Enoughdonegone - It's Not Fine.

I was off for a few months owing to covid. It was the first time I have taken an extended breath since I was a teenager.

It gave the trauma time to catch up to me. I feel it all. I am so damn tired.

I wonder how I would handle the normal day to day stress of life he hadn't been manipulating me to distrust and hate myself in the formative years of my early adulthood.

Most people learn coping skills during those years; they figure out how to 'get on with it' in the face of challenges.

I don't have coping skills except for avoidance. Distraction. Or I sweat and visualize all the ways I'm going to screw this up or not have the skills to be successful.

I am defeated before I begin.

Was I always like this?

I am organizing and shredding paperwork today. It's an insurmountable task and it makes me sick to my stomach. It's the only chore that gives me irrefutable proof of failures and horrible memories.

I have found so many things with both of our names on it still. Every time I think I've got it all, I find another stash.

Abusive parents will keep you feeling like you always have to fight to prove yourself. Any single thing you do can become a proof that you’re worthless and be an excuse for humiliation and baseless attacks, even if you do it perfectly, they will go on and nitpick and go against reason to find something wrong with it.

Another tactics they like to use is moving goalposts, meaning they will berate you saying you’ll never be able to achieve something, and once you do, well then it doesn’t matter anymore! Suddenly this thing you were supposed to be too stupid to achieve is a minor and perfectly achiveable goalpost and you’re forced to feel bad you didn’t achieve some other thing! You get nastily compared to someone else who had nothing to do with it, and you’re left feeling as if all that effort you put in to prove your worth, was for nothing, because it’s meaningless now. Also, as soon as you prove one thing they were wrong about you, they will find 10 other things you have to prove, right there on the spot. It doesn’t matter if you did something good yesterday, can you do it right this second? Can you prove you’re not going to fail something else in next 5 years? You can’t. Nobody can. It’s not a game of determination of your worth, it’s a game of diverting from your srengths, diverting from your accomplishments and pushing you into seeing nothing but flaws and weaknesses in yourself, and imaginary ones at that. No person on earth can live proving themselves every second of their lives, it’s inhumane to demand it. Nobody deserves to be attacked over their worth by their very loved ones, who are supposed to value you no matter what you are, or aren’t capable of achieving.

They do this to keep you in the constant loop of feeling desperate, incapable, not good enough for anything, and thus never realizing you’re in fact, smarter, more sane, and more decent human being than they will ever be. They wouldn’t be doing this if your achivements and abilities weren’t a threat to them, if it didn’t bug them so much that you can do things better, more efficient and with more common sense they could ever hope to gather. They’re watching you thru eyes of jealousy and desire to destroy your capability – even if they have to traumatize you to do it. Nobody should be forced to see themselves thru their eyes. Even they know they’re lying when they’re acting like they couldn’t be less impressed with you.

My Own Worst Enemy

Every day some part of me wishes I could go back in a time machine or something.  Not just to the day that I met him, but long before that - maybe to the age of 8 or 9.

If I changed some decisions, maybe my self worth would have been healthy when I met him. Maybe his smooth-talking wouldn’t have hooked and dragged me in.  Maybe I would have felt like I deserved more that a boy who told me I was pretty but made me feel unbalanced all the time. 

Perhaps then I’d be sitting here working confidently and not steeping in self doubt.