I was a victim of CSA by my brother when I was 9, combined with continual verbal and emotional abuse from him until he moved out when I was 12. I also struggle with my Mom verbally abusing me up until this day, (just turned 22) but every time I try to fight back and point out that I should not be treated this way, it is excused by her reminding me that she did not have an easy childhood. She lived with a brother who became mentally ill when she was a teenager, her father suffered from depression and PTSD. Just the other day, we were having an intense conversation after she became upset about something I did, and she revealed that she was "sexually violated" when she was 8.

She does not know about what happened between me and my brother, but now knowing this, it gives me even greater questions whether I have been mistreated all these years because she does not know what life should be like for a normal child during the formative years: safe, loving, nurturing. Of course she would never had accepted my being abused by my brother, but it gives me even more reasons to not want to ever tell her because her sympathy will be marred by her own experience.

I do wish that she had not had to go through what she did, but I wish that I was not the recipient of some of her unresolved pain and distrust that it caused.