Orchids in the ditches

[JamesG]

So much churning going on at the moment, but it's very different. There's a definite switch in my perception underway but it's maddeningly hard to pinpoint, but I'll have a go.

Firstly, I think I am finally realising that there are a whole suite of behaviour patterns that I am only now attributing to my brother. This means that the damage is deeper and this also means I have to accept that damage and see myself as "damaged". I don't mean that in a negative sense, more in a simple recognition that I am fitting the criteria of post-trauma behaviour fully, something I've been fighting with I think. This is probably because, I guess, because I wasn't physically or sexually abused. I've had a bit of trouble reconciling this. My abuse was sustained psychological abuse, enabled by my mother and unchallenged by his wife, friends or extended family.

I have a friend who had severe sexual and physical abuse and I spoke to her last night, almost apologising for this difference, but she was adamant that in her experience, it's the psychological that is worst. I'm in no position to judge this, but there is no arguing with how well I fit the symptoms. My counselling is nearing some deep buried stuff and I'm feeling it. I'm now remembering that the house was so tense with my brother and father's battles that I have no memory of anything much else. It must have swamped everything at the time and I am starting to be aware that I was sitting in the shadows, watching, feeling unable to react, dissociating for all I was worth. When my brother wasn't attacking dad, who'd had two heart attacks and was very sick by this time, he was laying into mum, or bullying me. He dominated the home. Dad was a broken man. He once said to me, "please, be who you want to be, but never, ever be like your brother." Poor dad.

Then dad dies and there is nothing to stop this grotesque cuckoo taking over mum's life. Mum, recently widowed, and with all the spine of a sea cucumber, was never going to resist. Armed with a child, he was able to blackmail her into silence. But that wasn't the whole story, she was also a class A narcissist herself, but in a simple, theatrical sense. She saw herself as holy, special and pious, seeing my brother as her noble cross to bear, a handy way to mask her cowardice or fear towards him. Her response was to attack me, becoming endlessly manipulative in her perpetual drive to force me to support his parasitism without complaint. When I resisted, I would be guilt tripped. There was a ghastly symbiosis, something between Stockholm syndrome and deep fear.

I am also increasingly in agreement with my counsellor that he is psychotic. He had empathy, but he did it anyway. He knew what hurt people, he spends time gathering data for it, he is sensitive to it. This is a man that is in a relationship with his ex wife's lover's ex wife... (yup) for the purposes of revenge. That's how far he is capable of focusing on hurt.  In the course of today, he will be thinking of ways to get at me.. that's not paranoia, I can assure you it is the case. I have seen him doing it over others and I have no doubt that right now, I am an itch he would love to scratch. I know that I am being monitored, distant relatives have been trying to link with me on Facebook, something that is only likely to be happening because he is out there propagandising against me to make himself look better. The narrative will be something like, 'Poor James, he's so messed up, I'm so worried, but he won't talk to me, maybe you.... '

The realisation for me now is that this sustained madness has damaged me, I'm injured. There was an unhappiness in me when I was young, a melancholy that should not have been there, a depression that at the time, I thought was just who I was. Of course it wasn't, there was all this misery going on and this incessant erosion of my confidence. And it went on, it didn't stop. He didn't grow out of it, in fact he got worse and worse. As his dreadful approach to life yielding its inevitable failures, he became more bitter, looking for blame in those nearest to him and then exacting cruelty and spite in revenge for crimes they had never committed. He is a failed dictator, possessing an alarming range of behavioural similarities to Hitler. The banal cruelty, the savage tendancy to seek disproportionate reprisals for imagined slights, and unfathomable belief that they have been chosen for greatness despite all the evidence to the contrary. The Hitler parody videos on youtube are a very, very close match, that exploding blamestorming and need for retribution in the face of self-imposed failure, the people around them quaking in fear at the sheer level of stress being unleashed. That is MY brother.

It shaped my future relationships, making me a sitting duck for narcissistic friendships. I ended up as the sidekick to some truly ghastly people who I tried to please as they belittled me still further. The pattern was set. And I was sombre, intense, my relationships were cloaked in this issue in a hundred ways, the threat of his bizarre interventions a constant nagging anxiety. And the attacks came in, they still come in, tho the channels are mostly blocked now and his online bullying has been seen clearly on facebook by friends who once bought his dark charm only too readily. My partners had to deal with my fear, tho I never really got anywhere near dealing with it properly and the deppression came and went, the dissociation lingered, both wrecking my intimacy and abilty to just enjoy life. I have no doubts this contributed hugely to my ex's alcohol collapse, something which I feel very bad about suddenly. The stress in the last years must have been unreal, especially as she was fighting her own demons regarding her own mother's cruelty.

These people are dreadful, they are everywhere. This week is really clarifying my desire to write something about it in depth. Black comedy, that's what I do best, and exposing these people in that belittling light. I feel so much for my friends with abusive histories and for all of you, it has robbed us of the normality we should have had, that everyone should have had.

But it is not fatal.

We owe it to others if not even to ourselves, to reverse the damage and claim a happy life from beneath the wreckage, like poppies growing on a battlefield. The doctor said to me that I will never shake it, the trauma will always be there, it's how I live with it now that matters. And that's it really, looking for ways to turn the experience from * into manure. In Normandy there is a battlefield where the German army was finally trapped and obliterated in 1944. They had one last road available to escape and I walked this and I was struck by how amazing the orchids were in the ditches beside the roads. Turns out that the bones and blood of the horses, caught up in this grim finale were bulldozed into the verges and that there is so much of them still in the soil that the flowers thrive.

The abuse and the neglect caused by my brother have created talents in me, ironically. I used humor to pacify him, I leant on art for distraction, my sensitivity has led me to be empathic and to see hurt in others and now that I am a writer, I can see that this experience shaped that. It's something I see in a lot of the writing on this forum, definite skill and subtlety in the use of language. We can't change the past, we can't make it better, but we can be the orchids in the ditches, the poppies on the battlefield, defying the pain and loss to bring beauty back.

[Three Roses]

How moved I am by this post, James! So eloquently put. We are the poppies on the battlefield, the life springing up from a scorched earth. We have lived thru events and people where others have fallen. We are brave miracles!

There is a lot of evidence that the damage we've incurred can be mitigated or even negated completely. Some people have reported feeling healed of CPTSD.

If you write a book, either orchids in the trenches or poppies on the battlefield would make excellent titles!

[Metanoia]

I think this is just the inspiration I needed to read James. It really does hurt looking back on all the time spent crying, sad, alone and scared that could have been happy memories. It even sucks looking back on all the years not knowing I had cptsd and the people I got defensive with or lashed out on or the things I would have done if I had more confidence. I mean during that time I have done cool things and accomplished goals but it just probably wasn't with the spirit that should have been there. I also faced mostly psychological abuse and minizemized my situation by thinking people have way worse things happen to them.

We can make our lives happy and overcome our trauma. I like how you have found the beauty in such a negative situation and have realized the skills you have gained from this experience.

There is beauty in the breakdown. I can definitely relate to the dark humor.

[Andyman73]

Just want to let you know I read this, and am sitting with you. Safe  :hug:if okay.

Andrew

[sanmagic7]

james, quite inspirational as well as admirable.  thank you.  so hopeful.  absolutely beautiful alongside the terror of the realizations.  very brave.  big hug to you with all sorts of support.

[helliepig]

I found it difficult to read your post, having been at the mercy of nasty narcissists myself, but so very true.
(I grew up in a family full of them and I was their scapegoat)
The damage of intimidation, craziness, nastiness and attack is very profound and incredibly damaging and no less for not being overt sexual or physical abuse. It's hard to even see the wounds and cruelty as it fills the air around you and attacks reality itself.
I'm so sorry for what you went through.

[helliepig]

It really does hurt looking back on all the time spent crying, sad, alone and scared that could have been happy memories. It even sucks looking back on all the years not knowing I had cptsd and the people I got defensive with or lashed out on or the things I would have done if I had more confidence. I mean during that time I have done cool things and accomplished goals but it just probably wasn't with the spirit that should have been there.

So completely true,

[achilles]

Thank you for sharing your experience.  I identify with much of what you said.  Your last paragraph gave me some hope.