starting over

[sanmagic7]

thanks, PC, for your enthusiasm about my little bison.  it's almost embarrassing to me, at my age, to put so much meaning into something like a stuffed animal.  feeling very vulnerable about that so i appreciate your support.  i guess i've put that incident and what it meant to me so far to the back of my anything that feeling all this about it is new and uncomfortable.  but it's real, and it deserves to be owned.  thank you for helping me with that. 

talked w/ my bro yesterday about some family stuff.  he has such a different attitude about being raised by our parents than i do.  he's 9 years younger than me, and from what he's told me, had a different set of parents than i did in how he was treated, etc.  also, he has a very different attitude about things that happened to him, what we weren't given or taught about being out in the world by ourselves.  part of it might be a guy vs. gal perspective, i don't know.  i do know that i'll stop talking to him about any of it.  he either ignores, or says - i just made the best of it, and it's fine.

it made me doubt myself somewhat, made me feel a little like i'm making too much of this, why can't i have his attitude about yeah, i was sad about it at the time, but it worked out ok.  the therapist in me believes he has some major issues, but he denies having anything bothering him at all.  maybe i'm totally off track, looking for stuff that isn't there.  maybe, i don't know.  it's unsettling thinking about it now, writing about it.  did stuff really not bother him or is he just good at denial or maybe i'm just looking for dragons where there are none.  whatever, i think it's time to put that all aside and let it be.

[Papa Coco]

Hi San,

I can understand how your talk with your bro has put some doubt into you. If he was raised by the same people you were, and he says he's fine, what does that say about you? I grew up being "the broken one" and taking the blame for it every second of my life until I was 50. Personally, I believe your doubts are just that: Doubts. I agree with your thought that he is just not as open as you are to the truth about how things were.

I'm #4 of 5 kids. My elder sibs were 13,11 and 8 when I was born. My little sis came 3 years after me. We were two distinctly different litters to the same parents. I have experienced the same sort of thing as you did with your bro recently. When I was 50, my family fell apart finally. My oldest sister, who I really didn't know well, connected with me, and we had a long series of similar conversations as yours. It took me some work to help Sis understand that we did NOT have the same parents. Little Sis and I grew up in the shadows of their childhoods. #2 was a sister who is a demon by most descriptions. Toxic in almost every way. Murderously toxic. I put most of the blame onto her for our little sister taking her own life. After raising that monster, Mom and Dad became very suspicious, and treated me like I was a thieving, conniving monster like #2 was. #2 broke their trust in children. My room got searched every day while I was at school because Mom once found hundreds of dollars worth of stolen jewelry in the closet of #2 who had been babysitting neighbor kids and was helping herself to their bedroom drawers. There were so many reasons my parents were different to #5 and me. It was an epiphanous time in #1's life as she, at age 63, heard for the first time from my own mouth what it was like being raised differently than she had been. Her parents were young and vibrant and building a new life. My parents (Same people) were old and working toward their retirement plans.

Personally, I believe that we are born with unique personalities, and then are raised under unique circumstances, making our own lives unique, even from the lives of our own siblings.  Just look at litters of puppies or kittens. Born together on the same hour, these siblings all have unique personalities even before they are raised.

As I read your words about his different take on life than yours, I'm drawn to my belief that we, the members of this forum, tend to be the ones with our eyes open. We see the damage. We feel the pain that everyone is living in. People who are like your bro, just close their eyes to it and don't deal with it. (Spoiler alert: Ignoring it doesn't heal it. I like to say that if we don't face our dragons, they will eventually turn and face us. Who knows? Perhaps his day to face his own dragons may still be coming).

I currently live my life by this rule: The whole world is traumatized, and those of us who recognize the trauma are the ones who are working through it. Those who pretend it's not there (like your bro) are doomed to repeat their pain until the day comes that they finally address it like we are doing now.

There may still be a day when your bro will need to deal with what you've been dealing with. He's on his own path. You are on your own path.

For what it's worth, I enjoy chatting with people like you more than I do those who hide from their pains.  They're shallow. We're deep. we are far, far more interesting conversationalists.

[StartingHealing]

sanmagic7

If I may.

I have stuffed wolfies.  A family of 3.  It works for me. And I'm on the back 9 of life.  I also have what could be called "children's art supplies" and it helps.  And this time I don't have to stay in the lines if I don't want to and nobody can tell me different.    

Filtering through what each small person has gone through in the family dynamic is going to be different. Not to mention the people in the role of parents are also changing through time as well.  The base may stay but the expression will change since us humans change over time.   

Had a serious sit down one day with the sibs and each had a totally different take / perception on the people in the roles of parents than each other.  Which makes sense because each sib is a different individual with their own "take" on things.  The comparing notes was .. eye opening to say the least.

The way the break down was when this convo happened by age of people was sister, sister, sister, me. Which covers nigh 20 years.  Yeah.

My takeaway from the conversation is that it deepened my understanding of the complex people that were in the position of "parents".  It gave me much more understanding and in some aspects being more sympathy for them.   

Sending you all the best

[Chart]

Ok, I'm sold! I'm gonna start shopping around for a stuffed animal. :-)
 

San, my best friend of all time and space calls himself the Lone Bison. He too suffers from Cptsd, but he hasn't the faintest notion nor would be even slightly interested should I ever bring it up.

Siblings and shared parents... Just like the adage, no one steps into the same river twice... No two people have the exact same parents. And even identical twins have unique and sometimes enormous personality differences. C'est la vie...

I'm trying to think of a situation where I realized the full scope of something from the getgo. Aint happenin... I don't "realize", I "absorb"... Then little understandings plink-up like mini-mushrooms. I link G with H and it clicks. I get a solid feeling of being a genius... which lasts exactly seven minutes. Then I look back up at the night sky and feel a silly giggle rise in my throat. I think the realization of anything is just another step on that stairway. I'm still pretty darn discouraged. Would it have been worse if it'd come all in one fell swoop? I don't think so. Cptsd sucks no matter what temporal time-frame we engage it on. At the beginning I was obsessed with speed. Now I'm impressed by the depths the condition can take me to. I encounter innumerable "ah-ha" moments, but remain generally clueless. But I know I'm someone else every time I decide to cross that river. Each time, the freezing water shocks me just a minuscule fraction less.

Sending positive senator-reactivity vibes. Keep writing your representative. I believe collective energy accumulates. This Forum serves as my proof.
Kisses and hugs
 

[sanmagic7]

honestly, you people are the best!

PC, the idea of 'eyes open' made so much sense for me, and i do believe that is true.  the rest of what you wrote, about we each having different personalities, also hit home.  i think parents can't help treating each kid differently - you helped open my eyes to that.  thank you for all your wisdom and support.

thank you, SH, for sharing your sib experience.  i think my eyes are opening a bit more about how parents treat kids differently - i guess they really can't help but do that.  i know i did w/ my 2 girls, but some of that was circumstantial - the older had a lot of illness both physical and mental that demanded attention, so the younger was kinda left out of my time and energy in many ways.  however, those differences can happen in a lot of perception, perspective, time of life kind of ways.

for example, my B was the only boy, born later in life, babied to death, so to speak, while my sister and i just weren't.  at any rate, i so appreciate what you wrote, your take on this.  it helped a lot. 

chart, you brought a smile to my heart!  i do hope you find your stuffed animal, the one who fits with you and for you.  i swear, i never 'got it' before, cuz i'd never had one.  being someone else each time we go thru a realization reminds me of something 'alice' said (i have this above my desk) - 'i can't go back to yesterday, because i was a different person then'.   yep, so true.  and i totally understand the 'absorbing' bit.  have done a lot of that throughout life, on so many levels.  we really do live and learn, don't we. thank you so much for your encouragement and support.   

busy day today, so i'll just go.  but some good stuff w/ my galpal yesterday, and just being accepted by someone.  it was so very good, but quite unsettling the entire day!

[sanmagic7]

more on my galpal.  she has been so accepting of me, of who i am, no matter how i look, what i wear, even tho she's quite trendy and fashion-conscious (i'm not, never have been - to me it's all a big scam, one type of fashion this year, something completely different next year, lots of money spent, lots of stuff for overflowing landfills, beaches, and oceans, etc.)

but i digress. (guess i just had to let that little rant out).  so, this visit i decided i was sick of being and looking so depressed, and i curled my hair, put on makeup, dressed in a cute skirt i love w/ my alice in wonderland t-shirt, black leggings and my red clogs.  i felt very cute, and i know it lifted my spirits when she saw me and just started gushing about how cut i looked, how much she liked what i was wearing - she was so excited to see me not looking bland.

we talked, like we do, about an enormous amount of different things, and got on the subject of how i've been not accepted, how i've been talked to as an adult by authority figures in jobs, and she was just aghast.  she knows me as being very outspoken, and she couldn't understand not only why those things happened, but why i didn't say anything. i told her that when it was someone in authority in my job, i would just freeze, and she accepted that, too.

as i was talking, just letting stuff come to the surface and then out of my mouth, i began feeling quite agitated, excited (but not in a good way), and i finally stopped talking.  later i realized that i felt very vulnerable at the time saying this stuff to another human being not my T or my D.  still, she was very accepting, got mad at other people for doing that to me, was very appropriate and supportive in her response.

it nearly brought me to tears right then and there.  but last nite, while watching 'sister act', i cried all the way thru, sometimes even sobbing.  i know it was a lot of relief from that day, from having her as a friend, but also because even tho 2 judges ruled that our food stamp benefits were to be reinstated from an emergency fund, our pres. decided he didn't want to do that.  we had gotten our hopes up for a day after the rulings, only to have them dashed again.  my D is really worried about this, and got so very angry when i told her the turnaround of these events.

and this friend is helping us w/ this as well.  she's been buying food for us about once a month, which has also been so sweet and generous of her.  honestly, she and her goodness just overwhelmed me this week.  she's also been paying for our rent increase cuz she wants us to stay here.  she's gone out of her way to help us.  it's been a godsend to have her back in my life.  and she's also told me that she's glad i'm here, that i help make her life better, too.  it's nice.