I’m back to reading The Courage to Heal (screw you italics, who says you should get all the action) because it seems like a good time.  I’m in the Disclosures and Confrontations chapter.  I’m having some strong feelings.  I feel kind of weird about how I did my public confrontation.  I feel like I needed to make sure the door of my entire family was slammed shut on me telling the truth.  I had to know for sure that absolutely not one of my blood relatives loves me enough to choose me over my abusers.  Not one.  Not one of my blood relatives loves me enough to say that it is heinous and terrible that I was abused the way I was and they will cease contact with my abusers.  No one.  No one will pick me over them.  They either simply don’t believe me that it happened at all and they think I am a liar or they somehow think it was ok that it happened.  I had to understand in the pit of my stomach how little they think of me so that I never ever go back and try to make amends.  I know how much I love my family.  I know how much I miss them.  It is terribly hard for me not to go cry to my mother.  I feel sad.  They have to die for me.  Jimmy was partially right.  I did tell everyone in a way that had shock value.  I did it to put everyone into a moment of stress to see how they reacted.  Guess what I found out.  If I have to go back and keep my silence and suck up for years before someone might be able to tell me in quiet whispers that they believe me but I musn’t speak of it… No.  Just no.  I’m worth more than that.  Anyone is.

I confronted my family because I needed to clearly know that there is no space for me in my family.  They don’t want me.  I am an inconvenient liability to their continued happiness because I insist on talking about things that make them feel guilty.  I need to have a clear line where I will never allow my experiences to be minimized by my family again.  They do not get to tell me what is or is not important.  My cousin told me: “You have serious mental problems. I really feel sorry for your children. Please, Please get professional help before you do damage to those poor babies that can not be reversed. OMG I can not believe the vile things that you make up. I really do feel sorry for you and hope that you get help. Do not write anymore of your vile lies to me or Nicole. You have hurt her enough as it is.”

I’m telling you, I couldn’t make this shit up.  So take that nasty witch from the writing class!  It’s believable because I couldn’t possibly make all of this up!  She can’t believe the vile things I make up.  Right.  To be fair when I talk about my mother and my sister contributing to my sexual assault history it’s kind of ambiguous.  I was sent off to be raped by people.  They would leave me alone with my brother so that he could attack me.  They sent me for weekends at my father’s house.  My sister had sex in front of me.  With men who would masturbate on me and ask me if I was willing to fuck them… well before I was 15.  It’s not like she pulled up a chair, but they wouldn’t bother to close doors.  Pornography was the reading material in the house.  All historical romance novels are not created equal.  There’s a lot of silly fluff that’s not real sexual.  Bertrice Small is big on rape, sodomy, animal play, beatings, bestiality, incest… These are ridiculously graphic.  And my mom was fine with me reading them when I was 8.

It’s hard to explain this.  I come from the kind of family where my niece can tell me that my sister taught her (my niece) about oral sex on my nephew and I nod and believe her.  That doesn’t make me blink.  Perverse sexuality was absolutely the cultural norm.  Even though my mom gave up having sex like 20 years ago.

I finished the chapter and got to the writing exercise part.  Ok,

Dear Denise,

I cannot forgive you.  I am not capable of forgiving the things you have done in your life.  You allowed me to be hurt in so many ways so many times because you were so busy chasing down your latest fuck that you could not behave like a decent person.  I sit here and a litany of things go through my mind.  You talking to me in depth about how awesome anal sex is when I was very young.  You bringing men into our house who harassed me.  You refusing to care for me and instead abandoning me to get high or drunk.  You sexually assaulted our brother.  You contributed to the rape of your son.  You contributed to the sexual assault of your daughter.  I cannot forgive you.  You did not rape me.  Not by even the most liberal definition.  Never the less you helped me grow up in a world where I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that if I wasn’t getting fucked I was nothing.  You taught me that it is ok to abandon your children for years because you wanted to do drugs and fuck a convict.  You got your bad boy.  You married him, kind of.  Oops.  Turns out he was still married to his first wife so your marriage isn’t legal.  Even though you traveled all the way out to the prison to marry him through the glass wall.  Congratulations you fucking loser.

Why am I bringing up old stuff?  Because you pretend like it didn’t happen.  Because you think you get to set the terms on reality.  You don’t.  There are things that are objectively true.  I wish to God I had worked harder to get your kids taken by CPS when they were young.  Although I think that I was too late.  I’m pretty sure you had already made your daughter suck off your son.  How can you live with yourself?  Dude, my demons haunt me and I have never done anything on your level.  How can you continue to take breath?  I bet you think you are a good person who has just made some mistakes.  You will blame drugs or alcohol, perhaps.  I don’t know how much drugs you have been doing for the past 5 years and I don’t really want to know.  I know it’s an all night party every night and you don’t work.  I know you babysit the children of teenage mothers.  Folks who really don’t have a lot of experience with healthy environments.  You fit right in.  What are you doing to their kids?  Are you giving them alcohol?  Drugs?  You have been around people who start as little kids and they turned out fine, right?  Just because they are addicts who can’t hold down a job or keep a stable place to live… well… that’s just hard luck.

I feel revulsion when I think of you.  I know that you had it much worse from our father.  It went on for years and years and you lived with him your entire life.  I’m sure it was horrifically bad.  And you never did a god damn thing to protect me.  Fuck you.  How could you.  You selfish bitch.  I believe that you are the lowest kind of person.  I think you would fuck someone over if it made you a dollar all the while loudly announcing how loyal you are.  Oh you make me sick.  Where was your fucking loyalty to me.
You did not support me prosecuting our father.  You withdrew.  You were angry and you made that very clear.  Fuck you.  Because now you claim that you always loved and supported me.  No you didn’t.  You went out and got high.  You had nothing to do with me.  Even when I specifically called you and asked for help because I was in bad positions you flat turned me down.  My only importance to you is to be a dog for you to kick.

When I think of you I think of the small old women in Japanese movies who chase people around and hit them with sticks.  You want power.  Having power means having people to dominate.  I will not let you dominate me.  Not even if you threaten to beat me up at my baby shower.  Seriously?  Who does that.  How Jerry Springer, pathetic are you?  When you are a guest in my home don’t you dare sit there and start lecturing me about how I need to respect you because you are the up and coming matriarch because you are the only one who gets things done.  Kiss my ass.  You are good at bullying other people into working.  You are mean spirited and lazy.  I have no respect for you.

But I remember the good times too.  You taught me how to stick up for myself.  When you saw me as on your side you occasionally dropped good nuggets for self protection.  You taught me a lot about how to manipulate people and the system.  You were an odd combination of occasional spurts where you were functional and inspiring with being absolutely a burden on society.  I am in favor of welfare reform because of you.  Whenever anyone tells me that welfare fraud doesn’t exist I start to laugh.  I know that you did pull yourself out of the system more than once.  You can do it.  Sometimes you just don’t want to bother because you are too lazy.

I remember school vacations where I stayed at your house for a week with your kids while you went off to party.  I was a teenager.  I was babysitting.  Yeah, and cleaning up health hazards in your kitchen because you were so disgusting.  I had to do any shit work you didn’t want to do.  And if I didn’t do it you screamed at me.  You didn’t actually “hit” me.  As you were fond of telling me.  You’d just shove a little.  Bump me.  You were big and aggressive.  All of my life you used physical force to instill fear.  I hate that you taught me to be like you.

I was willing to eliminate any possibility of relationships with my entire extended family because I am so repulsed that people think you are a good person.  I hope you rot in hell.

Sincerely, your sister.