Trigger warning - addiction, abuse
For as long as I can remember I have always felt a sense of duty and responsibility to take care of everyone else. I'm the baby of the family, but I always had to be the adult. My dad left my mom before I was born. My mom a always working to provide for us the best that she could, but being a single parent of 3 kids is hard as hell in "normal" situations. But our situation was far from being normal. My brother is and has been an addict for decades now. He was in and out of juvy more times than I can count before he was 18, and since then he's spent more time in jail then out of it. My mom would put herself out to help him, he is her son after all... I honestly think this is part of where my sense of duty has come from... Now, after 30 years of him taking advantage of her, and throwing away the resources she worked her ass to provide him with, she had to set boundaries with him. I'm proud of her for this, because I know how impossible it must feel to her. While raising a son who was in and out of the legal system, she also had my sister. My sister, to put it bluntly, is psychotic. I don't mean that in the derogatory sense, I mean it literally. My sister dropped out of high school when she turned 16 because she believed that her classmates were plotting to kill her; Her posters would come to life and talk to get at night; She had full on delusions where she thought I was someone else. My mom is a saint for everything she had endured with my siblings. My mom decided to go back to school fulltime so that she could provide a better life for us.... While working full-time... And caring for 3 children, one of which is an addict and another that is psychotic. And then there's be. Though it didn't express itself fully until I was in my 20s, I have a genetic condition that has tried more times than I can count to kill me. But more on that later.
Remember how I said my sister would have period there she delusionally believed I was someone else? For several years after she dropped out, she would sexually abuse me when she was in theses delusions. In her mind, I wasnt her younger sister, I was get boyfriend, "Jeff." Even after the abuse had ended, my nickname in my family because of her was Jeff. I often feel shame.... I never wanted it, but I also explicitly never said no. I never told anyone when it was going on. In fact it wasn't until college that I started talking about what she would do to me. When questioned by law enforcement, she never denied doing it either, she just denied knowing that what she was doing was wrong and unwanted. I went through years and years of therapy for that as well as assaults from my ex ( again we will touch on that later) and truly thought I had gotten through the worst of it. Until this year... This year I had one of many very medically traumatic experience. While processing the medical trauma, we've opened up old wounds.... Salt poured in.... I'm reliving the abuse from my sister andy ex. I'm exhausted. When I sleep I wake up in a panic from nightmares. I'm too scared to go to sleep half of the time, out of fear of nightmares. On nights where I'm lucky enough to not have nightmares and panic attacks, my physical illnesses have also been putting me in excruciating pain. I'm in therapy... I'm suppose to be getting better. So why does it feel like my mind is more fractured and fragmented than it has ever been?
-M
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