One thing abusers love to do is revision the past. Something happened, and you know you got hurt, you still remember their cruel words and the pain and how it made you trust them less, how the idea of them doing it again terrifies you and you’ve been resorting to tip-toeing around them just to not provoke them, to not accidentally set them off again.
But then, after a while, you mention the event, or they mention it, and they tell you it happened differently. They tell you the changed version - to the point of what they did and said was something completely different, something that makes them look good, something that makes it seem as if you overreacted, or over-dramatized the entire situation. They didn’t really hurt you, they didn’t really do anything cruel or scary, you just like to make things up, the were actually a delight, and you’re stupid for having such a fearful reaction of the now, your entire fear is actually based on nothing and you’re stupid for feeling it.
So you feel small, like even your version of events can’t be taken for real, you start to doubt what you see and hear, you start to worry other people too, will dismiss you side of the story based on you remembering everything wrong. It makes you scared to speak your side of the story at all after a while. You wonder if you really did make it all up. You wonder if you’re in the wrong after all. You don’t try to argue with them or call them out anymore, because your entire point of view will be denied as false, you will not be allowed to talk like a person who has something real to say anymore. You feel like your experiences and emotions are insignificant.
However, the event they revisioned, it happened exactly the way you remember it. They did everything you remember, everything they deny was absolutely real, completely happened. It actually did exactly what they wanted. It scared you, it kept you frightened, extremely sensitive to their moods, tiptoeing around their emotions, always ready to please them to avoid a potential disaster. It worked pretty great for them didn’t it? They got to feel big and important because they terrified you into submission. But then that wasn’t enough, oh no, they also had to make you feel as if you did all that on your own accord, not out of fear, not out of terrifying memory they engraved in your brain, nah, they almost look kinda bad doing that, and we can’t have that, no. Even if the price is your sanity.
And if you look back on every time this has happened, you can notice a pattern. How come every event you “remembered wrong” is specifically an event when they terrify and abuse you, when they do something cruel, something that makes them look bad, something they did wrong. It’s always those instances your senses are accused of being wrong, somehow. If you mention times when they did something they’re proud of, there’s no complaint, right? It turns out you can remember things just fine, that you experience things completely normal, and what they’re saying is that if your sense aren’t working in their favour, then you shouldn’t be allowed any.
Being able to feel completely certain in your own experiences, and to talk without a doubt if what you’re saying is true and real, is a human quality we all absolutely need. You can’t express what you’ve gone thru, and what you’re going thru, if you can’t do this. You do not get to communicate your experiences, you do not get to be understood, to be reassured, comforted, you miss out on necessary human experience of sharing your point of view, sharing what you’re going thru. How could you talk about your own life if you aren’t allowed to have your own point of view? How could you get anyone to relate to you and understand if you’re forced to doubt everything, if you can’t even say it?
This is not okay. Taking your certainty in your own memory is not okay. Making you feel small so they wouldn’t feel bad about terror they brought into your life isn’t okay. Their revisions to the past are fake. Events are exactly how you remember them and don’t let anyone make you doubt your own senses. You are right about what you went thru. Nobody has the right to tell you it didn’t happen.
