Telling this story once and for all

It's time to tell this story once and for all. I'm done.

I am the oldest of four children and I am the only daughter. My brothers were 16 months younger (born 3 months prematurely), 5 years, and then 10 years, younger than I was. My mother was 27 and my father was 34 years old when I was born. I was the product of an unplanned pregnancy, and the wedding occurred after I was conceived. I don't really know how my father felt about that, but my mother was a party girl, and I am quite sure that becoming a wife and a mother did not fit with her plan for her life at that time.

Those who observed us from the outside saw us as the perfect 1950's / 1960's family. What I notice, when I look back at the many photos taken of us in those years is that I was a child who did not smile. Not ever. No matter what the occasion. I cared for my younger brothers, shepherded them to be quiet and kept them well away from behaviors that might irritate, aggravate or agitate my extremely volatile mother. I was a worrier.

I have been asked many times, over the years, if I was abused. I've never been able to recall anything specific, although I can point to a number of parental behaviors that would qualify as "emotional" neglect if not abuse.

Somewhere along the line, I figured it didn't matter much -- what mattered is what I did with my life. The best revenge was living well -- right?

Then Master and I started playing intensely and I started having fairly frequent odd lapses into panicky places where I'd find myself sobbing and sweating and shaking, begging not to be sent to "the dark place," not to "be left alone," promising to be good -- "please, please, please!!!" It really never made any sense in context with what we were doing at the time. We usually didn't use blindfolds and so the darkness reaction was way out there and He never leaves me alone in session. Sometimes, when it would come up, we'd end the session, othertimes, He'd work with the panic, but continue the session until I'd calm down and get it back in control. Eventually the number and frequency of these episodes diminished, but an interesting thing happened for me. I began to form a coherent image:

-- an underground storage space like a cellar or a crawlspace with a wooden door that lifted up in order to enter it
-- a sturdy, hand-made ladder that led down into the space which had a dirt floor except for a concrete pad at the base of the ladder
-- some automobile tires stored in the far back corner of the space
-- wooden shelves that ran down the left hand side of the space where there were gallon paint cans and cardboard storage boxes and canning jars and assorted other household items stored
-- dust in the air
-- wooden floor joists overhead
-- being carried, as a small child, down the ladder and deposited roughly on the concrete floor and then left there in the dark

It might be that none of it ever happened. The images seem very clear to me... and very detailed... and absolutely wordless... I never had any sense that any of that was there (in accessible memory) before I began playing at extremely intense levels sadomasochistically with Master. I now believe that the images represent pre-verbal memories of actual events that happened to me. I believe that my mother actually carried me, as a very small child (before I was talking) into the crawlspace of the home we lived in at the time, and left me there in the dark. I don't know what reason she might have had for doing that. I also believe that it stopped at the point that I became verbal enough to say anything about it that might have tipped off my father.

To this day, I've never been able to connect with the woman who bore me. She is, for those who know her socially, bright and charming and the life of the party. With me, she is rude, insensitive, uncaring, unkind, distant, self-absorbed, disrespectful, and just downright mean and nasty. I've spent a lifetime trying to figure her out and bridge the gap. Now she is 78 years old and I'm 50. There aren't that many years left. Where does one decide that "filial duty" ends? Even 1200 miles away, she can destroy my peace and stability with a simple phone call, leaving me agitated and jittery for days. Nowadays, her "reason" for being ugly to me (as if she ever actually needed one) has to do with her disapproval of my poly lifestyle. Of course, when I was living in the most vanilla of monogamous marriages, her rationale for being nasty was that she hated the man I was married to...

I don't think I hate her. I don't even think I'm angry anymore. I've wanted her desperately along the way. Wanted my mom at lots of points in my life -- wanted A MOM. Wondered, sometimes if I would have done a better job of parenting my own kids if I'd known more about "being mom" in anything other than the "negative" sense -- what I didn't want to do... Now though, I just want to stop expending energy in fending off her energy.

I'm done. If she is going to come into my life, it needs to be on my terms or not at all: polite and respectful and gentle. That's it. No more destruction and no more dumping me into the darkness. I won't go there for her anymore. I'm big enough and strong enough that she can't take me down that ladder anymore.

swan

Link