So, let me get this straight. You are now an adult and there are children living with her, getting smacked around like she did/does to you and you have not done anything to help them?
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'The Cutter's Nightmare'...
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Yeah, that would be about right. I tried to do ANYTHING, but they weren't cooperative... All they had to do was say my mom DID hit them, and she would have had to be investigated. But they were 'scared' and wouldn't. So I got the stuffing knocked out of ME and had no goddamned proof, AND she hasn't been stopped. Yeash. Grand kids she has. Won't even stick up for their own sorry hides. All I could do was get far away and offer a sanctuary. Somewhere thewy could run to. And now I don't have it, and I'm back at sqaure one and counting.
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Well then it's time to set up the sanctuary again, any way you can. I know your situation will be different in ways to mine, but when I was eighteen I had my two sisters living with me, they were fourteen and fifteen at the time, and I had a new baby of my own.If you are the oldest the responsibility falls to you, whether you want it or not.
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Oddly enough, I disagree with star on this one, but only in the "responsibility" aspect, and only so far as it's YOUR responsibility, alone. You shouldn't have to take all that burden on yourself--you obviously have enough to deal with in your life. But I do think you need to discuss the situation with your younger siblings and explain that if at least one of them would be willing to verify your complaint about her, an investigation would happen and perhaps you could be set up as the head of the family without the EVIL ONE.Okay, so that's probably already been tried...but, if not, try it again. And, if the abuse is a prevalent as you say, isn't there anyone you know from whom you could borrow a digital video recorder and hide it somewhere the abuse could be visually documented? There has to be someone you know who'd be willing to help you out like that. Hell, if you were on my side of the planet I could think of a dozen people off the top of my head. How about your local Social Services? They must use something to document cases when they have to make home inspections.Ah, hell....I don't know, I'm just throwing out suggestions, here...
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Ok. I know this question is old..
but, I can't stand when people ask 'Why did you cut?'-- When, I cut -and, I am sure other people felt the same way-, It felt like I didn't control my body to do it.
You don't have control -- even when i think/attempt to commite suicide, i don't think of what I am doing - I just want to end it. But, right now, when i'm in a more stable state, I realize what death /really/ is.I know this may be confusing, but, hey, I was typing my thoughts.
and, losely proof-read. -
I think with a background like mine, you just naturally expect the same of other people, though I know that isn't always fair.
Sometimes I'll hear some teenager or young adult moaning about how hard they have it because they cannot afford the car they want or whatever and I'll just shake my head and think 'for fucks sake, I remember when I couldn't afford a pint of milk at your age and had three mouths to feed besides my own'.
So yeah, I do accept I can be a bit hard on younger people in similar situations, but I still think if her younger siblings are suffering and she is the oldest, if she cannot swing it to raise them all herself, she at least has to take it upon herself to do SOMETHING to alleviate their suffering, whatever means she has to employ.
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And I agree that she should investigate every means possible to get them out of there, but I don't know her complete financial situation and she's obviously dealing with a lot of her own emotional demons. That said, I'd hate to heap anymore weight on her already over-burdened shoulders. I really think Social Services is her best bet, but I don't know how they work where she lives. Still, their job is to make family situations right...and I think if she was in their offices as often as physically possible, eventually someone would HAVE to listen and do something to attempt to verify the complaint.
But again, neither you nor I, star, are in her shoes...so all we can do is make suggestions and wish her the best. Unfortunately.
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Are reports to social services from one person not enough to instigate an investiation afraidtotell?
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I know in Ohio, reports of abuse or neglect are enough to get social services to 'investigate'. Sadly though, I do not believe they are very thorough with thier investigations in most cases.
I don't know, if it were me, I would be down at the child welfare building everyday until someone did something to help my siblings. That is, if I couldn't help them myself.
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That's what we did. When my youngest sister got out that left our youngest sibling alone with our mother, he was six at the time. We basically camped out in the social services office for just over a year till they removed him. I'd have done so myself, and by force, but for I'd have been done for kidnapping and that would have left my sisters without a home, it was an impossible situation. My mother wasnt a bad person I'd just like to point out, she was a sick person, an untreated schizophrenic, and obviously not model mother material or anything like it.It can be an excruciating wait in cases like this, but really, whats the alternative? I know if we'd just sat on our backsides and hoped for the best we'd never have forgiven ourselves, and we'd never have deserved our little brother to forgive us either.- Afraidtotell; if none of the children will go to social services with you, perhaps there is an adult, a neighbour, relation or friend who knows what's going on who could validate what you’re saying instead? I think you’ll find there has to be somebody who knows whats going on, particularly in your neighbourhood. Extreme familial dysfunction is very hard to hide.
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The kids and our mother recently moved from my hometown to one across the continent. I know no one here. My mother does not hit most of us anymore. She doesn't have to. Even a threat has any and all of us (the eldest especially) cowering in a corner. In my case, I am so nervous that she'll blow up and hurt me that I can't go 20 minutes around her without throwing up. Usually right down the front of myself. She thinks it's funny. She's into empowerment. Things like cutting/tearing off clothes and making people get on their knees. She doesn't have to attack to gain repsect anymore. A hand raised and everyone backs down. Except me. I'm sick of it, but that doesn't change the fact that I have no backbone. I'm a wimp, and I can't fix it. There is nothing I can figure out. The only people who know are family, and no one will tell, not even her mother, sister, ex husband. Our stepfather is trying to help, and he is a huge help, but he won't tell on her. My brother is seven years older than me and he never did anything to help. He watched me get my face ground into the rug. He watched me be drowned, beaten with poles, get kicked in the gut until I threw up bloody foam, have my hair set on fire, have my fingertips put on the hot stove range, get picked up by my ears and hair, have my nipples pinched until i had bruises across my whole chest from it. He watched everyhting she did, and he never told a soul. Then again, why should he? He never got hit. It was me that started all the mess. Me with my big mouth and sassing the teachers. I made her lose it. I made her cruel and sick. Like her father. I broke her, you see? It's me who did it all. And now I can't put this fiasco right.I tried all through K12 to tell someone what was going on, but unfortuantely, no one cares, so long as we are physically safe. (No danger of death) I think what the Social Services bitch told me when i was 13 was that 'a black eye never hurt anyone'. On my seven-year-old sister? Oh, yes, it does. It hurts her, and it hurts me. My mom didn't appreciate that. She got downright pissed. She said death would be the only thing I could even beg for, and then she held me underwater repeatedly for what seemed like years. I drowned twice, my sister told me, but my sainted mother, in addition to being respected in the community, is certified in juvenile CPR. She killed me. Nice woman. I love her, don't you?There is not a thing I can do for my siblings. I have no money, no job, no home. In addition to that, I am 99.9% sure I am suffering from multiple personalitiy disorder. My psych major buddies told me I scare them because they think I might be right. I wake up with cuts in my arm so deep I am surprised I am alive. I run out to my favorite calm spot in the stables, and there are the knives, all of them, thrown into the wall above the chair where I sit. I lost almost 30 pounds in less than a week because I would black out right after I ate and throw it up, and then run and run and run until I fainted. Someone has been trying to kill me, and it's me. You can't know how frightening it is, to have strangers controlling you. Though I must say I much prefer blackouts to when I used to have to watch as everything happened out of my control. The point being: I don't trust myself around me. How am I supposed to care for four teenagers? Four growing kids with huge appetites, lots of homework, emotional problems like what, tendencies towards truancy in school (they skip all the time, and it's a $500 fine for their guardian every time they skip six classes.... I'd be even more broke before I had time to blink), puberty (Don't punch holes in the walls, boys. Or each other! I don't care if you're seventeen or seventy! You are NOT having a boy sleep over, and that's final! Oh, you started your period? This is your first time? I'm so excited for you! Let me run up and buy even more pads! And a bra. And new clothes for your brother, who just grew three more inches. Dinner in an hour, guys!), and a general dislike for being told what to do. Especially by me. I can't do it. Not financially, physically, especially not emotionally. I can't even hold a job. How on earth could I keep these kids safe? I'd be a WORSE guardian!And I don't know of anyone else who could help.... But I can tell you that telling someone that my mother USED TO beat her kids and now every one lives in fear and has emotional trauma immeasurably will do nothing. No one would do anything. So long as they don't see a bruise, no charges can be pressed. They are also safe with our stepfather. Small problem being he is at work when they come home from school.... So they all sass her and I am afraid. Don't! I scream inside my head. Oh God, she'll kill you! She'll kill me! She'll kill us all you idiot shut up quick before she hears you oh god no someone help shes mad sobbing please no mommy no! Fat lot of good I am for them.Pretty much, I am having trouble focusing, but the time to help them passed a while ago. I am helpless to save them, and I can't live with the guilt. Good a reason as any for needing to die, I'd say. I can't take that I couldn't save them before they were set in their paths, down the road to ening up like HER. To ending up like ME.
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I think what the Social Services bitch told me when i was 13 was that 'a black eye never hurt anyone'. On my seven-year-old sister?That's pretty amazing. Someone should have spoken to her supervisor about that.> I am 99.9% sure I am suffering from multiple personalitiy disorder. My psych major buddies told me I scare them because they think I might be right. I wake up with cuts in my arm so deep I am surprised I am alive.You're a psychology major at university? Have you ever seeked psychatric counseling?> There is not a thing I can do for my siblings.The best thing you could do for everyone around you, and for yourself, is to seek out psychiatric care.> How am I supposed to care for four teenagers?It's not your job. First and foremost, you need to take care of yourself. They're sassing your mom, and she's not hitting them. I'm not sure in what way they're living in fear. But in your current state, you can't do anything for anyone. You need to look into therapy now, not later. Once you get yourself back on track, you'll have a chance to help others.
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At the top of the back of knee is the base of the hamstring...or so I understand.I'm just saying.
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Obviously our situations differ in many ways afraidtotell, no two examples of family dysfunction are the same, but there are some striking similarities. You and I both have mothers who are clearly extremely disturbed and display erratic controlling behaviour and propensities to violence. In my own case, when I left, I didnt take anyone but me. Like you, I simply wasnt in the position to do so in the first instance. I left in January of 1990, a few weeks before my fourteenth birthday and it was two and a half years before I was ready to take care of anybody but myself. At that point my younger sister came to live with me. Another year or so after that our younger sister came to live with us. They both began working in menial jobs pretty soon after they left and between the three of us we got by. I'm not trying to be cruel here, believe me, but I'd say the main reason this may not be possible for you is because you seem to be in need of psychological help that I didnt need at that time. You cannot help anyone else till you've helped yourself. Cutting lumps out of yourself and fearing that your very personality may be fractured dosent leave you in a position to be of any assistance to anyone I'd imagine, and very much in a position where you need to assist yourself.I realise now I jumped the gun in advising you to get your siblings out of harms way, not everyone will be in the headspace I was in at that time. But now that you are living in a new area perhaps the authorities will respond differently to an appeal for help? I'm assuming the social worker you spoke of was located in your hometown? If you meet with a response like ‘a black eye never hurt anybody’ you just go to that persons superior, because they’re not doing their job. Whatever happens, doing nothing to draw attention to her abuse is never going to be the answer, and above all, as I've said to you many times now, you need help and nothing will get better till you get it.
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You know, this whole story seems strange to me. One minute the mom is beating everyone and they are so scared of her. Then the next minute, the kids are sassing her and skipping school and the mom does nothing. And no one, not the family, not the step dad, neighbors, teachers etc. no one will help? I don't get it.
Steve is right, she needs psychiatric help...now.
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You know, this whole story seems strange to me. One minute the mom is beating everyone and they are so scared of her. Then the next minute, the kids are sassing her and skipping school and the mom does nothing. And no one, not the family, not the step dad, neighbors, teachers etc. no one will help? I don't get it.You know, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were implying that I am a liar. I am very glad for you at how foolish and uneducated you sound to me. It means you never had to live through any of this mess. Good. I am glad. I don't wish this on ANYONE. It really is a this-minute-one thing-and-the-next-moment-another type of thing. She goes through phases of sorts. She changes. We all do.When I was small, if I so much as frowned at a statement she made or spilled something on my clothes (which ALL children do, of course), I was physically reprimanded well past the limit of humane and reasonable punishment. Not all of my siblings grew up the same. My next sister is the only one old enough to have been a aprt of that phase my mother went though. The next 'minute', I was tattling on her. The brusises showed on me, fair as I am, an anemic to boot. Even a slap would show learly for days. The hitting stopped. In comes the age of choking, drowning, crushing, hanging, tying. Into this phase, my brothers are born. They are too small to be affected. Then my mother becomes pregnant with my youngest sister. She stops hitting, and just threatens. The outburts still happen, but with less frequency. My brothers grow up without being hit, only seeing their sisters take the brunt of the force (because, Mother informs them, Halo started it all anyway, she should get punished, even though you stole from me). That's not to say they aren't afraid. Every one of her children cowers in fear when she gets angry. For a while, things settle down. My next sister begins to forget, blessed with a toddler's short memory. My mother becomes pregnant for the last time, and life is nice. She stops fighting so much with our father, and my beloved older brother comes to live with us full-time. Life smooths out, and we think everything is heaven. Vincent is coming (a baby brother is a present from God, our teachers told my sister and I, and even though I know what my parents did to make it, I am as excited as the boys are) in three months, and then Mommy is taking us all to see the family for the summer. And then out-of-the-blue, she miscarries. Anyone who has suffered this knows the emotional trauma it brings. I know the pain that rips through until it tears your soul to shreds. Especially in this case, with the child being so very far along, with a name, new clothes, and no health problems to speak of. The doctors said it was a freak thing. I can almost forgive her at this point. I am very grateful that I could hurt no one when I wwnt though the same, because I would have. To explain the few marks that showed, my mother told our teachers that we were fighting amongst each other beacuse of high tension. Wire hanger whip slices graced the bodies of her four eldest children. Bruises started showing in places where Halo and her closest sister wouldn't tell the teachers about (I should have been a whore, to get her back for using my innocence and modesty against me). Heads slammed against the wall came back in favor, since bruises don't show under your hair. I don't think I've ever been though more ice cold showers than in the several months after losing Vincent. My hair was a boy's length, because she ripped out too much of it to conceal with a headband. She didn't even smoke, but she got cigarettes just to put them out on my sister's crooked ankles and toes. And then she took us out on showy family gatherings and prayed with us at Sunday Mass. We're a family she says. Liar. Time passes like this, until once again, she settles down (her temperment is like a wave, with the phases coming as crests and troughs). By the time she gets violent again, I am far too old to tolerate regular abuse. I inform her I will cut her heart out next time she hits anyone. I was lying, by the way. She only has five major fits after this. Once when I asked for KFC (I was a hungry teenager, and I LOATHE hamburger), once when my youngest brother cussed her out in front of company, once when I told her I would love whom I loved (and she couldn't change it), then when my next brother stood up against her for being a brute and a bully, and then most recently when I consoled my little brother (she slapped him, he slapped her back, he called the cops, and she threatened me not to give testimony, making hers the only testimony given aside from my brother's, and as his gaurdian, hers nullified his), and she took offense at my 'taking sides with a freak'. That would be if I 'sided' with her. Hm. Like most abuse victims, we couldn't tell anyone. We felt naked and violated. Unclean. Even I couldn't tell anyone any details. It was too painful. But I had to do something, so at school I told my favortie teacher what I could. I never thought other people could be that affected. Even now I only view it as I do because of outside reactions. Remember, this is how I grew up. But apparently it was powerful and upsetting, because the day I told my teacher and my best friend at lunch, a grown man jumped up shakily from his desk and gathered me up in his arms like a child and cried uncontrallably with me while my best friend stared at me with eyes full of tears. No one with heart, my teacher said, could look at my eyes like they were when I told him, all glassy and empty. No one could see me with all my sparkle and fun gone and raw pain exposed for the world and turn their backs heartlessly. We immediately filled out all the proper form, sure help would come. Two days after we mailed out the papers, we got a letter back. My best friend held me while my teacher opened the envelope. Everyone was anxious about what would come when the social workers came out. We thought it was a given they would help. With what I put down? I still didn't understand, not even when my teacher turned pale and put his head down. My best friend started to cry and held me even tighter. I couldn't get it for almost 30 seconds. When it hit me, I fainted. Protective Services denied my request for an investigation.I sent out requests every year after that. They never came. They didn't even have to, really. She changed again. See, she doesn't have to do anything anymore. What would be the point? She wants control. She wants us broken, not bruised and proud. Which displays more dominance, beating someone unconscious, or simply glaring and having proud, strong people tear up and shrink back? Anybody can win in a brute battle. Only a true 'alpha' can frighten away rivals with a glance. She's an animal. Unfortunately, my siblings are too 'soft'. Too 'domestic', for lack of a better term. I can feel her getting mad. I get nervous and panick. Predator, my mind screams, and I am on edge. But they don't get it, or are too stupid to heed it. My youngest brother, a vulgar and sadistic punk 'thug' who deals drugs to kids and enjoys torturing animals and small children (who some people suspect he harbors rape fantasies about), is her 'pet'. She would let him do anything and get away with it. Instead of taking this knowledge and using it to slip into the background, he causes family trouble by sassing, pushing the limits, and starting countless fights with all of his siblings, plus his father and stepfather, his schoolmates, and even just strangers. (I would like to leave him with her, but I would end up taking in his battered wife and sexually abused children or something along those lines if I let him keep down the road he's on). My next sister is a spineless truant sneaktheif who can't shut her mouth. My next brother is a foul-mouthed brat who just happens to be seven inches taller than me, making him eight on my mother, and she doesn't like someone who she can't look down on physically. And my youngest sister is the biggest-mouthed twelve-year-old in the world, and her attitude, along with VOLUME and vulgarity in addition to numerous bragging sessions about how she acts as a dicktease to get money and favors at school... Not the best bunch for brains, I'll tell you that. There is always trouble brewing. And they all know very well that she will just scream and threaten and pout all night, and if there is hitting, it will be me, tomorrow, while they are at school, who takes the blows. They don't care. All and fine for them, but my mother resents losing control. She will snap. And they will be in danger.As for that, what can I say? 'Um, excuse me, Ms. Social Services? Would you look away from that child chained to the water pipes in the bathroom without food or water for a moment? My mom used to hit me and I think she might start again. The only proof I have are some very faded scars.' Right! No... They are going to push her too far, and that's what I don't want.And by the way, no one cares. When we lived in our apartment, there was domestic violence on the floor above, a vacant apartment on the side, and a beasement below us. No one heard. At school, teachers cared, but did nothing. 'The step-dad' is busy trying to fix his wife and has no time for a split-personalitied practically-kid with no job, no home, and a lot of anger. And there are no friends of the family. What a happy tale.
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That was very tough to read, not because of how it was written, but because of what it said. But everyone should read it.
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That is a lot of barely-paragraphed text to plow through.You are an adult, right? You need to get yourself on an even keep before you can be of help to anyone. What about psychiatric counseling? Do it for yourself. Do it for your family. Otherwise, you'll just be chasing your tail for a long time to come.
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I never once said you are a liar. I will not say if I think you are telling the truth or not. That is not what this site is for.
I will repeat though, that you should see a psychiatrist. Very soon.
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WOW....I don't even know what to say to that