Wednesday, January 20, 2016



It has been hard to be away from my blog, hard to be away from myself that way. To not be able to write and express everything that I am going through is clearly a part and parcel of being terrorized. Yes, I have been and continue to be terrorized by my older brother, David. His reign of terror over me pretty much ended two years ago when my mother finally (after months of begging him to leave) had him removed from the house with a restraining order. He was taken out of the house by the police. I have never written about this in my blog though I lived through this all along. Somehow when we are abused we believe that we must stuff the abuse into the corner of our hearts. But every cell in my body wants to speak. And every cell in my body is creating through that hard-won place of victory. Victory over evil, Victory over someone else's desire to control, power, subjugate me. Victory over my own fear and over my own impenetrable silence. I don't want to be silent anymore not even for the sake of self-preservation. The truth is cruel, ugly and disgusting. The truth is that I have an older brother that has terrorized me and the rest of my family members for years now. The truth is that I no longer want to to be a silent victim. I want to express it all in the same way that I express and share everything about Pudendal Neuralgia. Sibling Abuse should be no different. Today I know that my older brother will try to hurt me as long as I am alive and that my silence will only chain me to his abuse, stifle my creativity and block the deeper truths of my expressions and of my art.

I came up against a wall in my own art recently and I think that through writing this I am beginning to understand what this wall is. Fear. Fear of David. Fear of his anger. Fear of his obsessive hatred of all of us. Fear of his desire to seek revenge. What will he do if he finds this? I know that he knows that I have a blog. I feel frozen. Frozen in fear. I have come so far. I have and continue to be a voice for so many when it comes to pelvic pain. But here I am frozen. I am scared of David. His hatred has become an obsession that will follow him for the rest of his life. I thought that he had moved on. I hadn't seen him for two years. Until I went back home. I went back home to celebrate my mom's birthday with her.  I wanted to hug her a lot.


But instead I had to defend myself in court. David tried to get a Harassment Prevention order against me. He hates me and my younger brother with a vengeance. He knows that as long as we are alive we will not allow him to further abuse and dominate our parents. He wants to come home to resume his reign of terror, his dictatorship. My parents with all of their feelings of guilt and compassion...would allow him to come home. Though they both have suffered through hell, they would suffer more. Me and my younger brother will no longer allow for this to happen. David has violated the restraining order and the trespassing order. His abuse has been documented by the Springwell Elderly Abuse Services. And yet, he remains unstoppable.

In his own mind, if he could only neutralize me and my younger brother than he could return home to control my parents. I have watched his sadism with my parents. He blames them for his own mental illness, for his botched up childhood, for his non-existent self-esteem....He blames them for everything. He hates our mother with a passion. Today he hates all of us with a passion.






Yes, it is. It is very scary to live with an older brother like David. Yes, it is. Mental illness has been in my family since I can remember. And while I plummeted into PN hell my father plummeted into a psychotic depression. And David did everything that he could do to control and dominate all of us.





































I worked very hard these past few weeks. I had to gather all of the police records and I had to prepare my "defense". Most of all, I had to finally internalize that I was not safe from harm as I had thought that I was. I was shocked that the courts would allow David to abuse me through the court system. Had he tried to do this in Newton he would have never gotten away with it. But because he no longer lives in Newton and because the courts in Concord do not know of his history he was able to get away with it. Apparently anyone can request a Harassment Prevention Order against anyone else. I had no choice but to go and defend myself. By the way, David "invited" my Mom to the same court over the summer, also seeking a 'Harassment Prevention Order" against her. Only that on the day of the hearing he didn't show up. In his own deranged mind he is the victim and he is seeking justice.
















The judge clearly thought that he was an idiot. To claim that I harass him with his history of violations ....But, I suffered. And the fact that I suffered gives David pleasure. I suffered from all of my PTSD symptoms. I was derailed for two full weeks. Living in fear. Reliving all of the physical symptoms of what I survived.



















So now you know that Pudendal Neuralgia was only one of the devastating horrors that I was battling. My father's psychotic depression, his string of suicide attempts and psychiatric hospitalizations, his terrifying fall into a catatonia-like state of being...




Must I say more? Because there is more to say. So much more to say and I no longer want to hide it. I want to share it. I want to express it. I want to write it. I want to accept it. I want to protect myself from it. And I no longer want to believe that by not expressing it, I am protecting myself. Because it isn't true. At all. By not expressing it I am  just stuffing it deeper and deeper into my psyche...setting myself up to be surprised and shocked when it comes creeping back up, out of the shadows one again seeking control over my life.









I don't believe in shame. I believe in transparency. I believe that with openness and with expression, comes healing. I no longer want to hide myself away for the sake of my family. I want to express and to create boldly and I want to share, to connect and to heal through my art. Too many of us are hiding our traumas in the closet. I want to live with that closet door open. Wide open.

It takes courage and I have earned my own courage.




Atara





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