My Big Brother

Before I was born, my parents had a baby boy, Graham. He would have been 3 years older than me. However he was a trisomy baby and died when he was 5 days old. He should have been a miscarriage. My mum has never really dealt with it - not that I can blame her - how can any mother deal with losing her child?

For me, I have always said that it hasnt effected me. Graham died before I was born, I didnt know him and never had the opportunity to grow attached to him. And for the most part I believe that is true.

But a small part of me is angry that I didnt have big brother there to look out foor me. I know this is irrational and that it is something that cannot be changed. It is why I have never told anyone. I didnt even tell myself. It has only been recently that I have started to feel the anger inside, and it has been since then that I have started to discover this anger.

I have several cousins, but I was particularly close with my 2 older cousins - Sarah, who is 6 months older than me and Joel, who is 2 years older. Joel and Sarah fought a lot, but Joel always looked out for her. I was so jealous of Sarah - she has the most amazing father - who, when I was a child, was the only example I saw that showed men were decent. She has a big brother who looks out for her.

My grandfather never touched Sarah - because Joel was there. He didnt even know it and he was protecting his sister. And that is probably a huge part of why I am angry - where was my big brother to stop Papa? But it is more than that. I have always wanted a big brother who was there for me, protective of me and a friend who would always be there.

 I truly cannot believe I have just written all this. I have never even said any of this allowed - to anyone. But the last two days it has been in my mind - I am not even sure what triggered it. I needed to let it out, to share it - because, no matter how irrational it is, it hurts.

When the Tears Don't Fall

Please be warned this may be triggering to some survivors

please take care of yourself

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A few days ago I read castorgirl's post "Expressive Arts Carnival: Self Portrait". I was really blown away by her artwork, which triggered some very strong emotions for me.  I found the images very confronting and could relate to them on many levels. In the comments section I explained what I saw however it was castorgirl's reply which really articulated what I saw:

 I can see why you would see the perfect face people want us to present to the world, and the hidden damage we feel. That was another motivation for taking the picture – to show the dissociative coping, show how others see us, or how they want us to be. 

When I was reading the post and viewing the artwork there was a lot of internal conflict, for many of my parts and for me as well this images and some of what castorgirl said really reflected how we felt about the abuse of my childhood. The sense of feeling dirty, used, broken. It really made me want to cry, not just for the hurt we had, and continue to feel - but for the huge number of people out there who feel the same pain.

I still struggle with the ability to cry, to let the tears fall. Its not that I don't want to cry, because these days I do - I want to let it out and feel the release that comes from a good cry. In the last few years I have started to be able to cry - but I can still count the number on 1 hand. I believe the reason I struggle so much is because I was punished for crying and so I learnt not to, and now I don't know how to undo that learning.

Generally when I feel I want to cry, but can't, I draw the tears. Its not the same thing but it does help me to reflect on the emotions and to find a sense of calm. I have drawn hundreds of these pictures over the years and generally they have a similar look to them. This time, when I drew in relation to cartorgirl's post something different came out.

In this picture I didn't just see the tears I wanted to cry, I saw the deep hurt, shame and fear that I have been unable to face for years.

Over the last few days as I have been reflecting on my reaction to castorgirl's art and my own drawing I have found a deep sense of accepting that all this hurt is not my fault and that I did not do anything wrong. It was not my actions that cause my grandfather to hurt me the way he did. While I have intellectually acknowledged this for a while now, this is the first time that I have had a deep sense of accepting it.