Everyone is lying

For the first time in my 31 years of life, I am in therapy. It's something I should have started years ago, as a child really, so I'm actually very excited to be on this new venture. My therapist told me to try journaling to help me process everything that's come to light and the Vocal community is kind of like a form of journaling, right?

I'm not entirely sure where to start but at the top of my brain at this present moment is: either they have been lying to me my entire life or they are lying to me now.

I've experienced several forms of trauma and abuse during varying stages of life. I only recently, as in the past 2 years, have really come to realize exactly how much abuse I had endured and, was still enduring, up until about 2 months ago. My therapist enlightened me by explaining that one of my trauma responses is to change my own reality. I have always viewed my childhood significantly differently than both of my sisters and that is because I chose to change the way I viewed what happened as a way to cope with it. However, in the past 2 years, the veil has been pulled back from in front of my eyes and I am having to re-experience my life, process it, and work toward healing from it. Super fun, right?

I won't bore with all of the details of all of the things that have happened to me and my sisters because really, who wants to read all of that? We all have varying degrees of awful shit happen to us in our lives, no need for me to harp on mine. To summarize, my father abandoned us. My aunt and uncle are alcoholics. My grandmother whom we lived with was bipolar and verbally abusive. My mother whom raised us is a manipulative narcissist with borderline personality disorder. I was bullied all throughout elementary and high school. My father came into my life and abandoned me all over again. Let's see, I think those are the basic highlights.

What is eating at me the most with everything that I have come to learn and realize, though, is that there was always a question of sexual abuse in my family. This is involving multiple people across multiple generations kind of abuse. My mother abruptly and completely nonchalantly told us a few years back that both she and my aunt had been abused by a number of people, all of whom my sisters and I were left alone with/overnight with/lived with/etc. That was the first major blow. I have had so many questions surrounding this, number one being why on earth were we left alone with these people? Unfortunately, I will never learn the answer to that question so, moving on.

The next major blow came just this week actually and it touches home quite a bit more than the first. I need to backtrack a little here first though before I can get into number 2. A few years ago, my mother started having health issues, or so we believed. If I'm honest, I think she may have faked a lot of it. Basically, she abruptly stopped taking all of her medications (these included blood pressure, heart, diabetes, antidepressant, antipsychotic, etc.). It took a little over 2 weeks for this to land her in the hospital and she actually lost her memory. It was kind of scary and this is not the part I believe she faked. She thought it was year 2013 (it was 2021) she couldn't name half of her grandchildren, she called me the wrong name, it was a total mess. Anyway, I went above and beyond to take care of this woman following this event. I mean I put my children on the back burner to make sure that she had what she needed, we moved her into our home, I spent hours and hours filling out papers to get her assistance because she could no longer work, drove her allover creation to different doctors to try to figure out what was happening. I'm starting to get fired up so I'm also starting to ramble, I apologize.

You get the picture though, right?

Anyway, fast forward to 2 years later and we have been through the ringer wth this woman. I could write a book on all of the shady things she's done, the amount of times she's given access to bank accounts, screwed my husband and I over, compromised my kids safety. We have multiple conversations about how it needs to end. All of it needs to end, now, or we are not continuing to support her anymore. Well, Thanksgiving week she decided to just not give a crap and sat on my couch taking pictures of my 3 small children and sent them to some random man with an international phone number. When I confronted her, she lied then she got violent. Ultimately, we decided to take her to a hotel for the night. What a mistake the entire week was.

She threatened suicide and then when she was taken to a hospital, she claimed that I had abandoned her and was stealing her money. Needless to say, our relationship is now nonexistent. I have had no contact with her since the beginning of December and I was finally starting to cope with the whole situation when all of a sudden I am informed that yes, there was in fact sexual abuse involving my sisters and I and multiple adults in our lives were aware of it but did not do a damn thing.

I'll type that again. Multiple adults in my life were aware of abuse happening and did nothing to prevent further abuse or protect us in any way. I have asked the question multiple times over the course of my life and have always been met with "I'm honestly not sure, but I don't think so." Now, all of a sudden, out of the blue, we are confirming the question no one would ever answer before. So, either everyone has lied to me my entire life or, everyone is lying now.

If it were just my mother making these claims, I would not put much merit to it. However, it is being confirmed by other family members so I'm left sitting here going, "what in the actual fuck?"

Whether it was a lie then or it is a lie now, it is all so horrible and going to take time for us to heal from. I have so many more questions, starting with "why is this coming to light now?" and ending with, "what is wrong with you?" I know that I will never be given the curtesy of knowing exactly what is fact or fiction, and I know that none of my questions will ever be answered which, to be completely honest, I think I am okay with.

I know that I can heal without knowing all of the details of what may or may not have happened and that's what I will be working toward this year. Healing from all of my trauma, learning to love myself, and finding inner peace. I don't have any friends and all of my family lives states away from me. I'm a stay-at-home mom in a new area we just moved to this year, so I feel pretty isolated and alone. I wasn't sure how putting some of this down on paper for people to read and judge was going to make me feel but I can now say that I actually feel a little bit of weight lifted off of my shoulders. Maybe putting some of it down will mean that I can start to let some of it go.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I have nothing to offer from this but for me, it has been really helpful to know there is someone on the other end who will be reading it and even though we won't be having a back-and-forth conversation, I feel like I have been able to confide in someone.

I will likely be back to confide in you some more and, if you need to, please feel free to confide in me in return. I am always here to read and listen.

So again, thank you.