Hello!
I'm not quite sure how to start this but I'm hopeful to find others out there who are or have gone through similar things I'm dealing with.
My abuse story spans my entire childhood from birth to 18 until I could leave. A lot of abuse I'll never know about happened before I was alive or can remember. My father is a very large guy who had a severe alcoholism. He was the tyrant of the household. He also probably has an undiagnosed schizoaffective disorder of some type. He didn't physically abused me much surprisingly but the emotional abuse and neglect was so bad I used to wish he did just so the effects could be seen by someone.
My mother is a narcissist in many ways. While she was also abused, she messed me up in far deeper and more complex ways. She especially had an affinity for me. To the extent of sexually abusing me before I was old enough to remember (the memories aren't there but the effects certainly are). She was heavily codependent on me until about 6-7th grade before I realized who she really was. She acted like she was trying to protect me from my father but also used my fear of him to keep me in line. There's too many other things I could mention but that's the summary.
As of now I have made healing the first priority in my life for about two years. I've managed by some miracle to stay in college and take this as a time to hopefully heal enough to support myself and prevent future homeless. It's been a long cold road.
I was dumped by an ex I was in love with right as I was starting to face what had been done to me. The weight of both at once almost took me out. I'm not longer in that place thankfully but I'm certainly still struggling.
I've always been an extremely introverted person partly because of my nature as a person but also partly because I quickly learned to shut myself down. I tried to not exist growing up. It worked wonders in my abuse honestly. Now I realize this mental illness cannot be only intellectualized in my own head (which has been my healing so far). Part of this is finding community. I was programmed to not seek support and this is a protest against that. I'm looking forward to talking to you guys and hopefully no longer feeling like I'm the only one in the world who not only has a history of trauma but is doing their best to heal. Thanks for reading :)
Hi EVader,
Welcome to the forum :heythere:
I hope you find what you need here.
Sending you support,
dolly
Hello, and welcome. I'm glad you found us.
Hi and a warm welcome to OOTS EVader! :heythere:
So glad you found your way here and I hope that you'll find the community safe and helpful. So much of what you wrote resonated with me, wishing there had been more than emotional abuse so someone would see, the trying not to exist part, and the need to go beyond intellectualizing so you can recover at a deeper level. That's the feeling you get here, that is, we get it. Somehow knowing we're not alone, that we have fellow survivors here and we do belong (if not for the best reasons) starts to permeate. It leads us to knowing it really isn't us, it's what happened to us and together we have a better chance to recover than being alone as we often are.