It’s late at night and lately I feel like I’m playing the same stories over and over again in my head. I’m constantly thrown back and forth between denial and acceptance. For some reason it’s really hard to come to terms with all the abuse I’ve endured in my entire life. Sometimes it feels like it didn’t even happen, even though I see clear images in my head. So maybe when I write it down and face the facts, I can come to terms with it.
It started when I was young. I was never “the favorite child”. My parents, especially my dad, made me feel like I was out of control. That I wasn’t an enjoyable child. I played by the rules, but I was and still am the type that likes to swim against the current and have my own opinions. My needs were often neglected and my voice was often silenced. My family was cold and there wasn’t a lot of love or displays of affection. I was rarely hugged or told that I did something good and that they were proud of me. Encouragement was a rare thing as well. I was criticized a lot and in retrospect, I was kind of a puppet on a string; I had to listen and obey or else I was punished by being ignored or, in my dad’s case, beaten. The bathroom was my safe space, so whenever my parents (especially my dad) was turning agressive towards me, I hid there. But it didn’t stop there. How often I’ve heard the threats of him destroying the door and coming for me while he was banging on the door and yelling at me as I crawled away further from the door, hoping he didn’t act on it. My mother was working most of the time, so she didn’t see a lot of it and when she was home, she was tired and just wanted to sit down and do the least possible. Sometimes I was ridiculed or laughed at for the way I acted or the things I liked. The older I got, the more I watered myself down.
Then I got into relationships. The first two weren’t too bad. The last 3 were horrible in their own ways. The first one of those 3 skyrocketed me into a depression. I was a complete slave to the way I felt about her. Beautiful things were said and almost promised, but actions never followed through. She was cold, harsh and verbally agressive. I’m do not claim to be a saint and if there’s any mistakes I made, I would always own up to it, sometimes in a messy way. That was my first experience with feeling invisible and alone in a relationship.
Where this first one got loud, the second of those 3 was more silent. She was the type of girl who could never see things from my perspective. As long as I nodded and agreed, things would be okay, but as soon as I spoke up, I got the silent treatment. Not just for hours, but for days even. She expected me to build everything around her and her life and the plannings that came with it. Everything was on her terms or when she felt like it. She had friends who claimed her and almost controlled her, which eventually lead to cause a gap between me and her friends. She never denied her friends. She did deny me.
Then came the cherry on top. The last relationship I’ve been in. What started off as something almost fairytale like turned into trauma bonding. It started intense. Way too intense, in retrospect. We were on a car with no brakes and we were just headed for collision. This is the relationship where I’m most in denial about the events that happened. Even though the scars and effects are there, I somehow cannot come to terms and accept that this is what happened to me. Everything seemed to start really balanced, up until a certain point. One by one the strings were attached to my limbs and by the end, I just danced whenever I was told to dance. I was cracked open to get shut down again. Instead of me rebuilding myself again, I was molded and formed into someone I was not and made believe that that version of me was the real me. Encouragement turned into doubt. Everything turned into doubt. I was made feel guilty for being me and seeing things the way I see them, feeling the things I felt and thinking the thoughts I thought. At some point, all I did was try to not make her upset or trigger her, even if I had to do things against my will. With everything I had I tried to make her feel like she was on top of the world, but what I did not see that by doing that, I made it so she could look down on me. Every bit of life, self worth, confidence and hope was stripped away from me and these wounds still hurt to this day. It’s been 2 years and sometimes it feels like as if it was yesterday. This relationship completely distorted my reality and the way I view and experience things. She was always right and I was always wrong and still whenever I talk about this, I feel guilty for saying the things I say, even though this is really been my experience. I was constantly thrown back and forth between things being too much and things not being enough. I could not get a second of rest. I have lost several good friends over that relationship, because of her either imposing her view on me or almost forbidding me to talk to them. My heart still fucking breaks every time I think about how I’ve hurt people so close to me, just to keep her happy. Overall I still feel really sad and angry about all the things I kept myself from doing for her. My world just existed out of her. Not by choice, but by subtle force. My life was just about pleasing her and keeping her happy and satisfied while I neglected myself and my needs more and more. I was almost forced to be a certain way and be a person I was not. At some point, it was more that I was thinking that I should do certain stuff rather than me doing things naturally and because I felt like doing them. That’s when it came to affection, words of affirmation and even sex. I knew what I had to do to cause the least conflict and that’s just what I did. I was always overruled and overpowered. Whenever I tried to climb up, I was kicked down again. I really don’t feel sorry for myself and I refuse to call myself a victim. It’s just really hard when I keep telling this story and I look over at the other person and they just sit there with the most concerned and disturbed look on their face and all I can think is “is it really that bad?”. Even when they sum it up, it seems unreal. Gaslighting. Emotional abuse. Sexual abuse. It doesn’t seem real, but maybe that’s just me being in denial and still not feeling that I can have my own reality and experience with things.
After being silenced for so long, it’s hard to have a voice about things like this. Sometimes it’s pretty clear to me that the things that happened were bad and sometimes, it’s complete denial. “Things weren’t that bad”. “It’s my fault”. The hardest thing about this phase in my life is coming to terms with everything and finding healing in all the pain, sadness and anger. Even writing this makes me feel like I’m blowing things out of proportion or that I’m exaggarating or dramatizing things, but it’s real. I’m still scared and anxious and being in a relationship still triggers me to the bone. My life is balancing between finding distractions and dealing with things. I feel guilty about the things that I feel and I feel guilty about the things that I think or say. It somehow still feels like everything is my fault and that I’m the bad seed in every connection. Things are getting better, though and I’m healing. Acceptance is hard, but not impossible.
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