Abandonment Issues..

by K

Childhood abandonment issues (literally).

Not wanting to place blame on anyone. More curious as to why it took me until almost 40 years old to start wanting to figure me out.

VERY abusive family life as a child. Father beating older siblings (self not included). Mother left leaving a note on my first day of 1st Grade. Father dies in an accident at age 12. I had no emotion, I guess. No tears. Just quiet. Although, I can sure cry now about it. Not sure why I felt that just the 2 above issues weren't going to affect my life. I'm learning now that they absolutely did affect my life in various ways.

Moving on and fixing my life is where I am currently at, and what a huge mess. siblings long-distanced themselves from entire family, and each other. Mother distanced herself from children completely the day she left note. Being the youngest of the 7 kids, I tried to imagine all of us mending the destroyed bridge, but have come to know through the years that it needs to be about me fixing me. I can't fix all of them.

My siblings view me as the spoiled child because I didn't suffer the physical abuse that they did. Never mind that I was under 5 years old and had to watch my family beat each other while I was shaking in fear in the distance. Even our Mother views me as spoiled. I am guessing because she couldn't tell on me the way she did my siblings and get me beat by our Father?

As an adult I now know that our family was dysfunctional on some huge levels. I want to only acknowledge that the family structure was completely dysfunctional, and not ever repeat the behavior (or stop repeating the behavior).

It doesn't bring a lot of true meaning until I hear myself say the kinds of events that happened out loud. I now sit, and know that my emotion matches the events. I cry now because that is the emotion that should be there, and that is the emotion that I feel.

Many many of my relationships as an adult have been destroyed. Not always because of my issues, but many were due to my issues, and I'm now aware.
I would like to focus on repair at this point in my life.

If anyone came to me and told me of my childhood as their own story, I would know that they were most likely in a mess, but why I never allowed myself to acknowledge that about me I can't understand. Likely more of the classic, "it's easier to help someone else than myself". Where do I begin working on me? There appears to be so much that I don't know where to start. I do know that I want change for the better, and I want my relationships to be better from now on.

I'm leery of my Mother knowing that I am working on me in this way. There seems to be a "misery loves company" aspect of her towards me. I'm at the point now where I just don't care anymore. At some point it has to be about ME, and I need to be allowed to heal.

How am I suppose to deal with her when the shaded comments come at me or, that tone of distaste comes at me? What a difficult task at hand. One moment at a time is the only way I can begin to think of tackling this.