I Hate . . . Myself

I’ve spent too much of my life feeling responsible for the crimes that were done against me. The last time I saw my mother, I felt that old burden of responsibility creeping in, the desire to not to blame her and leave the shame she ladled into my life with her. I felt a need to remove her guilt and responsibility and own it myself. After all, I am much stronger than her now.

When I look at the many atrocities I lived through, I can see that it’s been easier to feel the skeptical ass that the family disowned for disloyalty, then to see the reality of all the pain behind me. The misery of dissecting those crimes has been daunting, unrelenting but necessary.

I thought I could somehow control the dysfunctional start by owning it.

What a mistake that has been.

I did nothing wrong.

That’s a really hard statement for me to make, actually. As a child growing up with incestuous, abusive parents, that is not the message you leave their house with. The message you leave these abusive homes with is this:

If there is a problem, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

To this day, the children in my family that have stayed loyal to the dysfunctional voice of denial still stand by my mother. My father is dead but don’t think their loyalty doesn’t stand still with him, too.

You know why they don’t leave?

They can’t.

The vicious webs that incest spins around your mind, your body and your soul are not easily cut. Most often the victims fall prey to the venom they received year after grueling year.

Their eyes are dim and their ears are deaf. Their feet walk with the abuser because they do not have the will to walk away or they’ve become the past and abuse themselves.

And yet, I have hated myself for not staying with them all. I’ve blamed myself for far too long.

It is not my fault. I did nothing wrong. I was a prisoner by no crime of my own. That has taken most of my life to learn.

Now, it’s time to carry on without them, without their guilt and without the responsibility of their crimes.