thanks, and knowing who killed you

[Guest guest]

Thanks everyone for your responses to my previous post. I was away from the

group for two days, finishing a work project, and I missed you even though we've

never met. Amy, you won't believe this, but your post about " facing your killer "

brought tears to my eyes -- and here is the weird part. About six months ago I

was in the library, looking for DVDs, and suddenly this phrase popped into my

mind out of nowhere: " I know who killed me. " It felt so profound, so insistent,

that I had to grab one of those little free library pencils and one of those

little free library slips of paper and write that phrase down. The slip of paper

is still in my desk drawer, right here, at this minute.

So when I read your post this morning, I was FLOORED.

It is astounding how much your memories echo my memories. How tragic but how

true that so few of us realized that our experiences were actually so bizarre.

Like you, Annie, I too have always gravitated (still do) to those old-fashioned

books and TV shows and movies in which families are happy and normal and NO ONE

YELLS. (For me, the yelling was the worst. When the topic of childhood comes up

in conversations, I usually find myself saying, " I don't know -- I got yelled at

a lot. " And people blink at me like: Why?) Those old-fashioned books and shows

which my cynical friends would call corny or mawkish -- I know they're fiction,

but to me they are almost biblical in the sense that they warm my heart and give

me hope -- that there is a kernel of truth in them, that their world actually

existed and exists.

My husband's family is just as disastrous as mine, but in different ways, and

sometimes I wonder whether people from loveless families somehow find each

other, because we " get " each other and other folks don't. One friend of mine has

gone perma-NC with her NPD parents. Another friend -- I swear her mom was BPD,

there was NO love and only meanness in their clan -- committed suicide. I've

felt bonds with these friends and obviously to my husband because I think we all

share a certain past in which we had a sense that our parents did not love us

.... and (although not in my husband's case) we thought it was our fault.