Sunday, January 25, 2009

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


12 comments:

Burfica said...

I think the best and smartest thing we can do is learn from our parents mistakes, and try every day not to make the same mistakes.

I cheer you on Rhi!!! And I loved the poem!!! LOVED IT!!!!

Muhd Imran said...

You've had a hard life from childhood. I am so sorry you and any child had to go through life as you did.

Yes. It is indeed a compliment that you are the "blacks sheep" in the family. You stand for what you know is right, even as a child. That tells a lot about a person.

You have a beautiful soul and God has given you that strength to make it on your own and still stay beautiful.

You inspire me. Your many amazing creative talents, your beautiful soul... not perfect but a complete person as a human can possibly be.

I am glad I get to know you and be your friend. You're an amazing individual. You are blessed and at peace with yourself. That is just awesome.

Have a wonderful and happy life ahead

Anonymous said...

The same struggles tend to recur in generation after generation...which to some degree may be inevitable, just as we carry a parent's facial structure or hair. But, then, we can work to understand them and ourselves. My father came from a truly awful situation in many ways, including religious fundamentalism, racism, etc.--and he broke away from it, but, nonetheless, having chipped away the ground beneath him, ended up pretty confused, and passed a lot of confusion on to his sons. Now, I'm trying to see through the confusion...and on and on it goes....

Jay (Yoga for Cynics)

Kylita said...

As ever and always in our
SisSTARhood of Evolution...you
are breaking open the seeds
within you that will keep
helping you to grow. Did you
notice the Cinderella stamp I
sent with your reading? Did
the reading help in any way?
Happy New Year of the Ox, it
will be a positive turning
point for you, I feel sure!
Love,
SisSTAR Kyle
xo

Devika Jyothi said...

Knowing the way others have struggled and made it in their lives is always helpful in making it all easier for oneself...

Forgive, or forgeting the misdeeds by others can do only good...

I could make out from many a comments and your posts that you were a strong woman who made it yourself in life...

Finding strength within oneself is the way to peaceful life, i feel...and I often do it, in my own ways :)

May your life be filled with all happiness, Rhi..

love,
devika

goatman said...

I doubt you would have treated your kids like you were treated. In fact you would have been aware of and tuned into the pitfalls of a bad parent which would have created an excess of empathy and care not a lessening.
I hope that you feel better after that release of words. I would love to do that myself on my blog but suffice it to say that my father asked me the other day: "You didn't vote for the nigger did you?"
Yeah I did dad and God help you!!

Carolyn said...

Rhi, I remember a year or so back before we lost touch on Blogger how I felt a kindred spirit with you because of similar childhood backgrounds. My parents, especially mother, were the same way. I had no sisters, but am in the middle of brothers, one who is 13 years older and one 4 years younger. Mom favored the younger one until about 6 years ago when dad got sick and he wouldn't help her stick him in a home right away. He wasn't that sick yet or needed it so my younger brother & I cared for him. Our older brother was too busy being a preacher (in that religion you mention) to care or help us. He still ignores us to this day because we aren't part of his church.

Mom hated us for caring for dad. It was hard for me mentally too because suddenly I'm caring for my father who, years before, was abusive in that he let my mother abuse us so badly, much like yours. He also hit me anytime she yelled at long enough to do it just to get her off his back. It was draining physically and emotionally to me. Some days I though, "Well, here I am doing her dirty work for her once again."

The last year of his life I had to put him in a home since my house wasn't equipped with bath downstairs and we lived too far out for nurses to come daily. He passed in '05. Mom still speaks with such venom about how I cared for him but why won't I give up my life now for her. She's 79 and has an apartment, doing fine healthwise and I see no reason nor do I feel the guilt.

And yet-- I still have things in my head to sort out and put behind me with her. She won't let me right now though because she simply won't let go of anything. It'll probably take her death befor I am able to do it.

I admire your strength. You are farther down the path in your healing now. Breath, dear Rhi! I hope to catch up to you one day :)

P.S. I still remember your picture collages.

Rhiannon said...

I know I usually don't comment much on my blog..not as much time as I used to be able to these days..

But I did want to thank each and everyone of you that made a comment to this post..it meant a lot to me..and isn't it just amazing at how many of us as children were brought up in this radical religious stuff? Just goes to show how messed up it can make kids and adults as they grow up. How we can actually be permanently damaged by it.

I always wondered why really radical fundamental religious parents think its more than "okay" to yell, scream, beat, "force" and "preach" and smoke and maybe drink at the same time they are preaching to us to be these "pure clean" child beings as they hypocritically trashed us and beat us all the time? Such hypocrisy! Jesus teachings? No, I don't think so. Identity crisis, unable to make your own decisions and needing to be in control maybe?..hmm..good question.

I know the Bible pretty well and how people can interpret it in their own way..especially the preachers that our parents learned from. I had questions for my mother and the teachers in sunday school about Jesus and the bible verses..like I didn't think that Jesus meant the things I was taught the scriptures meant.

I got yelled at for having questions. I realized why..they got very uncomfortable when I brought up these questions as they did not have answers to my valid questions and so they took it out on me. I think I made some good points also..and that really pissed them off!

I thought Jesus seemed basically a loving passive man who gave of himself...and loved the needy, the poor the sick and the "sinners" and he was very brave to have taken all the beatings and then what they finally did to him..his own people no less..we all can relate to that. He was human with imperfections just like anyone..but he was special in his deep human kindness to a mankind that treated him like dirt. He also was able to "go within" and meditate and walk through the desert be on his own and know who he was all about. He was tested many a time.

Most of my life I have not met many born again Christians that go within or meditate or even read the bible much..other than in church when everyone is "gathering". They don't "go within" they "go without" and have their societal get togethers and their "gossips" and it all just seems so external, so shallow. So "organized" I really don't think luncheons and parties and "giving of the tides" really is that affective..it's all a "group thing"...as a matter of fact I don't think a lot of them know who the heck they really are "inside" themselves..they are not comfortable internally..it's all about outside appearances and or constantly trying to save people.

I also don't see much loving and giving of themselves in the way it really was taught in the bible..it's more about "society" and "peer pressure"..I'm sorry but I really hate the hypocrisy.

I think that Jesus might be ashamed of a lot of some of these so called "born again christians" and how judgmental they are of others that are not just like them. We need to be more diverse and also in accepting others beliefs and what works for them in their spiritual lives..not what we think they should be or do..just because they are not just like you does NOT make you any better!..even if you think it does. I suppose what I just said here was rather hypocritical of me also..ironic?..:o)

"love one another sister and brother, love one another father and mother"..that's from a great song by Cher title "love one another".

Ironic isn't it?

A still confused but "learning" process for me..

Blessings,

Rhi

Devika Jyothi said...

Nice to have this response, Rhi

I do know the Christian way of life much, except for the brief sessions we had at school...

I just love the image of Jesus...I know I'm in love with him...and perhaps, Its He who fills me with so much love, each time I get exhausted...

Perhaps its my Guru, some Hindu God...Allah the Great...someone...

I don't know ..and I don't care to know who does it

But LOVE ONE ANOTHER is what I believe as the message of any God

wishes,
devika

goatman said...

You may be right about those who think they know the answers and must convey that to others.
Recently we lost good friends because I think we were not christian enough for them. We invited them several times for dinner but didnot bow to pray. That probably produced the result that they never invited us over or even returned Christmas greetings as we had to them.
What kind of religion preaches such limited love??

Bridget Jones said...

Oh Rhi I'm so sorry (((((hugs)))))! My mom has had a life a lot like yours, and both of you are such good people. I don't understand what makes people do the things that they do, and in the cases of those responsible for your misery and my mom's, am very glad for that.

Keep healing, sweetie.

Jimmy said...

Life has been hard on u
but dont despair

things will change

xoxoxo