If you are on Facebook, come by and see Carolyn Nash's author page and say hi. :)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Carolyn-Nash/185694554847144
This story is now available on Amazon under the title RAISING ABEL with the pen name Carolyn Nash. If you have read the book, and you have a chance, I would so appreciate it if you'd leave a review on Amazon. It's of great help.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
020412 (022312) Why do you guys keep coming here to see what I've written?
In the previous blog entries that went into RAISING ABEL, I'm certain I wrote about my issues with self-doubt. Self doubt is the main reason my blog entries are so few and far between. What can I possibly write that someone would want to read?
However, I just figured out something crucially important. No one is forcing anyone to click on this blog. Ergo, people are clicking on the blog because they want to read what I've written.
Extraordinary concept.
I think you can see why I have such a hard time marketing my book.
I'm 55 years old (another extraordinary concept). My abuse was almost 50 years ago. I've been through therapy for years and years and years. And yet, the gift keeps giving. The way I was raised and formed by my parents still effects what I do and what I think. I constantly fight the concept that there is no way anyone could possibly be interested in what I've experienced and what I've written. It's a painful struggle for me.
How much harder is it for Abel, whose abuse was orders of magnitude worse than mine? (I know. Abuse is abuse and there is no "scale" for judging whose abuse was worse, but his was worse.) Abel is 21; he'll be 22 this summer. He struggles so hard to try to determine what his place is in the world. He says (and I'm hoping it's only "says" and not what he truly believes) that he is living on borrowed time. He says he was supposed to have died long ago at the hands of his birth parents or when he took all those pills. He thinks he will die young and that it will be okay because he should already be dead. I'm sure you can imagine how those words pierce my heart.
February 23. I've been avoiding this blog as if clicking on it would give me an electric shock. There's something I'm avoiding, but haven't quite figured it all out, yet.
I will tell you the last couple of weeks have been pretty interesting. One morning, Abel told me that he had realized what he had to do to make his life have meaning. After I was dead and gone (because he didn't want to hurt me) he was going to track down his birth parents and destroy them. He'd been up all night and this was eating at him. He felt the only thing he could do to protect other people and to prove that they should never have gotten away with what they did, was to destroy their lives the way they had tried to destroy his. I argued, I begged, I pleaded, I threatened, but nothing was going to dissuade him from this goal.
Please let me make something very clear: I do not and have never believed Abel would actually search for and do violence to his birth parents. But I argued because it so hurts me to have him think these poisonous thoughts.I still labor under the false belief that if I can just come up with the right way to say something, it will take his pain away.
So, he finally went up to his room to sleep and I sat and worried.
The next day, maybe the day after, he came to me again. He said, "I still think they deserve to have their lives taken away, but I'm not going to do it. I won't do it because I love you. And, even if you were dead when I did it, it would not be honoring what you have given me. You're my mom."
I cried and thanked him for one of the greatest gifts he's ever given me.
Abel is a good, loving, gentle, generous soul. But, he has all of this rage inside him and he wants so badly to find a way to clean it out. I believe that whenever someone is badly hurt, the primitive part of their psyche wants to strike back and kill. I think that actually bringing that feeling forward, imagining what it would be like, and then finding a reason to discard it without feeling like a coward or a failure for not having done it, was extremely important. It was disturbing and difficult, but important.
Working with Stanley, he is gradually clearing more of the anger and pain, but there is so much that those bastards did...
And when your kids get older they may also say some outrageous and frightening things. Try to remember that it's part of the process of expressing the poison, pushing it out where it can be cleansed away.
And remember, you can't track down the birth parents either, no matter how much you would like to.
However, I just figured out something crucially important. No one is forcing anyone to click on this blog. Ergo, people are clicking on the blog because they want to read what I've written.
Extraordinary concept.
I think you can see why I have such a hard time marketing my book.
I'm 55 years old (another extraordinary concept). My abuse was almost 50 years ago. I've been through therapy for years and years and years. And yet, the gift keeps giving. The way I was raised and formed by my parents still effects what I do and what I think. I constantly fight the concept that there is no way anyone could possibly be interested in what I've experienced and what I've written. It's a painful struggle for me.
How much harder is it for Abel, whose abuse was orders of magnitude worse than mine? (I know. Abuse is abuse and there is no "scale" for judging whose abuse was worse, but his was worse.) Abel is 21; he'll be 22 this summer. He struggles so hard to try to determine what his place is in the world. He says (and I'm hoping it's only "says" and not what he truly believes) that he is living on borrowed time. He says he was supposed to have died long ago at the hands of his birth parents or when he took all those pills. He thinks he will die young and that it will be okay because he should already be dead. I'm sure you can imagine how those words pierce my heart.
February 23. I've been avoiding this blog as if clicking on it would give me an electric shock. There's something I'm avoiding, but haven't quite figured it all out, yet.
I will tell you the last couple of weeks have been pretty interesting. One morning, Abel told me that he had realized what he had to do to make his life have meaning. After I was dead and gone (because he didn't want to hurt me) he was going to track down his birth parents and destroy them. He'd been up all night and this was eating at him. He felt the only thing he could do to protect other people and to prove that they should never have gotten away with what they did, was to destroy their lives the way they had tried to destroy his. I argued, I begged, I pleaded, I threatened, but nothing was going to dissuade him from this goal.
Please let me make something very clear: I do not and have never believed Abel would actually search for and do violence to his birth parents. But I argued because it so hurts me to have him think these poisonous thoughts.I still labor under the false belief that if I can just come up with the right way to say something, it will take his pain away.
So, he finally went up to his room to sleep and I sat and worried.
The next day, maybe the day after, he came to me again. He said, "I still think they deserve to have their lives taken away, but I'm not going to do it. I won't do it because I love you. And, even if you were dead when I did it, it would not be honoring what you have given me. You're my mom."
I cried and thanked him for one of the greatest gifts he's ever given me.
Abel is a good, loving, gentle, generous soul. But, he has all of this rage inside him and he wants so badly to find a way to clean it out. I believe that whenever someone is badly hurt, the primitive part of their psyche wants to strike back and kill. I think that actually bringing that feeling forward, imagining what it would be like, and then finding a reason to discard it without feeling like a coward or a failure for not having done it, was extremely important. It was disturbing and difficult, but important.
Working with Stanley, he is gradually clearing more of the anger and pain, but there is so much that those bastards did...
And when your kids get older they may also say some outrageous and frightening things. Try to remember that it's part of the process of expressing the poison, pushing it out where it can be cleansed away.
And remember, you can't track down the birth parents either, no matter how much you would like to.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)