I use to be worried that I had been SA'ed, spent quite a few yrs drinking on that "memory" and telling people when drunk that this relative or that relative had done this or that to me. I was never sure

I know now that sexual abuse is a solid thing, its something that can be understood as abuse if and when remembered, but emotional abuse is fluid, its hard to believe, its easier to feel as if it must be made up, but for me the SA never happened, it was my way of trying to understand and also deny that my mother could have been so emotionally abusive to me.

My inner world used "male" figures sexually abusing me the child as a way to define the power my mother had over me, whilst my consiousness struggled to understand my life story. If I had been sexually abused at least I would have an explaination, something to pin all my despair on, but emotional abuse is more covert, it gets covered up with the "Normality" that existed as well.

I was slightly disappointed at first when I'd talked enought and worked through enought of the memorys to find them just metaphors for something else that was more difficult to comprehend.