Quote:
Originally Posted by Yearning0723
Sometimes I just wonder if the events I've written about here really did happen or just in my head. Because it isn't a nice clean logical narrative of my parents hurting me --> I told someone about it --> I got help.
It actually goes like this: I wrote a story about a kid being abused and gave it to a teacher (why? I don't know anymore - I wouldn't ascribe any particular motivation to it these days - I wrote stories all the time and gave them to people so there might not have been any great meaning to it) --> the teacher showed it to the principal who said she was worried about me and asked if it was autobiographical --> I said no (which was true, since the story didn't describe anything that ever happened to me) --> I told my stepdad or the teacher told my stepdad (I forget who) about the story --> he got very angry and slapped me because I was "telling lies about our family" (definitely wrong, but he was angry, and if it had just been that one time...) --> he told my mother about it and she got very angry and cried and told me she couldn't believe what I'd done to our family and I wasn't her daughter anymore and she would wash her hands of me --> she took me to my dad's store and left me there.
It was THEN (I think) that I reinterpreted all the things that happened in the past as "abusive" and that was the story I decided to run with, and even a week later when my mother wanted me back, I refused to go, because in my head I'd built up this image of her as an abusive monster.
It might have just been that I was ashamed of what I did and how much I'd upset her and couldn't bear to face her and face what I did, so it was easier to just follow through with the lie.
It sounds a lot better to tell people, "My mother kicked me out when I was thirteen," and have them say, "Oh, you poor thing!" than for me to say, "Well, I lied(?) about her abusing me, and she told me she would drop me off at my dad's because she was angry, and rightfully so, and then she got over her anger within the week but I continued to hold that grudge for two years."
If I really did lie about her abusing me, and told everyone in the world about it and got Children's Aid involved, which could have meant her losing my brother, and put her heavily into debt fighting for me in court, and ignored my own mother for two years based on a fantasy...that is pretty unforgivable.
I mean, how can I know?
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Ok, let's go with it. So you were 13 years old and told a massive lie. Now what? Is what you did as a CHILD unforgivable?
Let me tell you something. If my 13 year old told a story like that and inferred something like that was going on at home, my first instinct wouldn't be to send them away, it would be to bring them closer. Would i be angry? Hell yeah, but i'd be angry because i was embarrassed that i'd failed as a parent and now the school knew it and also because my child was hurting and i'd missed it.
I would talk to my little girl and tell her she wasn't in trouble but we need to get to the bottom of it, either she could talk to me or an auntie or a teacher or a therapist. Shaming my child wouldn't be on my agenda.
How long do you want to keep punishing yourself for that incident? Till your 20? 30? 45? 80? You can't change what happened no matter how much you flagellate yourself over it. So maybe it's better to try and forgive yourself. And for what it's worth, i still don't think a happy child does that, you were trying to communicate something.