Misfits

Clare,
I know that feeling...wanting to kill even though it is against everything that you stand for. It is an uncomfortable and confusing emotion...but it is real and necessary. I think that you and I are so protective of other victims/survivors because we know the pain of abuse and because we are mothers who really value nurturing. I wonder where we learned that from, our mother was so busy ensuring our survival that she forgot to nurture us...as you have said we are feral children.

The young woman is lucky to have you in her life...
be that one person who unconditionally loves her and she will find her way.
Perhaps you can bridge the gap for them and the mother can find it in herself to acknowledge the abuse and apologize to her daughter. That connection could make a huge difference in both of their lives. As for being adopted by the wrong family- Estes in Women Who Run With Wolves talks about the misplaced zygote...being placed in the wrong family. That's how I've felt as long as I can remember. I never looked like the rest of you. I felt different than the rest of you. I believed it when I was teased that I must have been adopted.

I have told the story of my patient, years ago, who had multiple personality disorder and who called me pleading with me to save her. She had gone home for the weekend and was being abused at home.
I had a reaction very much like yours...
the trigger of her pain made me so engulfed in anger that I wanted to kill those responsible.
I find it disturbing though that I have never felt that same anger towards my own perpetrators...
am I afraid of the consequences?
I am probably afraid of my own anger.
I hope that working with this healer will allow me to access my feelings in a nonthreatening way.

I am also amazed by young women who were abused who suffered through it to protect a younger sibling. I have heard that story many times over. What gives them the strength to surrender to it in hopes that they will spare another life misery? I still struggle with the fact that S#3 was also abused and that I did not protect her.

As for the discomfort that you feel for needing financial assistance...that was an early lesson taught in our house. None of us were ever supposed to need anything. We were raised to be ruggedly independent and now we are cursed with that ethic. We weren't allowed to be anything but a good and quiet soldier...never drawing attention to themselves.

Did you see The Butler? It was a movie out this past summer.
The main character was a lifelong house servant...
eventually working for many presidents of the US...
his first and best lesson learned was "when you are in a room it should feel empty".
He wasn't allowed to be present...
he was furniture, an object that served and responded only when directly spoken to.
That's how I could describe my self-image as a child and young adult.

Today at Meeting I felt as if a poem that was read described my life...
at least the historical path of my life.

The Men That Don't Fit In- Robert Service

There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far:
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They could say: "Could I find my proper groove, 
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with hope that's dead,
In the glare of truth at last.

He has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now it's time to laugh.
Ha, Ha! He is one of the legions lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in bone;
He's a man who won't fit it.

I am not sure how I feel about this poem...
I do know that it has me thinking...
and feeling uneasy. It has me thinking about my future.
There's got to be a take home message in her somewhere.
I hope that you have a blessed First Day.

Love and Light,
Maggie