Letters to the Editor
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Please Realize Events Affect People Differently
Cary had an excellent response, I applaud him. Get yourself to a therapist, a good one that you feel comfortable with. It may be a process to find one and go through the evaluation each time, so prepare for a bit of a wait. But it's worth it because the therapist provides the other voice in your head you need now. LW, you said you wanted to see what the commenters here would say, if they would judge you unworthy as well. I recognize that line of thinking and situation you were in. I've been there. My mom was a good person too, and vigilant against outside abuse not realizing it could happen under her radar, and I was too young and powerless and even Stockholm Syndromed into provoking/assisting the abuse. Remember something important. The people who do not understand how you are traumatized do not understand because they weren't or feel they would not be. Everyone is not the same, we aren't widgets. So sure, one person can be beat up by a sibling and be okay about it (which doesn't make the violence right or normal--I can never see where true cruelty is normal). Another will be traumatized because he or she is more senstive, boy or girl. It doesn't mean you are defective, just more susceptible to feeling abuse more intensely. It's how you are. Your good therapist will remind you of that. You don't worry about how someone else would be affected, but how you are. What your half-sibling did was wrong in any event. Your supposed complicity in his treatment may just have been your way of trying to gain control over the situation--you know you'll be abused, but you'll be in some control of how and when. I went through abuse by a much older sibling, physical and sexual, that would be considered pretty bad, but in today's "find me a better victim" culture is no big deal compared to say, A Boy Named It, and have had friends/family treat me as such--it could have been worse, get over it. I think this is why some people write fake memoirs, to get some sort of validation. But you do not have to meet someone else's standard of abuse to justify feeling the way you do--there is no such thing as demarcation between abuse and "get over it" childhood teasing/roughhousing where with one you feel bad the other you don't. What makes you feel bad simply does, and if it doesn't it doesn't. If you feel traumatized, there is a reason. Go with that. And people may disagree and say there is a normal amount of childhood torture to go through. No way. Cruelty is never accepatble. We should treat each other better.