EllyRox

This website is a jumble of my talents and the blog showcases some big moments for me, but also missteps. Honestly, I am fine with all of it. Humans are imperfect beings, all we can try to do is the next right thing. I do have CPTSD from my childhood, and I’m going to talk about some of it.

TW: SA, Abuse

As a child, I was a terror. I have come to find this is partially because of the inhuman amounts of trauma I endured, and partially due to abuse and no other outlets. No one was safe. Especially not my younger brother.

As the saying goes, shit rolls downhill, so every time I got my ass whooped he would get bullied by me to high hell. I’m not proud of it, but it’s the truth, I treated my brother very poorly growing up. In our teens he started lifting weights and became much stronger. The ‘taps’ he’d give me on the bicep would give me what we called a ‘dead arm’.

Most of the physical altercations between stopped by our late teens (though he’d still randomly hit me throughout our 20’s and 30’s as a ‘joke’). I can’t be too upset as it’s learned behavior from our father.

Horseplay when you’re the same size human is just that, when it’s a 400lb man vs a child, it hits different, literally. The verbal altercations basically never stopped unless one of us was inebriated.

What neither my brother nor my father knew at the time was that since the age of three I had been getting sexually abused. Right before the pandemic I had a cancer scare I took stock and I decided to disclose my abuse history to my father. (Who seemed more upset about not knowing, rather than, ya know, his daughter getting abused.)

I was never a child. I was parentified from the age of three and made to keep secrets for adults. My great great great uncle who had dementia and lived with us when I was a toddler abused me sexually. I told his daughter; my great great aunt about it and she called me a liar, she slapped me across the face and told me never to say that lie to anyone ever again and certainly not my father.

I thought I was in the wrong even though at that age everybody tells you that if somebody touches you in a bad place that you should tell an adult I guess that only applies if they’re not related to that adult.

I recall when I told my father pre-pandemic about all of these things, because it wasn’t just GGG Uncle. It was also school bullies who molested me, an older (14) neighborhood kid that hung out with my cousin raped me in my cousin’s basement and that’s how I lost my virginity at the age of 9.

At 15 when I was date raped by my then boyfriend. My grandfather told me because I was such a slut we wouldn’t get anywhere in court, and I probably did something to cause it. I told my friends about it they told me that I should be happy anybody wanted to touch me in the first place.

So it’s not a shock that I was an extremely angry child and young adult. During childhood a lot of that anger got taken out on my brother. I have offered a sincere apology to him on more than one occasion and as is his right he has chosen not to accept that and I don’t know if I blame him. Growing up my grandfather told us, me especially because I was the eldest, that when we were grown ups we would love each other and depend on each other deeply.

About 2 weeks ago I found out that my brother has nodular non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. My whole family is cut off except for my sister and I know it’s the healthiest thing for everybody probably. Every now and then something happens to remind me of them and it’s like a phantom limb that aches. It wouldn’t be productive to be in each other’s lives anymore but I hope he can heal from our childhood and the cancer in his body.

We haven’t spoken in 2 years. Not since my father disowned me for finally saying a lot of unsaid things and setting a boundary. I say all of this not to justify my behavior but to contextualize it. I have not said most of this to anyone, but I won’t keep carrying it silently.

Hug your loved ones, and beleive women.