New-ish

[HannahOne]

Hello!
I've been on the forum for a few months reading. Just made a few comments today so decided I should introduce myself. Not sure I'm doing it correctly, we'll see how it posts.

I'm so grateful to find this place. I have become very isolated in the last five years, partly due to the pandemic and life circumstances but also because many of my relationships couldn't sustain the "real me," the me I became through twenty years of therapy. Many of my relationships were built on old patterns of caretaking, people-pleasing, or hiding myself/pretending to be someone to whom my past did not happen: neglect and emotional, physical, sexual abuse. So I've been very much alone with just my nuclear family, of whom I am the caretaker.

I haven't ever really been "out" about my difficult childhood. I built my escape myself, first in my family to go to college, went 500 miles away and never looked back, tried to invent myself from scratch and fit in with "normal" people who didn't have my experiences. It worked for what it worked for, I got out, I have a stable life, many successes and adventures, and did not for the most part recreate my childhood with my current family. I grew, healed, became pretty functional. It also didn't work, because...I was not entirely present in my own life, because I was disowning my past. Just functioning wasn't very satisfying, and then my functioning decreased as I began to have more emotional flashbacks. I hit a wall around age 40 where I could no longer pretend to be someone to whom my childhood had not happened. And no longer wanted to.

So here is the place I'm trying out being myself, all of me, the one to whom all of it happened and the one who got out and lived as if it didn't.

So far I'm finding it liberating and deeply satisfying to just say how it is for me without editing out the context of having been an abused child---a context which makes all the difference for me. More wonderfully, I'm finding it essential to hear how it is for others. I find so much in common with each post, things I never said outside a therapy office, or never dared to take delivery of in my own experience. 

Thanks everyone for being here.

[SenseOrgan]

Welcome here. Welcome HannahOne!

Tears are running down my face reading your words. You made it. To here. You are welcome to stay. You are welcome.

[Chart]

Welcome HannahOne, I find this Forum is a crazy-house of mirrors. Everywhere I roam here I find reflections of my own experience. It is troubling and comforting all at the same time. But the "alone-ness" has disappeared for me. It took awhile to get used to it, but it sure is nice now. I'm sorry to hear your history, but so very glad you are with us here.
Sending hugs if that's okay, chart
 

[NarcKiddo]

Welcome. I'm glad you found us. Much of what you say resonates with me, especially how you dealt with your past. I find it interesting to read how many people seem to start hitting that wall in their 40s.

[Marcine]

Hi HannahOne,
Welcome! It really is incredible, isn't it, to have the experience of "trying out being myself, all of me, the one to whom all of it happened and the one who got out and lived as if it didn't."

[HannahOne]

Hi HannahOne,
Welcome! It really is incredible, isn't it, to have the experience of "trying out being myself, all of me, the one to whom all of it happened and the one who got out and lived as if it didn't."

Yes it's quite a new experience! It feels like starting over brand new, while also finally arriving after a long journey   

[HannahOne]

Welcome. I'm glad you found us. Much of what you say resonates with me, especially how you dealt with your past. I find it interesting to read how many people seem to start hitting that wall in their 40s.

I'm not sure if I'm replying correctly to each person. But yes, it is interesting it happens in the 40s. I'm 50 now and still working my way around/through the wall.... people would say to me ten years ago "it's a midlife crisis" and yes, but....also no. The life review and revising process is different when you were an abused child. It's more complex. For one, like many of us describe, I don't feel I have a "self" to go "back" to, my original self had to grow in response to trauma. So "finding myself" is more complicated.  For two, I ended up a divided self, at minimum divided in two, a self to whom it happened, and a self to whom it didn't happen. It's more complicated to navigate midlife when all these different parts of me have their own experiences, opinions, needs, traumas, dreams. And three, I don't have the resilience of a person who was not an abused child. At forty I started getting all kinds of sick, autoimmune, inflammation, old injuries flaring up, several pain syndromes. I don't have the body I would have had. and that's continuing now. I don't have as much money as I would have if I hadn't been an abused child. I don't have the family support I would have had.... so it's just more complicated to navigate a midlife reset, because there's all these problems that continue from the past, and also the grief of all of that.

I find myself at 50 spending less time thinking about the parallel universe in which things were different, which is a kind of relief. My life makes more sense when I don't leave out the first 18 years! 

[HannahOne]

Welcome HannahOne, I find this Forum is a crazy-house of mirrors. Everywhere I roam here I find reflections of my own experience. It is troubling and comforting all at the same time. But the "alone-ness" has disappeared for me. It took awhile to get used to it, but it sure is nice now. I'm sorry to hear your history, but so very glad you are with us here.
Sending hugs if that's okay, chart
 

Hi Chart! I love that image, it is a crazy house of mirrors! That's something I really needed as an abused child: mirroring. And the mirrors I had were totally distorted, or non-reflective like Teflon. I'm so glad to hear that you've found "not alone-ness" and find it nice. I am a little scared, to be honest, but it's something I want. I would to figure out how to be fully present and connected to other people at the same time and I have felt it happening lately through the forum. Thank you for commenting! 

[HannahOne]

Welcome here. Welcome HannahOne!

Tears are running down my face reading your words. You made it. To here. You are welcome to stay. You are welcome.

Thank you so much SenseOrgan! I did make it    That's important to notice. I feel like I've been running my whole life, to get far enough away from *there*, constantly thinking, "is this far enough? Is this far enough?" And at some point around age 40 I started realizing that what I needed wasn't so much to be away from *there* as to get *here*. I wasn't sure where *here* was, but I think I know where it is now, and it's a whole new world! I'm so glad you're here too!

[Kizzie]

Hi and a very warm welcome to Out of the Storm Hannah    I'm so glad you decided to post and that it feels helpful to do so. I echo what Chart wrote about the aloneness disappearing or at least for many of us, decreasing once we realize so much of what we feel is common for others who have experienced abuse/neglect. I find it makes it more about what happened to us and less about us as being defective, weak or whatever negative things we come up with about ourselves.

I hope being here continues to help!

Kizzie

[Gromit]

  Hello HannahOne,

I too seemed to find out and connect the dots at about the 40 age. I had already, 'escaped' and tried all kinds of 'help'. I am 53, maybe it was just that the resources were suddenly out there, online, around 10/15 years ago?

I too tried not to recreate my childhood with my family, but it is a struggle to know what is good enough with only a blueprint of what you do not want.

I am glad you are here.

Gromit