I did a microdose of Sabina Maria mushrooms last night and had a
lucid type of sleep that wavered in between waking and dreaming,
never quite going fully under. I woke up in the middle of the
night full of sorrows and washed them out from my body clutching
a little stuffed animal.
The trigger for a lot of these feelings was realizing that my
Dad had a big 70th birthday party and I didn’t even know that it
was happening. I guess it coincided with a family reunion and I
had heard about that a few months ago, but I was never invited
to that either. My brother mentioned that he'd be going up with
my niece and nephew, though I wasn’t asked to join.
At times when my brother has needed me for emotional support he
has included me in his life. Or one time when he was dating a
girl he suddenly showed a lot of interest in having me come
along to hang out with her and her brother, but I realized that
it was only to create an impression on her, and wasn't sincere.
He was using me.
For many years when he was with his partner that he has 2
children with I was never invited to see them even though her
family all lived in the same city as me, and they were getting
together all of the time. That was all when I was coming out of
being in the hospital and could have really used family support,
but they were very cold and distant from me. It would be
easier to understand the rejection and be able to reflect on
what it is about me that's so off-putting if I wasn't
arbitrarily accepted and invited into his realm when it suited
him.
Any time I've tried to talk to my brother about things he's done
that were hurtful he always becomes very defensive and then he
tells me about all of the problems that he struggles with, and I
end up feeling guilty. I believe that some of his issues are
sincere, but it seems strange that he wouldn't recognize that I
also have some significant struggles having nearly lost my life
to an overdose and been involuntarily arrested and committed to
a mental hospital; and many other things that are too much to
get in to.
He can only think about his own sensitivities when it comes to
me for some reason. I know so much about his personal
dramas, and have reached out to him many times, yet he knows
very little about the things that I've been through in my
life. Several times when I would tell my mom about some of
the sexual harassment I've been through in the film industry, he
would leave the room. Yet if a girl takes a few days to
text him back he wants to talk about it and get sympathy. Even
though he's one of the most flaky and unreliable people I've
ever encountered.
I know that he suffers and is isolated within himself, but it's
a real struggle to deal with him. I show his as much
compassion as I can, but I'm also pretty fed up. I also
recognize that he really doesn't want to have a sincere
connection with me, and so I give him his space. But like
I said, it's confusing when he will act like we're friends at
times that suit him.
There are countless more examples I could give from my immediate
and extended family where I’m always kept on the sidelines or at
arm’s length – unless there's a crisis and I'm needed for
something. And then when the crisis is over, I'm forgotten about
and tossed aside again. This is all done covertly, and in ways
that are difficult to call out directly. I remember one time
trying to talk to my mom about my feelings of being alienated
and left out, and I was harshly gas lighted and told that it was
all in my mind and ludicrous. People in my life will sometimes
make grand gestures to mask the deeper level ostracizing and
scapegoating that takes place.
**
The few times I tried to open up to others about the abuse that
I was experiencing during my childhood, I wasn’t believed. Even
close friends of mine brushed me off when I tried to talk about
how my mother treated me when I was growing up. They were so
lured in by her gregarious, free-spirited persona; that they
just couldn't imagine she would be capable of being so cruel.
And I was somewhat of a morose and sometimes difficult
character, so it was easy to perceive me as being a messed up
and unappreciative kid.. I remember one time an acquaintance I
knew through my cousin came to our family home, and he outright
asked me why I was such an angry person considering how nice all
of my family members were; and he questioned why I would get
into so much dark music after seeing a picture of me from high
school up on the wall..
I also remember my grandfather, who enacted horrible abuse upon
my mother and her older brother (and me when we visited him one
time), telling me that the dark art I was creating as a teenager
was a reflection of some darkness I must have within me. I
thought it was strange that he, as such a violent and abusive
person, created beautiful wood duck carvings, and was revered by
the greater art community as a kind and generous person. I
imagine that my mother had to internalize so much of her pain to
feed the persona of her delusional and immature father.
But then I go further back and see that my Grandfather was
abandoned in the mountains of Switzerland at 11 years old after
both of his parents died, was beaten for being left-handed, and
grew up in the shadow of so much tragedy that happened in Europe
in the 20th century. He never had a chance to heal.
Maybe the pain was too big to face and would have consumed him
completely. The Silent Generation. Inter-generational trauma.
**
I remember reading the file that was created about me after I
went through psychosis and was hospitalized. When they spoke
about potential “abuse” in the past, it was in quotations, as if
the minimize it’s legitimacy. My mother did such a good job
putting on the show of being the forlorn and over-caring mother
that the doctors didn’t think that there was any credence to any
potential abuse. Even seeing me whittled down to 90 pounds
nearly dead from an overdose with my hair shorn strapped to a
hospital bed wasn't enough for my her to face up to any kind
wrongdoing.
When I first got out of the hospital and went to her place she
told me that we could “deal with our problems on our own”, and
she was encouraging me to take atavan and alcohol. She made me a
co-signer for her bank account (I think more because she was
going through a bad patch with my step-dad and wanted me to get
her money before he did if she were to die suddenly) and she
told me that I could stay in a guesthouse on their property.
When I started expressing some painful feelings from my
childhood and calling her out for her abusive behaviour and her
substance abuse issues, she removed me from her accounts and
became defensive and closed me out emotionally again. When I
brought some of my stuff over and was going to stay in the
guesthouse, she moved a whole bunch of her stuff in there and
made it her own, as if to mark her territory. When I asked
to stay there a second time there were two Wwoofers staying at
their place and she told me there was "not a chance" or me being
able to come there.
I kept leaving and coming back, trying to sort out my issues and
find some solid ground. I was sleeping on couches, staying in
hostels, crashing at squats, camping, travelling around
aimlessly, and at times returned part-time to doing film work. I
was shattered from all that I had gone through, and I had no
emotional support at all from my family. When I asked my dad for
some help with my counselling he was very cold and awkward about
it, then sent me a small amount of money but told me that I
couldn’t tell his wife that he had sent it to me. He never
offered to help me ever again and rarely checked in as to how I
was doing. My step mom threw away personal sentimental items of
mine while I was in the hospital and at one point told me that I
wouldn’t "be getting anymore money" from my dad - as if I had
been a constant drain on him financially, which has never been
the case. I moved out at age 16, had never had any kind of
allowance before then and the only money my dad ever gave me was
$1100 to help me out with a makeup fx course I took in 1998.
Actually that whole situation was a good deal for my dad as he
no longer had to pay child support to my mom on my behalf..
Leading up to my time in the hospital my dad and step-mom came
to visit me at one point, and my step mom couldn't find some
medication she had packed, so she assumed that I stole it from
her. I could feel her and my dad’s energy change towards me
after that, and I tried to talk to my dad about it, but he said
that everything was okay; but I knew in my heart that it wasn’t.
It’s true that I was using a lot of drugs at the time, but I was
also making a lot of money in the film industry and had dealers
that I could get anything I wanted from at any time of the day
delivered to my home, so I had no reason to steal anyone’s
medication. Years later she finally fessed up and said that she
had later found her pills. I still don’t understand why she
waited so long to tell me. She apologized but also made a lot of
excuses for herself. When I became upset about it later on, she
got angry with me.
My step-mom, who’s a born again Christian, also told me that she
“removed everything un-Christian” from my dad's house, which
would probably explain why so many items from my childhood were
thrown away after she moved into my dad’s home. My dad used to
have an amazing book collection and I was told that they got
water damaged in the basement, but I’m still not sure if that’s
true. At one point my step-mother said that she wished that I
had more religious influence growing up, as if that may have
helped me. She really did think that she was better than a lot
of people and would shit talk family friends of ours and made a
comment about the old wallpaper at the house being “disgusting”.
It was wallpaper that my mom and her sister put up themselves in
the early days of her and my dad’s relationship.
For the record, I can say with a great deal of certainty that
any kind of Abrahamic religious influence, especially the kind
of arrogant, self-righteous, dogmatic bullshit that my
step-mother spews would have only inspired more extreme acts of
rebellion on my part. However tumultuous and frustrating my
relationship with my mother has been, we do still have a
relationship and that's more than I can say for my step-mother
and her children, so she's really in no position to pass any
kind of judgment.
So much about my step-mom is like an ogreish creature from an
old version of the Grimm's Fairy tale books. It’s hard to
believe that someone could be that much of an asshole.
Nonetheless, I've made my peace with her for the most part after
7 years of not visiting her and my dad. But sometimes raw
feelings come out, and I think that’s pretty reasonable given
what an DB she’s been to me; especially considering how kind,
loving and accepting I was of her when she first came into my
life.
**
Finally a couple of years following my hospitalization my mom
had a breakdown at my aunt’s place and admitted to abusing me.
My aunt told me about it later and said that she couldn’t help
me in the ways that I needed help but gave me some money. She
also told me something that stuck with me that was along the
lines of “everyone in this family has big issues, you just got
busted”. I really did feel like the sacrificial lamb for all of
the family traumas that everyone else wanted to keep buried away
and never face. For everyone to be so impassive to my suffering
when I was so broken and vulnerable was horrible.
I'm going to talk about that kind of abuse that my mom enacted
upon me because it’s something I’ve never been able to fully
reconcile or have acknowledged and I'm quite sure my mother
won’t ever get to the point of being able to truly empathize
with me (to be fair, it’s because she can’t empathize with
herself and her mother was even more indifferent to her feelings
than she is to mine), but I’d like to honour my own experiences.
My mother spit in my face and pulled my hair so hard that tufts
would come out. She threw me down to the ground, slammed me up
against walls, chokeholded me, poured liquid soap down my throat
until I choked, bit my nose, slapped me and dragged me by the
wrist when I was walking like rag doll. She called me “the bitch
of the class”. She manipulated me into writing letters to my dad
that were all her thoughts and words and then sign the letters
with my name. She convinced me to pour bleach on the clothes of
a friend of my dad’s that she didn’t like. She betrayed my
trust, read my journals and lied to protect herself. She left me
alone with my brother starting at when I was about 3 or 4 years
old. She would leave me with him all day to hang out in out car
while she drank at the bar. One time the cops were called but
she kept doing it and just told us not to hang out at the car
and would give us $5 each to go find some ice cream somewhere.
She fucked men while I was sleeping in the room with her. She
screamed in my face. She was hyper critical one moment and then
stoned and uncaring the next. She shredded my sense of self
worth down to nothing and then when I finally stood up to her
when I was about 13 she called the police because she was
“scared of what she might do to me”. I was then sent of to live
with my dad for a few months. Why did I come back and live with
her? I don’t know. I guess because of trauma bonding or some
shit.
It was rare that she would apologize or be accountable and there
was never any changed behaviour. She would make up for her bad
deeds by grand displays of affection, buying me toys or letting
me do something really special like pierce my ears when I was 4.
The gross thing is that I kept trying to make her happy and give
her my love, but nothing was ever good enough for her. How could
it be when she was so wounded inside. She was a pit of blackness
that nothing could fill. And part of why I bury these memories
is because the abuse that she was suffering was far greater.
It’s hard to get any kind of truth from my parents about the
early years of my childhood but talking to an old friend of
theirs some years ago (before she passed on), it seems that my
mom was sleeping around from very early on and was never fully
committed to my dad. When I was quite young (2 or so) she began
dating a man who I’ll call Lars. He was in a hard rock cover
band, had a mullet and handlebar moustache and was a lot more
machismo than my dad was. He would end up being in our lives for
over 10 years and during that time he severely abused my mother,
putting her in the hospital twice. The first time it happened
his daughter, who was a teenager at the time, begged my mom not
to press charges; and not only did she not press charges, she
continued to date this piece of shit for many years following.
I was my mom’s main emotional support person through so much of
her trauma, yet she abused me and we didn’t have an emotional
bond with each other – not like her and my brother did. I took
on huge responsibilities and my brother stayed in his room and
played video games. I left home at 16 and received zero support
from my family, and after my mom finally left Lars and moved to
the outskirts of town with her new partner, she let my brother
and his friends live in our house rent free. They trashed it up
and when it came time to sell the house and my mom needed help
getting it ready, I took an 11 hour bus ride up there and helped
cleaned up the mess that was left. When my mom and step-dad
needed help, my boyfriend at the time came and lived at their
place. When my grandma was dying my mom was terrified of flying
and wanted me to join her in Ottawa to go to the funeral, so I
did. When I was there my aunt told me that she didn’t think that
I belonged there. I still don't really know why.
Even though I was called upon when help was needed, when my mom
and brother would come through Vancouver when she was helping
him find success in chasing in dreams, they never came to visit
me. I’ve just never been fully included, wanted or loved in a
sincere way by anyone in my family and it breaks my fucking
heart over and over coming to terms with it. I had always hoped
that I would connect to people outside of my family system and
make a family for myself, but I keep falling into sinkholes that
replicate the shitty patterns from my childhood.
Everywhere I go, I’m an outsider.
July 15 2023
I don’t really want to fucking be here. I haven’t for a very
long time. I’ve had serious feelings of wanting to end my life
since my breakdown, which was about 13 or so years ago now. I’ve
tried so hard to overcome these feelings and make a life for
myself but I just can’t seem to get it together. Maybe I want
too much from life and I set myself up for disappointment. But
really, I just need to have sincere and loving connections with
other humans, and that hasn’t been possible. I always make new
friends but it’s flaky and fleeting, and I’m tired. I just need
a few people in my life who are going to be around for a while
and help me work through my feelings of abandonment rather than
carving new wounds into my soul and leaving me more broken. I
wish I wasn’t dependent on others for my emotional survival. I
wish I could do everything alone. But I can’t. And it’s
literally killing me because I’m not able to connect with the
right people.
I really don't have anyone in my life who's a true friend or
family member to me. It fucks me up so bad to face this. I have
some decent friends who’ve been in my life for a long time but
I'm always way more giving, loyal and committed to others than
they are to me. I don’t know how to change this. I can’t keep
going on like this. I can’t play power games with people just to
protect myself. I’m so utterly exhausted with humanity and I
don’t have much hope left for myself. Hope has become a bag of
broken dream strewn out on a lost highway.
**
I met someone who I thought I could potentially connect with in
sincere way but that person is being vague and dropping in and
out of communication. And it’s bringing up a whole bunch of
shitty feelings from the past. There have been quite a lot of
men who’ve come into my life and we seem to connect so deeply
and so beautifully - and then they take my soul into their soul
and they cut me up into little pieces. Why can’t kindness and
generosity and an open heart be honoured and cherished? Why is
it so often seen as something to chew up and spit out? I’ve had
to hide myself away and build up defenses around myself because
I can't be myself in the world. I sincerely care about others, I
work hard and am loyal and conscientious, and all that does is
put in a position of being taken advantage of. I really really
really don’t know what to do or how to be in the world.. so I'm
just staying in my little apartment and hiding myself away.
I actually do like myself, believe or not. I think I’m a sincere
and awesome human with a lot to share with the world and it
hurts me that I’m not able to find a place for myself. I
want to find acceptance and be a part of a loving and supportive
community. I want to do real activism in the world and bring
about the changes that need to happen in order for us to live in
a way that honours the earth and all living creatures.
It’s very frustrating when I feel a connection to someone (which
is a rare thing for me) and they seem to reciprocate those
feelings but then there’s so much ego and bullshit in the way. I
never try and force myself on anyone, ever. I only respond to
what seems like sincere interest. It’s when a person starts to
be hot and cold or confusing that I get so upset. I feel so
played with and it tears open all the old wounds in my soul.
I open myself up and think that a situation is going to develop
into something, and it can seem so awesome. Then the person
pulls away. Then they reconnect. I have my guard up. After some
time I drop my guard again and get excited about seeing the
person and connecting. Then they pull away again. Then I feel
crushed and like a fucking fool.