Its not my fault

Its not my fault – by Seren.

Why do those four words – its not my fault – send us into panic? Its not like if it was anyone else I know, I wouldn’t dream that what happened with the abuse to be their fault. But its ours!! what makes us so special? Even if we imagined the abuse we suffered was someone else, we still wouldn’t blame them. I wish that there was a simple solution into not blaming ourselves and internalising all the emotions that should be thrown at my parents. I hate to think of us as special, we hate being the centre of attention we just want to fit in (and never seem to). However we are the only abused child that its our fault....if only we could change how we perceive ourselves and I am sure that many other survivors feel the same.

I did some online research and found that adults who abuse, paedophiles, must except control and this is one of the ways that they do it. They don’t just hurt us physically and sexually but also emotionally. This emotional abuse is the centre to it, its not so much a sexual thrill they get (I think) but its the power balance and how they manage to transfer the blame to the child. They can do this in a variety of manners, through actually saying its the child’s fault, to giving them “presents” to keep them quiet. In our experience and those of people I know, it often means that we are the ones left wondering if we had done or been x y z then it wouldn’t happen. And so further believing it is our fault.

Having done some reading around I have realised that it was just the punishments that put me into the situation, but also the presents I used to get. This is a huge realisation for us, as we thought that was showing his “nice” side the side society sees, but from what I have read it was further bringing me into the damaging relationship. Having said that no person is all bad or all good. We all are a unique mixture of both. (I have mini dad (one of the alters) shouting in my ear that YOU ARE ALL EVIL NO GOOD CAN COME OF YOU) having DID does make things complicated!!!! anyway back on subject, my dad and mum do have good qualities just when it comes to me they turn bad. What Mini Dad was shouting is what I heard constantly for well over 20 years. And that is the part of the reason that my dad got away with it, I knew that it was my fault, and he was trying to help...after all 5 year old believe just about everything a parents say. Its not been programmed into my brain, and Mini Dad keeps reminding me of that very reason. And so the guilt continues. The guilt of turning them into the police and what happened from there I do see as my responsibility, although as some will tell me that they had brought it on themselves.

This is something that we struggle with a lot. People ask us why we are so different and special that if it is our fault why isn't it anyone else's. This question I cannot answer, maybe cause there is no answer, but we have been programmed for so long that it is our fault that in a way it lets feel that we have (non existent) control over our life for so long, its our fault therefore we deserved it. It also allows us to still see my parents as parents rather then them messing up our lives, which everyone else can see. I have to feel in control, we all do. I am guessing that it has a lot to do with our childhood and early years. Currently we are trying to do with with food :s if I am honest a lot of my life I was out of control, not with substance misuse, but because both my parents controlled me so much as I wasn’t the perfect vicars daughter that society believes I should have been. I wasn’t that happy go lucky child, I was suffering from the abuse my dad and his friends inflicted on my sexually and the emotional abuse from my mother. I wasn’t allowed emotions, and so I still internalise them as its safer, safer than getting rejected by the two people who are meant to be my care givers.

No child should be inflicted to what I was. However I was, and the reason for that is my evilness, I was born with it and they were just trying to get rid of it, and then using my to be for blame for everything because of it. This thinking is so wrong in a way, being a child includes innocence. Its all so conflicting.

Grooming, as they call it, meant that I didn’t talk for 20 years about what was going on, but I find it difficult to accept that it is his stuff that has made me feel like this. I feel responsible for so much including what happened to me. Will I ever feel differently? How will that affect how I see myself. I see myself with such detest, and distance myself from the body as its not ours, it belongs to them. In a way when I am hurting myself I’m not, I'm hurting them as it belongs to them always.

What gives the adults the right to transfer what they want to on a child? What gives them the right to use a child’s body as an adult plaything? Why when the adult may feel the guilt they transfer this to the child. I have no life really, I am only existing, as the past rules my life forever.

[EDIT: Seren had some help with this from some of the others, sorry its so difficult to understand.]