Things coming up *** Possible TRIGGER WARNING ***

[Blueberry]

Things are beginning to come up. They're not new because I never actually forgot. But now they seem disjointed. I see my elder brother's face vaguely but I know it's contorted with anger, in fact I can see the anger too. And that's enough to make me stop breathing briefly as I write this. So I won't allow myself to go any further into the memory.

A few hours ago I started feeling resentment towards various people in my present life and then almost rage. Then I knew that this rage was misplaced. I tried to reduce the rage by doing some Screen Processing, and actually when I think about it, it did actually work, even though I had trouble with the Processing itself. I'm not raging inside any more, which is good, because I turn that against myself in some form or other.

The other thing that's coming up is more cognitive and I know it's familiar to others on here. The self-blame or just wondering: why on earth did I remain so long in contact with FOO when they did all that to me?? How could I do that to my Inner Children?? I thought that on my Adult level I had forgiven my elder brother though I realised that my Inner Children hadn't. How could I not take them seriously? I overrode their feelings to remain in contact with FOO, to have support as an adult that I didn't have as a child. And to feel I had a family. To have contact with younger brother, who had said it was difficult when he was the only one I was in contact with. And to share the good that is in my family. There is and was some good mixed in with the bad. Only to realise last time I had contact with the whole lot of them how exceedingly dysfunctional the whole family system is, that they'll never change, that I left there in a terrible state emotionally. I've written about that elsewhere I think.

The thing about my elder brother is: he is the only person in the whole of FOO who has ever apologised for anything. He did apologise for his treatment of me. So I suppose that's why I overrode the anger of my Inner Children in order to go back to more normal contact. And up until last year at the family blow-up I still looked up to him in some way and looked to him for protection from other members of FOO. He did say when I re-started contact to M and F about 10 or 11 years ago that if 'anybody' had a go at me again, they'd have him to deal with. That sounded good! But he wasn't willing to do that for me last summer. I know because I asked. He was willing instead for me to leave early, go home. He knew that was the end result - either somebody sticks up for Blueberry or she heads home on a much earlier flight than planned. He was willing to let me go. Though he and most other members of FOO hadn't seen me for four years. We live on different continents. I guess he thought and the rest of FOO thought things would continue as usual. I'd have some time to myself, I'd recover and we'd go back to 'normal' contact of occasional phone calls, emails etc.

To steal an idea from Three Roses:  Page Break                        (Enough on this topic for the evening for me)