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Contains abuse - Processing memories
I’m struggling. I have been trying to process some painful memories from when I was a child. I just need to get them out somewhere safe. Was I to blame for this? Was it my fault?
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My childhood was filled with fear. I spent a lot of time hiding under my bed or under my dressing table because I was so afraid of my mum and her anger towards me. One day I remember spending the entire day hiding under my bed. Home was not a place I ever wanted to be. Sometimes I would sit on the floor in my bedroom withmy back to the door to try to block her from getting in and hurting me if she was angry.
She hit me when she was angry. She took all her frustration out on me. She hit me often but she never once laid a finger on my sister. From this, I concluded that I was hit because I am bad.
I remember once standing in front of the mirror in the kitchen and she stood behind me and said I had a double chin and was fat and needed to lose weight. I wrote a list of all the things my mum had called me. The list included a rat, a pig, fat, worthless, bad.
She often wrote letters demanding to know why I was so awful to her. She pushed them under my door at night. I dreaded receiving those letters. I would pretend to be asleep because I was terrified of her coming into my bedroom and hurting me.
My most vivid memory of being hit was one moment when we were in the front room. She was angry - I can’t recall why. I knew she was about to hit me, so I brought my hands up to shield myself from being hit. She grabbed my wrists and violently moved my hands out of the way and hit me anyway. My dad didn’t do anything to stop her. He was scared of her, too.
One time as a child, when I was poorly and vomiting instead of looking after me, she asked me if I was making myself sick on purpose. I was so young I didn’t even know it was possible to do that.
At 14 I began hoarding pills because I wanted to end my life. I vividly remember writing a suicide note.
I shared with someone online about some of what was going on with my Mum and they contacted social services. I was terrified. I had to go and meet some people from social services and try to convince them that everything at home was fine because I was so terrified about them contacting my parents. In the end, they called my parents in anyway. The fall out was really bad.
I remember when my parents got divorced and I hoped it would be a good thing that would reduce some of the stress in the house. I hoped that I could go and live with my dad but he moved far away from my school and it wasn’t an option. I naively hoped that she wouldn’t hurt me in the new house. The first time my mum hit me there I was absolutely crushed that it wasn’t over.
I wanted to run away from home but I was scared of what the consequences would be if I was caught and returned home. I was scared that my sister might be hurt if I left.
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