Normal

[meoww]

Anyway, I basically wanted to get back on here even just to say to any survivors out there that you can really be free someday! I don't even need to talk about it anymore. I don't have that burning need. That insatiable, out of control feeling. The loneliness, that self hatred where you just don't even want to be yourself. I don't think about all the people who I felt betrayed by. I ask for help when I need it, and I recognize I'm not always going to like the advice other people give, and do not count that as a betrayal. I don't judge things as cynically. I don't think I know people's character just by interacting with them a few times, or how they look. I don't feel like I have this dark, brooding quality about me, or this emotional depth that distinguishes me from others.

Lots of insidious ways being a victim can affect the way you think or act, or even see and the decisions you make.

 

I still feel like a child sometimes, but I can actually comfort myself. I could never do that before successfully. When you're alone, you're alone, nothing was scarier than that to me.

[meoww]

By the way, the only thing that healed my need to be heard was being heard. Empathy. Without that I don't know where I would be. Real empathy though, when someone takes it upon themselves to just feel your pain for a minute. No rescuing, no advice. No discomfort at the horrors I've experienced. It's like something just clicked. Can you believe I've only ever been able to communicate this situation effectively to one person? It took that long. All my other attempts were so confusing, and I always felt so vulnerable. I think it's a combination of finding the right person and being healed enough that you can think straight. After that everything you are unsure about as a victim becomes so clear. I'm now past the stage where I need to recount the details. It made me feel weak in a way, that I needed that. That I decided I needed that. I want any abuse survivor to know that they don't need anyone to survive. You don't need anyone to tell you that you are a good person and that you don't deserve that. You have to believe. I still don't believe it 100%. But I fight everyday to hold on to that and make it my reality. So I'm going to keep going.

 

I don't feel like a have a secret anymore, it's just my past and I won't allow to define who I am or how people perceive me. I'm proud as anybody would be I guess.

[meoww]

It's almost like there were real shackles holding me back. I know the process is unimaginably complex but here are a couple of the essentials. An emotional manipulator can't have as much power over you if you don't feel debilitating shame about your flaws or failures. Sometimes what they say can be true, for example. But the difference between them and a nice person is that a nice person doesn't point out your flaws to hurt you and keep you trapped, they want you to improve and bring delicate topics up with tact and love. Let your abuser's verbal abuse really sink in, don't be afraid it's going to weasel it's way inside you and never go away and strangle or suffocate you or enslave you. Especially if you think that they are preying your weaknesses and magnifying your insecurities. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's right or fair and I think no one should tolerate it. These people overstep people's limits on how much they can handle on principle to create emotional wounds. I think it's important to become really well informed on the tactics abusers use, healing would have been impossible without it.

 

At the end of the day, what's the worst they can do? Point out what you already know deep down? It's an outrage, but you are stronger than your flaws, everyone has limitations. Healthy people are always growing and changing. I wish could emphasize just how much love and patience I wish I could extend to anyone who has to guard themselves, basically it's like allowing yourself to get shot again and again, but this time at least you have your bulletproof vest.

 

If they try to slander you to outside parties, don't engage. You'll get caught up in a game you can't win. They can win the battle but they can't win the war because ultimately they can't control you, especially from afar.

 

It's just heartbreaking. But someday you have to get over it. I have to get over it. It's my security blanket. It keeps me at a safe emotional distance from reality. Trauma is all I know for the most part. I want to be brave enough not to refer back. My next goal is to be vibrant and full of life.

[meoww]

One of my latest obstacles is overcoming guilt for not accepting the terms of a carthaginian peace in my family. My guilt is so physically painful and like basically saturates my whole body and mind. So I guess that explains why my other emotions have felt totally desensitized and blunted. I'm just full of this throbbing, dull anxiety. I know I can't help the situation and I know I'm not capable of being a caretaker to someone who is hostile to me and will hurt me any chance she gets. But leaving her alone to die eventually is so messed up...lol but at least it's better than all the blaming myself, the horrible feelings I had for sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo long. I can't expect to be totally fine immediately. I just have to continue to dismantle these emotional traps and heal my tragedy. I can't even feel compassion because it'll break my heart. It's so weird! I just can't feel anything. I hope this comes naturally to me soon because I can't take it for much longer. I can't not help someone I love. So I can't love them. I have to break the trauma bond even more until it's really really like gone. I have to get rid of it. Like ASAP.

[meoww]

I guess that as you start to forgive, guilt for moving on is naturally an obstacle you have to face. Whether it's a failed romantic relationship or family...Guilt might even be more uncomfortable than resentment, which is actually a good thing because it'll force me to confront it more quickly. Time to read up on guilt, and get my life together! I'm really ready to move on.

 

This is a dangerous analogy for triggers, but it's like in Walking Dead when your loved one turns into a zombie, but you just can't let go of the hope that someday you might be able to get them back. Yeah so much for being ready to move on right? That just popped into my head and I've only seen like 5 episodes of that show.

 

But if I educate myself on guilt, I might some answers I'm not capable of generating on my own. I'm missing a piece of the puzzle

[meoww]

Guilt was definitely easier to start cyling through than my anger phase, for example. Although the healing from trauma can be approximated and described through concrete phases, in some ways, I think it might be a deterrent to healing when you apply that depersonalized perspective to yourself and your own traumas. I went into it all a bit too logically, and then I'd get upset and frustrated if I didn't start to feel better in a matter of months. In order to feel better I had to change a lot of things about my life, and that took a lot more time than I actually feel I had or currently have.

 

I wish I would have known just how much easier it is when you cut yourself off from the people who you are hurting you. I was too afraid to be on my own emotionally, and I basically waited until the last possible minute to slowly, eventually clear the way for making a safe place for myself. There were even some decaying long-distance friendships that were somehow causing me to doubt myself and feel insecure. It's strange, because I honestly can't say if they meant to have a negative effect on me or not. I could manage those kinds of friendships now that I have a sturdier core but at the time, I was so weak that anything could cause me to stumble into the rabbit hole of fear, distortion, and limitation. I used to feel like other people were holding me back which would cause me to resent them at some point. I think that some people, if given the authority to control certain aspects of your identity, will take it in disturbing ways, but if you don't allow that dynamic to develop you can have healthy interactions with the same people used to bring you pain. Weirdly, these thoughts never really occurred to me before, partly because I was so tired of everything that I just wanted out. Funny how a bit of distance and time makes you think it's not so bad. I don't trust either my feelings though, I feel like I'm falling into minimizing, subtly taking on more responsbility than I can handle, that is not a road I can go down at this time, not until I have possibly a decade of reflection....

 

I couldn't believe that I could perhaps have a form of Stockholm syndrome because that sounds so extreme, and I have been aware since childhood that their parenting was unhealthy, but over the years as I examine how my survival depended on forming an attachment to my abusive parents, it's becoming more and more clear to be how it's more of a reaction to trauma than the whole 'I love my parents because I'm human, I'm a 'good' daughter, and I was socialized to believe I can't possibly be a complete person without this' thing. There is a point when it becomes destructive to trust and continually forgive someone who is hurting you in very extreme ways. Although I experienced physical abuse, the tricky thing about verbal abuse and ambient abuse, is that nothing of that nature is fundamentally, forgivable. In isolation in even the worst gaslighting, critcisms or attack can be forgiven. In the case of what you could call healthy people, we encourage each other to forgive what we hope will not be an often repeated problem.

[meoww]

Forgiveness started to work its magic on me when I realized that I was feeling such physical pain from all the feelings inside me that just wouldn't seem to completely go away, that I finally hit some kind of arbitrary turning point. Weirdly, this wasn't when I hit rock bottom. It was when my life started to get better, little by little, that I started to not be able to take the pain anymore. I guess that's pretty typical and shallow of me, not to care because I just don't have to. It's also hard to compartmentalize and hold negativity for only one aspect of my life. It's just really confusing! Like theoretically, trauma doesn't even have to develop even when you go through something terrible. I guess the reason I try to forgive myself is that my maladaptive behaviors and thoughts developed due to abusive parenting, which I had no control over as a child. Even as a young adult, it would be a little cruel to expect me to imagine a life where that didn't happen to me and try to imagine the mindset and behaviors I would have learned without it.

 

"She must have provoked it." "It takes two to tango." When in actuality, some people are totally cool with tangoing to exhaustion completely on their own, or will take an unwilling body, tie it up, and drag it by its hair along the dance floor with them. On to my next unresolved fear...being labeled as being just as responsible for my plight as my abuser. Having people judge me or not want to have anything to do with me because I allowed it to get that bad...

 

.I hate it when relatives try to talk to me about the problem I'm having with "your mother." Ughhhh the ugliness. I have chosen the silent treatment because I am not ready to talk about this...as horrible as I know that is....

[meoww]

My heart would break if this was going through anyone's mind. "I guess ______'s parenting was inappropriate after all, but I still want nothing to do with meoww. They are both pretty unstable and pathetic." or something like that. Given the kind of X'mas presents that I received, I can probably assume the worst. I really do feel awful when my aunt will pick out something hideous and say in a cloying manner that it looks like something I would like or wear. I just don't understand why I get treated like that when I'm just not someone you should pick on. I'm not especially ugly, stupid, unstylish, or boring. Not being in claws of guilt or obligation I can see that this dynamic is complicated, and while I guess in some ways, if I had total integrity, a total lack of pride, and a good heart I could probably get through this okay, part of me still wonders...why is always my responsibility? Why am I the only one who not only doesn't want to suffer, but simply wants to be om good terms with everyone? So I continue to be paralyzed and wrestle with these thoughts alone.

 

I am going to do my best not to overdramatize, catastrophize, moralize, generalize, feel shame, guilt, burdened, resentful or resented, take things too personallly, feel singled out, over scrutinized, invaded, falsely accused or blamed, whatever the verb is when you feel overwhelmed by straw man reasonings, explanations and arguments, fear, wahtever the feeling is when you think people think they can read your mind or know what you're thinking when they have never bothered to know you, these are some of the feelings I feel that cause me to perpetuate this unnecessary drama in my life.

 

It's becoming less personal as I develop a new personality that is stronger and not as easily belittled. I can't be attacked as easily if I try to be the opposite of whatever 'they say I am." If they continue to disrespect me and assume things I just let them because it is totally futile to even care. This is all remarkably effective if slightly soul destroying at times. The whole, let's just get along thing doesn't really work at all. I know that sounds bitter but I am not even kidding. When it comes to some weirdos, the only way you can shake off a label is to let them label you whatever they want.

[meoww]

Hey, well, acceptance is the final stage of grief isn't it! I actually totally forgot. I did do them all: bargaining, denial, anger, sadness. The stages can definitely be used to describe a lot of the changes I went through on my long healing journey. Acceptance is an awesome place to arrive at because I haven't had to force myself to confront anything too difficult, it was like the me that could surface once all the trauma was scraped away. It feels familiar and comforting. I know it will be a challenge to overcome my victim identity from this point forward. This is still the best Christmas gift I have ever received. The year I got a lump of coal from my family turned out to be the year I got....I don't really even know. Maybe now that I'm not swimming against the tide of my own anger....I really can't describe it. The conscious choice I made, abruptly, to stop suffering, to stop caring about a few false accusations and just move on forever. There is such a difference when you're ready and it feels like something you need rather than something you are forcing yourself to do.

[meoww]

The other day, I noticed that I was able to go out, interact with people I didn't know well, and not feel like I was playing a role and that once they found out who I really was they wouldn't like me anymore. I didn't feel like I was anticipating rejection, and even if it had happened, I wouldn't have taken it to mean I'm fundamentally not worth anything. In certain situations, especially with new people, I'm not as outgoing as I think I could be, but I just didn't care. I wasn't all anxious to make everything perfect the first time around. I didn't feel like I was going to panic inside. I didn't force myself to try to put on a persona that didn't fit me or try to copy someone else I knew to get by.

 

And this is another thing:

Without my passive, personal, self-destructive, deep anger, I'm not sure who I am, to be honest. It's really sad how hard I fought not to internalize the verbal abuse, when it was wearing me down to the point that I was just a shell. Now i'm just a shell, which sucks, but it's better than having what I thought was a forcefield of anger and indignation protecting me.

 

The worst feeling I used to constantly feel was this:

 

That I was just like, wrong somehow. Like when you drink a glass of milk expecting it to be water and you get that weird indescribable sensation. I felt like so uncomfortable sometimes I was freaking out, even when I didn't realize it. I wouldn't let anyone get really close me, unless I was dating them.

[meoww]

I think I didn't notice how bad it was because I had a lot of acquaintances. Not to mention, I don't know almost anyone who has truly strong and accepting friendships. It's funny that I ever felt so unlovable when almost everyone is isolated and lacks a support system when it comes down to getting real. Not such a personal thing. I wonder why I felt such feelings of unworthiness and most of all shame. It all comes down to shame. The crazy thing is, there really are a few people out there who will tell you that all the paranoid and imsecure things you think about yourself and everything else are true, in a way...

 

It comes down to being able to create a very surface illusion of stability that I managed to fool myself just enough to survive and not face my fears but still layer more and more trauma by keeping myself down and unhappy.

 

It must have been really hard for me lol. I can't imagine walking into a party with that mindset.

[meoww]

I just imagine myself walking into parties, full of people I had met so many times before, yet somehow just not feeling whole unless my boyfriend or at least one person I was comfortable with was by my side. How could I have ever been so broken and not whole? How could I have tolerated that for any prolonged period of time? It would just be pure agony...I felt like that when I traveled to _______, and hung out with her circle of friends for the first time. I felt like that in _______ when I met ______ friends too.

 

I remember a good friend of mine also had this problem but more acutely, in high school. We somehow always felt like we could only just tag along. We always had each other when our other best friend was off being more social than us at these things. In that way, even if it was a friendship of convenience or mutual weakness or sickness, at least I have had real intimacy.

 

Which reminds me of when I first got to ___________, how he and his friends would get into certain parties but not really talk to anybody there in a meaningful or comfortable way. So then he projected his feelings of not fitting in onto me, the total newcomer, yet again.

 

So i wonder how I can change that feeling within myself. I can't just magically think myself out of it. I have to improve myself somehow. It doesn't matter that I'm not shy, and that I'm outgoing and friendly if I'm just lame...

[meoww]

Lost my post. I don't want to write it all out again. Since I was a child, I've seemed to lack the ability to compartmentalize effectively, I think blocking out the abuse made me block out everything painful, even when it's necessary for your personal growth and maturity. Being belittled, devalued and hurt at home caused me to permanently shut down when it came to rejection, when I became a teenager and started to develop the need for dreams, and an individual future. So I developed a false self, that wasn't really invested in the outcome of my decisions, since I wasn't really making any conscious decisions anymore, and obviously, in the long term thats terrible. No one wonder everything about me was fake.

 

I couldn't even think about me, as me, and start to figure out how to develop myself when doing so required that I get underneath the distortions and negativity that my parents burdened me with. I didn't want to remove the blockage, to get there, only to realize, well, there isn't a whole lot to work with. Just a blank, mediocre canvas of dubious quality.

The more time passed, the more I didn't want to know what a mess was under there.

 

It makes sense, in an emergency, you have to be aware of all possible dangers and threats. So I didn't really have downtime to not be overstimulated all the time.

[meoww]

Ok seriously wow i am really starting to remember. I seriously like had selective amnesia for a lot of different reasons. I thought i would never get it back but i guess they were still in my brain somewhere. I wonder if more will come back as i heal more and more

 

things from even 10 years ago, like watching movies at my friends guest house that i totally forgot existed. The way the light from the tv fell in the dark room, the way the sheets felt between my fingers, the warmth in the home, the big glass windows and evergreens, smooth wood floors, the late night laughter

 

Like an exs eyelashes, the shape of his eyelids, the pores on his nose, the pimples on his back, his hands, the shape of his calves, his leg hairs, his feet. His armpit hair, the way his semen smelled. It was suddenly so vivid!

 

Newer but old, like 4 years ago, exs first business card.

[meoww]

Cooking with a group of friends, a meal of some kind, in her kitchen, with a metal pan. Pantry on the right with some kind of mosiac art plaque thing hung above the door. The tap. The dog in the kitchen.

 

I can't force it to come out I guess but I really feel so hungry for more memories...

 

Fog in the morning, defrosting the car before school for 15 minutes.

The sky is purple at night sometimes in the winter, it doesn't go completely dark.

[meoww]

What the things I've forgotten that important to who i am?

 

Open pale blue robe, in the park, it's raining a little bit. Sex in the ravine with a cyclist whizzing by. I feel totally numb but aware this should be romantic, after all, isn't this my dream? Still feel nothing but the weight of his stomach and slightly thin and cold penis. But I feel like I should be happy.

 

What am i forgetting? Not the memories that flood my head with a weird yearly rhythm of some kind but the ones that i totally forgot about

[meoww]

I guess I can't force it.

 

But one thing I know for sure is that as beautiful as some of my little nuggets are I don't want to live a 'poetic' or raw existence, at all, really. If i have to be like that, i definitely don't want my life to be a tragedy. There are parts im sure that would make a very heartwarming novel or something but thats not what i want at all. I'd rather have my life resemble a one direction documentary if given the choice lol. I've got to step up and stop creating pretty little messes that sometimes turn a little, ugh.

 

That is so going to be a huge goal of mine. It is, becoming clearer and clearer. i know how to narrate tragedies andvnothing else. I feel uncomfortable with anything that has a happy ending or doesn't result in epiphany/major growth of sorts. And i'm never going to feel like one of those casual people inside if I don't stop it.

[meoww]

I change, and eventually I'm confronted with fragments of my old self that remind me that not everything I used to be was terrible or wrong. Even if that's true I can't stand it. The reason I want to change even more is that somehow, I just can't be my new, positive self because my old self overwhelms it even when I let it in just a bit. I think it's triggering for me or something. The worst is when those fragments make me feel disgusted with myself. Those feelings of panic and disgust fade when I stay in my 'new' (not so new anymore) mindset.

 

I have believed healing was about bringing my real self out. All of a suddenly, no longer think that's an answer I'm qualified to give. I do know, however, that being the new me allows me to enjoy life, pursue my goals in a healthy way, and feel joy without that old sense of being totally ungrounded.

[meoww]

Common sense and intuition, for what they are supposed to represent, are such empty, unreliable terms.

 

I'm really scaling back my ambitions when it comes to self improvement lol. Something I should have done a long time ago. Everyone in the world would turn to me and say I told you so....

 

Common sense is welcome relief from my hell of free thinking. I actually feel freer when I don't feel obligated to be 'free.' Then I know I have no ego attachment to any particular paradigm so if I really ever had to stand up for my beliefs I could do it with tact and less fear and anger.

[meoww]

Cycles of creepiness:

 

I used to place a lot of value in suffering, and believe you had to suffer for the truth. That to sacrifice was this overwhelming burden so painful you could barely carry on. Now, I'm just like, what? Why? Another insidious evil implanted by the you know whos...so creeeeeeeeepy

 

So much creepiness:

 

Thinking that I was alone when 99% honestly think in really similar ways, give or take a few standard deviations. If you really believe you are that alone it's just creepy...hard to explain.

 

Like being so naive, not trusting my instincts to the point of putting myself in harm's way with seriously bad consequences, and then believing it was my fault.

 

Believing that emotional/cognitive extremes, and when I say extremes, I can't even describe how extreme it was, were an acceptable way of being inside, tolerating such extremes. Like there are organisms called extremophiles that have adapted to live under extreme conditions and that's what I feel like I had become.

[meoww]

Just so I know in my head:

 

Over-stimulation, having to be constantly aware of an ever present threat/danger= Stockholm syndrome, anxiety etc...

 

Using a computer analogy, abuse is kind of like loading a different operating system into your brain. Brain needs an operating system, but it's hard to hack your brain to allow normal programs to run with this system. Systems and languages, doesn't compute, because it's the whole system that is responsible for cognition, processing, etc...which is good to know because people often can't fathom how even a pattern of abusive behavior can induce trauma eventually.

 

And I guess new connections have to be formed, reinforced and strengthened over time, so you eventually have to build a new operating system because unlike a computer you can't just go out and buy one

[meoww]

Slow escalation, that in the worst cases, leads to death. It's deliberate, systematic, and if it doesn't lead to a physical death can be like a long torture, mutilation and soul murder.

 

Spectrum, or a hazy pyramid

 

Ever elusive happiness and wisdom, to positive people, confident but selfless when necessary, fun loving, risk taking, curious, patient, to normal behavior, following the invisible rules and doing nothing more, nothing less, gatekeepers of judgment, to less and less decency, the covert bullies, the people who create negative environments by not being complimentary when appropriate, not forgiving, the utilizers of straw men arguments, exploiting people's weaknesses, to total debasement.

 

Do people exist on either extreme? Total monsters and 'demi gods' It doesn't seem like it...

[meoww]

Until my journals I never really tried to judge and understand people's behaviors and actions, which is why I, personally, couldn't deal with life's challenges effectively. Everything was a questionable grey haze, because I couldn't just come out and admit to myself that being abused was just wrong. Thinking about that spectrum of good to normal to bad behavior is healthy, otherwise there are no ways of dealing with people who do things that are hard to forgive or understand.

[meoww]

I wish I would have known or been informed that if you can't run on a broken leg, then obviously you can't really think with a broken brain. I'm not really in a place in my life to ponder the really important things in life, because I think you have to be a strong, healthy person to do that. I think one of the most important things for me to personally understand is that I can't acquire much wisdom unless I'm healthy. I can't always be wondering, what if I'm wrong? What if everything I believe is the result of pain and hardship? That's such a waste of a life.

 

Like I said before, I now realize not everything about me needed to be discarded, like on principle or something. But I wanted and felt that I deserved better than to be stunted by my experiences. I thought I should be allowed to say, what if I had been born someone completely different? Then I'd be like, well, I can't completely go off the deep end and make my own rules, that'll drive me crazy eventually and I won't accomplish anything...

And then I got to this place

Where it's like,

 

Well I'm just going to go for it. I'm already half way there. I can get by and mend myself

 

As long as I don't try anything new agey basically. lol really ew.

 

As long as I treat myself as the cripple that I am. I can wheel myself around on my emotional wheelchair for god knows how much longer

 

But I know I just can't run. Sad face.

[meoww]

I have to take it easy:

 

Don't socialize too much or take on more than I can handle

Need to constantly check in with myself so that I'm not interpreting events in negative ways

Need to be very careful about letting my guard down but very careful not to become fake or even standoffish

Need to conform perfectly so that if I ever do pick and chose what to reject I will actually know what I'm rejecting, this is super important

 

Need to definitely make some time for peace and acceptance of myself throughout the day instead being endlessly paranoid of slipping into the darkness again

 

I'm all normaled up and ugh sad, the damage is worse than I thought. I'm like physically disabled...I can't cope with things moving too fast, it's all so complicated and foreign to me. I am disabled...that is a label I need to put on myself so that I don't accidentally hurt myself even with good intentions.