When I was a child, I had one of a few immediate reactions to pain, be it mental, emotional and/or physical. One, I retreated into a protective shell, two I became enraged, and three, I lashed out at whatever might be the most handy item (or being) to lash out at at the moment.

When my parents where beating me mercilessly, I tended to go to two and remain there consoling myself until the physical pain subsided. If my brother decided to kick over my Lincoln Log house I was building I tended to go directly to two and then an immediate jump to number three in about 0.1 seconds. Depending on which brother it was, three was an option that was best exercised only on my little brother as my big brother could kick my ass just looking at me he was that much bigger and older. He also happened to be a little psycho as my parents tended to beat him worse than us other two siblings because he was after all, the oldest. So going off on Mike when he did something shitty to you (which was often and repeatedly on a daily basis) wasn't really an option unless you wanted your ass kicked.

My therapist diagnosed me with PTSD in 1989. It was the diagnosis she used to get my insurance company to pay for my therapy.  I had no idea what PTSD was at the time, but if it made the insurance company pay then, whatever, I was good with it.  She tried explaining to me that PTSD was what soldiers coming home from war experienced. Something to the effect that they saw this disorder a lot in Viet Nam War vets. I still didn't get it, much anyway.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Sounds psychobabblish doesn't it? An after severe and/or repeated physical, emotional and/or mental trauma reaction is pretty much what it boils down to. Soldiers endure some of the most horrendous sights and experiences any human being can ever see or experience. So horrendous that they cannot cope emotionally with their experiences. Basically what my therapist was saying was that my childhood had been war to me.

Enduring the ragings of a dry drunk, never knowing if just breathing in the same room with him would set him off on a rage at you, which might or might not end up in a severe beating, I guess is a lot like a soldier out on patrol, never knowing if a land mine is going to blow them up at any moment to a child. Always on edge, always walking on eggshells, never knowing when it's coming, when he's going to kill you just because you happen to be there in the wrong place or the wrong time. Apparently that causes severe stress in a child.

And then living with the enabler, my mom, who also endured the rages of her husband and then promptly took it out on her children when said husband was not around, doubled your pleasure, doubled your fun. The fact that any of us survived to adulthood still entact mentally amazes me. Mike (the evil big brother) endured the worst of it. He got it bad, all the time. Which only made him act out all the more, which only got his ass beaten even more severely. Scott (the whiney little brother) got it the least because he was the favored son of the enabling mother/wife. I being the middle child and the only girl, got it kind of in the middle (duh), although I did get it much worse from Mom than from Dad than Scott did.

Mike, being severely mentally, emotionally and physically abused by both parents, but especially Dad, turned around and took his pain and rage and doled it out on Scott and myself in good measure. Which is why I had a lot of ruined Lincoln Log houses or whatever. More than anything, he did little torture things to us, like holding our heads under water, or stuffing us in a small kitchen cabinet and then locking the door so that we couldn't get out. These were things that didn't leave marks so that if we told on him, there was no proof. Sometimes though, despite the fact that it would leave a mark, he would just haul off and slug one or both of us, just for the hell of it.

I tended to be the protector of Scott, him being the smallest and most defenseless of us two younger siblings. So Scott really did get the least of it all.

But the end results of this family environment was three kids with serious rage issues. I, as my brothers did, tended to go directly to anger and bypass pain entirely. As we grew older, the anger at the repeated trauma inflicted on us turned into severe rage. A rage that took me years and several thousand dollar in therapy to not just control, but over come that which triggered the rage. It was pain, emotional, mental, and/or physical that caused the rage. I had to learn to recognize the triggers of pain first. Then deal with those triggers.

What I really had to do was go back and relive all that pain and suffering as a child in an attempt to heal from it all. I won't go into the details of it all, suffice to say it was painful, but it was also cathartic in that it changed me and how I related to the world around me. I was actually able to forgive Dad, Mom and Mike for everything I endured as a child. I learned to accept that it was my responsibility to fix the damage that occurred and heal myself. I also learned to see where all that abuse as a child had caused me to behave in ways that were abusive to myself and others. I learned to take responsibility for my actions, to stop blaming other people, to own up to the things I had done and to make amends for my actions if at all possible.

This is the Reader's Digest Condensed Version of how I got to where I am today. I am by no means perfect and anyone who knows me knows I can be a royal asshole, often. Basically what I have now are tools that allow me to either not go to that dysfunctional place of reacting to what once was painful stimuli to me, or if I do react because the pain is greater than I can endure at the moment, to fix what I have done in reaction to the painful stimuli.

Owning up to being a complete ass and having fallen back into old dysfunctional behavior is not easy. It's humbling to say the least.

I reacted to painful stimuli, severe, traumatic, painful stimuli back in January. At first I reacted in what I felt was the most healthy way to deal with what was at best a bad situation. And I did pretty good as long as I didn't have to face the cause of the painful stimuli. It was when I was repeatedly assaulted (read into this that it felt like assault to me) with that painful stimuli that I broke down after a number of months and went into dysfunction mode.

After a few months a pure emotional hell, I decided that the painful stimuli wasn't ever going to go away. So I had to do something to make the pain in my own self go away. And that is when forgiveness came up as a subject in my head. I had to learn to forgive no matter what. Whether the abuse was going to go on forever or not, I had to learn inside myself how to let it all go and forgive period.

Have I gotten there yet? I am pretty sure I haven't. Mainly because I still am unable to let go and just forgive period, no matter what the truth of the situation is or isn't. I have to get to the place where it doesn't really matter to me anymore what really happened, I have to let go and forgive period. Just like I had to look at Dad, Mom and Mike and know that despite all they did to me, they reallywere doing the best they knew how to do given their own histories.

But the reality of real forgiveness is, it doesn't matter if you know the history behind an abusive situation and how it transpired or why, none of that matters. Real forgiveness just forgives and lets go because it must. Because real forgiveness is unconditional. Unconditional love.

I am not there yet. But I am working diligently on it. Working, asking for help, opening my heart to change forever. So that when confronted with assault of any kind from any person or situation, I can let go immediately, never feel the sting of pain, always coming from that place of unconditional love, of self and of others.

That's where I am at right now. Working hard and with grace and love of my own being for a cathartic change.