I Have Had A Very Traumatic Life
I Have Lived Through Trauma... I recently had someone tell me that they feel the way that I have dealt with things in my life "was to not deal with them at all, but keep moving forward". This has stuck in my mind.
I grew up watching my parents fight and throw dishes at each other, and my father at one point threaten to kill himself with a knife in front of my mother and I. My father and I always interacted more like siblings than parent, child. We would argue about anything and everything to no end, and my mother would mediate and extinguish these "fires". My mother got sick with cancer and was unable to mediate anymore and my father became physically abusive. I watched my mother die of cancer over the course of a year and a half while I became used to being physically abused by my father. She died when I was 13. To this day I don't think I ever properly grieved her death.
My father isolated me from my mother's family for three years during which time he continued to physically abuse me then let a friend live at our house whom he bailed out of jail while he was on house arrest. He didn't know at the time, but that friend began to sexually abuse me.....it finally got to the point I couldn't take anymore and began to tell authority figures.
I was put into foster care straight from my high school when I was 16. I had emotional problems, I had undiagnosed mental health problems, I had problems with authority figures and I had no trust in people. When I tried to ""reunify" with my father, it was short lived because he couldn't handle it and left me to live in a house by myself. With no food (I ate at school and my fast food job), no working toilet (I walked to the gas station's), no phone or company (except bugs), and no money (except the money I made). I got help and back into foster care. I moved 8 times while in foster care until I aged out of the system.
I got married to my high school sweetheart who had been the immediate family I had for the longest time. And now I'm on the road to divorce and moved out because he too became physically abusive. After the second time he strangled me I left because I knew I had to. I am still trying to come to terms with the fact that it's over, and it needs to be over.
To anyone who read to this point, thank you for listening. And THIS is how I have lived through trauma.....not because I wallowed in self pity and turned to unhealthy things but because I pushed through and continued trekking. Now the time has come that I need to look back on my life and process and deal with my trauma and learn from what I can in order to move forward a happier person...that is the hard part.
I grew up watching my parents fight and throw dishes at each other, and my father at one point threaten to kill himself with a knife in front of my mother and I. My father and I always interacted more like siblings than parent, child. We would argue about anything and everything to no end, and my mother would mediate and extinguish these "fires". My mother got sick with cancer and was unable to mediate anymore and my father became physically abusive. I watched my mother die of cancer over the course of a year and a half while I became used to being physically abused by my father. She died when I was 13. To this day I don't think I ever properly grieved her death.
My father isolated me from my mother's family for three years during which time he continued to physically abuse me then let a friend live at our house whom he bailed out of jail while he was on house arrest. He didn't know at the time, but that friend began to sexually abuse me.....it finally got to the point I couldn't take anymore and began to tell authority figures.
I was put into foster care straight from my high school when I was 16. I had emotional problems, I had undiagnosed mental health problems, I had problems with authority figures and I had no trust in people. When I tried to ""reunify" with my father, it was short lived because he couldn't handle it and left me to live in a house by myself. With no food (I ate at school and my fast food job), no working toilet (I walked to the gas station's), no phone or company (except bugs), and no money (except the money I made). I got help and back into foster care. I moved 8 times while in foster care until I aged out of the system.
I got married to my high school sweetheart who had been the immediate family I had for the longest time. And now I'm on the road to divorce and moved out because he too became physically abusive. After the second time he strangled me I left because I knew I had to. I am still trying to come to terms with the fact that it's over, and it needs to be over.
To anyone who read to this point, thank you for listening. And THIS is how I have lived through trauma.....not because I wallowed in self pity and turned to unhealthy things but because I pushed through and continued trekking. Now the time has come that I need to look back on my life and process and deal with my trauma and learn from what I can in order to move forward a happier person...that is the hard part.
31-35, F
