About my post below this one...

I wrote this "story poem" "Cinderella of the Underworld" in the post below a few years ago and had posted it in my blog during that time. Recently quite a few people have gone to this older post and read it and made some very thoughtful and nice comments about it. I even think I might have helped some people along the way with this little "true story" of mine.

I remember when I wrote this how easy it came and how it just seemed to "flow" out of me...took me about 20 minutes or less. I had just finally after years of denial come to the conclusion that my father who I always used to defend had not protected me as a father should have...from my mother. Though an alcoholic and abusive also I always used to feel that my father understood me best and at least we would have talks that were intelligent and real and often "emotional"...something I never ever ever received from my mother nor my two sisters...feelings, emotions and "being real" were not "allowed"...odd how I came out of this dysfunctional family being the one that was always able to "feel" and to express those feelings also. I often wondered why I was so different as a child and adult than the rest of the family. How come I didn't turn out like them or act like them? How come I didn't become just another fundamental baptist christian with all the dogma hate and anger like them? How come I was the black sheep who broke the cycle? And how come they have never really cared about let alone loved me or even cared if I lived or died? And how come I never became an addict? It runs in the family.......I was so blessed for this one thing to not have been a part of my life...addiction....and yet I was surrounded by it...even in the 15 years I had been married...the second time around no less.

Well, answers to these questions can never be answered really..it's more about trying to heal as time goes on even if your life become more and more difficult and with situations that you must always handle and "take care of" with no"back up" whatsoever...no family that you know you can turn too..no family that you know will ever be there for you....because they never were there for you in the first place since you were born..it's not easy..but writing about it as time went along sure has helped me.

Reading a post recently from Yoga for Cynics (check my blog link and you will find his blog) I read something he had written. I hope he won't mind if I quote him a bit here.

"If your family doesn't like you for who you are and they think you should be more like "them", and they treat you like you'll nevr live up to their standards...then you better take it as a compliment and consider yourself lucky that their limitations will never be yours, that you'll never need their approval". Thank you very much yoga for cynics...for when I read what you wrote, it helped heal some more of those old wounds. It's almost like being acknowledged...

About two days after I wrote Cinderella of the Underworld I rented the movie "Ever after" with Drew Barrymore...it was kind of a remake of the original Cinderella story. As I watched it, it suddenly hit me that my childhood and some of my adulthood also was very much like the Cinderella story! Only my father was alive...and my two sisters are not my stepsisters but my real sisters. I found it so ironic that I had just written "my Cinderella story" a few days before I had seen this movie!

My mother was very much like Cinderella's stepmother only a bit worse in the abusive ways..you can't even begin to imagine...there was never ever any maternal love or caring for her daughter...at least not this one...it was more like we the children were always taking care of the adults and all their "adult" problems..we were a pain to them...and they shared this with us almost daily what a burden we were to them...just in general and financially too..my mother had shared with me many times how she wished I had never been born.

My father tried but years ago it had finally come up, out of the blue, and the words came flowing out of my mouth out of nowhere "my father never protected me from my mother".."not only that he was not a good nor strong father and he abused me also and his drinking and alcoholism made him incredibly cruel through the years"..and "we were their little slaves"...I looked up at my therapist at that time when I said that and she looked at me "knowingly"...I could see that she already knew this long ago and was just waiting for when the realization would come to me....she knew it would she had said..and then we talked about if for about a year on and off.

Things changed for me more once I admitted about my fathers huge weakeness...knowing what my mother was doing to me and how she was beating me and treating me all those years...but he did not have the courage to stand up and speak and to tell her to stop...years and years and years of never doing anything or "saying" anything about it....my sisters were similar in their "nonactions" and the way they treated me putting me down and trashing me all the time...that I was "making trouble" by speaking up for myself..and my "co called rebellion"...so I better just "stop it".."or else"...I walked out in the middle of those "hateful mean" sermons in the church many many Sundays as a child through the years....and I paid for that on a regular "beating" basis..it made me sick to my stomach and heart and soul to listen to the hate coming out of that preachers mouth all the time...I knew he was "wrong" and he was filled with anger and controlling all these people...so sick...and though I got beat as a child over and over for walking out all those times, I still do not regret that I did walk out of those sermons...I saved my soul...I would not put up with that kind of evil sick crap! I knew as a child that this was not for me....

It's very sad to come from a family of totally repressed people...except their ability to physically abuse you...in that they were not repressed. I still often wonder to myself that the stork just dropped me off at the wrong house and I really did not belong there. From the book "the women who run with the wolves" the author speaks of this and in a tale she describes people that feel this way that we come from the "Zygot" family...we are called "Zygots"...where the stork accidently dropped us off at the wrong house..and we really belonged to that wonderful family about 4 blocks down where we really would fit in "just perfectly"...and the mother and father were good parents...etc...

Though I could not have kids and tried for years...I realize now maybe that was how it was supposed to be...who knows...maybe I would have passed down that hatred like my mother did with me to my own child? But you know I really don't think so...I love children and teens of all ages and I know many fosters kids and have been there for them..I understand a lot of their pain I can relate to them and they always knew they could share and talk with me. Everything happens for a reason...surely there was a reason for all of this in my life? I have learned so much...it still amazes me how far I have come.

It's how to let go and forgive when you know your family doesn't give a rats "A**" about you...but I do know that my mothers mother did the same thing to her and so I do understand in my mind how all these "patterns of abuse" came from...I think my mother was probably a lot like me when she was a child...she probably fought for her soul just like I did...but she gave in to "submission"...and then she finally caved in to her mothers "forceful pressure" once she was an adult...to become a radical fundamental "hell and damnation" baptist chrisitan...or whatever you want to call it...I watched it happen I heard her mothers (my grandmothers) phone calls yelling and preaching at her all the time...and oh by the way did I mention that almost my whole family are all this religion and are very very repressed till this day? To them I am the "evil one" yet I know that in a bizzare way they respect that I've made it thus far all on my own..I'd liked to see them do the same...I really dont' think any of them could.

Forgiveness is a long hard road...but I know it still hurts but not as much...and like yoga for cynics said I do feel lucky and I do take it as a compliment that they want nothing to do with me...

The whole truth and nothing but the truth...hope to learn more lessons along the way..so my little poem story is the post below this...and oh by the way guess what my maiden name was? "King"...I know it's ironic isn't it?

Rhiannon