As you may have seen from Sunday, I am using the book “All are Free to Write” by Sheila Allee to help me to feel inspired and to write. The second prompt was about discussing trauma that you have gone through. I made a list of 5 traumatic experiences from my life or general trauma areas that have occurred within the scope of my life. I have also stated that I am going to be very honest during this week and these posts. This means that these posts may come together on the same day depending on how I am feeling writing about the trauma or they may come later on in the day depending how I am feeling.
The first trauma area I am going to discuss is:
Physical Abuse
For years, I felt lucky. Privileged in some regards because physical abuse was the area that I got the least of growing up. I was raised by my grandmother, as I have mentioned I believe previously. I was lucky because she thought of me as the good one for numerous years. She had a phrase that if everyone acted more like me she would have no issues. She, however, slapped, hit, and was physically abusive often to the other three children in the house. I lived in this environment for so many years that I thought it was normal. I thought it was how all people existed in the world. It wasn’t until I gained access to the internet and started talking to others that I started getting from them that the way she treated us was not normal. I remember seeing her hitting the other three kids so often that it is strange to think back on now that this was the life that I led growing up. I still feel lucky because I do not remember any time that she honestly slapped me in the same way.
My roommate had to tell me recently that some things that I still think are normal are not. I was talking about how one time I was going into hysterics and to calm me down my grandmother slapped my face. He said that this was not normal, but to me because I lived in it for so long it felt normal. It didn’t bother me in the same way that him hearing it bothered him. When you live in a trauma situation, sometimes you just get used to it and instead you learn to survive in it. This sometimes is called going into “survival mode” which I realize that I had went into for a large chunk of my life.
This “survival” mode led me to horrible relationships, some that had physical abuse within them. The two that I immediately think about was an ex named Mikey. He and I would argue a lot. He would become physically abusive and hit me. The weird thing for me was that many people thought I was abusing him because he would tell them that I was, even though it was the other way around. I never corrected these individuals because it just wasn’t worth it to me. They were not going to believe me for anything and they had already formed their opinion of me. I can remember one time that I went to hug him and he grabbed my arm and bit into it. I can remember that day I lost a bit of myself because it all started to be a bit much. I left the area shortly after this, but for some reason I kept this individual in my life. I couldn’t break free, which I attribute this to the syndrome of not always being able to escape your abuser because you love them or don’t want to be alone. I learned from this, it is sometimes better to be alone in life. This way you can survive and exist as a functional human being on the planet. There will be more about this individual in some of the other postings this week, so I will divert away from him for now.
Another partner I can remember trying to get him to calm down. He threw me into a door knob. He was on substances though, so this will come back up later. I have had a friend that was physically abusive as well, using intimidation and force to come at me to get what they wanted. We lived together for a bit, but we realized that when we lived together we both became violent almost to each other. It became a toxic relationship/friendship. We are still friends today, but we regulate this so much better than we did during this period of our lives.
Physical abuse though is the area that I least identify with when I think about the abuse history that I have had in the past. It is the one that becomes the easiest to talk about because I had it, but it was so much less. This isn’t a comparison either, it is just that I can look at my traumas and state this is the one that was the least impactful in my overall life. It doesn’t bother me that much any more. Scars healed. They went away and my memories of a large chunk of the physical abuse faded, but the other ones still play in my head. I still think of the others. Physical abuse though, it has largely left my brain and I am thankful for that for me.
There are days that I think about some of the physical abuse that I received and I do become upset, but those days are few and far between. I allow myself to feel those emotions though now and move on from them. I find that this is one of the healthiest ways to keep moving forward from trauma. Feel what you are feeling, but don’t live in it. Move on and figure out how to thrive. It isn’t an easy process. It is a struggle every day, but if you work at it. If you utilize skills to try to push away the demons of the past, it helps. Healing takes work, but it is worth it when you start that journey. It may feel like a hard, rough journey, but it is one that is important.
When I wrote this and hit publish, I realized that my brain was leaving out something related to physical abuse. It took a moment to recognize that this was a form of physical abuse as well. I can recall my grandmother throwing things at us children. This included me. When she got mad she would throw things at us. I remember an Elvis Presley statue that was actually a cologne bottle that we had to dust all the time and one day I didn’t do it to her specifications and she threw it at me. I remember her throwing things at us frequently. It was not every single day, but it was enough that I recall that she did it. She became upset and violent so often that I had to learn how to exist in this environment. I had to learn what she enjoyed to stop her from hurting me. I pushed this away from myself to not think about it. I still feel, however, that physical abuse was not the worst area for me. In terms of grandmother there was still a worse area. There was still an area that I feel impacted my overall life much more significantly that I will discuss in a few days. I may add to this whenever something related to this topic comes up in my head, since I realized this information after the fact and my brain sometimes does this thing of trying to keep information away from me, but often I am able to overcome it. When I remember I will put it at the end of the post, so that it is a more collected overall version of the area.
I remembered several days later that the boy I was raised with at times, not frequently, was physically abusive as well towards me. He would start arguments and then he would start a fight with me. He would hit me and punch me. I recall this occurring several times growing up. I remember one time was when an aunt was in the house to help take care of Granny. She yelled at us about how we shouldn’t be fighting when she was so sick. I recall this so vividly because I recall wanting to yell at her because I wanted to get across to her what was happening, how I was hit by him. I feel like I was expected to always just sit there and take abuse. Another time he started a fight at the bus stop. We got pulled into the office because the vice principal drove by right then. I broke down in her office. I couldn’t take it any more. I didn’t let it be known what was going on though. I said that I was being bullied, but I should have stated that there was so much trauma at that point of my life I could no longer manage my emotions. I could no longer deal with everything that was happening all the time all around me. A piece of me left my soul that day, I believe. The part that believed I could be protected in the world and I entered into full on survival mode.
HOW I FEEL AFTER: Man, this has been harder than I thought it would be. Things keep coming back in weird places. It feels weird to put it out there and be a bit more honest about what occurred in my life. I know in my heart I am not doing this for attention, but to show we can survive things and still get to thriving places. I am a survivor and I see that, but man thinking about these things is like being in a car accident or something. I feel very jarred around.
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