Experiencing trauma does not make you stronger. Trauma is trauma and it fucking sucks.
Processing the trauma on purpose can make you grow, though, and that growth can make you stronger than you ever thought was possible.
I'd rather not have experienced it, but there's nothing I can do about that. No one is building the trauma reversal time machine. So I have to accept what happened. I accept the way it affects me, because now the way I am — and have had to be — makes all the sense in the world.
I had and have choices. At first only one choice: keep going like this forever, or change.
Like this forever was hell. My inner world was a tortuous, OCD-ridden place full of contempt and anxiety and suffering. I was so tired.
I had tried so many things to be different. Back to school. Workout, lose weight. Get better at art. Write better. Dress better. Get a better job. Work more and harder. Buy this or that. Date and befriend people who made everything worse.
I kept choosing the exact same friend, the exact same partner. Everything would end the same way.
I saw the patterns I was stuck in. I saw the chains I was wearing and I piled up keys that didn't fit next to me.
When you are finally perfect, then you will be happy. The suffering will end and you'll magically know what others have always seemed to know.
I found it one day. CPTSD.
I had heard it before but never applied it to me — after all, I was so "functional" and "capable," and my suffering was so much quieter than those around me. So was I even suffering?
I found the answer in childhood trauma. I found the answer in you can redo all the milestones you missed. I am an adult with adult power and choices.
Of course this realization also made me firmer in the choices I made to go no contact. When I was a kid, the adults pretended their hands were tied when they never were. I decided I would never.
I tried every key I could, until I found what worked.
Processing my past with a trauma-informed therapist (who is neurodivergent themselves) has worked better than anything else. I have dedicated so much time and energy to this. I perhaps have a PhD-level knowledge of trauma and adverse childhood experiences.
But wouldn't you know it — knowing everything does not help you heal everything.
Healing happens slowly and quickly at the same time.
Slowly — you don't see the change as you start to be more gentle with yourself every day, start to get curious and compassionate.
Quickly — in that looking back, it can be hard to understand why you were doing some of the things you were doing to cope.
Sometimes it feels too slow, as you want to feel part of the world again. Sometimes it feels too fast, as you outgrow everyone around you. You no longer operate the way they do and it's actually painful to try to go back.
I'm more alone than I've ever been, but I am not lonely.
A feeling I used to try to distract and fill up has just... disappeared.
No longer will I suffer at the hands of people who claimed to love me and showed with every action the opposite. No longer do I feel guilty that deep feelings of love do not come up for people who do not love me deeply in return.
I know what a healthy and reciprocal relationship is. I know what accountability is. I know what growth is. I know what emotional maturity is.
Emotional maturity is not refusing to play with toys, or conforming as hard as you can, or marriage and 2.5 kids and a house.
Maturity is knowing how to emotionally regulate yourself. To get yourself through hard moments in a healthy way and to have strong boundaries. Maturity is leaving all-or-nothing thinking behind, seeing a million nuanced options. Maturity is getting less judgmental, more compassionate.
Maturity isn't taking in every stray you can find in hopes of fixing yourself. Maturity is the ability to give people grace and be in community with those extremely different from you — without sacrificing yourself or burning yourself up completely anymore for other people. You can be there for them in a real and sustainable way.
Learning to be an adult after childhood trauma feels like becoming a super adult. You "see" so much in people that you didn't before.
