Well, there would have been no marriage at all under those conditions. Maybe I didn’t explain this before but the only reason I got married at 19 was to get my parents to stop harassing me. I grew up in an environment of relentless psychological abuse. I had not a shred of privacy. I was constantly invaded in every possible way. Last spring when I was preparing for surgery, the nurse said I had to remove my underwear. I threw a hysterical fit because I had learned since childhood to bundle up my genital area for sleep. Even to give birth it was a struggle and a half to remove my underwear. You only know if you know, and I pray that you don’t.
When I was growing up, there was no door to close when I went to sleep. No lock on the bathroom door. Not the tiniest space or occasion to not be observed and vilified for everything I was. I had to read my books in secret. I’m sure you’ve noticed what reading means to me. But I could only do it in complete secrecy. I couldn’t have friends, receive phone calls, be anywhere except at home and in school. I couldn’t have an unapproved facial expression or any emotion except gratitude and joy. I was called the most atrocious things for undergoing the normal puberty because it didn’t happen at the same age and in the same way as my mother’s had. I couldn’t have a bra because it drove my mother to fits of extreme rage. When I finally did acquire a bra, I had a whole elaborate procedure to conceal that I wore it. For several days each month we weren’t allowed to sneeze, chew, flush the toilet, or breathe loudly. And this is only the beginning. We were in a religious cult with no God. That’s what it was like.
What do you think all of these years of psychoanalysis are in aid of? Entertaining me?
If I had to fake-marry to get out at least physically, that was a small price to pay. But if I’d known that there would be no escape from that form of escape, I would have found a different way.
Clarissa's Blog 
I have no words that will make things better, but I want you to know that I appreciate your comments and your willingness to explain means I am more likely to be aware of the struggle of future teenage Clarissas.
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Thank you, Peter. What a very kind thing to say!
I’m fine. It’s been a long time and I’ve received a lot of professional help.
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My goodness. As a longtime reader of this blog, I knew you had a rough childhood but this is brutal. An actual cult?!
There are many things to admire about you. That you became the person you are despite your adversities is remarkable on its own. What I admire even more is you still maintain a relationship with your mother, you still care about her health and wellbeing, talk to her regularly. Extraordinary.
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Thank you! I talk to my mother every day. I’m the only person on the planet who can talk her down, and it was not an easy skill to acquire.
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And then you have people who break off contact with their parents at the drop of a hat. My ex-wife, raised as a seventh day adventist, never forgave her parents for her childhood (no abuse here, just conservative christian parents who didn’t drink tea/coffee/alcohol, stuff like that).
She’s broken off all contact with her family, quit her job, and is now living in a tiny town (population 3000) in the middle of the scorching california desert. Doing god knows what. At least she’s free.
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I really despise the narrative of “it’s not the family you’re born in but the family you choose that matters.” If you don’t respect your origins, you don’t respect yourself. Nobody can excise themselves from the story of their birth. You can’t choice yourself out of reality.
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You can respect your origins by understanding the mistakes your parents made and not making them with your own children.
You can choice yourself out of multi-generational trauma by stopping the cycle.
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I very much agree.
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It’s all about how you interpret the slogan. You can stick to a literal definition – that the past doesn’t matter. Or what I see as the point – that you can try to make the future better, even if you’ve started off with disadvantages.
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Motivational truisms notwithstanding, we are discussing a very specific situation of people discarding inconvenient relatives for often trivial reasons.
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How specific can this situation be based on a single comment? Any specificity is us projecting our pet cause onto it.
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“the only person on the planet who can talk her down”
If you don’t mind sharing, I, and probably lots of other people here, would like to know what kind of techniques you use.
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She’s no longer threatening to my sense of self. This took a lot of work but I got there.
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