losing you meant finding myself. watching you move on meant forcing myself to be happy. i loved you more than i understood at the time and in a few ways i still do. but i cant continue to try and find people to fill the void you left in my heart. i cant continue to form unhealthy attachments. i miss you. i want to talk to you. but the you i miss, isn’t there anymore. and the me i was, has changed a million times by now. and that void you left in my heart, no longer resembles you.
You might be suffering the
consequences of long term abuse if:
you feel uncomfortable taking
credit for things you did
you feel uncomfortable being
praised or complimented, and you feel like sudden expectation or blackmail are
coming up afterwards, you need to find intentions behind praise
someone getting mad at you is
absolutely terrifying and you’ll do anything to avoid it
you don’t ever feel it’s safe to
stand up for yourself, you can predict that even if you did that, ultimately
you’d only be punished and hurt even worse, and you can’t risk it
you always analyze every
situation with „am I bothering these people? Is my presence a burden to
everyone?“ even when you’re with friends or at a place where you were invited
you don’t feel like a part of
anything, not your family or your peer group, you worry everyone is going to
figure out that you’re out of line trying to pretend to be a part of their
group and reject you
you worry that you have no value
to anyone and you feel like you need to deserve to be a part of society
you feel inexplicably ashamed of
yourself, there are so many situations you can’t talk about, or even think
about without feeling overwhelming shame
you keep feeling everything bad
that happens is your fault, even for things that aren’t related to you
directly, you feel responsible and like you should have done something to
prevent it
you feel like everything would be
better if only you didn’t exist
you struggled with suicidal
thoughts before (or still struggle with them)
you feel like anyone who hurts
you is justified in doing so and you deserve to be hurt
you’re terrified of being
punished for anything you do, and don’t do, to the point where you paralyze and
can’t do things you’re supposed to do at times, because you can’t tell if it’s
going to end up in you suffering punishment
you don’t feel comfortable being
touched or cuddled, you feel like it makes you weak if you desire it
you don’t feel okay showing big
emotions in front of anyone, you feel your feelings in secret, or not at all
nobody knows just in how much
pain you are. You don’t show it.
you can tell that even if you did
talk to someone about your problems, you’d be accused of exaggerating, asking
for attention, faking it, or being weak for not controlling your emotions
better
you feel like the dream of a good
life, where you’re loved and happy and cherished, is something completely
unrealistic and it feels silly to even imagine it, it’s out of reach for you
If it’s only a few you can relate to, they can be caused by outside factors, but if you relate to almost all of these, it’s likely you’ve been living in a situation that is unbearable for human being without severely affecting their personality and mental health. Abuse can cause all of this, and these are not little things, this is lowered quality of life.
convincing yourself that your trauma isn’t valid is often a coping mechanism to block out what happened. admitting that you were hurt by what happened is scary, but it’s the first step towards recovery
even if it was unintentional, even if they thought they were doing the right thing- you’re still allowed to be angry or upset about how you were mistreated
Every time you go to say “well, it could have been worse,” I want you to stop and remember that it should have never happened at all.
Please don’t invalidate your experiences or yourself. It is okay to feel whatever it is that you feel about it.
The bottom line is that it should not have happened, and you deserved better.
