A lot has happened in the past year…

Apologies for the radio silence. I found myself a good group of friends, and suddenly pouring my heart out on the internet wasn’t as necessary any more.

But it’s 3.30am in the morning and my friends are asleep and I’m still trying to untangle what happened last night.

I’ve been going out with a guy. One of the first things I told him was my history. I told him I would understand if he couldn’t deal with. He said he could. Wrong there.

He said it was like a third partner in our relationship. He said he couldn’t be responsible for keeping me sane. He said that it was always there, that it never went away.

I’m angry. I’m angry that he can’t deal with the things I had to go through. I am angry that once again my step-father is reaching out from my childhood to damage my life. I’m angry that my now ex-boyfriend sees me as damaged, and irreparably so. I’m angry that it took four months for him to say so, and even then it was only after I brought it up.

How long do I have to pay for what my step-father did to me?

 

Nuggets on the Internet

Over at LiveJournal, my cousin Andie has a blog. She writes a lot of fanfic (a lot) and occasionally she talks about her life. I came across it as it is under the same name as her very unusual email address. By the way, if you don’t know what fanfic is, it’s essentially short stories extrapolating from various TV shows. She’s written fanfic for NCIS through to Supernatural. It’s very geeky and it’s all taken very seriously. She got 151 comments on one fanfic! I don’t think I’ve had 151 hits in total all the time this web site has been up!

Anyway, I’m still in a relapse and I’m thinking a lot about The Family. So I went looking through her stuff and she makes a few references to me – I’ve found four so far. All except one was made before I left the family. The one made most recently claims she is the eldest granddaughter of a close-knit family, whereas I would just like to put on the record that I am the eldest granddaughter.

The other three were more disturbing. In one she refers to me as a poet who can only write between bouts of depression. I mean that one’s ok. The next one called me emo, except that apparently I couldn’t be emo because I wasn’t a teenager and that I was a self-indulgent whiner who victimises myself. And the third catalogues the days before my grandmother’s birthday – which I was not going to because my step-father would be there. Apparently there was a family conference about the situation. All aunts and uncles and cousins getting together to talk about me!

It’s not paranoia when they really are out to get you.

Things are getting worse

I’ve been working like mad lately. It’s how I keep the feelings at bay. Yesterday I stayed in bed. I thought maybe giving in would be better for me. It wasn’t.

Eventually I dragged myself out of bed to go see a movie with a friend of mine. He’s been really supportive lately. He’s listened to me a lot, and he has depression too so he understands. Where others say, “just snap out of it”, he says “it won’t last forever.”

Yesterday he was trying to pay me a compliment. He was thanking me for bringing him out of his shell and socialising. I joked that the last couple of months it has all been about me though and he said “Oh yeah, I know I’m being used.”

Being used. I can’t believe that’s how he feels. And he’s not the first of my friends to say that. I was suicidal. In fact, after that conversation, I became suicidal again. I cried myself to sleep last night thinking of leaving my pets behind and how I could organise it so none of my friends would find my body, and then I thought about how none of my friends would even notice. After all, they all need a break from being “used”.

A whole lotta nothing

Well my police detective has had no luck yet in finding her. The Nurses Board are still to return his call!

As for me, I’m still not great. Been quite agitated lately and almost OCD in my behaviour (lined all my fridge magnets in a row). I’m still manically eating and feel stressed if I don’t have any food with me.

Seems like this relapse isn’t going anywhere.

Another nightmare

Well I had a nightmare last night. It was weird, but my mother and step-father were in it. And I was naked. Enough said really.

Cooking with gas

Well I am cooking again which is a big improvement in my state of mind. Basically it’s a very good indicator of my wellbeing- the better I am the more likely I am to cook. Thus I only started cooking last year. Prior to that there was a lot of eating out and taking meals home and even a few frozen meals.
So today I cooked spaghetti bolognaise and got to use my herb garden for the first time (it was almost taking over the kitchen). And I’m just waiting for the oven to heat up to cook my Jamie Oliver stuffed capsicums. Next on to dessert!

I found her!

I can’t believe it – I found her!

When the latest relapse happened, I started looking for my sisters’ nanny. She witnessed the physical abuse and the police were eager to talk to her.

I hired a private investigator- they couldn’t find her. I went through all her letters, trying to find a skerrick of information that might lead me to her.

I assumed she has gotten married and changed her name. I trawled Facebook for people with her first name that graduated in her area. One person remembered her but that was it. As well as being a nanny, she practiced as a nurse. So I rang the Nurse’s Board in my state, and they have her on their records!

Of course, due to privacy laws, they couldn’t tell me her details but I explained the situation and they asked the policeman investigating my case to call. He too, can’t give me her details but he can interview her and he can give my contact details to her!

I am so excited I can’t sit still!

Sorry for the silence

My step-mother got really sick last year and I to0k a couple of months off to take care of her. It kind of put everything else in my life on hold, but of course now “everything” is back with a vengeance.

You know I had almost convinced myself that “everything” was over.

But it’s not over. It never will be over. And so I make this promise to any readers that I have left: this blog will exist as long as I do, because that is how long the abuse will affect me. There may be months and years when I don’t post, but I have finally come to realise that my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder isn’t going anywhere, and neither is this blog.

I’ve just been through a PTSD relapse.  I cannot describe how painful it was. Within days I was suicidal. I couldn’t sleep. When I did sleep I would have nightmares. Nightmares that I was physically trying to escape from my step-father and the standard nightmare of being stuck living with my mother and step-father.

What scared me the most about this relapse is that it didn’t respond to Dexamethasone – it always has before. This time around it was switching to Seroquel that finally put me to sleep (for two days) and snapped me out of it.

However I have realised that I am always going to be vulnerable in this area. I will always have a wound, and it is easily re-opened. And my step-father is living his nice middle-class life with his wife and two children that love him. There are no consequences for him. Sure he had to talk to the police twice (once twenty years ago and again in 2009) about the abuse, but that’s not justice for the crimes he has perpetrated.

I also live a nice middle-class life, albeit with this blackness that occasionally overwhelms me. I can fight. I have the brains, the skills, the contacts and the money to fight. So I am reneging on my decision not to file a civil suit.

I feel better when I am fighting.

Twitter account

Now you can follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/weightrage.

Step-father

The word brings chill to my bones.

I have these friends. They are married. They have a two year old boy and the mother has a twelve year old daughter from a previous marriage. They’ve invited me over numerous times and I’ve always got an excuse. In fact I have postponed this one dinner for two years. I didn’t even notice that I was avoiding them.

I went to their house for dinner tonight. I had a great time; they’re great people. The daughter wants to be a child psychologist. She writes. She draws. She’s articulate and adult and easy to talk to.

She reminds me of me.

At one point she referred to her mother’s husband as her ‘step-father’. I was fine until I left their house. Then suddenly it hit me and all I could think about was whether he was abusing her and if I would be able to tell and how similar their relationship was to mine with my step-father (the answer: not at all). He’s a friend of mine and all I can think about it is he is safe. Part of me is horrified that he is the house husband and has so much time alone with her.

I know these are my issues. I know they will haunt me forever, and maybe I will never be able to hear the word step-father without horror. But I can’t get it out of my mind.