I haven’t written in what feels like a millennium and probably could be classed as one. The last time I did, I thought that with the childhood I had, and the teen years that followed, there wasn’t a single thing barring death that any person on god’s green earth could do to me that would actually affect me. I genuinely had thought that once you had been deprived of every single one of your firsts, when basic fundamental human rights weren’t a thing, how could anyone hurt me any worse? When people go through trauma, there’s a whole spectrum of how you turn out, and honestly, anyone who says they only fit one of the categories is in denial. Trauma doesn’t leave as you grow up, you just process it differently, sometimes not at all, and sometimes you may feel you have got it all together- one song, one word, one sentence, one smell, one person, one place- will bring you back, back to when it was all fresh and new . I myself know that I have been through a few myself. I can’t say im an expert and know exactly every way people turn out, but from a personal perspective I can talk about the ones I know. There’s;
- Denial/repression- it didn’t happen, how could it have happened? Of course not, I got it wrong, I must have misunderstood. Or sometimes our brains do this lovely thing to save us because it knows it will hurt us so bad that it completely forces you to forget it ever happened.
- Self destructive behaviour- what the fuck is the point? I have seen and experienced what is the worst thing that can happen to me? Let me purposely pick a fight and hopefully if someone hits me, I may just feel something. Maybe if someone hits me hard enough, maybe just maybe it will kill me if I’m lucky? Let’s abuse substances or maybe alcohol, lets hopefully get off my face for long enough to pretend or forget for a short period of time that this even happened to me.
- Hating the world/ not trusting- if someone has already hurt you what’s to say that others won’t? How can you be sure they won’t?
Anyone who has known me will know I went through the first and second stage, thankfully never the third. I have always walked around with my heart on my sleeve and with a mindset that everyone deserves a chance and that there is no reason to not trust someone unless they actually give you a reason not to trust them. I don’t believe in second chances, everyone makes mistakes, so I give multiple chances. Somehow, even till date, I can’t bring myself to not do this, because why should you let your past hold you back? Why should an insecurity from the past affect what could be the best thing to ever possibly happen to me?
But there was a way to break me, a way that actually was worse than death or repeating anything that had happened, was to break my psyche. I’ll tell you how, when they play on that very vulnerability and that gullibility. When they tell you they love you, make you feel safe and warm. To then hurt you and apologise, say it won’t ever happen again and give you flowers and say sorry repeatedly. You rationalise it in your head and tell yourself it was due to stress, they weren’t sober, they wouldn’t do that to me sober. Never. Which then leads to the second time, the third, fourth before you soon lose count, everytime the apologies get shorter and the flowers disappear, before it leads to the point where they hit you and don’t say a word after. Instead they make you feel bad every time they hurt you, that somehow it was your fault and that you are the only one to blame, if you did or said something different, then maybe they wouldn’t have hit you.
When they gaslight you, when they spend hours upon hours, messages upon messages, making you question your own sanity, your own memories. Maybe I remembered it wrong? Did I remember it wrong? Why would my partner lie? I must have done it. I must have fucking done it. After all, what have my parents said to me since I was a child, you deserve it with the way you behave, they still say it even after knowing the story I’m about to allude to.
You read the messages and hear the words ring in your ears repeatedly as you slowly convince yourself of what version of the truth you have just been told you spend time looking in the mirror wondering what the hell is wrong with you, why don’t you remember what wrong things you do? How fucking normal has this horrible behaviour become that you don’t even remember or realise exactly what it is you done. I remember standing in that mirror, telling myself to stop fucking crying and pick myself up, pretend those bruises around my throat- that sharp pain every time I take a breath in, the scar running across my chest, the bite marks on my arm, the cigarette stubbed on my breast, the chipped front tooth ,the multiple concussions- all of this doesn’t matter, because the person who did this to me, did it because they were hurting inside themselves, because I deserved it, because they still loved me.
Every time I said or did anything that wasn’t to their standards, every time I tried to say something hurt me, every time I tried to ask for a mere apology, I was in the wrong. if I went sleep early, that was a problem. If I ate before they turned up, I was disrespectful for not waiting.
‘Boo hoo, I know I did something wrong but can’t you just let it go? God, you never let anything go’
‘so what you are in hospital, what do you want me to? You just keep talking about pain and all this shit to make me feel bad, fuck you, you manipulative bitch’
‘no one cares about what you say or how you feel, everyone’s bored.’
I was genuinely scared to say something had upset me because what good would that do? I wouldn’t get closure for it but instead we would have another argument and I would have more to process. I genuinely spent the past 2 years believing if you feel your partner had hurt you, then you were an ungrateful bitch, because as long as they told you they loved you, it didn’t matter how they treated you, you’re the selfish bitch for not remembering they said they loved you. The worst fucking part is the whole time I was beaten, every single fucking time all that came out my mouth is ‘you love me remember, please stop baby, please I love you’ now I look back and think wow I was so damn pathetic.
However the truth is, even though outside I may have been a 22-year-old woman, inside her was just that little traumatised girl who just wanted to be loved. I know how pathetic I am when I say what my true-life goal is. I have a whole list of things I want to achieve, but the one thing I never will admit out loud, whether I get the house or the cars, whether I see the countries or build a snowman, all I have wanted since I was a little girl, is to have someone love me. To have a family, one who loves me unconditionally, who would be there to laugh with me in my good times and hold my hand, or be my shoulder to cry on in the bad rather than being the reason the bad even exist. For the past 23 years (in 4 days) I have been told I am not loveable and some maybe conceited or selfish/prideful part of me believes I can’t be that bad, maybe even a slither of love is destined for me. I am so determined to not accept what I am being told is supposedly the truht because if those who hurt me can find love, why can I the one who did nothing wrong not get the same? Maybe I do need to accept life isn’t exactly just and fair but the little girl in me who idolised Cinderella, has hope there will be some for me, I just have to promise myself that if I don’t get it, I don’t, but getting it does not ever mean I have to ever be less than human. Someone will either love me with my broken self and all, they will respect me and have the decency to apologise when they hurt me and someone who cannot see or try to understand how they hurt me will never be worthy of my love or self again.
I will become the type of woman I would want my daughter to be, that I promise to myself. I won’t swear I will not be hurt again, but I promise I will not stick around for repeats and I will actually see and accept the signs. No more, ‘oh but the silver lining, maybe they were stressed by blah blah and they just ended up getting drunk and taking It out on me.’ Time to change things up, fingers crossed.