dreamwithmagic.com Blog

I Believe

Dream with Magic! — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:35:46 +0000

I believe that everything happens for a reason. Good or bad, He has a reason. I have always believed that there was a reason that I went through what I did as a child. For a short time in my late 20′s I was seeing a therapist. She spent time trying to convince me that maybe there was no reason why I was abused, maybe it just happened. I bought into it for a while. For about a year I was a mess. I couldn’t handle thinking that there was no reason for being so badly abused and growing up unloved. I finally started talking to God again and He helped me get my head on straight. There is a reason for everything he does. Because of what I went through as a child, I have a deep well of compassion and understanding of other people. I’m a very good Mom, and the reason I am a good Mom is because of what I went through. I truly believe, with no doubts, that there is a reason for everything.

No Help

Dream with Magic! — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:19:27 +0000

This memory is a little vague because I was very young. I was about 7 or 8 and I had done something to make mom mad. I was so scared and my Grandparents only lived about a mile away, so I ran all the way to my Grandparents house. Mom arrived shortly after in the car. She grabbed hold of me and was pulling me to the car. Now, I knew what would happen once she got me home, so I was trying to pull away from her and had my hand reaching back to my Grandma and screaming. Grandma just stood there. She didn’t help. I think that was the first time I started to realize that you can’t trust anyone. If even my Grandma wouldn’t stop her, nobody would. Nobody was going to help.

One of those days

Dream with Magic! — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:47:47 +0000

I have got to be the best blocker of all time. When memories creep up on me I can usually block them so fast, I almost don’t have time to think about it. But today is one of those days. Every once in a while I have one of those days that the flashbacks come one right after the other. I just can’t block fast enough today. There are too many. I don’t even know why today is one of those days. Nothing happened. They’re just there. So, I will just deal today knowing that tomorrow will be better.

Diaper Time

Dream with Magic! — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:29:04 +0000

My little brother was born when I was 3, when I was 4 my mom decided that it was time that I learned how to change a diaper so that she didn’t have to. Now you have to remember, back then there were cloth diapers with pins. Yes, at 4 while I was trying to pin the diaper, I stuck my little brother with the pin. He started screaming and I got beat. Yes, I was still expected to change his diapers, no, I never stuck him again.

No Memories Of Dad

Dream with Magic! — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:21:46 +0000

If you haven’t noticed, I don’t call up many memories of my dad. I can call up memories of the beatings and other things from my mom, but calling up memories from my dad makes it so that I have some very rough days. Up until about 5-6 years ago, I would have flashbacks like crazy. Now, I only have them every once in a while. But calling up the memories of him makes it so that I have nightmares and flashbacks and the all around icky feelings that come with remembering. So just a heads up, you won’t be reading much about my dad.

Unbreakable

Dream with Magic! — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:35:43 +0000

I have been beaten with everything you can think of, bare hands, belts, dog leashes, flyswatters, wooden spoons, you name it and I’ve probably been hit with it. For some reason I always made my mom so mad. And what really enraged her is that I would not break. No matter what she did to me she always knew that she didn’t win. She had the rest of them scared and cowed, but not me. I was actually a very good kid. I didn’t drink or do drugs, I was a virgin when I got married, I was always in by curfew and I was loyal to a fault. You would think she would feel blessed, but instead she hated me, she couldn’t break me no matter what she did and she hated me for that. I look at my children and know that I want them to be better than me. I will never understand her wanting to break me. She did everything in her power to break me, it wasn’t just the beatings, I was told constantly how unlovable I was, how fat, how ugly. Yes, life might have been a little easier if I had given in, but for some reason, I just couldn’t. I was stubborn and I just refused to let her win. After every beating I would stare at her with defiance, a lot of times that would usually earn me an extra slap, but for me, it was worth it. I heard often as a child how the beatings were my fault. I was unbreakable. I won.

A piece of bread

Dream with Magic! — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:13:01 +0000

I was probably about 10 and my little brother was 7 and we were playing in my bedroom in the basement. We got hungry and decided we were going to go upstairs and see if we could get something to eat. Now for some off reason my mom would not allow us to eat anything unless she gave us permission. Well, she said we couldn’t have anything so my brother and I stole a piece of bread each. We took it downstairs and were standing on our heads against a wall eating it. My mom came down and saw that we had taken a piece of bread. She lost it. She yelled and screamed and than grabbed us and took us upstairs. She got the belt and beat the living daylights out of us for that piece of bread. I know that your thinking that most kids don’t get to eat unless mom says it’s ok. The thing is, mom wasn’t that kind of mom. I remember being hungry often as a child. Mom would get all sorts of really good food for her and dad, but we didn’t get any of it. I learned to sneak food for us kids at a very early age. And yes, I got caught quite a few times and got beat for it. I also took the beatings for my brothers when they stole some food, I would tell my mom that I was the one that took it and gave it to them.

Loneliness

Dream with Magic! — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:00:08 +0000

I think one of the hardest things to handle when your a survivor of abuse, is the loneliness. Even if you have a wonderful partner who loves you and awesome kids that think you hung the moon, they will never fully understand the pain that overwhelms you at times. I can talk to my husband about what I’m feeling and he tries to understand, but unless he has lived it, he truly can’t understand. He doesn’t understand when the pain just wells up out of the blue. No rhyme or reason, just bam!, it’s there. I would give him a medal for trying to understand, but, seriously, how can he? Unless you’ve lived through the beatings, the rantings, the icky touching and the emotional abuse that’s almost worse than anything else, you just can’t understand. At these times I feel such a deep sense of loneliness. I know that the loneliness will pass, I don’t feel it as often now that I’m older, but darn, the feeling of desolation when the loneliness hits is suffocating. I feel like I’m in a glass box looking out at a world that I can’t touch.

Feelings

Dream with Magic! — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:16:38 +0000

There are so many different feelings and emotions that come with being a survivor of abuse. Guilt, shame, regrets and more. You will go through these kinds of emotions on a daily basis. Don’t think about tomorrow, it will drive you nuts and make the feelings so much bigger. Just get through today. Deal with the emotions and feelings as they come up. I used to have a really hard time with the guilt and shame, because I would look towards the future and think that I would still be the same way I was today and that was just depressing. I learned to just deal with the feeling of that day and not worry about tomorrow. It’s so much easier to cope with daily feelings instead of weekly, monthly, whatever. Tomorrow will be there tomorrow. Once you accept that you will feel these emotions, it’s a lot easier to cope. One day you will wake up and realise that you haven’t felt those hard feelings for quite a while. I know that it’s overstated, but seriously, time does help.

Touching

Dream with Magic! — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 13:23:57 +0000

Thanks to my parents, one of my biggest problems that I have and have a hard time with, is touching. I am a toucher. When I’m talking to people, I reach out and touch a hand or shoulder and I also love to give hugs. But I don’t like for anyone to touch me or hug me first. When my dad would come into my room at night, he would always try to wake me by rubbing my arm or leg. Ewwww…. (shudder). I can’t stand for people to touch me and if they try to comfort me by rubbing my arm or back…. again…. ewwww….. Having children is especially hard. Children like to touch. I made sure that my children understood that I had had a lot of “bad” touches when I was little and had a problem with it. I let them know that it wasn’t anything to do with them personally. I never hid the abuse I suffered from my children. I had problems and I wanted to be absolutely sure that they never thought it was them. Children can’t not touch, so there were a lot of times that I just let them. As long as it didn’t last too long and there was no rubbing, I just did what I had to do. Luckily, I must have said/did the right thing. My children never felt that it was them, one of the main reasons is probably because I was always touching my children, petting their hair, rubbing their backs, giving kisses and hugs. As I said, I am a toucher, I just don’t like being touched myself.