Through some conversations I had in the past few weeks with people online I’ve had a handful of uncomfortable memories pop up and some questions. The memories I am just trying hard to ignore, things I’ve never spoken about and would rather not now either. That has been fairly successful so far, I am pretty good at separating out intrusive thoughts.

But these questions are eating me up. My parents knew I was being sexually abused growing up. I’ve always know they knew because: 1. They literally walked in on it, 2. It sometimes happened in their own house when they were home, 3. I caught my mother watching more than once through a door. 4. Weaker point but I had some medical concerns as a child that I think were abuse related, I guess they might not have been since doctors didn’t sound the alarm.

Which #3 leads me to where I’m stuck right now. I had lived with an assumption that she did not care what happened to me, was callous and had normalized it from her own abuse experiences. Now I’m wondering though.. is there more to it?

She used to ask my father to beat me, would literally cheer him on when he was doing it, telling him what to do.

She murdered and neglected several of my pets. She’d show me their dead bodies after.

She used to do things to intentionally make me cry and she’d laugh the whole time- the clearest thing I remember was locking me in closets, I’m afraid of the dark.

She forced me to make myself throw up when I was a preteen so I could be skinnier.

She’s always trying to see me naked. Even now and I’m 30. Tries to pull my shirt down, tries to see me peeing, changing, etc. she’s got no boundaries- is always naked around me, talking about sex, once she face timed me and when I answered she had the phone pointed at her naked vagina. She used to have me watch her take out her tampons. She’s totally gross.

I guess I had never contemplated her role in my sexual abuse, other than failure to protect. I’m having questions about if she encouraged it, wanted it to happen, enjoyed watching it? maybe even made money off of it- though I’m not sure about this because it was just one person?

I’ve been struggling with this and it’s like she knows because she keeps calling me telling me sob stories about kids being sexually abused that she’s reading about and saying “I’d never let that happen to any kid of mine” It’s making me feel insane. I don’t know what to do with all this. I can’t quite cope with this thought just yet. My story for so long was that she didn’t care. Now I’m feeling like she’s the biggest monster out of them all and I failed to see it. I feel like an idiot