Late Night Ramblings (support please)

[Anonymous]

I was tossing and turning in bed thinking about aarc and aarc related stuff so I figured this is the best place to go. It's hard sleeping next to someone who supports you but in the end has had a fairly normal life and normal family so they don't really understand.

I've been graduated for some time. When first out of AARC I waited for the first sign that my parents weren't going to send me right back to aarc or go tell a counselor or something if I told them what aarc was really like. That was about a year after graduation. They didn't want to listen and argued with me over it and then they pretended that the discussion never happened but they themselves chose to stop associating with aarc. I let some time go by before bringing it up again and I had the same response. Later a siblings counselor had them come in to hear what they had to say about it but they still chose not to listen. My father won't talk about it or apologize for putting me through it but he has a guilty look in his eye whenever he sees me. My mother does not visibly show any guilt and actually has the audacity to call and congratulate me for my anniversary of the day I was sent to aarc. As a result they've had very little to do with my life. They couldn't be real parents or friends emotionally and they couldn't support me or raise me financially either saying that aarc put them in debt.

Day to day I do think about how life would be different had I not been in aarc but I've been very proactive since the day I graduated in moving on with my life even though I maintained aarc friendships and visited for some of the time. I've always had the mentality of "don't let it weigh you down just keep moving forward".
Now that I could use some family support and I don't have them to go to it brings up some of that anger again. I feel very tired of always having to remind myself to move forward and not let it hold me back. I worked hard to get out of aarc quickly. I worked hard to catch up on the life I missed while I was inside aarc. I worked hard to get away from my crazy family. I work hard to support myself knowing that if I lost my job or became sick there wouldn't be a family there to lean on.

I'm sorry if this post doesn't really have a purpose I just needed to vent about it. I wouldn't forgive my parents if they did apologize but yet I'm still amazed at how they can't accept the truth.

[plomly22]

I know how you feel.

Even though I get along with my parents we don't see eye to eye on them sending me away. My mom credits it with saving my life although I tried to kill myself while I was at DMR and a month before my 18 B-Day. I will never forgive them for sending me away or most of the people that worked there.  

I have become way more self consience and am afraid to have friends. The only friend I have is a girl that I was at DMR with who lives here in Seattle. I hate telling people about my past and wish I could forget the two and a half years I spent in these places. I have tried hard and forgotten for a couple of minutes. Although I do have over a hundred daily reminders in all of the scars from cutting on myself, which I might add I didn't start doing until I was at SRA. And about a month after I started doing that I started pulling out my hair which I still do to this day.

The main thing I have realized that has become of my going to these places is how strong I have become and if I really want something I know I can get it without anyone elses help.

[Antigen]

Me too.

It's amazing how strong our family bonds are. It took me a good many years and a number of clear demonstrations to finally come to terms w/ the fact that my family are no friends of mine.

Don't get me wrong. They're all decent people who lead decent lives and who just about anybody would be lucky to call a friend.

It's just that, if I try to fit into my family, the only place for me is that of a Program screw up. You know how it is. If I accomplish anything, it's because something sunk in during the 2 years I was in the Program. If things go badly, it's because I split.

When my husband got chicken pox as an adult it effected his kidneys. He was very sick and we didn't know if he was going to live. So, forgetting myself and thinking it was a reasonable thing to do, I called my mom for a little moral support. Next day, she called me back and told me she'd found foster care or some such for my kids and told me to pack up and get on a bus so I could check into treatment. This was around 9 or 10 years after the whole program thing. She'd never met my husband, except on our wedding day. He'd never been an addict or unemployed or anything. But she assumed, based on the fact that I split the Program and the fact that he had kidney problems, that we must be junkies. I shit you not!

I wish it were different. Of course, I'm also glad things are not worse. We could have been born in Sri Lanka, for example, or Nicaragua or something. I'm a big fan of not letting anything weigh me down. But sometimes it helps a lot just to know that somebody out there really, really gets it, ya' know?

...to disarm the people (is) the best and most effective way to enslave them...
-- George Mason

[Anonymous]

That sucks. I hope your families support you no matter what in the future.

[Anonymous]

Thanks you guys for the support. Antigen that's crazy about the chicken pocks thing. I've had similar bizarre things from my family that I'll never understand. Everyone I've talked to about it is encouraging me to accept that they live in an altered reality and to them it is real. I think the hardest part in accepting it is that I'll always feel that because they created me it was their responsibility to try to give me the best life possible and they didn't do that just because they were gullible and unhappy with their own lives. Enough time has passed that they must think there's no going back. Every now and then something happens that this sneaks up on me and it's stayed with me all week this time. In the end I'll do as I usually do and find some way to make my life just a little better than it was last week to remind myself that I'm free from them.

[Anonymous]

the best thing you can do is tell your parents that you dont want to do anything to do with them, tell them why you dont want anything to do with them.

consult a lawyer about bring chargess against the places you were in ans the people that abused you there...perhaps even against your parents for putting you there. Beleive me, it does a body good. A girl i know "divoced" her parents while she was a minor. It is self emopowering. You no longer live in a dark world where anyhitn can be done to you.

[Anne Bonney]

I was tossing and turning in bed thinking about aarc and aarc related stuff so I figured this is the best place to go. It's hard sleeping next to someone who supports you but in the end has had a fairly normal life and normal family so they don't really understand.



I've been graduated for some time. When first out of AARC I waited for the first sign that my parents weren't going to send me right back to aarc or go tell a counselor or something if I told them what aarc was really like. That was about a year after graduation. They didn't want to listen and argued with me over it and then they pretended that the discussion never happened but they themselves chose to stop associating with aarc. I let some time go by before bringing it up again and I had the same response. Later a siblings counselor had them come in to hear what they had to say about it but they still chose not to listen. My father won't talk about it or apologize for putting me through it but he has a guilty look in his eye whenever he sees me. My mother does not visibly show any guilt and actually has the audacity to call and congratulate me for my anniversary of the day I was sent to aarc. As a result they've had very little to do with my life. They couldn't be real parents or friends emotionally and they couldn't support me or raise me financially either saying that aarc put them in debt.



Day to day I do think about how life would be different had I not been in aarc but I've been very proactive since the day I graduated in moving on with my life even though I maintained aarc friendships and visited for some of the time. I've always had the mentality of "don't let it weigh you down just keep moving forward".

Now that I could use some family support and I don't have them to go to it brings up some of that anger again. I feel very tired of always having to remind myself to move forward and not let it hold me back. I worked hard to get out of aarc quickly. I worked hard to catch up on the life I missed while I was inside aarc. I worked hard to get away from my crazy family. I work hard to support myself knowing that if I lost my job or became sick there wouldn't be a family there to lean on.



I'm sorry if this post doesn't really have a purpose I just needed to vent about it. I wouldn't forgive my parents if they did apologize but yet I'm still amazed at how they can't accept the truth.

STRAIGHT