Trigger Warning: What do I Know?

[BJeanGrey]

What do I know?

I know what it is like to be thrown against a wall. I know what it is like when the darkness eclipses your field of vision as your mind scatters in different directions and your limp body bounces off the wall back into his hands to be thrown again, and again, and once again.

I know family is supposed to build you up, hold you up, and keep you up on your feet when the pain of existence threatens to knock you down – well, at least that's what I know that I have heard. I know what it is like when "family" kicks your legs out from underneath you, spouting epithets of trust and love, then mocks you, berates you, and ignores you as you lay on the floor, curled up in on yourself, crying.

I know how childhood traumas create self-perpetuating cycles, repeating the traumas over and over, in different forms, throughout one's life, and I know of the relentless insomnia and nightmares that follow each rendition closely. I know that such traumas change the way the world looks and how you see your place in it – it is to feel small and threatened, all of the time, by everything and everyone.

I know that I replace the pronoun "I" with "you" in an attempt to transform the abstract signifiers on this page into some sort of meaningful understanding between us, because I know how chronic loneliness fractures a heart.

I know the physical and psychological pain of isolation, like a garrison wall designed for war and fortified with socially paralyzing anxiety and distrust, constructed upon the paradox of self-preservation. I know of a loneliness that peers through the fissures in that wall into a world of acceptance, belonging, and love that it knows it can never be a part of, but yet obstinately clings to a hope of someday residing there.

I know of a hope that slips through your fingers, accumulates at your feet, and buries you deeper with each year. It is a hope that threatens to stick to the inside of your lungs like wet sand and suffocate you in self-delusion. I know what it is like to cling to that self-destructive hope because that hope is the only thing that gets you out of bed every day.

I know of the vultures who circle around the corps(e) de l'amour et l'espoir, agitated, aroused, and eager to pick the flesh off of the vulnerable in order to satiate their own appetites. I know the insignificance of being nothing but a body, to be used until broken or outdated, then discarded and forgotten.

I know the fear of being precariously and perilously teetering on the edge of falling but having no safety net, no net constructed of family and friends, to catch you if you fall. I know what it feels like to know that if you fell and disappeared into the void, the world would be as if you never existed.

I know of a sadness that reverberates throughout every nerve with each heartbeat, locking your entire body in a pain that ruptures poorly glued together pieces of your heart. I know the cruelty of having that pain mocked and disregarded as being selfish, childish, imaginary, attention-getting, weak or insignificant. I know cruelty, no matter how unintentional or ignorant, is no less cruel.

I know what objectifying and patronizing pity is – when you become nothing but a thing to be fixed, when your voice is lost to a despotic, bleeding heart, do-gooder who presumes to know exactly what is wrong with you and what you need but who refuses to hear who you are. I know the cruelty of callous indifference to the voice that screams out and begs to be recognized and acknowledged for all of its pain, complexity, and longing but instead is met only with rejection and dismissal.

I know rejection. I know the longing for belonging, for a smile from a friendly face. How your hand reaches into the world seeking a friend to pull you out of the void, to be met with a  hand mockingly extended then pulled back leaving you grasping at the nothingness of empty space. I know how your rejected psyche internalizes the anger and shame, turning the violence against itself. I know how your body seeks to comfort itself in its own embrace, rocking back and forth repeating over and over again the same thought: "there is something intrinsically wrong with me that makes me entirely unlikable, I am a mistake, a freak of nature, and there is nothing I can do about it, it will never get better."

I know that they do not know you because they never wanted to know you. They projected their privileged life experiences and prejudices about who you ought to be unto you, all conveniently wrapped up in the "mentally ill" labels they have affixed to you, to categorize you neatly into their psycho-social pre-packaged for the masses worldview.

Above all, I know that people are nothing but consistent in harming you. I know how year after year the walls close in. What I don't know is what happens when hope finally buries you.

[Deep Blue]

Wow this really resonates with me.

I "know" much of the same.  That darkness that eclipses is what I looked at during emdr this week.  So many memories, flashbacks, nightmares of it.  Sometimes I wished I could pass out... ya know?  So yeah dissociation became the next learned defense.

Beautifully written.

I'm so sorry for all that you have "known"

[bluepalm]

Thank you for writing and sharing this beautifully written and powerful statement BJeanGrey. Your words resonate strongly with me. Almost every paragraph rings true to my experience. After more than 72 years of it, I'm exhausted. You say:

I know the fear of being precariously and perilously teetering on the edge of falling but having no safety net, no net constructed of family and friends, to catch you if you fall. I know what it feels like to know that if you fell and disappeared into the void, the world would be as if you never existed.

This feeling is the primary struggle I have right now. It helps me to feel less lonely to read these words from you. My heart goes out to you for all you have suffered and continue to suffer that is reflected in your powerful words. I send you a virtual hug. Thank you.
bluepalm

[findingpeace2018]

I am so sorry for all you have "known" BJeanGrey.  I can feel the pain of knowing in your words.  I wish you didnt "know" all this, but I want to thank you for writing it.  Your words really resonate with me, there is something comforting knowing you arent the only one.  Sitting with you in this if thats ok....

[Three Roses]

Eloquent. Thank you for trusting enough to share this. These things I also know, in my own way - the sounds and smells that trigger me still, 60 plus years since.

Expressing pain does seem to help alleviate the loneliness IF you are heard and understood by validating, supportive people. Here, you are known. Here, you are not an outsider. Here, you belong, as one of us, being privy to the same heavy secrets we carry.

[bluepalm]

Dear BJeanGrey, I continue to come back to read your piece on what you know. Most of the time I can only reads parts and then stop to recover. It is extraordinarily powerful for me and I am so grateful you shared it. I hope you don't mind but I have copied it into a document I can access readily.

I've reached the point where I feel that there's no further value to be gained from talking words to a therapist or anyone actually. There is nothing left to say. I've had literally years in intensive psychoanalysis and psychotherapy trying to come to terms with what was done, and continues to be done, to me by my immediate family, four generations of them, and the lasting injuries I've suffered that need management every hour of my life. This help from my therapists has undoubtedly saved my life and I've come to understand that my family's behaviour was and is driven by their own needs and disorders and in a sense has nothing to do with me - but that understanding does not heal my wounds. 

The outside world has treated me well and I've managed to overcome huge odds to live an outwardly successful life, but always alone, isolated, without any human comfort or touch or caring or love, but rather active abuse and deliberate cruelty and deprivation, from those who were and are supposed to love, encourage and protect me - grandparents, parents, siblings, husband and children.

I understand the threads that bind these generations together in their conduct - I am paying the price for my father's sins of abandoning his wife and child and (unintentionally) bringing me, a * child, into the world. And for the sin of being born a female child who has exercised my intelligence and spirit to survive well in this world - to free myself from a husband who continued the abuse and deprivation  and to survive better, on objective terms, than any of my family ever did or will do. 

Over these past few months I've come to feel that no doctor or therapist can understand the devastation that is left inside me - it's out of proportion to how I appear on the outside and reassuring words and understanding nods seem pointless now. However your words ring so true to me and what I live with. So I cannot thank you enough for sharing them. I have been staying off this forum for some time now, feeling it too had lost its ability to console me, but when I came back on here just days ago and found your words, I've felt renewed hope that a community of survivors does offer my last source of help and hope. Knowing there are others, anonymous and scattered all over the world, who struggle with the devastation done to them as I do. And, as always, I'm so grateful to Kizzie and her colleagues for establishing and running this forum so well.

Thank you, BJeanGrey,  from the bottom of my heart for what you wrote and shared.
bluepalm

[Not Alone]

I'm a bit overwhelmed and at a loss for words after reading what you expressed so beautifully, BJeanGrey. I could relate to many things you wrote. I'm a little shut down, but thank you for writing and sharing such painful and truthful words.