Trauma and birthdays.
TW: Abuse, ableism, stalking
It's my birthday today. Often this time of year isn't mentally a great time. Not because I'm getting older and this random marker we choose signals that.
But mainly because that was the week when I was very small, that I learned my first proper lesson in life.
It's not stable and there's no such thing as a happy ending. Sometimes your parent's can't protect you. Sometimes they harm you. Sometimes you are collateral damage in your parent's need to make everything about them.
I have a very complex relationship with disability and trauma. People tend to often look at disabled folks and their kids. There's a mixture of pity and “Oh my goodness how brave and strong you are.”
“How on earth can a disabled person have abused you?” I can almost hear you ask. “I bet you abused them” you think.
Or perhaps selfishly abandoned that parent? Well to be fair, that's what that side of the family think. The ones that kept trying to find me for years to bring me back in.
At the age of 18, my disabled relatives primary care giver died. Before I left, I'd had a mixture of fear and love in that household. It took a lot to leave that household, I remember being terrified I would get snatched from safety and be forced to live there again.
Even now decades later I occasionally have nightmares that I'm back living there. That my life stressful as it is now was just a dream.
That fear of that household kept me not visiting. I abandoned a sibling to it. But then that sibling didn't know till years later what was going on. I still feel guilt for that one. Because that sibling also suffered abuse. Years later, my abuser died and weeks before their family kept trying to contact me. I didn't go to the funeral, I didn't need to. I'd quit that family years ago. The toxic positivity, the guilt trips to try and ensure I took the problem of my disabled abuser away from them.
My sibling attended the funeral and ended up very angry, with no sense of closure. Speaking over the phone to my parent after, we both considered that idea of closure. It was never going to be possible. So many of us had been abused in there. Including the dead caregiver, who'd been used to put fear into us. At the time hearing that experience, I couldn't stop laughing. I felt for my sibling, but I'd been a shield. When I left that shield was gone. When we both were free, we took out our trauma on our loved one.
I'm mostly free. I remember crying at the time, but it wasn't mourning. It was angry. It was mourning for my safety. That had never existed. It was all the outpouring because I was finally free.
My sibling still doesn't carry my number on the phone. To protect me from that side of the family, who stalked my father to demand where I lived. Who phoned up an elderly aunt who had the same initial as me. Who then tried to pump that aunt for information. At the funeral they tried to work out if I was in Germany or Canada.
So I find it jarring, when I see a mixture of abuse couched in positive language. One minute crowing over a victory. The next minute telling you to seek help for your shitty mindset. Feeling the need to virtually punch others, so you feel better.
Perhaps for you it's brilliant, you made your point. You stood your ground. You vented your anger and now it's all roses. Meantime the rest of us stand in your wake, jarred, fearful. Traumatised.
It's still surprising to me 35 years later that I can still be triggered. But then childhood trauma doesn't leave. It's at that point when I see that behaviour being done to others. To make them fear you, because to you, they don't matter. I'm sad, angry and really traumatised by it.
It's as others have pointed out. There's such a thing a maliciously playing my the rules, exploiting them for your benefit. Performative goodness, while getting away with harming others.
Well done. You objectified them, by making them the enemy. slow clap
It jars me everytime, that I see that sort of thing. Everytime.