The last thing abuse survivors need…
I am learning a whole lot about what it is that we, as survivors, go through, once it is that the violence is “over.”
No one thinks about the lasting effects of this thing called abuse, and when the technically physical part of the abuse is over with (meaning anything from these assholes being physically there but not hitting, or, actually the abuser who was physically violent is out of the picture), there is still the rest of it – the part that lives on on the inside and the part that no one wants to deal with, unless, of course, those people actually love you.
When I state that I know who actually loves me, and who will, if they are able to, do like I do for others – go to the fuckinʻ mat – and do that much for me…I mean just that.
I totally know who loves me, for real….and I also know who loves me conditionally, and that, my friends, is where abuse, of the emotional sort, begins. It is where, as children, we are made to prove that we are worthy of the love of the big people in our lives, without the “having to” prove that we are worthy. If the adults in our lives when we were kids were told this when they were kids, we would not have so many people, specifically women people, in abuse therapy these days.
Thatʻs right – more women…fuck that…more humans of either gender are abused and do not realize it, and the abuse happens when we are shunned, blacklisted, made to feel like we are – not exactly the greatest rendition of the definition of “unique” and lots of times, those people would and have no problem making fun of that which is not like them, or, that which they have been taught to judge and eventually, that judgment becomes the basis for how a person feels about anything, and anyone.
Again….there are a TON of women on this planet who are in abuse therapy.
I am one of those women.
I am almost not one of those women, because as an intuitive, I also know that this part of my life is coming to a close…this part that sucks and is somehow not my lesson to learn anymore – but that of the lesson that my family is learning about acceptance.
It would not be coming to a close…this part… if I were not the one who exacted it all – there is no closure, sometimes, without court documentation. The ones who were there for real are still there, for real, and they are still there telling me that no matter how I feel about me right now, I did something brave.
Abuse victims and survivors alike need reassurance, and it is not because we were not loved but that we were not shown love.
It matters.
Physical touch is all a child knows, but not until after they know words. I have learned that my particular love language is that of words….written, spoken, read, heard, sung…they are the thing that I am magickal at stringing together and creating those things called coherencies .
I am big on words.
They are my magick and I am very careful with them.
Problem is, not a whole lot of other people are, and by right of their own shitty habits and the idea that not a lot of humans like to make waves and will tolerate being treated like shit…this is another factor in all of this..abuse…shit that is prevalent and in our faces.
No one wants to believe that once the bullshit abuser is gone, that the abuse is NOT yet gone – because it is not. No one thinks about this part, the C-PTSD part, ever. They just want to believe that once the actuality of it, once the catalyst for it all to physically take place is gone, that this means it is all gone.
Wrong.
You still will, for a little while, or maybe forever, have the memory, and the people who think you can just think it away are the worst ones of all, next to those in the quasi – medical professions, some of them, who believe that there is only one way to deal with the abuse…and that way is their way. When it is that the person who is on the mend does what is expected – which is to NOT TRUST what ANYONE who is NOT A CONSTANT PART OF THEIR EVERYDAY LIFE and regularly there in some capacity – unless you are one of those people, you need to NOT give your “textbook” rendition of what anyone else needs to do, specifically those who are on the mend from this insidious thing, and your only job is to be there and LISTEN.
Too many people, namely those in those…quasi…medical positions….donʻt do either. They are too caught up in saving someone, so that they can feel like they did something and not feel so guilty that they donʻt know it all….they want to believe that their help is just what someone like me needs when in reality that is not the case. They seem to be more concerned about the pat on the back for having helped another person in need, the way that the person needed them to be, than they are about the actual person.
The reality is that abuse leaves an indelible mark, and unless it is that the abuse was happening regularly in your own life, you do not have the right, neither the experience, to help, at all, and the moment that you try to, and then get angry when the person who you are talking to did not need your help with anything other than whatever they were working on, and in your own….arrogance….decided that you knew better.
You donʻt.
You didnʻt.
I hope that you never will.
But, it could happen, and you, no one, can say that it wonʻt happen to them.
That is dangerous to think that way.
What happens if it does?
And you cannot take that much away from someone, by right of your book knowledge, who has the power of experience on their side. NO ONE who has not had to go through losses of the material sort, and no one who has been taught that you are the reason why things go awry, when in reality you are just the easiest one to pin shit on…THAT is the reason why I know now…family…DNA FAMILY…and with VERY FEW EXCEPTIONS IN MY CASE….is the LAST GROUP ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN ABUSED NEEDS TO GO TO, BECAUSE THEY WILL NOT REALIZE THAT SOMEHOW, they had a part in it, all because they themselves cannot let go of the things that they were taught and are hanging on to that were given to them as the rules for life by dead people.
Yes…dead people, and dead people whose memories seem to be far more important that what is here and now and what is here and now is all this shit that anyone like me has to go through, all because people who want to help, tried to help, then when they got told that all they needed was someone to listen, they got shitty and told you that you deserve what you are going through.
Pretty much…
And really…when the fuck did I, specifically, deserve to have to deal with this shit like this, when all I wanted to do was breathe again, and somehow, that seems like too much of a request for people who are so used to watching me proverbially drown in the sea of …hurt.
When, really, did anyone, at all, deserve to be abused by anyone else, and when was it okay that the people who we entrust our lives with will not only give us reason NOT to trust but more – will manhandle who we are, as a person…all because they cannot be told that theirs is not the only way to deal with something, and namely something that they have no idea about the reality of, even if they were there and witnessed all of it?
Yeah…all of it.
Right this moment, aside of my three kids and my other half, David, and a handful of others who know who they are, there are not a whole lot of people who willingly have anything to say about the things that I have been through. They shouldnʻt, because all they have is their opinion, and probably some sort of limited experience, and really, when I think about it – that “limited experience” that they have with domestic violence and limited because I refuse to go through things in my head that I am not already being put through or have gone through for a long, long time.
People think it is because we are looking for attention.
Actually, we are trying to make the memories that hurt us become something that we no longer think about. The bitch of it all is that there are people who have been there all our lives and who saw what we went through and still, for the sake of preserving their own belief in whatever it is that they do not want to accept – they make the person who totally needs people in their lives to be supportive, and instead, are critical…
They tell us to stop remembering things….how?
Memories have the tendency to do that to a person, specifically when they have suffered abuse…memories have the tendency to make us live and relive the pain. The ugliest part of abuse is not realizing that you are being abused as a child and then have reactions and feelings when you are an adult and not know, right off the bat, where those feelings are coming from. Then there is the thing, or the several things, that you heard as a kid….things like “hit first and ask questions later,” and being called names like “Waterdog” and “monkey” and “monkeyʻs okole” because when you first learned to wear makeup, no one taught you how to put it on.
You liked the color red, and then your boy cousin decides to tell you that girls who wear red lipstick have “lips like a monkeyʻs okole.”
Right now I am experiencing this…energy…that is causing me to be nauseated, so much so that when I forcefully stop myself from thinking about it, the nausea stops – this is, folks, the reality, at times, of what we who are on the mend from abuse HAVE TO go through. And no – no there is nothing more than working through it that anyone can do, are no audios or videos or courses that you can take in place of actual help from a therapist or clergy or a life coach (and yes, I am a life coach who, herself, has SEVERAL life coaches….because I NEED them…). Those things work in tandem with actual human help.
And there are folks who believe that our mental awareness, and more, our soulʻs awareness, is something that we can argue with or, through this mechanism of denial, make it be something that immediately feels better right that moment. It wonʻt happen that way. When we are talking about things that have endured for a very long time in a personʻs life, all because you, yourself, have no clue how to get out of a bad thing, and more, when those who you do trust are telling you the truth, and the rest of them are still pinning themselves to who you used to be and do so without thinking that maybe a person has had way too much violence in their lives….when that person who has had enough violence speaks out against it, and the people who they are meant to trust suddenly turn on them…it causes all those things that you were told when you were a child to never heal and never go away, and for the life of you, you feel helpless to get out of the feeling. It is worse when those who you want to trust tell you that it is your fault for thinking about it all too much. How is anyone supposed to not when they are surrounded by reminders, all the time?
People think – specifically family people – that you are crazy, or spoiled, or being unreasonable. But you are not. What you are is holding in a whole lot of anguish that you were never taught to relieve yourself of. You were taught to fear a god that you were also told would help you, and when it came time for that god to help you, and you cried out, and that god ignored you…you went to your family.
Who went to that same god.
And when that god ignored them, they told you without telling you that you do not have a choice, that somehow, you owed their god the favor of self-sacrifice, when in reality it was not that at all, but that instead of them admitting that they have no idea what the hell they are hearing about, let alone being expected to do something for anyone else about – they failed miserably, and all because of a faith in and an expected belief in, on your part, a god who you have been told, all your life, will kill you if you breathe wrong.
This is who I was expected to believe, and worse, who I was expected and am, in my own head, still expected to be…a conformist for a god that never helped me, and who I am supposed to trust blindly, and that for a long time in my life, did trust blindly, and all that did was get me my ass kicked, again and again, and then eventually, caused me this issue that I have to heal for me, because their big scary abusive man god…the one who I was supposed to and did trust for a long, long time….FAILED ME….bigger than shit!
And it is this same god now that I KNOW these people who say that they love me are likely and now telling each other is who I pissed off and yeah….it is likely my fault (again with the victim blaming) that I was abused.
…because I refuse to accept that I am wrong for being abused and that somehow, I am wrong in the eyes of their fucking god…a god who I was always expected to trust, even though he would strike me down immediately.
A god who I was told would take care of me, and a god who I was told to pray to, and this same god that people now use to punish me with, because my faith was not complete, or my belief was not true, or something, always, having to do with what I did or did not do, that this mangod who is more like a manchick wanted from me as a mere female human being.
I was supposed to accept what I was shown, and that was that whatever it was that I was going through, I am going through because apparently, I have lost favor with a god that I was told would protect me….but did not, and then I was told it was because I did not believe…
I Am a Pisces, and our fucking motto is “I BELIEVE” ….
This is where a whole lot of us end up being abused.
If it is not obvious to anyone, I am mad as hell – I see it everyday in my own life, the idea that pride in hiding what we are not willing to admit to having been wrong about or that we cannot bring ourselves to believe that someone who we raised would not believe the things that we believe. I am pretty much told, in the cruelest, harshest manner of all – the silent treatment, most of the time – that these people do not know what the hell they are doing, that they do not know whatever it all really is and they cannot help me with my issues, because you cannot food it away, and it cannot be cut out via surgical transplant. To people who cannot see another personʻs issues, it is maddening to get others to believe that there is something not okay with you.
They tell you to stop crying but donʻt realize that the only thing that you wanted to do when you were a kid was cry, because the “important” big people in your life were not being kind to you, and they were calling you names and being bullies and even now, will not admit to this, even though those who they also bullied remain in contact with them.
I have no beef with them.
They need that connection.
I get it.
What I do not get is how it is that the people who were the adults in my life, now and knowing that not only am I one of them…adults…I am one who is almost 50 with adult kids of her own and who do not ever think that their mother does not care.
They know otherwise.
I made sure from the time that they were known about that they knew.
My children knew, and know, even now, that I am there for them, that I would do anything in the world to try to make them not hurt. They know that there is no favor that they have to work towards getting from me. They are not perfect, but they are good people, and that is the only thing that I would imagine any parent in the most “basic ways of beliefs and behavior for human type people” would want their kids to have and to display for real and as their truth.
When it is that we are trying to garner these things from others because we need to have our egos fed and we are willing to be the biggest mouth that has the biggest words but possibly not the biggest awareness of what those terms and the like actually mean and when someone like me comes along and begins to prove her prowess with research and with science and abuse….when that person (in this case me) has lived the science they teach and also live by, is told by a quasi-professional in the medical field that the way that anyone on my end of the block would be living through…when that other person tells us that we are not doing things the way that their textbooks says anyone ought to…meaning they are telling us that we are wrong – ya tend to get a little offended.
And in the case of people like me – ON THE DAMNED MEND BUT IN NO WAY IN NEED OF PEOPLE TO DO MORE THAN LISTEN AND AT LEAST BELIEVE US….you get very offended, and you do so because of this thing called C-PTSD, and this thing that many quasi-meds wanna believe that they have the right thing to say.
To them I say that they ought to just tend to their actual patients, and let the ones like me who are functioning through these issues…just LISTEN when we need you to. That is all we need. We do not…DO NOT NEED YET ONE MORE PERSON TRYING TO GET ATTENTION FROM US so that we can be further harmed by someone who actually has no fuckinʻ clue of what the hell to say to us.
So, instead to belittle us with your knowledge, saying that we are not going to heal if we donʻt do things your specific way.
Fuck you.
Those who are garnering favor for the sake of their need for attention, approval and pats on the back is the reason why, I find, people who come from the same set of parents will do what they have to do to get all the attention and accolades that they can….because subconsciously they also know that it does not come without condition.
And by right of what it is that we are actually trying to do, which is gain the favor of those who we would be trying to at least get even a nod to our survival….our families…but we never, ever think about what our actions and words and sometimes a combination of both does to anyone else, all because we need to feel like our expertise is somehow above that of anyone elseʻs, and certainly more than is the person who is going through the shit they are going through. No one knows what it is like unless they go through it for real, for a long long time, and no one knows the hurt and the pain caused by people asking you why you just did not leave and more, telling you that they would never allow it to happen to them.
It is not that fucking easy, and the people who we each and all would expect to be there for us end up blaming us, not realizing that this is what they are doing, and we go through the shit of being or feeling like we are that tiny little kid again who is wondering why it is that these people who are supposed to be there for us are there but want to call us names and tell us that someone else does things better than we do?
Now, I am not expecting a ticker tape parade. In fact I am not expecting anything at all other than that people will have the god damned clue in their heads after the fact that once the abuser is gone, so, too, is the abuse and so are the emotional “things” that the one who was the most abused in the house has gone through…is somehow over with. They wrongly assume that our issues will also be gone, not giving credence to the idea that what took years to make be part of our awareness is going to take a little bit of time to remap in the brain.
They forget that abuse is not something that is a one time thing, that PTSD and C-PTSD are the things that end up happening to people in the long run because you are fighting what you saw and what you know this thing called couplehood looks like and for the life of you, you cannot figure out what the fuck you did wrong or why it was that you feel like you did. All you feel like is that this is an error on your part, based on what you were told all of your life – that really, you are not that good, are comparable to everyone else, and that you are not unique and that you might have even deserved being beaten.
And all you want to do is have that beauty called “Love with one other person” in your life, and you want it to not hurt, and you want them to be as crazy about you as you want to be about them.
In my case, I am lucky. I actually and now have this and have had this for almost four years now.
I would not trade it for anything and will never turn my back on this person.
He doesnʻt do that to me.
He has things going on, too, but, he also, no matter what, wants to know that I am okay. He knows when I am not, and when he is not able, for whatever reason there may be, to be physically here for me, he is right there in text and Facebook messenger, reminding me that to him, I am special, good, loving, his…
We each want to be these things to someone.
At each stage of our lives there is going to be someone who we want to be these intangible things to.
I am there now, and it is not just about my guy, who I hope that I am being everything he hoped I would be, but also about my kids who I know I am every bit the mom they know that I am able to be, even now, when I feel like I am so, so …stuck in the emotional mud with people who donʻt understand what this is like.
This is not me being a victim, and no I do not have victim mentality. This is real to me, this ….insidious thing. I donʻt want to hang on to it. I hate it, and I hate the people who made it so that everyday now, for weeks, I have been made to hear the shit that was said to me and blaming me for how other people have treated me. That is the way that it felt, the way that it sounded, and when you have this C-PTSD shit, that which would not be a big fucking deal not very long ago suddenly becomes the biggest fuckinʻ deal in the world, and not because of anything other than that you have waited your whole life for someone – ANYONE WHO WAS ONE OF THE BIG PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE AS A KID – to take you seriously.
When they donʻt it is like being that kid all over again.
Every god damned day.
When they donʻt listen, or are not attentive, or even appear to care (because they, themselves, have no idea what to do but will not admit that much) and when it is that you know, because your intuition is heightened as is your level of empathic ability – you know they are not bothering with your words, which, in your head makes you believe that when it matters they are not going to recall the conversation, but you will, and when they forget about everything that they told you, and expect that those things are just ably easily washed off like water off of a ducks back...they again fail you, but not because of anything other than that they are as tired as you are.
Even as they are not willing to see what you are going through, or at least listen to you, and willingly NOT TALK for a lousy three minutes of your life and theirs, not giving advice and not giving anything even so much to hint that they are not listening.
This is where a lot of victims are kept in the victim energy, and it is by none other than their families. I am going through this now. In fact about a week ago, one particular family memberʻs friends decided to do it to me again….publicly, as if her opinion was anything near valid, let alone her fucking facts.
And yes…it would be those who love me the most who were not willing to allow this stupid bitch to continue on. Of course I blocked her.
And these,,,formerly big people…even after all of this, and after the fact that they donʻt want to hear what I have to say.
That is not the way that they see sick people.
What they are not realizing is that I do not call myself sick, and I do not claim these issues as being mine. I refuse to. Maybe this is why it also feels, sometimes, like I am feared, because yeah…anyone who has survived the shit that I have been through and has the balls to write about it and tell the world about it without caring if those who would judge me are going to do just that….I suppose that for lots of them, my words, and my experience with them might indeed cause some problems for them….
(really?)
Where it is that they think silence is what we need, what we really need are people to listen without judging and advising – yet no one who believes in this big scary man god wants to hear that. What they would rather have is proof that their god can fix everything and no the hell he cannot.
No…no he will not. He wrecks more than much else, with expectation that womankind is GOING TO just follow along and be less than any human male.
This is why women are abused.
This is why anyone is abused – because other people refuse to look at the lives of other people and not judge and not place it in the minds of people who we share DNA with that somehow, this person is hurting and the ignorance to that pain and anyoneʻs …creation…of it…is not something that is going to help. The ignorance of and to that pain is the reason why some of us are in such pain – because we want to go to those people who have our best interest at heart, or who have told us this, outright, more than one time.
Yet…lots of us…We canʻt.
We are in such remarkable pain and sometimes we donʻt realize that this is our truth. We just keep going through our day as though it – the pain – never existed, doesnʻt exist.
Okay so some of us do this. I am not one of those people. I do not know how to not feel my pain because it is the thing that I have always had to deal with because no one knows how to deal with it and if they do, it is not for me, because if it were they might reach out and help me but they donʻt.
We need to be able to create trust with others in our world, and when we are not able to do that within the confines of the familial blood bond and all of our lives we were all and only equated with the people who were also in our awareness and who now no longer talk to us for whatever reason they have to no longer talk to us…itʻs all good. I am not one of those people who cannot see where we will not be okay with each other.
In fact, because of the bullshit all these years, I am actually phenomenal at knowing who actually does love me for real, and even though sometimes we wonʻt talk for a few days or even a week or two – that makes no difference.
We all know who loves us. We are aware of it because they are the people in our lives who donʻt want to see us cry. And those people are typically just like we are in that, they, too, have gone through these things where no one in their right mind would offer to go through what they are going through. There are some people on this planet who think that we like the abuse, like the dissatisfaction with the way that who we are is being handled by anyone.
Typically, we are being handled egregiously by people whose lives will never be as rich as they care to believe it will be, because in order to have that richness, one must know what it is like to go without the thing in their lives that too many people take for granted, and that one thing is Love.
I Know, without a doubt, who Loves Me….
They call me “Mom.”
He calls me “Pineapple”
Another “he” calls me “Sis”
…and a whole shitload of you call me “Rox,” your “soul sister,” and of course, one of you calls me “Daughter” of the soul sort….
Yes, I do know…I am indeed very lucky, but, there are also those of us who can see the abuse as it still happens, and when others have not been taught that it is not okay to continue to treat people like they are less than anyone else, it tends to make the after effects of the end of an abusive relationship of any kind at all last longer, even after the abusers are gone…
Be kind to one another.
We are all we have
Try Hoʻolohe for once….try listening….you might be shocked at what you learn that you do not know about…
Chick Wisdom 