Trash to Treasure
A Teen Mom’s true story of authentic self-rediscovery
How recognizing patterns of abuse helped to heal years of trauma through moments of clarity.
I wrote the quote below in 2013.
Shortly after mending a relationship with my estranged family of origin.
Looking back, these short few sentences may have been a moment of clarity gifted by my wise-woman future self. My neurodiversity sometimes pokes at me to question my intuition, but this is a trust exercise by and for myself, so, I was tickled when Facebook offered it up as a “memory” from 7 years ago. Hahaha, what a memory indeed.
My philosophy is simple. No matter how unique my interaction with others may seem, no matter how limited my social abilities may be; I wish only to live and to love. I strive to be in service, honest, protective, forgiving, fair, and unconditional. We don’t have enough time in this life for stress and anger — and the energy that those emotions require is immense. The relationships I choose to nurture are special for a reason; the ones I choose not to nurture or maintain also have their reasons and carefully considered justifications. I believe in karma, I believe in love, I believe in being true to yourself no matter what anyone has to say about it; and I believe in me.
I am so grateful in this moment.
I’d like my community to know that this mending, or attempted mending, was a mistake that cost peace, money, and years of my life. Plenty of people have pinged me curiously about “what the hell is going on” — this is a portion of whatever explanation I don’t owe to anybody.
Trauma is real and it’s stored in our bodies and mine has consumed, basically, the entirety of my life since I was a small child and left to die with a broken leg for hours in the snow. Or, maybe mine started when I was being pushed and thrown against the wall for not picking out the right clothes in 2nd grade, or drawing pictorial images of naked women at age 8 and being shamed and vilified to the point of verbalizing my first (memorable) suicidal ideation to the school guidance counselor — I described sticking a knife through my head because I was afraid to go home; because I was afraid of my family.
These were not one-off incidents. There truthfully was not a lot of love in the home I was raised in. In its place, rather, plenty of secrets and hiding spots.
I bore the brunt of my birth-parents anger and self-loathing for 14 years in total (that I’ve been able to account for). Their parental-alienation tactics, the mind-control and gaslighting, their physical abuses, the broken fingers and broken ribs, the chunks of missing hair, and the bruises where no one could see them. Over time you adapt, you learn to strategically place yourself in and around situations or circumstances where your abusers can’t physically touch you; and as a result, I got really good at isolating myself.
I started smoking cigarettes and drinking before I was fifteen. The summer between middle and high school I met a “boy” on LiveJournal. Remember that ol’ chestnut? This man drove from Pittsburgh to Philly suburbs and I snuck him into my 3rd-floor bedroom where he lived in the closet for 3 days.
Have you ever been in a position where you’re “in too deep” but can’t see a way out? Have you ever been so afraid of the “consequence” that you’ve hidden the truth even if it means hurting yourself just in a different way? Also, have you ever heard of the show To Catch a Predator? Think of that, that is this. Except, I believed he was a “boy” — not a rapist, or child predator, and I did let him in, and I do think that I gave him the coordinates to the Blue Route overpass where he parked his car, and I remember telling my cousin about it in the living room that next day, hoping he would out-me, maybe even save me… but everything gets fuzzy after that night. Really fuzzy.
This was a difficult memory for me to reconcile; because I see it now and maybe forever as being my fault. Maybe you’ve passed judgment and think so too. Because, after all, I took those steps. I did the thing. I let it happen. Despite not being equipped, emotionally, to process any of what I was creating at the time, I’d like to think I knew it was bigger than me and that it would seriously shake the foundation of my world from that day forward. Because that’s how afraid I was of my family.
When I began being banished or later escaping, to the mental wards of public hospitals around the greater Philadelphia area — my just younger sister and brother started experiencing a more frequent first-hand experience with rage, and hate, and evil. The abuses migrated quickly away from me and eventually completely. My recklessness resulted in the “recycling” of me from my family of origin at the wonderfully formative age of 17 into a foster-type program located in New Jersey for young-unwed pregnant teens; think Teen Mom OG with no cameras and lots of Jesus Christ.
None of the details of how it had happened mattered. It didn’t matter to me and it especially didn’t matter to anyone else. It was my ticket out, so it didn’t matter that I said no because I eventually said fine. It didn’t matter that I was afraid and scared and without a lifeline. It was okay because it was over fast. It was okay because he wasn’t as old as the guy from the closet who wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was okay because I was “totally cool” about it afterwards. It was okay because I justified it, so everybody else did too. It didn’t matter because I didn’t matter. And I’m curious, have you ever been “totally cool” about something but feel like you’re burning alive on the inside? Okay. This was that.
Some people knew. My foster-mother knew, but she’s what I like to call a silent empath. An older generation of feelers that communicates in hugs and hand-holding, rather than wordy proclamations of acceptance.
Those emotions are beyond v i v i d — and I know I owe myself forgiveness. I know that I can forgive myself for not being able to be honest about it before… it’s just a question of, will I?
I outwardly showed strength because, survival. I carried the heaviness of my sadness and shame with me in my womb for 39 weeks and 2 days — wishing for death every night as I’d fall to sleep thinking how much easier everything would be if I could just… not… wake… up.
It was like living inside of a dream state, constant and unrelenting panic — because this can’t possibly be my actual reality; no, no, no. And, even though that whole time away and being separate from them, they never left my mind. I never stopped missing them, thinking about their safety and their happiness and aching for their comradery while knowing I’d likely never have it again. I remember writing about the accountability I felt if God forbid, there was an accident and someone died because of our parents’ lack of moral compunction. I need you to know that this fear has never left me and it still to this day feels so undeniably clear.
I know they grew up witnessing it. I know, once upon a time, we stuck together against the common enemy but eventually, it became every man from himself. I know we used the skills we picked up along the way against each other — to inflict pain and revenge for past hurts and injustices. Don’t you see that it was because we were all so deeply and profoundly wounded by the people we were born to? I guess not, because you all picked sides — and it’s okay because I forgive you. I forgive you and I forgive myself.
I am sorry for not protecting you better for longer.
I am sorry for not showing a better example.
I am sorry for abandoning you.
I’ve never really excelled at relationships. Married and divorced by 20 with 2 kids under two, two-too many baby-daddies, friendships that fizzle, boundaries that blur and become edges of entanglements. It’s complicated.
I am complex-trauma personified and I’m trying to live in my truth.
It’s taking a while to figure out what’s real and what’s not.
When you’re an abused person, it’s oftentimes easier to be alone in the safety of yourself isolated, backed into a corner… or a lake house, or a campground, or a basement. Rather than in the company of literally anyone else on the planet. When you’re an abused person, you can develop this separate external self or alter ego to be able to survive in the outside world; conforming to be whoever it is that you need to be to stay safe, stay alive, or “keep it together”, in those moments.
This facade builds and builds and becomes dense and heavy and opaque until it crushes the actual you under its weight. The shields used as protection now literally choking you; the very life you were trying to protect being crushed-squeezed-juiced out of you. But not loudly, instead slowly — silently and sneakily. You might not even notice until you go looking for something you feel like you’ve lost some long time ago… or maybe you’ll never battle this adversary of thought and maybe my analogy will have to stand for itself, in its truth.
In your rawness of perpetual self-protection and preservation, your whole self, your vulnerability — if never allowed before, might need explicit permission to come out and play; it might even need new rules to play by. You might have to stand in front of the mirror speaking to yourself aloud so you can hear it existing in the world. You might record it as an affirmation and listen to it when or if you ever feel like a slippery slide has materialized beneath your newfound higher vibration and you’re at risk for descending into an abyss of blindness to ‘who you really are’… again.
You’ll need to start believing with the truest intention in the world that “It’s okay to be me today” because we all deserve this freedom.
The bits and pieces that we’re made of, the parts of ourselves that amalgamate to create the ever-evolving beings we’re becoming — they can each be recognized and celebrated and cherished and comforted; because all of you is welcome here. Our parts, especially our childlike ones, are shunned and overlooked because, after all, we’re adults now. We have expectations of ourselves and others from our generations to be a certain way, to fall in line, to keep family secrets, and the list goes on. We’ve been stuffed up into boxes on the shelves of who we think we are, who we’ve been told we are, who we seem to be on the outside every day of life when we’re carrying the emotional baggage of our ancestors because we think we have to. Some of us have assumed the responsibility of carrying the diseased torch of generational trauma, allowing abuses to continue, turning a blind eye, being polite, shaming and blaming and creating identified patients in our family systems. We have never needed to do this, we have never needed to behave this way — this is shame keeping us small. Shame is poisoning the groundwater of the future. It’s not our job or duty or obligation to ignorantly perpetuate someone else’s pain or to carry on into the future someone else’s choices that directly, indirectly, or even peripherally, cause harm. Instead, our duty lies within ourselves, to change ourselves, our futures, and our immediate circle of influence to allow for the acceptance and belonging of truth without shame, and love without condition, and the necessary righting of wrongs.
The truth of psychology tells us, we wake as children and sleep as children. We bookend our days inside of privately held mind palaces of vulnerability; on both the best and worst of days. This is a gift I’m learning to appreciate.
If you’re holding onto something that is holding you down, hear this:
It’s okay to let go. It’s okay to walk away. It’s okay to take a break. It is okay to give yourself some space. It’s okay to say no. It’s okay to grieve someone who is still living. It’s okay to feel sadness and cry. It’s okay to change your mind. It’s okay to admit that you’re wrong. It’s okay to feel sad. It’s okay to change your life… again, and again, and again if you need to. It is okay.
When my mother said, “Oh, so he’s Black?” with a seemingly innocent enough chuckle — as I told her the name of the Muslim man I had just started dating (fresh from my separation) in 2011, I could have simply hung up the phone after the nerve was struck and my hair raised and I could have saved myself a lot of pain and heartache I didn’t know would be haunting me until I chose to walk away again.
Empower yourself to live the life you want to be living. Own your life.
Shine light into darkness to free yourself from that box on the shelf; be honest. Remembering thoughtfully, compassionately, that hard truths are blessings because what is meant for you will reach you no matter the distance, no matter the boundaries of time and space as long as you keep going.
It is written.
You are worth so much more than you allow yourself to feel.
Permit yourself to feel it, only then you’ll know.
— M
P.S. Love and light to all the souls who crave it.
#youareworthit
