If you had normal parents, you feeling scared, panicked, upset, grief-stricken, distraught, depressed or suicidal, this would have been a thing of immediate importance to your parents. They would not want their child to feel that way for longer than seconds, they'd want to address it, check on you, talk with you, see what's causing it, if it can be removed, if they can help, if anything can be done. Your deep distress would have been a priority above everything else and treated with emergence.
And that how you'd know for sure, based on your lived experience, that you feeling extremely bad is something to be addressed immediately and with care. That you're not supposed to be feeling like that, and it's important something be done, and your loved ones will want to help, you can ask, you can urge.
With abusive parents, you feeling panicked, distraught, grief-stricken or suicidal is not even an afterthought. It's thrown back at you as a joke to humiliate you, or a threat to control you. It's not only not given urgency or priority, it's treated as annoying, stupid, and completely your fault. Whatever is causing your distress is only increased to punish you. People presenting themselves as your loved ones don't care or think it matters at all. You'll get yelled at if you bring it up.
So you stay in this state for days, weeks, years. Thinking it's normal, that you caused it yourself, that it couldn't possibly matter because it never did. You make it worse because that's whats done, it's what feels right. You were left to rot in the worst feelings a human can experience and you learned to live that as your normal. Asking for help feels embarassing and annoying because it's been treated as such.
You don't see it as abuse. It's not a hit, a broken limb or an obvious violation of your body. But you've been broken by it. Neglect of your humanity, your well being to the point where it didn't matter if you sat in your room day after day wishing you were dead, that counts. That is extreme.
It didn't only hurt you in the moment, it left you in permanent state of distress with all exits blocked. You can't ask for help, you don't even know you're not supposed to feel like this, that it should feel better, that sometimes things can get fixed. You can't even explain how you feel without the fear of punishment or humiliation. You don't even know it's not your fault you feel this. You are only taught it can get worse. All you can do is endure.
That is worse than violence. You didn't deserve even seconds of this, and they gave you a lifetime. You should have been helped the second it started to feel like this. Not whatever was done to you instead.
