Re: Brother Story=erbussmom

[Guest guest]

erbussmom,

I am sitting here in an utter flood of necessary tears after reading

your post. I don't even know where to begin other than saying thank

you. Thank you for posting and thank you for spilling your heart out.

I needed this cry in a way I could not formerly fathom.

I feel in the depths of my soul my deceased father reaching out to me

through your words as well as my friend, who killed herself

last year. While this hurts with every fiber of my being, it is

probably the best spiritual medicine I need to heal sooo many wounds

I've had from 2006. So much death and tragedy and I know you are new

here and probably haven't read my past posts on these topics, but

this is a ray of hope for me in some of the darkest days of my life.

I sooooooo need to learn these lessons that your post inspired that I

just am in awe right now of how badly this darkness breaking into

dawn hurts- hurts that I've not been able to fully feel and deal with

b/c it has been too much. Tomorrow, tomorrow, always tomorrow and

this minute tomorrow is here and I'm so grateful for this torrent of

tears to release me from this God awful past year. I've been waiting

and I see now more clearly than I have in a long while that the

waiting is coming to fruitioin. Thank you and thank you again.

Valuable lessons.

You must think I'm crazy, but I'll try to explain. My dad died of

cancer when I was 8 and my younger brother was 4. My dad was much

like your brother except they truly didn't have any money. But he was

the all bad child that my grandnada singled out as the worst of 6 and

I've heard horror stories I never wanted to know about how badly she

beat him. They will live with me just as your witness will live with

you for the rest of our lives. Its not possible to wrap one's mind

around these types of evil. A lifetime would never make it make sense-

nor several lifetimes for that matter. But truly, I've always blamed

my grandnada for my dad's death on certain sublime levels and yet I

was singled out as the all good grandchild growing up by her- out of

16 grandkids. Even as he lay dieing, my grandnada told him he never

got a whipping he didn't deserve. No waiting for the funeral. No she

heaped the piles of dirt on while he still lay fighting for his life.

Last year at Christmas I made the difficult decision to go NC w/my

nada after a hysterical 45 minute conversation with her. Mainly her

hysteria as I tend to get calmer around her the more insane she gets

which only freaks her out all the more these days since I was always

the rebellious youth ( " just like your father " - in her words) until

these past few years of getting married, getting in therapy and

learning about BPD. I don't participate the same, but after that

conversation I decided I would not participate period. There's no

point in having a relationship w/an insane person when I'm truly

sane, which I think I am for the most part now days- maybe not

growing up. Who is as a KO? Is it possible? Not sure.

But in going NC w/my nada, in my heart I've also just not felt any

inclination whatsoever to call grandnada on my dad's side. Call it

clearing house. Call it seeing the bps in my life for what they are?

I don't know. I've felt compelled a few times and then I'd stop

myself and say 'for what?' And so this is also the first year of NC

w/grandnada and I'd wondered if I'd call her at the end of this month

on her 80th birthday. I can almost hear my dad saying 'letting it

go'too and just be done w/her and that part of my past as well. I can

sense that so much from your post- to let it all go. Not only let it

go, but to be grateful to let it go- to not hold the anger any longer

like my dad always did. To not feed the bitterness that has chipped

away at me over the years for being cowardly around grandnada w/how I

really feel about her or even nada for that matter (I said all I had

to say last year when I made my last attempt at salvaging any

relationship and I realized w/o a doubt that chapter in my life was

over- no mother, no father). I see now that I don't want to feel

those things b/c they do give a person cancer. I knew that growing

up, but I never knew how to get the hell out of Dodge.

But not only cancer. Nada's live in fiance was also a KO. After she

and I had our pow-wow last year and she realized I was walking away

for good, she turned on him w/all her rage and he killed himself in

March. He was overall a good person. He got terribly warped the

longer he was with her and was a puppet for a lot of her crap w/me,

but the last time I saw him was the first time I ever saw him in 5

years stand up to nada. I was proud for him. And yet he internalized

her insanity (as well as his nada who lived closed by) the same way

my dad did w/his nada and maybe even my nada(though my nada wasn't

anywhere near as crazy before my dad died as she got after he died-

the trauma triggering for bps as well as her youth being a factor of

indecision as to the development of truly being bpd- she is,w/o a

doubt a bp).The last thing her fiance said to her the morning she

took off for work was 'I have a headache. Do you have any

asprin? " Nada's reply " All I've got is Tylenol PM. But you should've

taken that last night. " - like he was a moron- of course the

compassion is overwhelming. And so he turned on the car in their

garage but never left home.

I've never prayed to God to have mercy on anyone's soul as much as I

have all my life for my grandnada.Now I feel the same about my nada

as they are the most sickest, vile creatures to walk the earth-

didn't actually kill anyone but got the victim to do themselves in.

Brilliantly diabolical. My nada's and grandnada's souls strike me

very much like that creature Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. Oh how

I related to its hideousness when I saw it in the movies. Finally

someone capitulating the essence of how a KO views their biological

predecessors (I hate to use to the word 'parent'. I'm a parent and it

seems an abomination to my vocation)!!!!

Within a month of nada's fiance's suicide, another good friend of

mine, killed herself. She'd been on disability for the past

year for back problems and in retrospect, the writing was on the wall

w/her depression, but I just didn't pick up the warning signs w/all

that was going on in my life between getting over the fact I'll never

have a relationship w/nada and having two little boys in diapers. I

wish I did have time in retrospect for my good friend and I wish

she'd known about nada's fiance's suicide as she never would've done

that to me- had me deal w/two suicides in less than a month's time

frame (and I've only ever known one other person my whole life to

kill themselves).

But came from an abusive alcoholic home and her immediate older

brother died the day before he was suppose to come back home from

Vietnam. She worshipped the ground he walked on and was 16 when he

died. But to top it off, it was Christmas eve and so she never

forgave God for that one. She had such a sad life and yet as an

outsider, I could look in and try and tell her he's still with her

always just as my dad always is, but it never got through to her.

Only the bitterness and disappointment. She was never a bp or an

addict though a bit of an enabler at times, but it was like she

walked through life screaming 'please don't hurt me' and the wounds

from her brother were always so transparent. As much as I related to

her woundedness, I also saw in her what I never wanted to be-

spiritually crippled and unable to live again. I know her brother

wouldn't have wanted that for her and I tried to tell her that, but

she could only see her pain and so rightfully, it manifested itself

in her back. Surgery after surgery and then at the age of 52 she

started losing sensation in her legs and that was it. No husband or

kids and so she thought her life had no meaning and she killed

herself. She's not so different in that way than my dad- wounds from

childhood killing the lifeblood of today (and it wasn't just her

brother, but the abuse from her father growing up and her mother had

finally passed away four years ago and so she didn't seem to think

she was still of use on earth- but to serve- never to live).

Your post touches me in the scariest parts of my self. The need to

hold the mirror up to my soul and say " are you trying to live or die?

Which is it? " I don't want to be like my dad and give myself cancer

from all the internal bs I hold onto. And while I'm quite certain I

would never kill myself like nada's fiance or my friend I also

see the crippleness of their souls and how even though they were

alive, they were still enslaved by the traumas of their past- though

not bp, still unable to fully love or live. I don't want these wounds

from this past year to cripple me like that. I just don't. I don't

think that's what my dad or my friend or any of these other souls

that have left would want for my life.I don't want this for me and

truly, I am quite certain your brother would also want you to live

and to learn how to love (which was never modeled in our youth and

God has it ever been the greatest challenge of my life to learn what

that means- love!).

I weep for the dead. Right now. This minute. And it hurts sooo bad.

So bad. And I also know in the depths of my soul, it is good to feel

this much right now and to let it go. To learn how to live and how to

love and to cry and not be constantly haunted by the pains of this

past year or any other year for that matter, but especially this past

year.

The footprints they have left on my soul will last my lifetime and

yet I honor them all the more by living and loving and not succumbing

only to the trauma, but rather the good parts they left in my life-

the parts of me that are better b/c they have left these footprints

on my soul. Ouch though. Just ouch.

Again, thank you for your post that really made me look deep within

at the lesson of my life this past year and many years leading up to

it (and those two are not the only deathes- just the ones that are

perhaps hardest for me to reconcile). I genuinely do feel in the

getting it all out I'm ready for a vastly different kind of year this

year. Thank you again.

Kerrie

>

> Greg,

>

> Your response and story about my issues reminding you of

> similarities with your brother and family was touching. As I keep

> saying, it intrigues me to hear such similarities.

>

> I find it so sick how nada lied, manipulated, and just caused such

> damage via abuse, drugs, emotions, etc. The one place in my heart

> that hurts the most is the loss of my brother to cancer. I hate to

> say this, but I blame nada for him getting cancer, and so did he.

I

> just cannot come to terms with what nada and my father did to him.

> Things like making him choke by shoving food so far down his

throat,

> so my father would think he was puking his food and beat him to

> simply calling him worthless, and selfish to think that anyone else

> wanted him. They would tell him things like " we were the only ones

> that felt sorry enough for you, and this is the way you thank us. "

> HELLLOOOOOO! He didn't ask for them!!! When he left at 16 to go

> live with his uncle (an alcoholic) he was diagnosed with cancer

> three months later and didn't have the money for chemotherapy, so

he

> sued my parents for child support, and lost because my parents

filed

> bankrupcy. They cleared 200 thousand a year, hid there money, and

> filed bankrupcy. I sold everything I had: clothes, jewelery,

> heirlooms, anything to raise money for him to get the medical

> attention necessary. Then I was the two faced back stabbing

> daughter, according to nada. I remember holding him as a baby and

> hugging him so tight, telling him all would be okay...as a baby,

and

> then through his chemo., it all played back. Ughh, gotta stop,

> can't hold back the tears right now. But I thank you and the many

> others who have opened a huge door for me, and I can't thank you

> enough for being there, so supportive, and listening.

>

> erbussmom

>