fuckingTrauma
Not everyone responds the same to trauma.
Some of us try to hide all the symptoms and affectations and pretend that trauma hasn’t changed us in any way whatsoever. Others own the trauma in a big way and blame everything wrong in their life on events that negatively impacted them no matter how big or small, or how long ago the actual event was. Their choice is to be a victim.
Then there are those of us who have suffered trauma so severe that we are unaware of how deeply it has affected us. On some level, we are truly the walking wounded. The ones who live daily on the breath of necessity for survival but don’t thrive or find any real measure of lasting happiness. The broken ones. A circumstance made even more tragic from the very beginning when our identity was stolen and moulded into that of our parents, caretakers, and/or abusers’ way of being. We lost the chance to grow naturally into the beautiful gift we are and establish original thought and personality.
Truth is, most of us are damaged in one way or another. And we all have a story.
But some of us are broken in ways that can never be repaired. Not really.
I have always chosen to be more than my brokenness. I have lived through some pretty horrific events and, almost daily, something will trigger me and remind me of where I’ve been. A scene in a movie, a conversation, a name, a smell, or even a look on someone’s face. It’s impossible to outrun the damage trauma causes. It leaves a stain on your soul you can never really be free of. But you do have choices on how you let it affect you and your life, and ultimately how it affects the people who love and care for you.
I choose not to let it decide who I love, how I love or whether I love at all.
For every negative you see, I see something positive. My imagination is limitless, and my desire to be happy (or wonderfully content) is a powerful motivator.
For every frustration you feel, I have learned patience. I understand that things will not always go my way and that has to be okay. But that’s not a reason to give up on something or someone I care about.
For every fear that loomed, I found courage and compassion. It’s dark and scary in the closet with the monsters. But I’ve learned to talk to them and they are growing less fierce. Maybe making friends with the monsters is key?
For every pain, I have found forgiveness. That’s a tough one though and not everyone forgives. But in the end, it just hurt too much to hold onto anger and relive old hurts, conversations, and wrongs. I know that I honestly did the best I could with what I knew at the time. So, I have let go of the past and forgive all the mistakes. We’re only human after all. You and I have been compromised almost from birth. I accept that, not as an excuse, but as the simple truth. I had a lot to learn and the challenges were not always met with grace and dignity or kindness and understanding. Areas that I strive daily to better myself in. Like I said, a continual work in progress.
Yesterday, in my therapy session, we talked about my trauma. Some of it. She and I have jumped around in my story but yesterday it became a linear storytelling. We started almost at the beginning and by the time I got to age 19 I was in tears and she was praising me for surviving the horror, for being as together as I am, for beating the odds of statistics – I should be a crack whore apparently lol or dead. But the thing that I had never heard before was that I was a Hero.
A hero.
Hmm…
I don’t think I have ever thought of myself like that. A survivor yes, but a hero, nah. To me, a hero is someone who saves someone in some way. When I told her that in between my sobs, she smiled sweetly and told me I was indeed a hero.
I saved myself.
Yeah, I suppose I did. But when you’re a child, you take on beliefs that aren’t yours, a history of trauma that doesn’t belong to you, and it shapes you somewhat into an adult without a true identity. I’ve been struggling to find that identity deep inside and let her be free to express and feel and simply be. But there is so much inner turmoil from the confusion of not knowing what is real and what is not.
Take love for instance.
If you grow up without ever receiving it, how do you learn to give it? Or even know what it is?
If you grow up in a household where the love language was volatile, screaming and full of misdirected and often dangerous passion, sexual abuse, and alcoholism, you will take that on as a part of your identity. How can you not? It was normalized. It was all you knew. And so it becomes who you are.
But that’s not all you are.
Buried deep inside and fiercely protected is your inner child, the one who never got to grow into the beautiful being she was meant to be. Her emotional growth is stunted, aggression is mountainous, insecurity is rampant and disappointment is inevitable. Why? Because no one can fill that void. And that sense of lacking something? It is not external and can’t come from anyone else. What’s lacking or missing is something that wasn’t given to you as a child. Healthy and nurturing love. And sadly, there is nothing you can do about that now. But you can choose to let go of a big part of that identity, the one that was forged for you, and embrace the identity that is truly you. Warts and all.
But at least they are your warts and no one else’s.
If you’ve been abandoned by your birth parents and shuffled around from home to home like an unwanted puppy, complete with all the neglect and kicking and verbal abuse, how can you ever believe that someone will want you, love you, and not leave you? How do you ever learn to trust? Easy answer? You don’t. That mistrust becomes part of your identity. If you grew up never being told you were loved, how do you know what it feels like to be loved? If every caretaker in your life who was supposed to take care of you, abandons you how do you not suffer from abandonment issues? If the one person who is supposed to love you unconditionally tries to kill you, what do you do with that? You learn not to trust love. How fucked up is that?
Growing up unwanted, unloved, and treated as if my existence didn’t matter was not an easy thing to manage. In my teens I discovered alcohol. Numbing did the trick for years. The demons rested when I drank. Seeing what alcohol did to other people, I promised myself I would not become an alcoholic. And for the most part, I succeeded. Seeing my best friend kill herself with alcohol poisoning was a real wake-up call, and falling apart and needing a mental health break from life was the alarm.
I can’t get back what was never given to me, but I can take back my identity. I can embrace who I am and meet my inner child. What’s lacking or missing is something that wasn’t given to me as a child; a healthy and nurturing love. And sadly, there is nothing I can do about that now. But I can choose to let go of a big part of that identity, the one that was forged for me, and embrace the identity that is truly me. Warts and all.
But at least they are my warts and no one else’s.
There are choices in life that are hard to make. Mostly because of fear. Fear of rejection, abandonment, being hurt, and fear of simply making the wrong choice. Hindsight can teach us so much even though the past is irreversible. It can show us where we went wrong, how a different love language may have worked better, and most importantly, but not nearly often enough, it can show us how to do it right the next time.
If there is a next time.
I have grown. I have changed. For the better, I hope. I can see things so much clearer now. No rose-coloured glasses, no wild fantasies – well, maybe one or two – but no illusions though. Reality has kicked in and sometimes it even makes me smile. Smile because I have finally known love. Perfect love. Messy and complicated, and it probably showed up at the wrong time in my life, but is there really ever a wrong time? After all, it’s LOVE. That elusive, intangible thing we all crave, need, and sometimes die for. And I miss being in that bubble.
My trauma is real. The hurt is real. The damage is real.
But I am so much more than my trauma.
Inside of me, there is a creative, kind, loving, compassionate, empathetic, sexual, passionate, funny, witty, vibrant human being who wants to live the rest of her years in a peaceful calm, in a delicious knowing that she is really loved and really wanted and truly accepted for who she is. She’s not perfect, but she tries. And when she loves, it is with everything she can possibly give.
I don’t want to discover her on my own.
Everyone has trauma. Children. Teenagers. Adults. We carry trauma from others, and then we unknowingly pass that on. Or we suffer without any awareness of what’s happened to us or why we do the crazy shit we do sometimes, even when we know better. Gotta love those triggers.
Lovers traumatize each other too, though most of the time it is unintentional and unknowingly. We are not perfect beings and love can be a tricky dance, but we have to learn to be kinder to others and to ourselves. I suppose it’s what we do with what’s left of us after the cause of trauma has been identified – and been somewhat exorcised – that really makes the difference. We can choose to change things for the better or we can stay stuck and live with the fear that never lets us release the past and forgive the human mistakes that were made along the way. It really is a choice.
I can not change the past. But I still want a future.
I was made to love and be loved. So were you.
We all were.
<3
