Chapter 1 (and 2?) rough draft

“You should kill yourself”

My inner voice. I’ve tried so hard to change it, to change it to a positive voice. But in the quite moments it’s there. Saying the most awful things, and I can’t get it to stop. 

She created those first whisperings of my inner voice. The unrelenting trauma that birthed the constant whispering in my mind. I’ll never be enough. 

But she wasn’t the only one, she was the first but not the only one to traumatize me. But she brought me into this world, she should have been the one to protect me from it. 

When your a child, It’s amazing how cruel both children and adults can be. They say to find an adult, but even adults proved they where unsafe. 

And so I spent my life, not safe at home, not safe at school, and not safe in my thoughts. My whole adult life shaped by surviving trauma, facing trauma, and my feeble attempts at healing from trauma after many years of trying to figure out why I wasn’t enough. I spent many years as an adult finding myself in abusive situations, not realizing I was just reliving the only love I had ever known. The love of a narcissist, is not love, but when that’s all you’ve ever known love to be, if that’s what you grew up in, you have no measurement to compare it too, you don’t realize love could be anything else. 

So you continue to get caught in these cycles of abuse, easy prey of narcissists, they build you up, then tear you down, and when your finally brave enough to leave, no one’s left to help you pick up the pieces. Alone and left with nothing, you try to build your life again and start the viscous cycle all over again. 

I’ll never be enough. Nobody likes me. 

There were signs, eating the same foods for weeks, not wanting to wear clothes, the Benadryl, the “growing pains”, flexibility, and the bismuth tablets. I didn’t want to sleep or nap, a “night owl”. The horrifically epic “tantrums”, I’d later learn were autistic meltdowns. My lifelong struggle with depression and anxiety an indication, an affect or manifestation of the underlying neurodivergence within. And of the deep scars of abuse. 

I’d much prefer physical scars, visible scars. Physical pain at the very least in some ways makes you feel, and physical pain won’t last, it eventually goes away. 

The invisible scars of mental abuse never go away, they are always there unseen, just under the surface, the source of my self deprecating inner voice. And because these scars are not visible, and I’ve learned to hide them as best I could, always wanting to please, never believing my sadness should inconvenience anyone. I bare my silent scars, Shame, sadness, utterly broken inside. My inner voice is hers, it was always hers, my inner voice is my mothers voice. My only gift from my mother. Her trauma, now my trauma. 

My mothers unchecked abuse a significant factor in all of this not to be ignored. My mother is a textbook narcissist. Dishing out mountains of love when it suited her, and when it didn’t the things she said and did to me I could never imagine doing to a child, let alone a child I’d created from my own blood and flesh. 

Thus began my warped view on the world, on love and relationships. Abuse ever entwined and synonymous with love. It opened me up to so much more abuse. violent, despairing, soul breaking abuse as a teenager and adult. My mother stole my soul when I was a child though, so I suppose you cannot break further what had already been broken. 

Being neurodivergent never helped, it made me a supple malleable target to Narcissists. A plaything to be conquered and easily destroyed. It also made me a difficult child, a child my mother who had me to young, had me before she healed her own traumas, couldn’t deal with. She had no patience for me. 

And all the while, the people I needed the most, the people who could have helped me heal, who should have nurtured me, failed me. The decisions I made to quell the inner voice and stop the pain, these decisions made as a child, would damn me. Instead of seeing the ocean of torment and despair inside of me, they saw a problem, a burden, a selfish human hellbent on self destruction. They didn’t see the wounded child. And so she felt abandoned by those she needed the most. 

When my father got custody of me in the divorce and also got the house I thought I would finally be safe. For the first time I thought I had a chance, my chest not so heavy. My mother was a toxic individual and that toxicity would follow her into her new life. And my dad would allow her to come back, and he left. I don’t blame him for wanting to stay away from her. But he threw me to the very wolf who created the monster within me, the voice that would tell me I’d never be enough. And with that betrayal I knew I would never be safe, I would never be  truly happy, I would never ever be enough, not worthy of love. 

Maybe my father didn’t know what my mother had done, what she would continue to do until I turned 30 and finally cut her out of my life. Even though it’s been 6 years now, she still haunts me, and I can’t shake that nasty inner voice that hates me so. 

When my Mother came and my father left I became her plaything. The punching bag she’d born, the punching bag she used to feel better, at the expense of my sanity, my childhood. But it was also the last time she ever hit me, and it created a spark of hope. 

I wanted to leave, I had my license and a car and I wanted to be with people who I thought at the time were friends. Away from the monster who stole my soul. 

My mother didn’t like being alone, she had monsters, she had passed her generational trauma onto me instead of having the strength to heal, to spare me, she gave it to me, one blow of her tongue and fists at a time. 

She didn’t want me to leave, she blocked the door and when I indicated my defiance, and I told her I was leaving. She had thrown me onto my bed, pounding me everywhere with her weak fists. I was strong, I had always been strong. Maybe my soul had turned into muscle as it was stripped away. I picked her up, moved her off of me and I left. She never hit me again after that, I think she realized in that moment that I could inflict all the physical pain she inflicted on me and more if I chose. But she would continued to hurt me in other ways. 

My father had left me alone a lot after the divorce he had a girlfriend. He stayed with her often. She had two teenage children so I suppose she needed to be there for them. But I had needed a parent too, now more than ever. I became more desperate, depressed, confused. And I was navigating something far beyond my abilities to understand as a child and I was forced to do it alone. Children are not equipped with these tools, and yet I was expected to behave as an adult. No child is equipped to make adult decisions and no child has the tools to navigate complex trauma alone. 

I don’t blame my father now, I did then, but I think I understand now. He also was abused by her, the things I saw her do to him were awful I’m sure the things I didn’t see were even worse. He had stayed because of me, and he was finally free. He had trauma of his own, and he was absolutely the reason I was still alive. 

Chapter 2 

Memories are strange, at least for someone like me. Trauma permanently alters your brain, it also causes brain damage, it can affect your memories, it can even negatively impact your bodily functions such as your immune system. I have early memories, memories my mother thought impossible, some of them were from before I could walk. But I think for a time I was surrounded by love. And because of that love those memories stayed. 

One of my earliest memories is of my Aunt T. I It could even possibly be one of my first memories. She loved me fiercely and she showered me with affection and attention. She had trauma of her own but she didn’t give it to me. For that I’ll always be grateful and later on in life she would be a great refuge from the pain I held inside. 

I remember being alone, a lot too. I remember being a baby, lying on my back in a pack and play in my room. I remember watching the ceiling fan spin lazily. Then I remember my baby blanket my nana lovingly hand made spinning in there air. As I began to grow I would remember this with awe and wonder. I’d imagine I had been born with some deep magic and if I could only remember how to access it I could free myself from pain and misery. 

But as I began to grow more, and as I began to pursue therapy I realized this is where my imagination began to grow, the first mustering of disassociating, and it did save me in some ways. But it wasn’t magic, it was just the imaginings of a lonely baby learning how to go within and occupy herself. 

I often wonder if my mother neglected me as a baby, when no one else was around, when she didn’t have to pretend. She neglected me as an older child so I’m sure she had done so when I was an infant. I could never ask my mother if this was so, she doesn’t tell the truth. She certainly wouldn’t be truthful about anything that would portray her in a negative light. Not unless she herself had something to gain from it. Her whole life and then mine by default was a web of intricate lies. Lies to hide the truth, lies to make her seem like she was a decent human, lies to hide all the ways in which she destroyed me. 

Before I learned to read and afterwards but with deeper more complex fantasies I would go within myself and I would create wonderfully comforting stories and worlds with my ever growing imagination. When I learned to read I would lose myself in books. In these worlds I so longed to be a part of. 

I would later learn these activities, the reading and imagining were dissociating, it was a coping mechanism to keep my mind from fully breaking. But it made me nearly invisible and It saved my life in many ways but it is also another reason I don’t have many memories. 

My partner who has made me feel the safety I had always longed for is also the reason why some of my memories I had buried deep began to surface. I was finally safe enough to remember, to face things, to heal. I finally had someone in my life who wouldn’t use that pain against me. 

I’m always amazed at the things he can remember, but it also made me realize there was something deeply wrong with my childhood. It also made me mourn the little girl that could have accomplished so much, but her light was snuffed out. 

I do have memories of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about any of this. They are typically either very bad or very good. A lot of the in between is lost. 

I don’t have many good memories of my mother, I do have good memories that she was a part of, but there were always other people there. She is always just a blur or smudge on the perifery. Sometimes happy memories like spending time with my dad would abruptly end when she would join us after getting out of work. But I do remember every sick twisted evil thing she’s ever done to me, and I remember with painfully vivid detail. 

When I was a young girl my Dad worked second shift. So I was alone with her in the evenings. Eventually she would begin to abuse me more openly but it was so very tame compared to how she treated me when we were alone. And later on the behavioral issue that she created would be her greatest excuse to continue to torment me, to tell the world I deserved it, that I was somehow defective and it was no fault of her own. But it absolutely was her fault, and with no way to articulate my big feelings, I would at times become a feral animal. 

My first memory of my mother is her squeezing my jaw, so very hard, tears streaming down my face. She sat me on the railing above the stairs, the part of the stairs that was almost to the first floor, shaking me violently, pushing me backwards and dangling me over the emptiness. Threatening to throw me down and saying she’d tell everyone it was an accident, that I had fallen. That was the first time my mother threatened to kill me. I remember that, but I don’t remember why. I don’t know what I did to incur such violent wraith, but as I grew I would learn that sometimes the mood just struck her to be cruel. Whatever deep hurt that lay inside her, whatever trauma she was bearing she was passing it onto me. 

After that first memory, I would have many nightmares of falling off that railing to the floor below. Helplessly tumbling into a dark abyss, and I would awaken, my body jumping in my bed, sweating and crying and utterly terrified. I would continue to have night terrors, almost every night until I met my partner. 

Many times I would be told I had an old soul, that I was mature for my age. I still wince when I hear another child described this way. We are not mature, we are not old souls, we are forged from many decades of enduring and unending trauma. We were robbed of our childhoods. It’s not a compliment, it’s a product of surviving many lifetimes of trauma. And not all of us will survive it. 

If you’ve read this far you might be assuming that if you continue to read this book will be filled with horrible stories of traumatic abuse. You would be partially correct. I can’t tell this story without telling the abuse I’ve suffered, but I’ve had so many wonderful experiences and adventures. Trying to escape my childhood led me to do things that not many people will experience. Some things were great and incredible, others were awful. But ultimately this story is a story of survival, hope, a roadmap of how I endured, and I how I am emerging on the other side of it. A phoenix risen from the ashes of the shit I was dealt. This story even though my life continues to unfold before me, this story has a happy ending. 

I hope the same for you, I hope if your reading this you have a happy ending as well. And if only one person reads this book and it helps them, I’ll have considered this endeavor to be wholly worthwhile. Because in this book you will journey through my life with me, the mistakes I’ve made, how I learned to put words to what was being done to me, and the feelings within. My journey to the realization that my early childhood experiences were not normal, and my path to healing and all that entails. You will learn how I would ultimately refuse to become a vessel for the generational trauma that was given to me. You will learn that it ended with me. 

But you will also learn that I will always be working, that I will always struggle with this pain, but that I have learned healthy ways to cope, I’ve come to understand, and most of my days I’m learning to live more than survive.