What Beatings Did for my Self-Identity
Why I chose to become a drug addict.
Firstly who can justify beating with a belt or even an open hand little baby girls. We were beautiful and innocent babies who had not even learned right from wrong.
My heart is broken. I spent the first 17 years of my life learning from those I trusted and loved most what a horrible person I was. I learned it from my father who I now loath. Thing is I had no idea what child abuse looked like so I blamed myself for every beating, verbal belittling, rejections, abandonments, and violent strike my father gave me before the age of 5. Who allows their little daughter of 3 or 4 to walk into a pile of hot coals? I suffered 3rd degree burns on my butt and legs for my parents….neglect was it? I remember the mail man bringing me home at the age of 3 because I wondered down the highway with no supervision.
Firstly how in the hell does a man justify beating a little 3 or 4 year old girl. It sickens me. Father; you taught me I was literally disgusting. He taught me that my young and excited hopes and dreams were ridiculous and I could not possibly attain any of them. He taught me who I was. He was my teacher and he showed me I scarcely had a right to be on this earth. All my feelings were wrong he said. All my ideas were wrong. By the time I was 4 or 5 I remember wanting to cut my body because it was reprehensible.
Here’s the kicker. I didn’t know why I hated myself until the age of 50. I spent most of my life as a drug addict entrenched in living up to what I was taught about me.
For me ADDICTION IS NOT A DISEASE IT’S A SOLUTION to shame and fear. I feared every person on this earth because I knew they were so much better than me. I was so ashamed that when I smoked pot I got paranoid and wanted to hide in a closet thinking someone would see who I really was.
I loved my father more than anyone on Earth. I struggled for years and years to get just one kind and encouraging word from him…to no avail. I am not sure why I ended up in the emergency room so many times that the authorities investigated my parents. From what I remember mainly it was head injuries. Even my older sister dropped me on my head saying she would catch me from off her shoulders before I splattered on the basement floor. But instead I ended up with an egg size bump. By the time I was 4 years old I was chewing on fabric so hard and gnawing cause I had no idea how to release the pain inside of me.
My parents sent me to a known child molesters house on a regular basis. Yes I was sexually molested to boot by at least one grown man. But even that didn’t compare to the damage of the beatings from my Father.
After living a horrific life of drug abuse and addiction related trauma, overdoses, sick relationships, and abusive marriages I finally got and stayed sober in 2006. I had a year of group recovery trauma based therapy and many years of AA. After seven years of meditation and prayer most of my trauma memories had re-surfaced. It wasn’t until seven years sober that the worst of the worst trauma came up.
See, I loved my father. That is I used to. I didn’t ever couldn’t ever see him as anything but the perfect Daddy. Even after my sister remembered the beatings and realized it was abuse. Me and my brother called her “judgemental” and railed that the “spankings” were good and lessons learned for our own good. Right. These are the words of the blind child who cannot look at what their parents really taught them and who their parents really are. Blinded by the pack mentality I had no idea why I was so afraid and ashamed.
Most people don’t do meditation for years on end and they never realize WHY they have anxiety attacks, panic attacks, depression, intense fear of people, low self worth, self loathing, insecurity, and invalidate themselves on a regular basis especially their hearts voice.
It is my heart that I shut down NO that you shut down Father. I repressed all of my fears for so many years and every pain as if it were my fault until it’s a wonder how I survived. I hid away all of who I was because of my shame. A person can rarely achieve greatness in the face of over-whelming insecurity and paralyzing fear.
My ego had to take over and do the job little Lori was afraid to do. My ego had to take me to where I needed to go while the true Laura hid in under the bed. I had to latch onto false pride, vanity, and deception to get through the day. And what sickens me is in my addiction I had a daughter with a father much like my own. I was incapable of protecting her from his verbal abuse until she was nine and I finally got sober and began the work on myself. She is a beautiful child but no matter how much I praise here and love her I cannot undo the damage the abuse caused. I do whatever I can for her and if I had the world I would give it to her on a silver platter so she wouldn’t have to be afraid.
Right now I am struggling with the fact that I want to confront a 85 year old man who could die at any time. I want to tell him how he destroyed my life. My God I didn’t find out until I was an adult that my IQ was the third highest they had ever seen at my elementary school. I thought I was stupid and so I didn’t try in school and settled for C’s.
So cruel were my parents they kept me back to take third grade twice because I was bad and didn’t deserve to go to fourth grade with my classmates. Who does that? They make me sick and I don’t know except by God’s grace how I would ever forgive such a horrific offence called ruining the entire life of a child.
I was so deeply ashamed of myself that if I spoke anything about my true feelings, ideas, or intimacy I turned so red with shame that my entire chest and face would heat up like a fireball to bright red. I would feel like running and hiding.
Of course when I took opiates I got a reaction are you kidding? Why do drugs react the way they do on addicts? It’s obvious to me. I got such a release from my shame and fear that I had to keep taking them.
Of course I was obsessed with drugs they were my only solution my only release. Other than the Holy Spirit who I discovered at the age of 30.
I wondered why when I sat in group therapy with the other women in rehab who were repeatedly sexually abused why I had the same symptoms as they and even worse symptoms at times.
Now I share my feelings without shame. I would rather hate my father than hate myself. I have been clean and sober for over ten years.
So Father if you read this I now realize you are a faithless man who is incapable of love. I bet if you did read this you would think it were all lies.
Why did you hate your daughters firstly? And why did I end up in the emergency room so much? Do you realize what you have done to me and my sister? Look at your son the alcoholic. What did you do to him Father? Did you sexually abuse us? Is that why you hated us? Because when you looked at us you saw your crimes?
God will be your judge, MY GOD not yours because you have no God that is obvious. My God will judge you so you better hope you have a good alibi for destroying at least 3 young and innocent hearts.
THE SOLUTIONS TO TRAUMA AND ADDICTION
What are the solutions to addiction? Spirituality, meaning a relationship with God first. Then we must process our past and learn how not to repress our intense feelings. We must correct emotional disorder with emotional processing and empathic communication skills and exercises. And lastly we will need to clear the wreckage of our past by working the 12 steps. But not just wrongs done by us. It is equally important to recognize and process wrongs done to us. By process I mean a heart felt form of expression consisting of either sharing, writing, crying, guttural sounds, moaning, screaming and some physical exercises to expel anger, rage, hurts, pains, and shame.
By putting God first the rest of the solutions will fall into place. Many people in recovery have not “recovered” because they won’t address their core issues and are satisfied with believing they have a disease rather than emotional issues. They will always be at risk for relapse if they “let up on their spiritual program”. Don’t blame them. They are unaware of their true reasons for wanting to hide from reality.
They will quote the book of AA when you ask them why they used. “Selfishness and self centeredness”, they will say is their problem “lack of power was our dilemma” . And they are right except that is a generic and blanket psychological term of much much more.
Many addicts in recovery are ashamed of being ashamed and addicts are entrenched in denial about their own childhoods. They like I, had no idea what abuse really looks like.
Here’s 20 years of scientific evidence that spanking, hitting your child is never beneficial in any way. That is except to scare the shit out of the and injure them emotionally for life.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-me-in-we/201202/how-spanking-harms-the-brain
http://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-0101-corporal.html
And there are many more articles promoting non-violent child rearing.