Exorcising Those Demons, Trigger Warning: Abuse

Once again, I find myself in a triggered state… where all I can do is feel lousy. It’s not something I can do much about. I was triggered, now I need to work my way out of it. Of course this isn’t going to be short work, because it never is. This is about working through years of abuse. And in this case, other related feelings that aren’t directly about the abuse.

So, what am I dealing with this time?

Well… I’m dealing with the feeling of how alone I was feeling during the abuse. I’m dealing with feeling that I was never important enough to have anyone help me. I had to fight against it by myself. This is harder because this deals with a lot of feelings of abandonment and neglect. It’s not an easy path to figure out.

When I was triggered on Sunday, all I could think about was that no one really wanted to help me out of the abuse. Granted, yes, I know that the abused needs to want to get out of it on their own. They’ll never leave if they don’t want to. They’ll find excuses to stay there, even if they know it’s not good for them. In my case, I didn’t have that luxury. I was abused as a child first. It’s harder to leave, even if you desperately wanted out. I couldn’t be emancipated, because I had no way to support myself. I was stuck in places where I was beaten up, either physically or emotionally. When your whole life has pretty much been full of abuse, it’s hard to realize that isn’t normal. This is a lot like feeling sick after eating my whole life. I didn’t know it wasn’t normal because that’s the only thing I ever knew.

Granted, at some point, I realized that I was constantly not happy. It wasn’t working for me. I couldn’t keep consistently feeling miserable. How is that good for me? If I kept this up, I wasn’t going to live for long. Being unhappy didn’t suit me well and decided that I wanted out.

There was never really anyone there who was supportive of this with me. This is something I had to do by myself.

Then there was the abuse when I was a child. There was no one who would fight for me. I would take the beating, regardless of whether I deserved it. I was often beaten for things I didn’t do. I watched my mom watch me being beaten for something I didn’t do. I would take beatings for other people. I became a literal whipping boy…. But not really a boy.

That’s the hard thing… when you realize that not really anyone in your own family will advocate for you. So, I was beaten with fists and wire hangers, I had my mouth duck taped shut. I was forced to sleep on a drafty floor when I had the flu. No one helped. No one did anything.

This is a reality that I *need* to live with. That I never had help. It might be why I’m not always comfortable accepting other people’s help. I never had it. I don’t know how to accept it. I’m getting better with it. I’m starting to accept help. For so many years, I never had it. I had to help myself, even when I was 7-years-old.

That kind of thing can warp your world view.

That’s one thing this latest triggering has taught me… I can ask for help now. I can ask people to just be there for me as I try to work through all the stuff I had to fight against as a kid. This isn’t something I’m used to. It is something that I’m working on getting used to.

This last triggering has taught me some things. It has taught me that I’m no longer alone. That there are people who are there for me and can help me. I need to figure out how better to get the help I need now, but I do love knowing that there are people who are there to listen, there are shoulders to cry on. For those people I am truly grateful.