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your post TheBigBlue

Welcome to the forum, Dochartaigh. I´m so sorry for everything you went through. You were a precious child and deserved to be loved. The thought of our parents´ mistreatment breaks my heart. It´s something I know too well, unfortunately. I hope you can find all the support and validation you need here. I´m glad you found us. 

Twenty years ago, as a kid, I wrote you a letter out of desperation and immense pain. In that letter, which I never gave to you but kept it till this day, I asked you a question and tried to answer it for myself. The question was: why don´t you love me? I kept asking in the letter if I did something wrong and if you were ever going to love me. Now, as an adult, with a long healing journey behind me and an even longer one ahead of me, I´m not asking any of those questions anymore. Not that I gave up, I just simply know the answers to those questions. And that is that it was never about me in the first place. I´ve always been worthy of love, I´ve always been enough, only you couldn´t see it, couldn´t see me. You were and still are unable to see my value as your child or even as a human being. You keep telling me how proud you are of me, but your words don´t match your actions, and even your usual words don´t match those you´re saying when you´re in a good mood.

You know, this is the hardest part not just for me, but for many of my fellow trauma survivors: coming to terms with the fact that my own mother can´t appreciate and love me unconditionally. Of all the people who don´t owe me anything, who are strangers to me, right you, mother, have to be the one that doesn´t see how precious I am? It hurts in the deepest realms of my soul, at the place that I am keeping untouched till the day when you will finally acknowledge my existence. But I have to brace myself for the possibility that this day might never come.

And I´m building a fine, silky net from all the wonderful people I meet, from all the love and warmth I get, from all the strength and resilience I collect from within me. And it gets stronger and stronger, even though it still keeps its fragility. I am learning the things you never taught me: how to be accepting of myself and others, how to receive and give love, how to be vulnerable and fierce at the same time, how to live a meaningful life.

Now I´m writing you this letter that you´ll also never see. But I don´t mind it, you know. I´m starting to be okay with the fact that you´ll never see me the way you should as a mother. And that I don´t have to explain you the basics of how to love your children. It´s not my duty to heal you and to make you see me. I´m on my own healing journey and guess what: it´s awesome and empowering and most importantly, I´m learning that the way you raised me was not okay and that it wasn´t my fault, it wasn´t something I did wrong, it just happened because of your huuge package of unresolved trauma. Seeing the better examples of how you can live your life gives me hope. I wish one day you can experience it, too.

It´s been a while since anyone posted in here, but I was scrolling through the topics, reading and relating and commenting and sharing and suddenly I realized how grateful I am for this forum that´s been a game changer and life saver for me. I don´t really believe in faith or things like that, but I cannot thank life enough for leading me here.
 

Silveris, thank you very much for reminding me of this thread. Right today I had a very painful experience with watching a sweet video about a dad who was thanking his daughter for making his life meaningful, that completely destroyed me emotionally cause I realized how little unconditional love and acceptance I got as a child, so watching something that I needed so much but never had was extremely triggering. It made me think about all the instances I got angry at seeing someone being affectionate or shoving love, but had no idea why. Now I´m starting to realize that it´s because it makes me feel uncomfortable to see something I miss so much.
Anyway, I´m glad that you had breakthroughs with some emotions, realizing something that you´ve tried to decipher for years and suddenly connecting the dots feels very liberating, so good for you. 

I know your post was made a few weeks ago, but I wanted to express my sorrow about your situation and everything you went through because of your abusive brother. I believe it´s very difficult to be around someone who reminds you of the past abuse and your traumatic memories. I wonder if you managed to talk to your psychologist about this, I hope you did.

Hi and welcome to the forum. Well, where to start? because most of what you explained was something I would tell about my life. It resonated with me so much and partly I´m sorry for that because that means we suffered a lot and continue to do, but on the other hand, your writing about this made me feel seen and validated, so thank you for that. I´m really sorry for everything you´ve been through, it´s really hard to feel invisible and not worthy of love. My background story is very similar - being constantly ignored, the only attention I got was the negative one. No one saw, comforted or validated me, no one ever told me they love me and appreciate me and that they are happy I´m alive. I was the invisible child, the one that needs no love and care, the one that can provide for herself, and apparently it was ok for everyone to think that a child can exist without love. But I was slowly dying inside, just like a plant would die without sunlight and water.

Your story about the old friend you reached out to was something I´ve just experienced, so it hit really hard. I had a seven years long grudge with my former partner, who I had a terrible breakup with. We haven´t talked since then, but I´v always carried the burden of guilt and wanted to apologize to him because of the things I said to him. I met him two days ago and that gave me a confidence boost to finally text him, which I did - the answer was rather cold and distant, he let me know that he doesn´t want to reopen the topic and doesn´t want to talk to me at all. Boy, it hurt so much, even though rationally I knew I have to accept his reaction and that he has a right not to accept my apology. But my emotions don´t care for rationality, so it was horrible, it still is, because his rejection reminded me of the core rejection from my mother, the invisibility, the worthlessness and the frustration: why can´t he understand that I was in huge pain when I did those things? That I was not ok back then? And most importantly: that now I am a way better person, way healthier, way more healed and much wiser that I would never do that to him or anyone else again? I felt so desperate to make him see and hear me...

Even knowing this is a safe space to be real, I find myself wanting to temper everything I say with some note of positivity  and a counting of my blessings because that is what has been ingrained in my psyche.

It´s so comforting and so scary at the same time, how someone can hit the bullseye of my lived experience so precisely...I´ve always been doing this positivity thing, not letting myself to feel bad or stuck, because I´m afraid that if I allow myself to be down, I stay there forever. And it´s very hard to advocate for myself when the only one doing it for me is me. It makes me feel just more isolated and more alone.

I don´t mean to hijack your post, so sorry if it felt like that. I just had so many things to say because everything you wrote, resonated with me very much and made me feel validated. I thank you for that and hope that by writing these things down you felt a little relief at least. 

Thank you everyone for taking the time to write something nice to me and for validating my experience.
I find it very challenging these days to navigate between pleasant and unpleasant emotions. It´s like a roller coaster ride with my eyes covered, so I can´t see what´s coming next - the up or the down. Lately I´ve been involved in different activities with different groups of people that filled me with a lot of energy. For the first time in my life I experienced real human connections and presence in the company of other people. It gave me the impression that I truly exist, that I´m not just an abstract something without borders and contours. This experience was out of this world and left me wanting for more. The more real I start to feel, the more I need to be connected to the reality. I realized that I´ve always had this need, I was born as an expectation for it. So when I started to experience it, it was as if a valve had been opened and now I yearn for more. I know that there´s huge amount of love that I´m capable of giving and receiving and that it´s always been my natural need.

I know that little me is still crying and crying and crying in a small bedroom in a separate wing of a big old house with three doors closed between me and my parents' room, and no matter how much I cry, nobody comes.

Saluki, I´m so sorry for what little you had to go through. I can relate to the quoted part so much that I can even picture your being in emotional pain because that was my experience, too. I wrote about this similar experience in my recovery journal, writing a letter to my mother when I was 10 and feeling so deeply alone in the process...
The pain of being abandoned, unloved, forgotten by my mother is a wound I will carry with myself forever. I just wanted you to know that I hear you and that you deserved to be loved and cared for.

I know that first wound was probably the most painful. Being abandoned by the world, being alone. As I´m uncovering more and more from my past and all my traumas, I feel more grief and also more pain. When healing is present, there´s always some amount of pain. There´s a part of me that thinks it´s in pieces. This broken self is longing to be whole, looking at the world from the perspective of it´s own brokenness. That´s why everything it sees is distorted and twisted. As children who don´t fully have a sense of time, this self also thinks that everything is infinite - the pain, the suffering, the sorrow. This part is stuck in the past, in and endlessly repeating scene from a horror movie.

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Today I had a very profound experience. It was something out of the blue, but it made me very joyous. As if the universe knew that I needed something to keep going. I was lying on the bed, just woke up from a nap, half-asleep, when suddenly my heart filled with immense love. I felt it to my core and it was radiating from inside my body. I started to think of all the people in the world, all the lives on Earth, how far they might be from me in the physical world, and yet how close they are to me, because we are connected. I realized that our lives our interconnected, no matter who we are or what we do. At that moment, the whole world could fit in my heart. And everything I went through and all the things I´m experiencing now and will be in the future, is a part of me, and not just me, but the wider universe. I´m not an island, I´m not alone, I´m part of something lot bigger than my mind can comprehend. It goes through space and time, it started before me and will be here long after I´m gone. I´m not religious, but at that very moment I felt something higher and thought to myself: if there´s some kind of God, it´s nothing but love. I felt so close to nature, I felt that it accepted me, that I could return and be united with it if I wanted to. And the best thing about this experience was that all the love I felt, was radiating from me, from my chest, my whole body, in fact. And that´s when I realized that it´s been inside me all the time, all the love I have in me, it never went away, it was there all along, waiting. And that means that I was never really broken, there is a place inside me that was whole the whole time. That part was never dead and I´m not dead either. I am capable of love, giving and receiving it.

Does the feeling of abandonment ever get better? There are multiple occasions a day when I feel the good old feeling of being left alone. Someone didn´t reply to my message? You are alone. Someone couldn´t find the time to dedicate to me or my needs? You are alone. You felt something good and now it´s gone? That´s because you are utterly, eternally, endlessly alone. It´s lurking in the darkness of my mind, waiting for the right time, and the right time comes almost every time a minor inconvenience happens (minor inconvenience = a huge disaster to a CPTSD folk). At that very moment I´m drawn back to the past, to the childhood I never really left mentally and emotionally. Painful emptiness and stone cold vacuum fills my body and the space around me. I´m experiencing anxiety and deep sorrow. I´ve never been loved and I´ll never be - this is the message it´s carrying. No matter how many people tell me the opposite, my childhood´s got it right. My mother´s got it right.

Gabor Maté, my hero and number one role model talks about this a lot. He himself was abandoned as a baby by his mother, who gave him to a stranger on the street to save his life that was threatened every day in nazi Hungary as a Jew. Despite being reunited with his mother after six weeks and living after in a loving and safe environment, he says he never fully recovered from this trauma of early abandonment. He was a baby who then got the chance to live a meaningful life with people he loves and he himself became someone who saved the lives of thousands of people as a doctor and a humanist. And yet, he never fully recovered. This deep are the childhood wounds.

So I´m sitting here thinking: Will I ever recover? Can someone fill the aching void that was supposed to be filled with unconditional love? If someone experiencing a short term abandonment can´t fully recover, can I, dealing with abandonment my whole childhood, get better? I´ve spent my whole life being absolutely sure that I´m all alone. I remember sitting on a bench in the park, waiting for the school bus, listening to the sound of the birds and distant chatters, and feeling that I´m alone in a world that forgot about me. There are people but I can´t reach them and neither can they. Abandonment became my second nature, my loyal companion. Things may change in the future, but the childhood scars are stronger than any bond in the world.

No matter what I do, this is embedded in my mind and soul. I can´t tear it out and throw it away. That´s just not how it works. I was a child who never once heard ´I love you´, who never once felt that she´s important and that it would be sad if she didn´t exist. Instead, she was abused and neglected, again and again, being used as a tool that had to be useful, otherwise it wouldn´t be needed anymore. I learned that I´m not precious and that love doesn´t come unconditionally. I´m worthy of stuff only if I can provide something in return. I have to be smart, kind, quiet and easy to manage. But love, unfortunately, didn´t follow and it took me almost thirty years to understand that it was never about me. But knowing something rationally and being able to act upon it, are two very different things. And my body and my soul remember everything. They feel the pain of the newborn that was emotionally left alone, they remember the tears of desperation of the ten year old writing a letter to her mother, asking why she never loved her. I remember everything. The question is: can I remember and heal at the same time?

Thank you, SenseOrgan, I really appreciate your kindness in these hard times. Yes, I very much agree with you and this is what keeps me going, even if it sometimes seems so meaningless, that through my personal healing and gaining of wisdom I can make changes in the broader world, too. I try not to forget that in my life I need to be in the first place, especially when it comes to healing the traumas, but this is what motivates me the most, the power of wisdom and healing that I can share with those who need it. Everything I do pretty much points into one direction: to make this world (inner and outer) a better place. My personal journey may be about me in the first place, but I like to think that it also benefits other people because, as you put it, we are not an island. My plan of becoming a social worker, which I wrote about, is also part of this bigger picture.

And it´s already changing me as a person in a positive way. I used to be in my head 24/7 and very much isolated from the outside world. All I cared about was my mental and emotional state, which is of course not a bad thing, only that it cut me off from the context I exist in. But with everything that´s happening, I am changing, too. I would have never thought that I have so much integrity and bravery in me that I´m experiencing nowadays. And you know what? My CPTSD, my personal healing journey and experiences of abuse and oppression (even systemic one, since I´m part of a minority ethnic group in a country where we don´t have equal rights with the dominant group), it all helps when it comes to understanding the issues of the world today. Everything I´ve been and am going through gives me extra understanding and compassion. I used to think about my negative experiences and ACEs as something that shouldn´t have happened (I still do in a sense that it was horrible and would never want it to happen to anyone), but it´s also starting to change and now I can value my experiences as something that helps me be more compassionate and helps me build something better for me and for others.

It can feel hopeless sometimes, especially with all the helplessness I´m experiencing, but it makes me want to integrate the pain into something bigger more.

I find it more and more difficult to concentrate on my personal growth and healing journey in a world that´s falling apart. Everything loses its meaning. It´s hard to find essence in everyday actions. I look around and see the objects surrounding me and creating my personal space, the proofs that I´m here right now, that I haven´t ceased to exist yet. And yet, my heart and soul is aching and this pain is the only thing that assures me that I´m still alive. The absurdity of existing in parallel with the death of thousands is what makes me question my very own existence. Everything feels out of context, in a vacuum, and the context itself is decomposing slowly, too. Where do I stand in this turmoil with my trauma and my deep knowledge of personal loss and suffering? How can I continue to live in a world that has stopped being the place I want to live in a long time ago? Where is my place in all this? Everything loses its meaning. Words don´t describe the pain sufficiently anymore. I can´t be free from suffering. Nobody is free until everyone is free. How can I heal my own wounds amidst the destruction? Where does "personal" end? In my soul, all starts to blend.

 

Thank you, NarcKiddo, for introducing this technique. I like it very much and it immediately reminded me of some people at work with whom I have this exact problem that they are behaving in a certain way and saying the same certain things all the time that I find extremely triggering. I find myself triggered even just imagining that they are going to approach me with the same stuff again every time I see them. I always get caught up in endless thoughts like "why are they like this, why are they doing this to me/saying mean stuff to me etc" and it makes me feel very sad and depressed even. I´ll definitely try this next time.