MPD/DID - Memoirs: Abuse History

Abuse History: Overview of our story and our family's story

I always heard that abuse flows across the generations, and when I was first beginning to actively confront my abuse issues I discovered that my family was no different. To start my story, I suppose I should step back a few generations...

On my mother's side of the family, there was abuse that was known about. My great-grandmother was sexually abused. She tried to protect her children from ever having to suffer through such abuse as well. But she went overboard and made them fear abuse. She taught them that it would be their fault if there were abused. Sadly, my grandmother was sexually abused, and she firmly believed what her own mother had taught her. When I was around 5 years of age she discovered that I was being sexually abused, and she gave me the same lecture and placed all the blame on me. If *I* had been better, then the abuse would not happen. That *I* had done something WRONG that had caused grown adults to act badly.

As a side point, not only did abuse run deep, but so did secrecy and the need to "hide" things. My family was Jewish and had to hide that in order to try to escape the Holocaust. Furthermore, my great-grandmother married a Catholic and had to leave the family because of how "shameful" it was in that religion. So they hid that fact as well. They stuffed their past away so that no one would hold it against them when they moved to America. The intense fear of "being found out" seemed to spread to everything.

Anyway... so my mom grew up with her as a mother. She was cold and harsh, emotionally, verbally, and physically abusive to my mother and her siblings. Her temper often got out of control. She seemed to have two sides to her personality: the raging bull, and the smiling socialite. Nothing in between. My mother tried to escape that lifestyle and ended up with my father who was EXACTLY like her mother.

Fewer details are known about my father's side. They were poor farmers who worked hard and lived hard. Highly religious (stout Southern Baptist), they lived the farm life which often kept them isolated from the outside world. Men were men: women, children, and the land were their property. They had their Bible to prove it.

My grandfather was born in 1900. My grandmother was just a few years younger. They married back in the day when love really wasn't why you married. And you sure didn't divorce. So they worked out difficulties, and lived as employer employee. Don't get me wrong, there was love, there was tenderness at times... but there was also the strict rule of my grandfather, and the obedience of my grandmother. And back then, that was how it was "supposed" to be.

I think where things got a little haywaire was the fact that my father was born very late in life. He was 20 years younger than the next oldest son (there were four male children altogether). So he grew up almost like an only child. But his parents, at his birth, were already both over 40. I doubt that they had much to offer him compared to the love and energy they had to offer to their other children. But I have to speculate because there is not much I have been told because my father refuses to share stories like that.

It is a well known family story that my grandfather became a hard, mean drunk for a period of time. Then threw himself back into religion to save himself. He then became the biggest t-totaller around. My father has always had an intense rage. No one really knows where it comes from. And he can not and will not discuss emotions or problems (which he probably learned from my hard granfather and his passive, quiet wife). When he married my mother he expected things to go the same way as his parents' marriage had gone. But when problems arose and my mother stood her ground, he didn't know what to do. Often he turned to violence (mostly verbal and emotional).

My parents never intended on gettng married. They weren't really even dating when they got married. The story is that my grandmother and my mom were in a fight and my mom wanted to prove her point. So my mom decided to run away. My father was going home to Missouri that weekend and offerred her a place to stay. So, she went to visit his folks. When my grandmother caught wind of it she called the FBI and charged my father with kidnapping and taking her daughter across state lines. In order to duck the charges they married with the intention of getting it annuled a few days later. After the few days had passed my mother asked for the annulment. My father snapped, punched a number of holes in the wall, and announced that it would happen "over his dead body."

So, they were married, and my mother was now married to someone just as hot and cold, violent and overbearing as her own mother had been. She didn't really feel like there was any other way, and I think she even began to think that that was just the life that God had intended for her to live. So, she did.

My brother was born about a year and a half later or so. My mom tried to stay home with him as much as she could. I came along five years later, after two miscarriages. From the stories I've heard from my family, my father was domineering to my brother before I was born and was quick to reprimand him verbally and physically. When I came along, he had a new person to bring under his control. My mother tells me that I scared her because I was just as hard-headed, stubborn, and aggressive as my father was. So, the battle between us began early.

I was born 10 weeks premature and spent a long time in the hospital trying to reach the 5 pound mark before I could be relased. By the time I was released I had been withheald from touch and contact for so long that I hated it. My mother said that she worried that I would never learn to like being around other people. So, as much as I fought and cried when she held me, she finally got me to understand that touch was ok. She also had to do the same thing with darkness because the entire time I was in the hospital I was under lights.

I venture to guess that my father first began to molest me sexually back then. Who was going to notice me get fussy over touch when I already was? If that was the one thing I hated and he wanted to break me and control me, why not use that against me?

The first incident of sexual abuse that I remember is at two years of age. It was when we first split. My father had been fondling us sexually before then. But for some reason he decided to see if he could penetrate us. The excrutiating pain split us into four new people. The original person ceased being then. The alter Tears was formed to deal with the abuse. Rachel was formed to help control the formation of new alters, and to help shift us in and out of control of the body. Singer was created to help us dissociate. Duke was created to help Rachel and to control our power resources. He is the one that took the resources away from The Lost One (what we call the original birth person) so that she would "die" and not have to feel anymore.

We moved very often, averaging one move per year. We often rememeber how old we were by remembering what house we were in at the time. My father hid his abusiveness well. To people outside the immediate family he appeard to be a good man who was hard working. He was a great salesman, often winning sales awards in every company he worked for. And he sold everyone into believeing that he was a good father and a good husband. He became more abusive to my brother, often resorting to cruel verbal abuse paired with cold physical abuse. He would purposely set him up for failure just so he could punish him.

My mother was aware of the abuse to my brother. She tried to tell my father that he was being too harsh. But to stand up to my father at the time it was going on was dangerous. Not only that, but the parenting guides of the time said that was very bad. Parents were expected to argue about discipline anywhere but infront of the child. They were taught to be a "united front" at the time of action. My mother continued to try to ask for a divorce, and even asked her own mother to help her leave. My grandmother told her she should stay in the marriage because it was "her duty." So, she again felt trapped, and stayed. She tried her best to make life bearable for my brother, the whole time feeling guilty that she couldn't stop the abuse.

We learned to stay quiet. We saw that my brother was getting hurt badly and we kept telling ourselves that what was happening to us in the quiet of my own bedroom was much better than what he was having to endure infront of everyone. We were threatened to remain quiet, and we did. We also used alters who didn't know about the abuse to help "be out" during the day to help us be "a normal child" (often JeniPeni).

By the age of 4 my father was actively taking pornographic pictures of me and the abuse that he was conducting. It was at this time that he began to let two "friends" come over and join in. We began to split very fast, creating Emalee, Nobody, Sable, and Jynnifer. Some alters were created soley for being there for the abuse (Emalee and Nobody). Jynnifer was created to deal with the religious life we were in which taught us that bad things happened because G-d was punishing us for being bad, so she needed to learn the religious stuff without knowing about the abuse. Sable was created to help hide behind to carry on the facade that we were normal and ok.

We moved in with our grandmother when we were around 5. It was here that she discovered the signs of abuse on our body one day while bathing us. When she told us it was our fault we dissociated away into the wallpaper. She yanked us out of the tub, drained the tub, filled it with steaming hot water, and scrubbed us so thoroughly I thought for sure I'd have no skin left on my body by the time she was done. By the time we got out of the tub, Wallpaper, a new alter, had been created.

During that time we were also being abused by a friend of my brother. We often hung out with that family because they had many kids (pretty much ALL of the kids in that neighborhood). We used to all play together and we had a good time. Two of the older boys began to force me and their youngest sister into sexual activity. One of the reasons I didn't tell was I didn't know how to explain the marks that had been left by my father and not by those boys. So, I kept quiet, and split some more.

The next move took me to the worst part of my life. My body was now mature enough that the sexual abuse became more violent, frequent, and invasive. My best friend, which was really my *first* best friend since I spent most of my life moving and friendless, and I began to spend a lot of time together. One of the reasons we got along so well is that we both knew that we were living through abuse together. It didn't take long for her father to size me up and begin to abuse me as well.

Jynnifer was still going to church like a good little girl. Finally another alter got tired of hearing how bad things happened to bad people and argued with the sunday school teacher. After class he pulled us aside and asked us to explain why we were fussing so badly. She told him of the abuse. Angry, he drove us home, told my father the "lies" we had told him, and left my father to straighten me out.

Needless to say, we nearly died that night. In fact, we lost countless alters inside that night and even had to create someone just to keep up with all the "dead" alters. We never EVER tried to speak out after that.

During those years, my brother was finally old enough to get out of the house. And he did every chance he got. My mother began to work long hours (sometimes days in a row) away from the house. She hated her job and hated being away for so many hours. But it paid well and my father coerced her to stay. He also knew it kept her out of the house so she wouldn't have the time to notice what all was going on. Besides, he always liked money, and always had ways of making it disappear even though none of us ever knew where it was going... and still to this day don't. it just *went*.

The next move marked the last move as a family. My mother finally decided that she'd get him to give her a divorce, or die trying. He often verbally attacked her, making sure that she knew that he would not give her or us up easily. He constantly told her that he'd get us in court and leave her all alone. That no court would let her win, and that neither would he. She feared for her life, but knew that atleast if he did kill her, the courts would take us away from him. My father finally realized he had lost the battle, gave up, and got the divorce.

We had hoped that things would calm down since our father was finally out of the house. But that didn't change anything except the location of where he was raping us. We even hoped that things would stop after he met a woman and decided to marry he, bit the abuse continued.

When we were in the 8th grade my mother and him were fighting constantly, and went to court several times over issues of child support. My brother joined the navy and headed for the west coast. Things finally got so ugly with my father not paying support that my mother threatened to stop letting him see me. He threatened to abduct me. So, she kept me away from him for about a month and a half till she thought things had calmed down.

Then it was time to celebrate Thanksgiving with his folks, she decided to let me go with him. He raped me that night and the next morning we got into the car to head for his parent's house. He tried to abduct us while we were between his house and their's (a few states away). Something made him change his mind and he ended up turning around and heading back in the direction that he was supposed to be heading. The sexual assaults stopped after this incident.

He left us alone for years. I think he even scared himself with the abduction plot. My mother and I moved to another state the summer between my junior and senior year of highschool. When I went back for my prom at my first high school, I stayed at his house. HIs wife was supposed to be there, but she took a trip to New York. The first night I was there he got drunk and tried to initiate sexual contact. I never went back to that house alone, and tried to avoid going back at all. The next two times I had to spend the night at his house I slept with a stun gun.

We began to work on our issues as a freshman in college because of the severe depression and frequent nightmares. In our Sophomore year we were date raped by our first boyfriend. In October of our Junior year (1996) we confronted our father and his wife about his abuse. We found out that her grandchildren (ages 4 and 7) were living with them and we feared for their safety. So, we confronted, and she believed and supported us and asked him to move out of their house for a period of time. Last I heard, he had been allowed back into the house once the grandchildren had moved.

We spent a number of years being rather silent internally. We let one alter be out and be unaware of the rest of us in order for her to be able to function and get us through school, as well as keep ourselves sane. We all needed a break, to be honest. But after the confrontation we slowly began to work together again, and to reintroduce ourselves to the one we had left out and without knowledge of the rest of us for so long.

Recovery was like cleaning out a crowded, poorly packed, unorganized storage unit. We had to clean everything out, and try to put it back in a more organized, healthy, safe way. Many of the alters listed on our system map were actively out during the early years of our healing after the confrontation. Many of those alters have not been active now that they have had a chance to share their information, memories, and feelings with the system. They have either become blended with other alters, or they have gone back to sleep because they are not needed anymore. Some chose to sleep forever because they were too hurt to function and had no desire to try to recover.

We went through a period of time when we needed to ignore the memories in order to keep functioning, then a time when we needed to remember in order to stay alive, and finally a time when it's ok to not remember because it's not critical in our life. We no longer fear our abusers, our memories, or our feelings. This has taken a vast amount of the 'disorder" out of having Multiple Personality Disorder. We're still Multiple, we still have alters, and we still get triggered from time to time. But we no longer write suicide notes each birthday, we no longer actively or passively want to die, and we are no longer hypervigilant for signals that abusers or abuse is nearby.