I Know I Was Treated Wrongly. Hell, Every Trait About Me Is A Product Of Abuse. The Way I Cry When I

“But I must admit I miss you terribly. The world is too quiet without you nearby.”

— Lemony Snicket

““I love you, but you just make me so sad.” She whispered quietly enough to not wake him. “And I so badly want to go back to the way things were, but every time I look at you now I feel little edges of my heart cracking apart.” She kisses his chest with the next words, “I love you, but I have to love myself now.””

—

“Guilt is pointless, and is not the same as regret. Regret is the feeling that tells us we are sorry for what we did and do not wish to do it again. Guilt is the feeling that indicts us for it, and never lets us redeem ourselves no matter what we do. Regret is empowering, guilt is paralyzing. Fear is pointless, and it is not the same as caution. Caution is the feeling that tells us we would benefit from looking both ways before stepping off the curb. Fear is the feeling that won’t let us step off the curb at all. Caution is empowering, fear is paralyzing.”

— Neale Donald Walsch 

the most horrifying thing to hear as a person who has suffered abuse from their parents, is when people say that you resemble one of them.

i hate looking in the mirror and seeing my dads facial features. so much that i am saving up for plastic surgery, because i can only be beautiful, once people see no resemblance between my abuser and me.

“I want laughter at 4am and sloppy kisses between dinner dates and hands fumbling underneath the blanket because god knows there is never a minute i can go without touching you and i want silly jokes and awkward handshakes and quiet “i love you’s” over the phone and dancing a lot of dancing i want to dance with you in an aisle at the supermarket as we both try to come up with which taco shells are betterand i want to dance with you on the night we both say i do i want to hold your hand in front of my friends and kiss your cheek when my mother asks me why i am so god damn happy all the time and i want you now,and for as long as forever with you can take me.”

— A.M// i want you always,

“It’s like when you read a novel and you’re so captivated by it that you don’t even realize you’re approaching the end of it until there are no more pages to turn. You’re left with this dreadful emptiness and aren’t quite sure what to do with yourself because while the book is finished, the story is living on inside of you.”

— This is what breaking up feels like - Jess Amelia 

If you’re living in an abusive environment, and you often doubt your own memories and wonder if it’s really that bad or if you’re overreacting, here’s a few things you can do:

Write down what your abusers are telling you in the time of abuse. It can be easy to disregard it at the time it’s happening, but once you write it down, you can read it later and only then see how actually horrid and disgusting these words are. Whenever you doubt yourself, read these words. No loving parent or partner would say words like that, no matter what kind of angry they are. If you write in the dates too, these writings will also serve as a proof, if at any time you decide to take legal action against them.

Check the double standards – would you be able to get away with acting toward the abuser the same way they’re acting towards you? Would you be safe doing any of the things abusers are doing to you? For instance, if they threaten you, or pick apart your appearance, insult and humiliate you, destroy your confidence, ruin your plans and goals constantly, invade your boundaries, act like you don’t have feelings or imply you’re worthless and a burden – could you ever do any of that back, safely? If the answer is no, then all of their aggressions, even ones they mask as ‘jokes’ and 'well intentioned’ are based on a power imbalance. They’re punching you down because they know you can’t defend yourself. That’s abuse.

Ask yourself, would I ever do that to someone. For every and each of their abusive actions, imagine yourself, with your own future kids, or a partner if it’s the abusive relationship, and ask yourself if you would ever do any of that to a loved one, anyone. How would that person feel. Once you put yourself in their own shoes, and imagine someone else suffering at your hand, it becomes clear their excuses are worthless, a decent human being would never do what they did, no matter the circumstances.

Only abusive people will ever try to tell you that you’re lucky it isn’t worse. Only abusive people will demand you to be grateful, or compare themselves to someone worse to prove how bad it could have been. What you can do is keep having healthy references to what a non-abusive environment looks like. If it’s your home, you should feel safe and loved in there. If it’s a relationship, you should be completely equal, never diminished or told you’re less than. If these people are nowhere near making you feel safe and loved, and insist on you being less competent, stupid, unworthy, deserving of pain – ask yourself what the heck is wrong with them. Even if by some insanity you could possibly be stupider or less competent, a loving person would never ever feel a need to say that to you to your face, they would see what is good in you, and point that out, over and over.

If your doubt in yourself is based on this person treating you badly, while they treat everyone else good, know that normal people treat their loved ones, their family, with more warmth, more allowances, more softness and forgiveness than their collegues, neighbours, outsiders, bosses or strangers. If this abuser chose the most vulnerable person, the one who relies on them the most, to abuse, something is wrong with them. They’re obviously capable of being polite and respectful – as they let on by treating others better, so why don’t they utilize their skill with someone who truly cares about them? Because at heart, they’re just an abuser. Playing nice with others is only to build a reputation that helps them discredit victims. Problem is not within you, but a monster who treats the people they supposedly love, worst than enemies. They’re incapable of love. You were lovable all along.

“I’m trying really hard to be this person that has her shit together, that has some form of fucking control over anything that has to do with my life. I’m trying really hard not to be so god damn fucking angry at everything. At the world, at myself, at people in my life. I’m trying to mask it all with some point or validation or giving it a mean by saying “this has to happen for a reason. It had to.” But maybe that’s just it, that’s what’s driving me crazy. Maybe there is no reason why bad things happen or good things happen. Maybe there is no reason and it’s just that, a thing that happened. It’s just the universe being cruel and the universe giving you a break once in a while because if we’re being honest there is ALWAYS something. There will always be a time in your life where it feels like bricks are sitting on your chest and there will always be a time after the bricks when the light peaks through one small crack and you have that moment where you don’t feel like you’re drowning and you think “This is it, this is where things get better. This is where I get better.” And it’s true you do get better. You get better every time, but there will never not be a time when there isn’t bricks sitting on your chest and that is what is so goddamn heartbreaking to me. We are born and we suffer and we live and we are happy and sad and everything in between and then we just die. Our bodies go into the ground or get spread out somewhere that was once meaningful to you if your family or friends know you, if you’re lucky. If you’re lucky you might also find love. I’m trying, I’m really trying to find the goddamn crack in the pile of bricks but fuck. What’s the point? What is the god damn point.”

— Wednesday, March 25th, 2020 11:33 pm

“He’s just a beautiful boy with a beautiful soul. And I love him.”

—

“I’ve come to the realization that our relationship failed not because I didn’t love you, but because I didn’t love myself.”

— m.g.