! It made me think carefully about where the blame should lie, and who it should lie with. I came up with the only possible answer, THE BLAME FOR ABUSE LIES WITH THE ABUSER.. AND ONLY THE ABUSER! The abused do not ask to be abused, they are just the victims/Survivors who have to suffer the pain and heartache as they try to recover!

One day soon I hope I will be able to write about what they actually did, how they made me feel at that tender age, taking away my innocence and making me feel that somehow it was my own fault because I was such a bad girl! It always happened when my mother was at work or out somewhere and not due home for a while, I would be alone in the house with HIM.. and he took advantage of that time... to Abuse me!!....

Can't write anymore now.. need to calm down................