I find myself feeling like I did when I was a child where I was just so glad I survived the day yesterday. But, it was not just one day, it was several days just it was when I was a child.

That is what I did or thought, and I constantly prayed and felt that what I saw on that bus and in that school and in my own home every single day was not anything I could "fix". Yet, my one constant was how I was not going to be like the people I saw that were hurting others. I already knew I could not fix or change the past, which could have been just in one day each and every day. What makes me angry and confused is how I have been "reliving" so many things the way I have.

Lately, there have been a few things I have read in articles and in conversations with others that have contributed to seeing things better, however, it can be a challenge when really looking under the bed so to speak and seeing that the monster is real and it DID hurt me more than I realized.

Yesterday morning I had that same challenge that I have been facing a lot IN THE NOW that is TOXIC. I recently read an article about how a certain kind of toxic person practices doing things to get you engaged so that individual can trap you and abuse you in a certain way mentally so that person's existence is the loudest. These individuals engage in a way where they don't see YOU or can even listen to you, they react instead in a way where engaging with them turns out to be how their emotions must always be louder than yours. It reminds me of what I see take place in my barn every spring when the barn swallows come around and my barn gets full of all their loud noises. And then they get quiet and then I slowly begin to hear these faint chirps that lets me know there are babies. There is always this baby that is the loudest and because of that it tends to get fed more and it gets bigger than the other babies. The baby who isn't loud enough tends to get pushed out of the nest and I see them laying on the floor of my barn. Every time I come across this I "feel" for it because it always seems to remind me of how it was for me, "it's a feeling more than a thought" and on my own healing journey I began to realize what this "feeling" I had really meant that I often did not understand the way I do now.

The other thing I noticed while I was experiencing this phenomenon every year is how these babies went through stages until they could finally fly from the nest to other places in my barn close to the nest that they could rest and then fly back to the nest. The entire time these babies are going through these different stages, they are imprinting all the things they experience and see their parents doing.

What I saw happen to my older brother would be considered "severe abuse" by today's standards. When I began experiencing flashbacks from my childhood it frightened me.
When he came back around after my not seeing him for about 20 years, I had no idea what seeing him again would mean to me and what might come out of my past that I did not even know I had stored the way I did. It was actually very brave of me to see him not even knowing how seeing him might trigger me to experience some kind of flashback. What I discovered that day was that I did not have "fear" of him, instead I felt the way I did as a child which was loving him and wanting him to have a presence that would help him. And when I did meet him my parents were clueless like they always were and then my sister appeared and the next thing I knew I was back in time and witnessing the HATE that existed between the two of them.

It has taken me several years now to understand what actually set off these flashbacks to take place and what all these triggers I experience mean. I know I can't change the past and I always knew that. Yet, the NOW is just as sad and toxic as the past. And I somehow missed just how toxic the now was going to actually be that has contributed to how I struggle and can't seem to articulate well enough.

Yesterday I was trying to do this thing called Christmas in whatever way I could. And in that I was trying my best to do some "damage control". I wanted to find my way to be able to at least wish my parents a Merry Christmas. I thought about the toxic game I get drawn into and how I can approach it differently so I don't end up so badly triggered. I asked my husband to make the call and he got angry and said he did not want to be my puppet. I tried to get him to understand that was not what I was doing, but instead I needed him to help me by being a kind of "mediator". After he displayed his need to see it his way, he finally agreed and made the call and my sister answered and her tone was that of anger in that I was getting into HER sandbox and breaking HER rules. He asked to speak to my parents and my sister replied that my mother was in the shower and could not talk but that my husband could talk to my father. She handed my father the phone and said, "Here dad, it's X but it's REALLY OE wanting to talk to you". Her tone was that of needing to be LOUD because she did not get to have her routine with ME where she would talk down to me and CONTROL me in a way that let me know how SHE IS THE QUEEN of the drama.

My husband was nice and patient and got to start with talking to my father wishing him a Merry Christmas and asking him if he had a nice meal. (It's funny how men focus so much on food which as we are all told, "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach"). So I got to hear my father's voice and I got to have my own little piece of him so I could wish him a Merry Christmas and tell him how much I love him.

Then I asked him how my mother was doing, he replied with "your mother is in the hospital". Suddenly I could hear my sister telling him what he said is a big NO, NO.
Then I listened as my father got quiet. It was the kind of quiet that happens when a person slowly learns how to be a "child" again and that person suddenly is not allowed to talk and be themselves anymore. So, after listening to the quiet, I told my father, "dad, it's ok, it's ok if you want to let me know the truth about mom". Then I said, "Dad, what I want my mother to know is that I love her NO MATTER WHERE SHE IS". It's ok Dad, I love you too, no matter where you are too and I want to let you know that and sometimes Dad, I try to be with you the best way I can. He expressed how he wanted to see me yet again and I tried my hardest to respond to that without hurting him. I just try to focus on letting him know that I love him.

After that my husband got very angry and he wanted me to call my sister back and demand to know WHERE my mother really is. My husband was angry that I did not immediately engage that way. I said to him, "I am taking a step back and that's not giving in, I am trying very hard to think about how NOT to get drawn into HER GAME that way. I said, think about it, I would end up giving her what SHE wants, a chance to get me on the phone so she can EMOTIONALLY ABUSE ME. I just experienced that when I bit the bullet and tried to call my father to wish him a happy birthday. That resulted in my being yelled at "F you" twice and loud with her hanging up on me. Then putting me through HER PUNISHMENT TRIP, to assure SHE had the loudest DRAMA role.

And I began to also experience a lot of flashes that reflected that dynamic about her that was coming at me in her behaviors towards me, "example when my mother had a stroke in front of me that resulted in my sister immediately coming at me from the moment she arrived at the ER in anger blaming the stroke on me". There have so many negative situations like that "in the NOW" that come from her that have triggered me and crippled me that are deeply disturbing and VERY toxic.

So, while my husband's reaction would have given her what she wanted, I was able to stand back and finally, even though I wanted to, not engage it. I also saw it in that card that my husband insisted I engage that I did not want to engage. And yet HIS need to have HIS feelings take precedent led to him disregarding my feelings and opening that letter up himself. That was the same, it had her ALL OVER IT and then my husband ALL OVER IT, and all I saw of it was just what I experienced that morning, a faint little piece of my father in his own writing "love Dad". My daddy is disappearing under her being ALL OVER HIM. He can't even tell me "Mom is in the hospital" without her OVERPOWERING HIM where I hear his silence.

So after I convinced my husband to let go of his desire to fall into her trap, we began to call different hospitals. Then we called the rehabilitation facility and we could not find my mom. I don't know where she is, maybe in a home somewhere that my father thinks is a hospital? My sister told my husband that she would have my mother call later and that never happened. So, I did not get to wish my mother a Merry Christmas and tell her that I love her. I know I am being PUNISHED, I am learning more about how my sister operates if you do not obey HER political correctness game.

I had a long thread entitled, "I feel like it's my fault". I am beginning to understand more WHY I feel that way and how that goes all the way back for me too.

Lately I have been paying more attention to what happens in the arguments I have with my husband. I saw it with that letter argument. He NEEDS to have his own emotions stand out more too. He hates what he sees happening to me, yet he also does it to me himself. Ironically, he is also the oldest child and I feel so much more connected to his younger brother than I ever did before. When I sat at the table with his family, I put my hand on his brother's hand and said, "It must have been hard for you, but you manage to handle it so well". I should have know because his brother had the same habit I had in that he twiddle his hair and he has so little left now so he grew a beard and fiddles with that. When I was little I used to twist and fiddle with my hair in my sleep and wake up with so many knots that my mother complained and she took me to the hairdresser and had them cut off all my hair so it was very short. They could not cut off my older brother's thumb, and nothing they put on it stopped him from sucking it all night long.
Two little children just trying to self sooth in some way so they could sleep after yet another traumatic day.

It's been AWFUL lately and I have been slurring my words, just like I did when I was "little".

What I am hearing from listening to myself is how much my deep issues have a lot to do with who failed me in my past. What is strange is the entire time I was growing up I always felt something important was "missing", the "beginning" and I never could articulate it. And while I could not SAY IT, I was constantly doing it and giving it to others especially in what I ended up doing for so many years with young children including my own child.

My husband tried to say I was using him as a "puppet". I found myself explaining to him how I was NOT doing that with him, but that I did need his help. Then I explained to him how my sister has shut out any possible connection I can have to finding out how my parents are actually doing. Her daughter who was friends with my daughter suddenly stopped interacting with my daughter completely, her husband won't pick up the phone and my parents are slowly disappearing and her entire motive is to MAKE me have to be alone with her so she can practice her toxic behavior with me. My sister's behavior is just as my parents kept describing, "mean and bossy" and she isolates people and shuts them off to PUNISH them. Her entire message is "you either play her game which always means do as SHE says, or you don't get to play AT ALL. One day my sister was talking about her brilliant idea in how to deal with her autistic grandson. She sat there beaming and announced her great way of dealing with him. She said, "When you come to gammy's house you only have to know ONE rule, it's simple, that ONE rule is "do as gammy says". Well, that has ALWAYS been how she was and is.

I don't know where my mother is, have to figure that one out yet.

I am trying to figure out how to process what is taking place with my older brother and his health. It's so very SAD when it comes to what I am dealing with in the NOW when it comes to my family. I guess, at this point all I can say is I "survived" this thing called Christmas this year and I am tired today.
And "sad".