Violent childhood. Sexual abuse. Damaged adult getting by. Disclosure, police, courts. Two decades of coping. And now — the realisation I never really faced any of it.
This all feels like the right thing to do, and I am starting to understand some of it. I had never spoken about, addressed, admitted, described all the things that were done. Never looked at it, never thought it mattered, understood nothing about anything. Almost a sense of shock, realising what was there, how much and how deep and how embedded it all is. Starting to wonder how I have even functioned over the last two decades.
I am struggling not to condemn myself for being so stupid as to not see it. You wouldn’t believe how many survivors I have listened to, comforted, advised — and not once applied it to myself. I think everyone else assumed I had done that bit and I had no idea I needed to. I thought the saying it out loud was the important bit. I thought admitting it was what mattered.
I thought it was just the way it was. Deal with it. You have told the police. You have said to people you were abused. They know now. You can’t keep repeating it. The feelings and the memories and the nightmares and whatever else — this is just what goes with being a survivor. I don’t think I was surviving. I think I was getting by and coping.
I keep circling the same things at the moment. Trying to understand what it all means, and how it applies to me personally. A member here answered my plea to understand what trauma of abuse actually is, and listed some symptoms.
So I searched them and read about them. Some things are just nothing I recognise. I am too Tigger for depression or anxiety, but the way I feel at the moment I am not ruling anything out. I fully expect someone to point out some behavioural quirk or habit that I was unaware of and whisk me away for help.
Someone in my actual life, not this pixels-on-a-screen reality — what can you do, you are thousands of miles away and in an opposite time zone? Don’t think I haven’t thought about relocating to America for an extended break. I can make a list of ten friends who would accept a Brit house guest. Manage it right and I could be there for six months.
Compiling a list of what is wrong with you is a sobering thing to do. I have really tried to embrace honesty from the start of this process. I saw little point in deceiving myself and wasting time trying to side step.
Consequently, I acquired a sort of mentor. I’m not sure if I have actually used that word in front of him yet. It’s how I treat him. He offered sage advice in our early conversations and he was easy to explain things to. By which I mean his responses seemed to show he understood me and what I was explaining.
Maybe this is something you are all familiar with and it’s old hat. Not me. Never had it before in my life. I have told him, unprompted, that I want to be accountable and answerable to him. That he has my permission to call me on things, to challenge along with advising. I was very quickly aware that I couldn’t do this on my own, and it seemed the sensible thing to do. If I have found a person that is wiser, more informed, smart enough and cares enough to make the effort, why not go all in.
So I take my rambling, uninformed thoughts and questions to him, and he responds with answers and suggestions, questions and observations. Then while he sleeps I spend the day pondering his insights, reading more, listening to others, grappling with complicated, emotional, terrifying feelings. Then do it all again. I do hope I don’t break him, but I suspect he has been here before. Me, not so much.
You visit a new land, you need a map, a guide and a friend.
So far the only things I am fairly sure of is that I have PTSD, there is trauma — and I think we might be revisiting that quite a bit — anger issues, but that feels more like an internal rage, hyper-vigilance in the form of how safe a place/room/person is, so that’s probably a yes, trust issues like you wouldn’t believe, nightmares and sleep issues (I mean please, just standard stuff surely), Hyper-Sexual but struggling to understand some of that and how it applies, and in recent days the realisation that Dissociation has been such a part of my existence and so integrated into me that I had trouble seeing it. I just thought it was normal and just how I was.
No idea what I am going to do next. Listen and learn some more. It’s too early to say how it makes me feel. Currently trying not to be swamped by the idea that so much is wrong with me. I have moments of feeling hopeful that it’s a good thing that I know. Followed by despair at how broken I feel.
It is what it is.