Telling peer survivor story continued PTSD

I have been in PTSD for the past couple of days. It is amazing to me how I can go for a very long time without having any episodes of PTSD then they just come on strong. I know it has to do with making myself vulnerable and telling my peer my survivor story. It also has to do with this time of the year. It has to do with my obsessiveness over the petition I put on change.org. I need to snap myself out of this because it isn't fair to my son who is getting the brunt of this. I really hate how irrational and crazy it makes me. Unfortunately when I am being irrational I am not thinking logically, calmly, or being non reactionary. I can only imagine how bad this PTSD was when my children were little. It saddens me to think that they had to deal with this irrational side of me. The good thing is that we can talk about it when I am back in calm mode which, for the past five or so years has been my normal mode. My ability to be aware of my triggers has been a big thing in helping my family and friends understand why I am acting the way I am. I am grateful that I am able to know the difference. This is one of the ways I am trying to help my children. If I can teach them by the lessons I have had to learn maybe they won't have to suffer through things the same way. Being the type of mother that my children can be proud of has always been important to me. I never want them to feel the way about me as I have about Ruth. Even though I am very justified in feeling toward Ruth the way I do. I wish there had never been a reason for me to feel the way I do. I am fortunate that I have my step-mom who has been wonderful to me. I am lucky in that I have had the opportunity to get to experience having a "real mother."  I need to remember this when I am feeling the way I do.

I'm at a place to finish writing about telling my story to my peer.........

After I shared the sexual abuse issues with Ruth I started telling her about the RA. I explained that I am a survivor of ritual abuse. She asked me, "What exactly do you mean by that? Was it satanic? Were there rituals you were involved in? Were they sexual?" I answered "Yes, they were satanic, yes, I was involved in rituals and yes, some of them were sexual." I shared how I believe that it was connected to pedophilia. Then I started to cry and I said, "Ruth was a pedophile." I shared how I was aware that Ruth was having sex with teenage boys. I came home early from school one day and a boy named John (who was about 16 or 17) was coming down the stairs zipping his pants and fixing his shirt. Then a couple of minutes later Ruth came down the stairs smiling like a Cheshire cat. Then I started crying it was the first time I called Ruth by her rightful title not only was she abusive both mentally and physically but she was a pedophile. My peer said, "She was R...she was a pedophile." We had a couple of minutes where we were just in silence. It felt good to be sharing this openly.


After I swallowed that realization I explained how I had always had the memories of being locked in the bilco door. In the northeast the type of door that lead into an outside basement was called a bilco door. I explained how there would always be a statue of satan at the top of the stairs and I was at the bottom near the entrance to the basement. I told her that I didn't know how long I was there, but that I would tell Ruth that, "Those people put me in the basement stairs again with that scary thing." She would always tell me that, "It was just a bad dream." I explained that after a while I started to believe it was just a bad dream. I talked about being put into what I think was a dog house, because I could see their shoes and the robes walking by an opening. When I was in this dog house how they were chanting for me to denounce God.  I have no memories of denouncing God, but that I have memories of playing with cherubs. I told her that I know that sounds weird. She told me that she didn't think it was weird at all. She told me that was Gods way of helping me. She told me she has heard other stories where people have survived abuse that experienced angels.

I talked some about the "Haunting" (which I will cover in other posts at a later time). I asked her if she was doing okay with hearing what I was telling her. She told me that she was doing fine. She told me that, "To be honest I am thinking about how I am glad it was you and not me." She told me that she had heard of people surviving things like this but she had never met anyone who had. She talked at length about how she had to deal with some terrible stuff but not what I have. I told her the story that Allan, one of my therapists told me when I was sharing how my survival story of domestic violence was less then a couple of the women in the support group. He said, "If the two of you were in an accident and you broke your arm and she broke her leg would the pain be any less?" That was very helpful to me at the time. It helped me understand that even though a trauma may seem less that it doesn't mean that the pain isn't the same. I told my peer to please never feel that what she has gone through wasn't painful. She asked me not to be upset with her for telling me that she was glad it was me not her. She explained she didn't mean anything mean by it. She told me, "You are one strong person. If this was going to happen to anyone that would get through it, it is you." I shared that I am not upset with her for speaking how she feels.

She was surprised when I talked about there being people who don't believe in RA. She didn't understand why there are people that don't believe that RA exists. I shared my distaste for the false memory foundation. I shared how they speak for survivors when they don't have a right to and how I started the petition. She thought that was great and is going to sign it if she hasn't already. She talked about what is happening to children in some African Countries. She was in disbelief that there are people who don't believe things like this happen. She told me that she believes me. I told her how hard it was to come to terms with surviving something so horrible and that until 1997 I refused to acknowledge it's impact on me. I shared how I was in a book story in Arkansas in 1997 and noticed a book on surviving ritual abuse. I opened it up to the symptom page and I matched most of the symptoms but, once I read that people who have survived ritual abuse have very black and white thinking I started crying and almost dropped the book. It wasn't until then that I could admit  that I had been impacted by surviving RA. I used to be a very black and white thinking person. There was no shades of gray. I have been learning the older I get that there are shades of gray and that is okay. My peer told me that, "Now I know where your stubbornness comes from." Then she laughed and told me, "You are one of the most stubborn people I have met in my life. And that's a good thing." That is all I can manage to share right now. I will need to take a couple of days to get off the topic. So I will be sharing other things about traumas in the next couple of days. Blessings, Rosie