Big Breath.
I can do this. It’s just like before, years ago. Just like when I began therapy due to flashbacks. Just like the first time at age 18 I tried to move out of the mother’s house and with a friend. I did move out, but only lasted a few months. The mother convinced me to return. It was a fine situation with friend, but I had moved in with her and her daughter and it was tight and cramped. The mother said she would pay and help me to go to college. She didn’t, because I wanted to go to a different community college than she wanted me to go to. The community college offered a better program for what I wanted to study. That’s why I wanted to go to the community college of my choice. No difference in cost; just I wouldn’t submit to going to a college that didn’t offer the same program of study. Yes, dumb me. So is life.
It’s also like before- when we began therapy with intent to stay, no matter the cost. It’s when J.I.P. (Julie In Pink) was created. She was there to withstand the family cost that happened as a result of speaking the truth and entering therapy. She took the backlash that followed us, although with the help of others inside. But she never lost her sight of healing and put it as her highest priority in life. Sometimes it seems that was to our detriment at times, but other times, we greatly appreciate and value what J.I.P. did for us as a system. She maintained the hope, the dreams, the vision of healing, and it took great courage for her to not back-down and submit to the mother or father or brother. She stood her ground in the face of the mother despite living with her the majority of this body’s entire adult life. She stood her ground in the face of the mother despite the fact this was ‘out of character’ for the body of the mother’s daughter to do– submission and passive was the cards routinely played for safety and survival. Any attempts to do otherwise were quickly squashed and punished in a variety of ways. Dissociation and silent protectors, like Billie, and others withstood the aftermath of doing anything that crossed the mother’s rules or disapproval and disgust. Yes, silent. Billie protected by taking the emotional and verbal abuse by the mother and bearing the brunt of it while remaining silent. Billie knew that to do otherwise was actually more harmful to Julie and this system and not worth it. Billie’s loyalty lied with helping Jillie and Julie and others in the system and not with the mother, or as Billie says, “Julie’s mother.” If the slightest thing was said in defense of ourselves, if Billie or anyone else were to give the mother a “look” while silently taking the verbal lashing by the mother, this too would be added to the mother’s disapproval, disgust, and verbal beating into submission. So J.I.P. standing her ground to remain in therapy and continue onward in spite of all of this is remarkable. We also take credit for our system stance in this as well, for we had something to do with it as well. Additionally, to be clear, Billie joined our system when the body was 17 and the mother went on her rampages during that year and thereafter- when the body was an adult.
Recent Comments