Seriously haunted by my past.

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I know that the longer I hold on to all of this, the longer that means that the bullies will take up space in my head rent-free. Letting go is ridiculously difficult, however.

I may as well start by saying that I did very well for a couple of years on a special education campus. Nobody there bullied me, and I was encouraged to be creative in constructive ways. I was getting straight A's there, doing college level work while I was in fifth grade.

Then my mother decided that she did not want her son to be "institutionalized", and she insisted in placing me under the care of the local public school district.

That school district did not want to deal with me. I had emotional meltdowns and I sometimes threw objects around during these meltdowns. So, how did that district decide to handle me? They placed me in their school program that was designed for students who were constantly in legal trouble. I had no criminal record, and I was sentenced to a couple of years of being beaten brutally by gang members while the staff there more often than not did nothing to stop what was happening to me. They just kept telling me that if I was not such a freak, I would not get beaten up so often.

I thought things would improve when I was moved out of that middle school into a public middle school, but it actually got much worse from there. The teacher in that homeroom often told me how much she wanted to send me to juvenile hall because of my emotional meltdowns. She let the other students brutally beat me up right in front of her, and then she conveniently neglects to tell my parents about how I am being bullied when she calls them to let them know that I have spiraled out of emotional control. I received academic awards from other classes in that school, only to have her talk to those teachers to have those awards taken away from me because she felt I did not deserve for my intelligence to be honored. All the meanwhile, I go home and I try telling my family about how bad things actually are. They respond by saying, "We're worried about you, you are lying so much that you are starting to believe yourself."

There was once a counselor at that public middle school who tried to reach out to me. I went home happy one day because I thought something might be worked out in my favor with this counselor on my side. My mother saw me smiling, and she went ballistic, screaming that if anybody at that school took anything I said seriously, she would fight the school district to make sure that person got fired. Needless to say, I distanced myself from that counselor after that incident.

I was beaten nonstop at school while the staff told me I deserved it. Then I went home, and I got beaten by my stepfather and sister while everybody told me I deserved it. My only respite from the beatings was when I visited my aunt and uncle (I was not allowed to have friends), and they sexually abused the hell out of me.

Now I see there are organizations that are actively advocating for autistic students when the public school districts want to screw them over. I wonder where these organizations were when I was getting my teeth kicked in intentionally, only to have my homeroom teacher at the public middle school claim it was accidental (this was after she heard the bullies brag about how fun it was for them to kick my teeth in, after all).

I do not want to remain a victim forever. But when I start thinking about this, I spiral down into self-pity quite rapidly. They torment me still today, and I have only myself to blame for that. I feel emotionally drained writing this post out. I feel a desire for vengeance, but more than that, I feel a desire to not feel any of this any more. So, I turn to the bottle. Not good.

I need help. I cannot climb out of this pit by myself. And I want out of this pit more than anything. The thoughts are hyper-obsessive. The memories play on a nonstop tape loop. I feel like sanity is outside of my grasp as long as this is going on.

Oh that sounds terrible!

I think you shall have to run away to escape...

Meh, running away won't do any good now. I already am far away from all of this. The last time I got beaten and bullied was when I was 20, and I moved out of the house not long after that. I have lived on my own for over 16 years now.

The only thing that needs to happen now is the quieting of the mental tapes. They really should not have as much power over me as they currently do have. I can remember and feel these things as if they were happening this very second, even though it has been many years since I had to face them. I no longer have emotional meltdowns - I just freeze up, then I wait until I can hit the liquor store. But the liquor store is bad for me, as I have developed a strong case of alcoholism.

This is too big for me to handle. This is way too f*****g big for me to handle by myself. And knowing that brings me some degree of great shame.

I would suggest reaching out to an abuse organization or perhaps seek legal help? Getting a therapist--an effective one--would be a good idea as well, so you could talk to someone about this and hopefully recover.

Here's a national hotline website: http://www.thehotline.org/

Ah it's good that you're not there anymore. Try not to feel ashamed. It's okay. I never used to want to admit that I needed help or was struggling with anything. My dad told me that everyone in the world has to get help and that mental health issues are nothing to be ashamed of and I think it must be so if my dad says that because he is always a very resilient person and seems to handle anything.

Maybe you could talk to some kind of support group or go to your doctor or a counsellor. Or AA or something similar if you think you're drinking is a bit of a problem.

Thanks for the number. Although I imagine it is more geared towards people who need more immediate assistance with domestic violence, I did read through the checklist, and more than half of the abuse signs on the lists were things that were happening to me in the household that I grew up in.

I am seeing a therapist now, actually. Sadly, he is on vacation currently and will not be back for a couple of weeks. He gave me plenty of advance notice and referred me to somebody else in his office that I could possibly talk with while he's on his trip. One part of me is reluctant to do that because I have developed a great rapport with my primary therapist over the three years I have been using his services. Another part of me is screaming out for help and is becoming willing to risk talking about this with somebody who I have never seen before.

What to do, what to do. f**k it, I'll make an appointment for Monday. And I will stay far away from my friend Jim Beam in the meanwhile.

I do not want to think of myself by my scars alone. Not anymore.

Yeah, it's probably best if you see the referred therapist, even if he/she's not your assigned therapist. You seem to be in a lot of pain right now. Hopefully, everything goes well for you.

Not sure why, but I find this video to be comforting.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=635HvPE1OyA

I don't know. I grew up with my mother always reminding me that I was essentially a survived miscarriage. And I also grew up with her treating me like I was going to turn into somebody like Adam Lanza, so she may as well treat me like a criminal right from the start. The school districts also shared that view of me. I was socially awkward and I often broke down into tears, so that automatically made me a sociopath in their eyes.

I remember my mother screaming at me, telling me that she saw security camera footage where there were no security cameras catching me doing things that I knew I did not do, and then hearing her scream at me about how she was scared because she thought I lied so much that I was believing myself. She believed everything bad that people said about me, without exception. If I was being beaten and bullied, she believed it was because I did something to them and therefore I automatically deserved it.

Then again, this is the same woman who claims that my stepfather and sister never violently beat me, even though it happened right in front of her all the f*****g time.

She knows I have autism, and she uses that against me every chance she can get. She tells me often that I have intellectual disabilities, and that my thinking is tainted by that. She tells me that I am possibly psychotic because I remember things how they actually happened, instead of going along with her lies that I am damaged beyond repair and that every thought that enters my mind should be immediately dismissed.

And she knows she can get away with that. I am the autistic one, she is the martyr parent who saved me from dying before I was born only to be greeted with an ungrateful autistic baby.

My therapist knows I have an IQ over 160. So does everybody I work with at my job. So do all of my friends in recovery. And my family has become ridiculously hostile against me ever since I started attending 12-step groups. Suddenly, I do not go along with their gaslighting as easily as I used to. Suddenly, I am creating personal boundaries, such as not being in the same room with relatives that raped me when I was a child. Suddenly, I am starting to feel personal worth. And that scares them. They often ask me if I have gone off my antidepressants because I am not going along with their treatment of me the way that I used to. The fact that I am not raising my voice with them and the fact that I am not a raving psycho frustrates them even more - they now claim that I am callous and emotionless and sociopathic.

They raised me to be an all-purpose whipping boy. They often told me that I was personally responsible for the lack of happiness in everybody who ever beat me, molested me, or taken advantage of me in any other way. They still tell me that today, actually. The fact that I am saving money up these days instead of letting people who used to use me as a personal ATM for their drug habits is something that they hold up over my head as a sign that I don't care about the people that I used to enable through my codependent habits. The fact that I cut those people out of my life, according to them, is proof that I am horribly selfish and that I am pathologically incapable of knowing how hard other people's lives are, because after all, I am personally responsible for their lack of happiness according to them.

I am tired of being treated like dirt. I am tired of being treated like the way I feel does not matter. I am tired of being lied to and gaslighted by the very people who were supposed to protect me when I was growing up.

I am overflowing with rage at the injustice I face in my life.

And these people have the nerve to tell me that they actually "overprotected" me, and that I am a privileged person who knows nothing of pain. They tell me that I should love the people who raped me, because their lives were far worse than my privileged upbringing was. Yeah, the same people who tell me to my face that I was never beaten, never bullied, never discriminated against, even though it happened RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM ALL THE f*****g TIME! And they know they can get away with these lies, because they know it's their words over mine. My mother works with individuals who experience developmental disabilities, so apparently she is an expert on me, so her words trump mine. Of course, I have heard her tell funny little anecdotes about how funny it was when she horribly humiliates the people she works with, violating both their confidentiality and common human decency at the same time.

I know that I am far more intelligent than these people. I know that I am far more empathetic than these people. I know the difference between right and wrong, and I know how to be honest. I know that I am not going to turn into Adam f*****g Lanza. I know that I am not a violent and aggressive person. I know that I do not live with cognitive or intellectual disabilities. That has been proven through some tests that my therapist has put me through over the last couple of years. And my family is telling me that my therapist is coddling me, because he is telling me that I need to set up personal boundaries and not be so damn codependent to the very people who want to treat me like a whipping boy/doormat for the rest of my life.

Speaking of my mother and therapists I have seen, one therapist I was seeing about a decade ago put a legal no-contact order against my mother. My mother was leaving her harassing voicemails telling her that she should not listen to anything I said, because I was stupid and I supposedly had cognitive disabilities. She now often says that she got that no-contact order and almost spent some serious jail time because "she loved me". What a f*****g martyr.

My mother often refers to me as racist and misogynistic. I wonder where she got that idea from. Actually, she is ridiculously racist and misogynistic herself. She is a far-left liberal who makes all far-left liberals look bad. She claims to be "progressive", while at the same time claiming that everybody who is not exactly like her needs special treatment and protection from themselves. She is incapable of thinking of other humans as being other humans. She is so narcissistic that everybody around her exists only to stroke her own wounded ego, and anybody who calls her out on that is an evil Republican (and in her eyes, all Republicans deserve the death penalty, she said so herself many times with those exact words). I'm not a Republican who deserves to die. I'm not even a Republican. But she keeps on telling me that I am, just because I disagree with her narcissistic political views. Oh, and I am white and male, so that means that my political views should be automatically dismissed in her opinion, because I live an overprotected life of vast privilege.

And I am sexist because I do not want to be around the woman who forced me to commit acts of bestiality when I was 12 years old. I am a white male, and she is a woman, so that automatically means that her life was far worse than mine ever will be. Never mind the forced bestiality.

I grew up with everybody around me telling me that I did not matter. I grew up with everybody around me treating me like I was the scum of the earth. I know that my family was disappointed that I did not turn out to be a miscarriage, and that I ended up with autism to boot. If I was a successful miscarriage, they could have used me as a ticket for empathy from everybody around them without any real strings attached. But I survived, and they have always hated me for it.

I have experienced dehumanization of the likes that most people will never have to face. And the people responsible for that will sleep soundly at night, knowing that there are such things as "statutes of limitations" protecting them now. They kept me silent by telling me that I had no legal rights because I was autistic, and that they had the legal rights to do whatever they wanted with me.

All of this is bubbling up inside of my soul. I feel powerless in the face of these memories. And I feel powerless in the face of the intense rage I feel at the injustice I faced. No, I am not going to act violently, because that is not who the f**k I am. That is not what I stand for. Instead, I retreat. I retreat into alcohol. Into marijuana. Into pornography. Into video games. Into junk food.

Seriously, my mother had the nerve to tell me that she thought I "must have wanted it" because I was "not a good enough reporter" of the sexual abuse I faced when I was a child? And then when I call her on that statement, she starts crying, saying that she never said those exact words (when she did say those exact words), and then saying that what she meant to say what that my abusers must have "thought I wanted it" because I was "not a good enough reporter", therefore what happened to me was still my fault.

God, save me from this toxicity. The toxicity that I face from my past, from my family, and from what I inflict upon myself in an effort to escape. I just want these feelings to f*****g end. I do not want to go through the rest of my life with a couple of PTSD episodes happening to me every day. I do not want to live with the shame of knowing what I let other people coerce me into in an effort to not rock the boat. I do not want to use addiction as a faulty crutch any longer.

What I do want is liberation. I am not talking about suicide. What I want is long, durable and lasting liberation while I am still breathing.

what your family put you through is deplorable. i'm not sure why you even give them the time of day. blaming the victim is always bad, and worse if the victim was a child. you are articulate and have already made great strides by setting boundaries. you will continue to recover. sorry to say, it will take some time.

Yeah, it is extremely tiring to fully relive these horrific emotions several times a day, every single day, as if these things were still happening to me this very second.

That's awful.....are you safely living somewhere separate now? That seems really important.

I went through something a little similar with parents making stuff up and lying all the time, then denying they ever said or did that. And they're still doing it although I am 45!

I have lived alone and supported myself for 16 years now. The reality is that PTSD totally sucks, and I cannot wish it away with my willpower alone. I need more help than what I am willing to admit to.

Yes, it totally does, and of course you need and deserve help for that.

The way you describe your family's ongoing behavior, and reliving things so much.....do you know what the trigger is that's making you relive all the time to get away from whatever's triggering you, or is it something you can't escape?

I'm so sorry you had to go through what you did. It must be difficult to write about these things and relive them in your mind. I'm thankful that you have made a conscious decision to seek help in any way you can and refuse to remain in a victim mode or to make your past define who you really are. You always come across as highly articulate and deserve so much better than you have.

I suffered from post traumatic stress for some years following an incident in 2004. I could not sleep, had panic attacks and was in such a state that the only thing which helped was when I began writing fiction stories for children. I spent a great deal of time writing chapter after chapter and this was therapeutic. Were it not for this creative channeling I may have well have reached the point of being institutionalized. I was only diagnosed in 2008, so I also lacked the medical and emotional support I have now.

I can see you have the will power to rise above your circumstances and wish you the best.