A Life After Trauma

  TRIGGER WARNING: This entry mentions physical abuse & describes in detail severe emotional child abuse & school bullying.    One of my reoccurring problems in therapy is my chronic self-hatred and an innate feeling of worthlessness. Why am I certain I’m so despicable? While none of the following makes the thoughts logical, they do make them reasonable. So let’s delve into the dark depths of my mind.    As a kid, I was bullied constantly by the entire elementary school, older kids, younger kids, and kids who had never heard of me. They all picked on me. And although now my therapist, when saying, “Not everyone hates you,” is correct… back then, I was constantly told, “The whole school can’t be bullying you,” when they were. I remember being so mad and frustrated that no one believed me. Then again, the teachers treated me with disdain as well. They thought my “ADHD” made me a burden to teach. One teacher forced me into child psychology because he though...

  TRIGGER WARNING: This entry mentions suicide.    There is nothing more important to me than being a big sister. To love them is heaven, and to lose them is hell. I’ve always dreamed of being close to them and being accepted and returning the favor. To protect them and guide them.    But today, another of my siblings turned 18. And again, I wish I could explain to them why I’m not there, why my relationship with my bio dad is so strained and always has been. To tell them I love them more than they could ever know. And that this distance is torture.    I’m an only child of 11. 2 sisters on my bio mom's side, and one of them I lost when my bio mom disowned me. The other I lost when my bio mom told her lies about me so I’d be hurt when I got rejected again. My bio dad is another story-nine siblings raised in a conservative Christian cult. Growing up, I kept everything secret from them because my whole life story was all taboo to theirs. How could I possi...

  NO TRIGGER WARNINGS    I remember hearing on a youtube video that young people aren’t getting driver's licenses anymore, followed by criticism of today's youth by an old guy. Then I noticed some facts that someone must point out, so here we go.    Conservatives like this older man tend to cluster in the country. The country states have smaller towns and less traffic. They also have back roads. Growing up in California, learning to drive terrified me. There was nowhere to safely practice except the Saddleback Church parking lot, which banned student drivers from using it. The idea of going from clueless about driving to traffic-congested, fast-paced, road-raged streets is a nightmare. Now in Wyoming, I’ve almost got my license because no other cars mean no fear of fucking up or hurting someone, mostly.    Where does this connect to my Blog point? Well, the second reason for the lack of new drivers is parents. Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed ...

TRIGGER WARNING: This entry mentions a family suicide attempt & a family inpatient stay.    It’s one thing to be born of a pathological liar and another to have been raised by one. I made the dumb move of calling my adoptive father. God knows why. The phone call went fine. I was made aware he was a jerk, but otherwise, fine. The next day his phone was off. It stayed off. We have my cousin call my uncle because my uncle believes we “broke” his brother. She asked how my dad was, and he said, “He’s fine. He’s in sober living,” which matches what my dad told me.    Finally, my dad called us from a hospital. He says he doesn’t have his phone, and someone is waiting for the phone. Wait, waiting for a phone? They can't have phones? If you’ve spent time in a psych ward like me, you know how this sounds. My father told us he was dizzy and that two weeks ago, he almost fainted and was at the hospital. We called the number back. It was a one-way line. We called the hospital...

    NO TRIGGER WARNINGS    No two abuse stories are the same. Ask most survivors, and they’ll each have very different views on their experience. But even more confusing is when you’ve survived multiple experiences with different characters. You’re left trying to understand the difference.    My adoptive dad is a classic abuser. He hurts because he can, and it never fails to get him his way. My adoptive mom is another story. Her abuse I’ve come to call reactive abuse or self-defense that she’s misdirected. She feels like a victim because she is. She’s struggling, and it’s unfortunate what that means for me, but it’s pretty evident that she is not an abuser.    My bio mom is another classic abuser. Her love exists as long as her control of you. But when she can’t control you, that love is sickly ripped away with full awareness of the pain it’ll cause. In the hopes that you come crawling back. But if you don’t? Then she crawls after you to make you ...

TRIGGER WARNING: This entry mentions gun violence & self-harm.    Most people I’ve met are horrified to hear my adoptive dad had threatened to kill me and my mom with his gun. But my family? My bio dad and grandma? Either they don’t believe me, or they genuinely think being held at gunpoint is no big deal. In this case, they’re the ones who are genuinely mentally ill.    The thing with my family is that it doesn’t matter what happens. If I’m the victim, then no one cares. If it’s one of them, suddenly, nobody shuts up. I’ve made impressive accomplishments in my life most people never manage. I lost and kept off 150 lbs! I was trying to go to college this summer! But still, no praise, just begging for me to step out of their spotlight.    I seem to exist as a nuisance. I’m loved most when I’m silent and invisible. I try so hard to wrap my head around it. But only my adoptive mom can seem to figure it out. I exist as a cop-out. Instead of acknowledging th...

    TRIGGER WARNING: This entry mentions sexual abuse, child abuse, forced child abandonment, violence, killing, prostitution, addiction, & the death penalty.    Aileen Wuornos, the woman the film “Monster” was talking about, was the United States’ most notorious female serial killer. After Aileen’s arrest, she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder, and she scored high on the psychopathy scale. However, her level of care for others makes it unlikely she was a true psychopath, in my opinion. The film altered a few details. In this post, we will stick to the facts.    In the film, Aileen is both a dreamer and a sexual abuse victim who spent her pretty years prostituting herself in hopes of being discovered by a scout from Hollywood. Even in the film's context, her murders don’t seem so hard to understand. But is it really what happened? Actually, yes, it is.    Born on February 29, 1956,...

TRIGGER WARNING: This entry mentions self-harm, suicide, sexism, violence, cheating, kidnapping, animal abuse, & killing.    Fatal Attraction. A film intended by its screenplay writer James Dearden to depict a horrible, awful, crazy bitch who can’t let go of a real catch that’s married. Glenn Close was among the only people at the time able to see the many flaws in this story.    Did you know Close made her backstory with the help of psychiatrists? The character Alex Forrest was, in reality, just intended to be a random chick who was crazy for no reason, and that’s it. Gee, what psychology course do you think Dearden took? Toxic Masculinity 101?    The psychiatrist helped Close see that Alex was likely sexually abused by her father at a very, very, very early age, long term at a time when the brain is doing most of its developing. That's the typical backstory of a woman with these behaviors and issues. In the DSM, this mental illness is called borderlin...

TRIGGER WARNING: This entry mentions sexual child abuse, other child abuse, addiction, self-harm, suicide, & violence.       After writing the article about my uncle, I couldn’t get the event out of my head. My mood spiraled, insomnia hit, and suicidal thoughts took advantage. So I tried using social media to distract myself. Change the topic on my mind. And it worked because the page was swarming with self-diagnosed people claiming typical traits as disordered and everyday experiences as trauma. I felt so misrepresented, so I made this.    Yes, self-diagnosers are that obvious. They use pop psychology words. Words like “quiet borderline,” which in its very purpose seeks to create another drama-less form of borderline personality disorder. Those whose lives are, in other words, unaffected by their symptoms. They confuse you about trauma by using the word for every event a teenager would find a big deal, but no one else would. They are making trauma a now mea...