7:39 p.m. - 2014-03-26
problems
I think the most damaging aspect of growing up in an abusive family isn't the violence -- it's the fact that no one stopped it.
If no one steps in, it means that what's going on is OK with them. It was OK with my mom, my aunt, my grandmother, my school nurse, my doctor and the cops, that my dad beat me up. They all knew -- or in the case of the doctor and the school nurse, should have known, since I had classic signs of child abuse.
Nobody thought it was worth it to stop it.
Nobody thought I was worth it.
I think it's left me with the feeling that other people see me as a piece of garbage. You rescue a cute kitten from being run over by a car, but you don't rescue a piece of garbage.
It's not worth your effort. Trash doesn't matter.
It's hard for me to be emotionally intimate with people when I feel like I'm no one of value to them. It's hard for me to love people and show it when I expect my love to be thrown away. It's hard for me to ask for anything from anyone because I don't feel like I deserve anything, even a hug.
I know that people can heal from "childhood trauma," but I don't see myself as worth the time and effort and money that could be better spent on someone else. I don't even feel like I have the right to feel hurt or sad or scared, then or now.
I've been diagnosed numerous times with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but that just makes me feel like a whiner. So my dad choked me and dragged me around by my hair a few times; so what. I wasn't permanently injured, except my back which is still fucked up. It's not like I was in Vietnam.
I've never been able to fix me for me, but I know I need to fix me for A and my kids. I'm never fully present, because half my brain is constantly mulling self-mutilation, starvation and suicide. I can't have sex and be present in my body, because I dissociate. I am never happy to be alive.
How can you be a good spouse or parent when you just want to die, all the time?
I talked to A about it a little bit last night -- that I think shit that happened 25 years ago still affects me now, as pathetic as that is. I told her that the fact that I don't cry isn't because I don't feel awful; it's because I CAN'T cry. I think I feel better just knowing someone else knows that. It makes me feel like less of a fake and less alone -- a tiny bit.
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