A Forum Post

Thursday, October 4, 2012  2:16 pm DST

Another post from a forum post about flashbacks and what's real and what's not.

I have no trouble distinguishing between what's real and what's not. I got a lot of abuse of various kinds by relatives and their ex-friends, mainly between the ages of 7 to 10. I never forgot it nor the abuse heaped on me to cover it up. Things like training other little kids to call me a liar even though I never had said anything about it. They made me watch some guy beat his daughter with a belt to keep her quiet and then ask me if I wanted that to happen to me. Later, I heard that girl's mother tell my mom that they kept her daughter home from school because of the whooping cough, but that woman said to me, "You don't want that to happen to you, do you? You don't want the whipping cough, do you?" I knew what she meant even though I was only nine. She's a real piece of work, that woman is.

You mentioned the first grade. That reminds of their favorite cover-up game. It was "get him drunk and throw his sister's dress on him and parade him around teachers or whoever and dare them to take the word of a drunk cross dressing 7 year old." I remember that clearly because the teacher told that woman and my mother, "We don't believe your story. It sounds fishy." I interrupted and asked what "fishy" meant and the teacher basically had to explain to me that she thought they were liars, and right in front of them, too. That teacher turned out to be my fourth grade teacher also, and I remember she told me that she took over the fourth grade just for me. I didn't get it back then, but I did years later. I'm betting that she's one of the few people who stared them down back then.

As late as 1986 that woman's grown son came into some gas station I worked at and handed a coworker a note for the coworker to ask me what nationality I was, and then he answered before I could. Also, there was a woman who came into the station and said, "Someone told me to come in here and call you (nickname)." Then she just looked at me. I said, "I think somebody has their head up their ass." That nickname she mentioned was what that abusive woman's family called me back then. It's was all on recording security cameras in the station. Basically, people I didn't know were bringing up things I didn't like to talk about and it's not a coinidence that the woman's son would be involved in doing that. He was only about 3 or so during the peak abusive years and most likely doesn't remember (his dad pulled a clump of hair out of his head before beating his daughter).

So it isn't a question of recovered memories or anything like that because I could have told everything about those days when they first happened. My parents stayed friends with those abusers for a very long time afterwards. After the sz in 1985, the voices I have are counterparts to those abusers and witnesses. And basically, it's them telling me things like, "You're never going to be complete until you try to kill yourself for real." Or, "You're not competent enough to tell the story of your life." Basically, the voices claim that they have rewritten everything I would want to say about those days, and no one will believe me since they already got me to agree to their lies and they have played it out in public without my realizing it.

How do I cope? I wrote it all out in a journal/blog. Everything I could remember about my life. It took over a year to do and it wasn't that hard at all. No matter how much the voices want to put me on the defensive about everything, I'm not a criminal and I don't feel like one, either.

Anyway, your question was about flashbacks, and no, I don't have any. I have auditory hallucinations that are a rehash of the truth and listening to them lie about me and the past. It's easy for me to dismiss the ridiculousness. As for sz episodes, I've learned that what you remember at the time is just about all you're going to remember. Filling in the blanks of an episode is a waste of time, for me anyway.

Like you say in your profile, "It is what it is." And the past is what it was. No changing that.