What I did to you is nothing compared to what you did to me

A friend just posted this image on Facebook. If you have PTSD like I do, everything is a trigger for a memory, and this one is no different.

When I was 15 years old, we had to move in with some friends of my parents. They had been friends since the 70’s. I knew them when I was in elementary school. Over the years my mother told me that the woman, whom I named Bubbles in my book was a prostitute. Her husband was her pimp. This is what my mother told me, so when I was 15 years old when we moved in with them, I had preconceived notions about them as human beings. Bubbles tried to have sex with me when we moved in with them and I told her that I didn’t have any money. It was a jerk thing to say, but it was a jerk thing for a woman in her 50’s who knew me when I was a child to try to have sex with me.

So I don’t remember how much time had passed, but my step father had beaten my mother up to the degree that she went to the hospital and spent probably a month in a shelter for battered women and children, and her own children weren’t allowed to visit her. No one had any hard feelings toward my step father but me. When my mother came back, my step father had to leave. He moved in the trailer behind a mechanics garage. I don’t think it was too long before my sister kicked “Bubbles” out of her own house and moved in on her husband. My sister was 18, and this man was in his 50’s. Remember, we knew them when we were children, and she’s sleeping with him and making him kick out his own wife.

My mother, both sisters, Bubbles and I were all in the kitchen and my sister told us (my mother, sister and myself) that we had to leave. She was kicking us out of someone else’s house and my step father was moving back in the house. Really?

Before I get to the next part, I’d just like to remind you that when I was about 8 or 9, our parents would leave us alone in the apartment and my sister who was only 2 years older would babysit me. She began chasing me around the house with knives. KNIVES! They may have only been butter knives, but to a child, it doesn’t matter. To my little eyes, a knife is a knife is a knife. This wasn’t a one time thing, oh no, this was every time we were alone over a period of time. As soon as the front door would close and she knew they weren’t coming back, she would head to the kitchen and grab a knife and start chasing me, threatening to kill me. Again, it doesn’t matter that it was a butter knife, in my mind a knife is a knife and she was threatening to murder me, and she put me through so much hell. Imagine how tortured a child must feel knowing their own flesh and blood wants, well… blood.

When my sister kicked me, my baby sister and my mother who had just left a shelter for battered women out of the house, I looked at the butcher block in the middle of the kitchen and saw a butcher knife and those memories from my childhood of her chasing me with knives flashed into my head, so I grabbed that butcher knife and chased her with it. I was filled with rage, but obviously I hadn’t planned on hurting her, just scare her. She had just put a knife in all of our backs, so it was only fitting that she thought that she had one coming for her as well.

Years later, my sister told a friend of hers that when I was 15, I chased her with a butcher knife, and she told me that her friend thinks I’m a psycho. It’s funny how she told her friend how much of an angel she was and that out of nowhere I grabbed a butcher knife and chased her with it, but she failed to mention exactly what prompted me to pick up that butcher knife. I don’t normally go around chasing people with knives for no reason, especially butcher knives. I’m not a violent person, if anything I’m a pacifist. I’m sure she has been telling everyone she has ever met about that time that I, Mike the Psycho, chased my dear innocent angel of a sister for no apparent reason whatsoever with a butcher knife.

Look, I know it was wrong, but it was a reaction to how she was treating her own flesh and blood and how she was throwing other people’s relationship in the trash for her own selfish needs. I agree that it was wrong, I know that, and I own my mistake, but I guarantee you that she will never own her mistake. She has never apologized to me for anything that she has done to me, except for telling me that I was going to hell for being gay. That’s the only thing that she has ever apologized for, out of all the horrible things she has done to me in our childhood. And I guarantee you that she will never get an apology from me.

So yeah, I saw this image, and it flooded my head with all these memories. It doesn’t take much to trigger a memory. All it takes is an image, a sound, a smell, or even looking at an object and I’m back in the memory feeling the same emotions and I can’t stop thinking about it until I vent, like right now. And even after I vent, I may still be thinking about it and I’ll probably start talking to myself, or yelling at her in my head, and I’ll probably cry myself to sleep tonight because I can’t stop thinking about it.

My sister has all these people believing that I’m the bad guy, that I wasn’t abused as a child, I was the abuser. That’s what her friend said in his “review” of my book on Amazon. She fails to mention to him or anyone else all the rotten despicable things she did to me, and she will never own anything she has ever done to anyone else. I’m the “spoiled rotten brat who writes a book full of lies”, but my sister is a perfect angel who only tells the truth. Yeah right.

I’m getting off my soap box. I hope you don’t mind my venting, but what else is a blog for?

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Self doubt

I had a conversation yesterday about self doubt.  When I was a kid and we were living in Bakersfield, around Christmas time, my sister accidentally knocked down and broke a lamp.  It was completely by accident.  As soon as it happened I looked at her and she had her hands over her mouth with a look of horror on her face, which is a typical reaction when you accidentally break something.  But then she had a different look on her face, a more devious look.  She looked me directly in my eyes and with a smirk on her face she yelled “MOOOOOOOM!  MICHEL BROKE THE LAMP!”  I couldn’t believe she ratted me out like that.

My sister was trying to avoid trouble for herself, but what she didn’t realize is that by throwing me under the bus like that, she was setting me up for failure for the rest of my life.  I would have defended her because I knew it was an accident, but I don’t think she would have cared because she is a sociopath, yes even as a teenager she was a sociopath.  This is the same person who would chase me with knives when I was 8 or 9 years old when she was babysitting me.  She was supposed to protect me, but she did the opposite.

From that day when she threw me under the bus with the lamp, she started breaking things on purpose and blaming me.  My parents believed her because she was older and I guess they believed that a girl would never lie and boys always lie, so I became a liar.  My mother even gave me the nickname “Liar.”  She would ask me about something and as I was trying to explain what happened, she would interrupt me with “LIAR!”

Whenever I would tell someone what I heard someone say, or what someone said to me about someone or something, even if I wasn’t trying to get them in trouble, they would ask that person about it and they would lie and say they never said it.  Because they refused to cop up to what they said, that made me doubt myself.  Next time it would happen they would say “Are you sure that’s what you heard?”  I would start to doubt myself again.  Yes, that is absolutely what they said to me, then they would lie and naturally I was the asshole because now everyone thought I was lying about what people said to me.

I have been doubting myself my whole life because of people doing that to me.  When I wrote Diary of a Gay Nerd, I was so confident in everything that I wrote that I knew that everything I wrote was absolutely what happened and absolutely what people said.  I have no doubt in my mind.  Naturally, my sister had someone do her dirty work and write a negative review calling me a liar on Amazon, saying that not only did I lie about everything I said in my book, but I wasn’t abused, I was the abuser.  I couldn’t help but laugh when I read that.  I didn’t doubt myself because I knew I was telling the truth.

The reason this came up in conversation is because I believe nearly everything people say.  The reason I believe everything people say is because I know what it’s like to be called a liar constantly and for people to never believe what I say.  I like to see the good in people.  I like to think that I can tell when someone is telling me the truth, because why would someone make up being abused, sexually, mentally or physically?  It’s natural for someone to say they didn’t abuse someone because they know it’s wrong, so naturally I wouldn’t believe them because my parents lied about my abuse.

If someone is going, or has gone through what I just described, just know that you are not alone.  I am sure this goes on everywhere.  If you know you are right, then that is all that matters.  You have to stop letting people get in your head and allow you to doubt yourself because that can negatively affect you for the rest of your life.  You will have low self-esteem and you will probably end up with suicidal thoughts like me.  Don’t succumb to that negativity.

I believe in karma.  What goes around comes around.  If you do negative things, it comes back to you x10 and if you do positive things, it comes back to you x10.  As long as you know you are a good person and you are doing the right things, you don’t have to worry.  If you know someone is acting negatively, then you can count on it coming back to them, so don’t get mad, just know that karma will take care of things for you.  Karma is the best revenge that I can think of.