When you grow up in survival mode, you learn things most people don't. Most of them not on purpose. Most of them not consciously.
One of the things you learn really hard is patterns. And this is where people's advice starts failing you.
See, you're going to spend the next decade or so hearing from therapists and loved ones - and yourself on the good days - that it wasn't your fault. That someone who would hurt a kid like that was irrational.
But a piece of you knows a bit better. People, as damaged and imperfect as they are, aren't irrational. And you, sweet thing, figured this out before the age of ten. You learned there were certain ways to carry yourself to minimize the chance of something bad happening to you. And you learned this because they worked. It might have been reducing the odds of getting hurt from, say, 40 percent, to 30 percent, but if you could do subtle things to ensure someone's mood was a little better, you were a little safer.
And now - and this is where the issue is - you're... not there any more. But that scared kid is still in you. And the kid figured something out. The person who hurt you isn't the only one who likes how conscientious you are. And, worse... the kid gets kickbacks from it.
Now you're living with a partner. And you move like a shadow sometimes. You figure out that they get comfortable around you and open up when certain music is in rotation. You figure out that they're more easygoing when you're cleaning up a little after them. And I want to be clear, this isn't about you not taking up enough space, or fawning, or anything like that. Related issue oftentimes, sure, but this is something a little distinct I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the fact that you lived in fight-or-flight for a decade or two and started using your anxiety as a nervous system with which you feel the world, and it... works. It works in ways that a lot of people can't see, because they don't have that sensory organ. Your more well-adjusted friends, you realize, don't fully understand why they like you. But you do. And you... you're used to the results that gets you. It's not just that you don't think people would like you if you weren't hyperalert about their needs and facilitating them in ways they lack the capacity to recognize, let alone appreciate you for. It's that this gets you what you want, and you haven't figured out what else does.
No longer are people screaming at you. But people like you, a lot. And you can keep this up, kind of. It's taking a longer term toll on you to be this tense - yes, tense; the whole thing is built on your fear response.
And that... longer term toll starts to show. It shows in the language you speak that not everyone seems to: patterns. You see it emerge in your relationships. You're messy. You leave people in the lurch when the strain of what you're doing gives way. You become irritable and impulsive, often rattling against the chains of your ingrained behavior by lashing out, not even really realizing you're doing it. Maybe you find out BPD exists, that it can be caused by trauma, and you go, cool. That's, descriptive at least. But it doesn't *help.* Nothing *helps.*
And nothing kind of... keeps helping, for a while. You fail upwards. You spend a few years in the best relationship you've had, surround yourself with friends, then crash out for reasons you don't understand yet. You later look back and think none of it was really where you wanted to be. A *lot* of your relationships look like them being the best thing that ever happened to you, getting messy, and later thinking nothing was really there.
But you start to find people who can see a little more clearly what you mean when you talk about the patterns. You start to hang out with more grounded people. You start to understand your preferences more, how you want to live your life. And it's... gradual. And the bad days are still hard.
"I hear that all the time," you say. No longer a hypothetical you. You, reading this. "It gets better, it's not perfect, it's still gonna leave a mark on you. That sounds like settling. I don't want this. What does any of that even mean anyway? This isn't better if I have to live with it the rest of my life."
What I'll tell you is this. I went into typing all this as... a vent post. It's been a hard night. I didn't have a clear lesson I wanted to deliver; I just wanted to share something I'd never seen put into words. And... as if on cue, my partner texts me:
"I think you saw I was stressed about money and tensed yourself into a helper shape. I don't think that's what you want to be doing there, and it makes it hard for me to do much but lean on you."
And I texted back, "Heard."
... you keep the scars. But it gets way fucking better.
