Exercise 90

What They Did to Me

What you may have experienced from your perpetrators has probably left pain for many years. This pain is often free-floating inside of you. You may rarely or never talk about what exactly happened, and so it may remain like an emotional blob of gel that you don't seem to have crystallized inside.

In your recovery, it will be important to have these pains you have been medicating all these years to be as crystallized as possible. This will be helpful for you to identify what exactly happened and later to process your feelings about these events.

In this exercise, you will do exactly that: crystallize the memory. In the previous exercise, you wrote down your perpetrators and their general offenses. It is now time to get specific. List the perpetrator and write down in as much detail as you possibly can exactly what your perpetrator did.


J./ Mother

Emotional abuse - shamed and yelled at me regularly. Shamed for my voice ("Your voice goes right through me."). Shamed for OCD-type habits I had (scrunching up my nose, blinking, turning on and off lights) which I couldn't help. Shamed for trying out new clothes/hairstyles (told I looked like a slut). Shamed for hygiene ("green teeth, swamp breath").

Physical abuse - slapped in the face for not doing laundry when she had company over, hit with a pair of sandals for asking for them more than once, hand crushed when in a public place if I was misbehaving in public, pinched, hair pulled, ears grabbed.

Spiritual abuse - telling me I was going to hell, or telling me to "go to hell." The only other thing (and this is kinda funny) was that my sister and I had these matching shirts. One said "I'm a little angel" and the other said "I'm a little devil." Guess which one yours truly had to wear (LOL). I remember being afraid of that shirt, too, 'cause I thought the devil would see me in it and think I wanted to go with him. And then when my sister outgrew the angel shirt, my mom wouldn't let me wear it. She told me she would buy the devil one in a bigger size.

Emotional neglect - lack of praise for good report cards, lack of participation at chorus/orchestra recitals, lack of interest college for me, lack of concern over my lack of friends, lack of interest in my interests.

Sexual neglect - failed to explain what sexual abuse was. When I told her what was going on, she told me to "Stop that kind of talk" and that my cousin would never do that. Gave me "the sex talk" when I was eight years old along with my sister who was eleven. This way she didn't have to do it twice. By the time I got my period, I had forgotten what she told us or I just wasn't paying attention when she told me, and I was really freaked out when I got it for the first time.

D./ Father

Emotional abuse - yelled at when we took off sick from school. Threatened with the belt for not going to bed. Confusion over his drinking, which included swearing and hand gestures to other drivers. He once accidentally touched my breast when he was drinking. He came home late after drinking on the eve of one Easter and was supposed to color eggs with us, but instead knocked over the bar in the living room, breaking all of the glassware behind it. And he would often drink so much that he would vomit, which scared me a lot.

Physical abuse - he hit me with the belt one time after he was drinking, which was unusual because he was usually a pretty happy drunk. But my mom wasn't home that time and I mouthed off at him for coming home drunk when he didn't even come home to feed us kids, so I got the belt for that. I don't remember what I did to get hit with the belt the other times, but my dad always used the belt, never his hand, when he would hit us. I didn't get hit often, but enough times for me to remember that it was more than once.

D./ Sister

Emotional abuse - holy crap. This chic was *mean* to me. She would hide at the top of the stairs or in my closet or behind doors and then jump out and scare me, and then laugh like crazy. She would tell me that if I would give her something (whatever I had that she wanted...candy, money, a toy) that she would play with me. So I would give it, and she would run away laughing and then never live up to the bargain. Or she would just blackmail me..."I'm gonna tell mom that you said the *b* word if you don't do what I say." One time when we were teenagers, she wanted a stereo. She told me if I paid half, that I could come in her room and listen whenever I wanted. I was allowed in once the first week she had it and then never again. And I paid $200 for that stupid stereo! She talked me out of going on vacation with my grandparents so that she could go, and talked our neighbor friend into playing with me while she was gone. She kept telling my little brother that I was a "psycho" and would teach him to call me that when he was learning to talk, and then would laugh when he would say it. She would call me "lezzie" or "lesbo" and tell my little brother that I was a lesbian. If I played with or kissed my little brother, she would call me lesbo and tell me the only reason I was kissing him was because I couldn't get a boyfriend. She would make up stories about me and tell them at work or to our neighbor. She told people I went on the roof to get a frisbee down and while I was up there she took the ladder away and I was stuck on the roof. Never happened. She also told them that she was chasing me with snowballs and chased me onto the scaffolding next to my bedroom window and she spent hours pelting me with snowballs. Never happened. The one thing that did happen that was probably the worst, was when we were at my grandparents house in Florida. The bathroom door didn't have a lock and while I was in there she took a picture of me on the toilet and told me she was going to show her friends. My mom never did anything to her to punish her for what she did.

Physical abuse - often! Punching, kicking, hitting, bloody noses, shoving.

D./ Brother

Emotional abuse - participated in calling me psycho, lesbo, lezzie or whatever the name was that day. He would tell my mother I was hitting him when I wasn't and then laugh when I would get spanked or yelled at.

H./ Maternal Grandmother

Emotional abuse - yelling, name calling. She once hung a picture of me in the bathroom. After I came downstairs from using the bathroom I asked why my picture was hanging in there. She said, "That face would scare the shit out of anyone as they sat there." She also told us, every time she would visit, that we were going to put my mother in an early grave. That my mom was going to die young because we didn't help her around the house. One day she kept calling me "Crisco." Finally, I asked, "Why do you keep calling me Crisco?" She said, "Because you're fat in the can."

J./ Paternal Grandfather

Emotional abuse - yelling, always yelling. Always asking my dad, "What are those kids doing now?" He was a very nasty drunk. My step grandmother had to call my dad to come and bring him upstairs one time because she couldn't wake him up. He got drunk and fell off of the barstool in his bar. He went to the hospital because he broke his hip that day. He died from alcohol withdrawal while he was there.

B./ Uncle

Physical abuse - the first and only time I ever met this person, I was six years old. My sister and I were watching something on television, and the kid on the show switched the sugar for the salt and vice versa. I thought this looked like a good idea, and nobody on the show got in trouble. So I went upstairs and put *some* salt into the sugar. I didn't switch them for each other because I didn't have anything to hold the sugar while I poured the salt in. So this man sees me and says, "What did you just do?" And I said, "Nothing." And he said, "I saw you pour salt into that sugar." Then he sat on the stairs and said, "Come here." So I went over to him and he said, "If you were my little girl," and then he grabbed me, turned me over his knee, and proceded to beat my ass. And not one adult in that room did a damn thing to help me. I hated everyone that night and didn't come back up until he left hours later.

B./ Cousin

Sexual abuse - I hate doing this...I don't know all of what was going on. Some of it was fun and I don't want to write it. Part of it is the shame, part of it is that it is not as bad as some people had it. I'm pretty sure there was no penile penetration. Right now, all I can say is that it was a game, and I was made to believe that it was fun. I was blindfolded. It was fun to have someone's undivided attention. He told me I was a good speller. I can't do anymore right now.