Miswired Circuits/Things That Spark

Started by Bach, February 25, 2023, 09:00:17 PM

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Armee

I know. I do the same thing to myself.

I want to tell you it's a big deal but also respect that right now your mind is telling you it wasn't as a way to protect yourself from how bad it feels. It's a lot to navigate both the traumas and the defenses we have against them.  :grouphug:

sanmagic7

and i grew up in the 50's, bach, had the reverse experience.  was sexually stunted.  it was traumatic in its own way. i've asked my t several times how i can react so much emotionally when i've heard far worse stories of physical abuse from others.  she's always told me, it is often more difficult to deal w/ the mind manipulations (such as making like sex was ok everywhere in the 70's, even w/ children present).  just cuz it was the norm then doesn't mean it was any kind of good or right.  yep, generations of people growing up w/ distorted sexual beliefs about themselves, relationships/ casual sex, committed sex - there are so many angles to it.

you were traumatized by it, and that's what counts for you.  doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, it was traumatic to you, even if you didn't realize it then.  i think realization is one of the first steps to healing.  love and hugs :hug:

Armee

 :cheer:

Amidst the other posts I don't want to miss celebrating that you felt joy in your feet!!!! That's amazing! Wouldn't it be great if that joy started to spread?

(And I totally get how miraculous this feels! I remember finally being able to feel my feet and how amazed I was that this was possible. My T was always telling me to feel my feet. "Feel your feet, ground." Uh ok I'd say and dig my feet into my shoes and he'd laugh and say "not like that!" But I didn't know there was another way you could feel your feet without touching them. When I figured out how to sense them after about 1.5 years I was ecstatic! Like whoa! That's possible??!)

Blueberry

Quote from: Armee on April 14, 2023, 09:04:57 PM
Why are you making a big deal? Dear Bach...it's because it was massively damaging and as you noted before affected many aspects of your life. Whether it was normal for the 70s or not...it was not appropriate and it was damaging.

I was raised in the 80s so I personally can't speak to whether those were normal conversations to have. I suspect your family took it to the extreme of whatever was normal. On top of that, other things were not right too in your childhood and with your family. This was damage on top of damage. If you feel disturbed it's because there's good reason to be disturbed.
:yeahthat:

The only change I have to make is that I was raised in the 70's (and 80's) and in my experience not all families treated the topic of sex the way yours did, Bach. There were undoubtedly more families than just yours who did since it is assumed that far more children and teens are subjected to CSA than anybody wants to admit, but that still doesn't take away from the damage that was done to you! There was CSA in my FOO too btw, a kind of covert type, but tons of damage. So that's a further reason for me to agree with what Armee wrote:
Quote from: Armee on April 14, 2023, 09:04:57 PMIf you feel disturbed it's because there's good reason to be disturbed.

(Thanks for giving me words Armee. I really really wanted to reply to Bach the first time I read her post, but my mind was blank as in frozen.)

Bach

I remember that girl's name, but I don't remember what year it was or where I met her or for how long we were friends.  I think it might have been when I was 10 but before I met V (who is a long, long story, could I even write about it?).  I do remember that the girl and I really hit it off and that after we hung out together for the first time she said something about "the beginning of a beautiful friendship," but then after we had been friends for however long (not very long) she didn't want to be my friend anymore.  I don't remember how this manifested, but I do remember that when I confronted her about (avoiding me? being too busy to hang out? not coming to the phone? What?) she said that I was "not her type."  I remember her reluctance to say it, and the squishy expression on her face when she did.  I went away baffled and hurt.  As an adult, I have faintly recalled something about having some playing cards and putting the king and queen cards face together and saying they were having sex, and have surmised that I made her uncomfortable with sex talk and that perhaps she asked her mother about it and her mother thought that I was after her sexually.  So unfortunate.  I'm absolutely certain that I had no such intention because for one thing, I am no predator, and for another, even though I started masturbating somewhere around that age (I got the idea from one of those 1970s novels of my mother's) it didn't even start to occur to me that I could have sex with another person until I was a few years older than that.  I was a kid, and sex was for adults the same way driving a car was for adults. 

It's a difficult memory, probably the first ever of many friendships lost throughout my life because of my sexual inappropriateness.  I wonder whether she remembers me, and whether it's a difficult memory for her from the other side of things.  I hate thinking about the pain and bad feelings and squishy expressions I've no doubt left in the blazing wake of the fascinating awfulness of my sexuality. 


Moondance

These kinds of memories are so uncomfortable for me, too.  I get it!  I get so uncomfortable that I use the "container" tool
My T suggested to deal with at another time. The only thing is I seem to be putting a lot in there. I hope with time I will learn about other ways to deal with these thoughts.  There are so many of them for me yet. 

I wish I could be of more help other than relating. 

Bach

Thank you for relating, Moondance. It does help.


rainydiary

Bach, I'm checking in to say I've been reading and am here supporting you as you untangle this.

sanmagic7

fascinating awfulness of your sexuality - what an interesting phrase.  when you're brought up inappropriately, you learn, then do, inappropriate things.  you've learned differently now.  we are products of our upbringings, which we never asked for.  it was thrust upon us.  please, be gentle w/ yourself, bach.  you didn't know any different.  love and hugs

Bach

#69
It's very complicated to write about V.  She was my best friend from the ages of 10 to 13.  It was, for many reasons, a formative relationship.  I was deeply attached to her.  She was a little over a year older than me, and I think she may have been the first person I ever really felt loved by.  Her father had died in Vietnam, and she lived with her mother P, and BJ, her mother's boyfriend (they married several years later).  P and BJ were hippies, and their apartment was a cluttered smoky mess.  They didn't have much real furniture in the living room, mostly large pillows on the floor, and for years, that was my idea of cozy.  They loved her and were kind to me, but she was almost as neglected as I was in terms of lack of supervision and guidance.  Looking back, I really wonder what their story was.  It's impossible to know.  With an adult perspective, I think it's likely that V was sexually abused but groomed to believe that the sexual activity was her own choice, because I remember her telling me about having had a "boyfriend" where she lived before I knew her, and having sex with him.  I think she may have even mentioned him being older, but I might be making that up.  Either way, she was 11 when I met her, so...whatever that means.   I also think it's possible that V's mother was involved in an abusive relationship before she got together with BJ (who was a total sweetheart), but that's based on very vague memories and lots of supposition.  As I said, it's impossible to know, and probably impossible to find out.  V's mother died young, only 52, back in 1997, and V died in 2011.  There's no information about what V died from, but my guess would be a drug overdose.  BJ is possibly still alive, but considering how inaccurate I've found those people search websites to be, especially for people with surnames as common as his, he might not be.
Even if he is, it's not like I'm going to call him up after 25 years to ask him about his dead wife and stepdaughter.  I expect that he would remember me, both because I spent a LOT of time in his home during those years, and because I used to visit P somewhat regularly during the couple of years between when I returned to the area in which I'd grown up and when P died (probably of emphysema or the like, she had an oxygen machine during that time, and she was a hardcore cigarette smoker.  She used to ask me to bring her cigarettes when I came to visit, and at one point when I put up a little resistance to that because of her condition, she told me that it was her choice and that if I didn't respect it, I shouldn't come by).  I also had a couple of frantic spates of contact and renewed friendship with V over the years, more weirdness, all weirdness, everything is weird.

I feel that it would be important for me to explore and write about V, but it's very difficult.  This post alone has taken my whole morning, and involved a trip down the rabbit hole of Internet searches, including the finding of a Facebook page with pictures on it that V's ex-husband apparently made for her, not sure why, last I knew they weren't speaking, but they had two children together and it appears that they may have renewed some kind of friendship before she died.  Seeing pictures of her made me ache for her, for her life, for my life, for the innocent connection we had as children, for the untold realms of dysfunction that surely underlay our friendship.  I suppose if we had remained in contact I would have discovered more, but we lost touch years before I started to figure any of this out.  Ugh.  I need to stop now.

sanmagic7

you know, bach, things were sometimes weird back in the 70's as far as childrearing went.  i knew several sets of parents who had their kids hitting bongs at a very young age (one was 5), and parenting/rebelling from the 'establishment' was often way too free-flowing, undisciplined, few boundaries.  There are a lot of adults who got messed up as kids during the 60's and 70's cuz of such a lifestyle.  looking back on it, well, i know a lot more now than i did then.

your story about you and V is beautiful but sad.  i'm glad you found each other and have those memories.  love and hugs :hug:


Bach

I wish I could find my tears.  Feel my grief.  For V, for me, for a thousand other things.  I know it's in me, I know I'm absolutely full of it, but it seems almost like a dead space within me, like my life and my day-to-day feelings and my consciousness are some kind of thick plastic skin enclosing all that grief, keeping it inaccessible, trapping it inside where it can't really hurt me but perpetually stops me from rising.

Something I have realised over these past few days of, well, rather dwelling on it, is that V was not a very good person, and was quite a bad influence on me in a lot of ways during our original friendship.  This doesn't make it okay that she's gone, that I ache for her, that for whatever reason we slipped away from each other for a third and final time after our last reconnections in the 90s and then when I looked for her again, back in 2011, she was already dead and I had missed her by only a few months.  Dead!  V is DEAD.  At 47.  And I missed her by only a few months!  I discovered that twelve years ago, but I don't think it ever really hit me until this. 

From further exploration of her ex-husband's Facebook page, I discovered that BJ is indeed dead.  I haven't been able to determine exactly when he died, but it would seem to be within a year or so of when V died.  He would have been in his mid to late 60s.  PT, V's second husband, who she was with the last time I saw her, also died some time around then, at 53.  It's haunting.  There are a number of pictures of V in those Facebook albums, mostly poor-quality snapshots from many years ago, a few from shortly before her death, several with her daughters, a few with P, a few with BJ (Interestingly, none with the ex.  Who I also met a couple of times!).  Looking at them, it struck me that it felt like looking at old pictures of departed family.  Abstractly, I know it hurts.  I know the grief is there, and it's deep.  But still, I can't really feel it, and I can't find how to mourn. 

Moondance

Hi Bach,

I'm so sorry for all of your losses Bach.

:grouphug:


Bach

I had a horrific emotional flashback this afternoon.  It was brought on by smoking a joint after work and thinking about how it was V who introduced me to smoking pot lo those many years ago (hippie parents, san!  Though I don't think she was allowed to smoke until 13).  My history with pot as with so many things is very up-and-down.  Sometimes it helps me with living my daily life and with processing my trauma, but at other times I use it as a substitute problem so that I don't have to do either of those things.  It's hard for me to talk about, because on the one hand I feel the shame of an addict, and on the other, the defensiveness of a user of an often misunderstood medication. 

But anyway.  I carelessly smoked a little more than I should have, and I started thinking about the first time I ever got stoned, which was not the first time I ever smoked.  I had smoked a few times before than and not really felt anything.  This time, V and I were smoking with my brother, and my brother's friend M.  I don't remember exactly how this went but at one point, M and V started making out.  I don't know what my brother was doing at that time, but somehow, I was left with the joint, which I took several puffs off.  Then later my brother and M had taken off somewhere, and V and I were playing cards in the living room when I suddenly realised that the room was gently rocking back and forth.  It felt like being on the fulcrum of a see-saw, where if I leaned to one side or the other, the room tipped in that direction, and I had to balance in the middle.  I was a little weirded out by that and didn't know what was happening, but V said "You're stoned!  Enjoy it!"  The after a while there was a Sara Lee chocolate cake that I may have eaten all of.  I've always said I ate all of it, but honestly, I don't think I did.  I ate some of it for sure, but I think I've always said I ate it all because I thought that made the story funnier.  I don't think I did actually enjoy the whole thing very much.  I suspect that the only reason I smoked pot enough times to start enjoying it is because V liked to do it, and I liked to be with V.  I've always, quite frankly, been a follower.  Smoking pot, shoplifting, writing graffiti all over the city...no, V really wasn't a terribly good influence on me at all.     

None of that is actually what the flashback was about.  The flashback happened after I realised that I am almost out of the HRT and thyroid medication that I receive in the post.  I requested it almost two weeks ago and it should have been here by now, and when I realised that not only did it not arrive today, but it was already too late to call the doctor and ask where it was, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of not being able to get what I need.  I tried to think calmly about it, but I'm under a lot of pressure with my job right now and feeling very trapped by it, and the idea that I might have to deal with it while withdrawing from HRT and thyroid treatment put me in a state of absolute terror. Catastrophising and raw, mortal terror.  I've been halfway into an emotional flashback since Friday anyway, keeping it under control but being keenly aware at all times that some part of me was back in 1976 at V's house with the pillows and the loft bed and a mother who said "I love you" to her daughter and actually meant it, but this was too much, TOO MUCH.  Just in the nick of time I remembered the Instagram post I read the other day about "shaking it out."  So I stood up and started to dance around, singing "Shake it out.  Shake it out!  It's okay, it's TODAY, shake it out!"  It helped, to some degree anyway.  I still feel atrocious, but I was able to make dinner and watch a TV show with My Person like normal, have not broken down and stuffed my face with chocolate, and am calmly understanding that, uncomfortable though this is, it will pass and I will survive it.