Acknowledging the Hurt I Caused Helped Me Heal From My Own Pain
Recovering from what happened to you is just one step of the journey. What about the people you affected?
I have two younger brothers. Though for a long time, I can’t honestly say they had a sister.
I had been in therapy for a few months, trying to come back from years of depression, self-harm, toxic relationships and a suicide attempt. It was an uphill battle, but I was making progress. I was starting to smile honestly again, to have good days in between the bad and sleep a full night.
For the first time in a long time, I felt happy to be alive.
I also started to have the energy to actually spend time with people. I had begun to give my two brothers more attention than I had before, actually talking to them when I was home, rather than shutting myself away. The youngest of them said one day;
“It’s so nice to finally spend some time with you.”
The words were innocent and honest, coming as they were from an eight-year-old. But they made my brain screech to a halt.
Finally. Not the “nice to spend time with you” part. Finally.
My mind careened backward in time.
Before I tried to commit suicide, before I started therapy… When was the last time I spent any meaningful time with my brothers? Not even that; when was the last time I had voluntarily spent time with them at all, just because?
I couldn’t remember.
To my horror, there were lots of things I didn’t remember. What was their favourite colour? What music did they like? How were they doing at school? What did I give them for their last birthday? How were they doing at football practice? Did the oldest even still play?
I remembered so clearly their early years. The first time I held them when they were born. How I’d chase them around the living room table in a game of tag. Summer days playing football with them, even though I was shit at it. When had I stopped paying attention to their lives? About the same time my depression hit and I got too caught up in my own struggles to care.
Could I honestly say I knew them anymore? I wasn’t sure.
In the process of wrestling with my problems, I’d pushed away two people who were utterly innocent.
The three of us used to be very close. Countless times I’d give them a hug after our parents had been arguing, or we’d sing along to old songs just for fun, or they’d crawl into my tent on summer holidays and they’d spend the evenings telling me about their day and games.
I’d lost that closeness, and I had no one to blame but myself.
Once I started talking it over with my therapist, a lot of other things that I had never acknowledged to myself came out as well.
I had to admit the bitter, bitter truth, that it wasn’t just that I hadn’t had the headspace to spend time with my brothers. I had actively pushed them away. I had been cold, distant and angry, so angry, at both of them…because I was envious of them.
Out of the three of us, I am the only one diagnosed with autism. And it showed.
They were seven and ten years younger than me, yet they could run circles around me verbally. They could laugh and talk and socialise in massive groups, while I would get anxious when surrounded by more than three people. They could walk in noisy crowded areas and enjoy it, while I wanted to run away.
They were normal. They would never face the discrimination and struggles I did. They were everything I wanted to be, everything I could never be, and at some point without realising it, part of me started resenting them for it.
There’s no excuse for taking your internal struggles out on innocent people.
I was horrified that I could have stooped so low as to take my frustrations out on an eleven- and an eight-year-old boy.
I was also terrified of the things I couldn’t remember. Things I knew I had said and done I could find a way to move forward from, but how do you start to make amends for the wrongs you couldn’t remember doing? I had been deeply depressed for years and had frequently just let each day pass by unnoticed. I made no effort to interact with or pay attention to the world around me and so I just… Forgot. Weeks and months passing by in a blur. That scared me. Had I said or done something hurtful and then just forgotten about it?
The things I could remember were already enough to make me cringe. The obvious one easily comes to mind.
“My big sister tried to kill herself.”
What the hell had I done, putting that thought in an eleven-year-old boy’s head?
What else? Had I behaved in a way, said things to them, that would affect them later down the line? Had I taken the things that had happened to me, and inadvertently passed them on?
That thought spiraled further, to how I’d behaved toward my parents, to friends and in relationships, to hurtful words I’d spat out in anger or coldly spoken without care. I wanted to curl up in shame.
It was my very own private lesson in that old saying: “Abuse is a vicious cycle.”
Whether I meant to or not, I had to acknowledge that in my own hurt and anger, I had hurt all the people around me.
It would be easy to pass on the blame. But in the end, I am responsible for my own actions.
It’s not something a lot of people think about, at least not at first. But just as we are affected by the people around us, the people around us will also be affected by us.
If you have suffered trauma, you’re likely to cause vicarious trauma. If you have problems at home, it’s likely you will say or do something to negatively affect those around you. If you’re angry and frustrated, it’s likely you will snap and say something hurtful to an innocent bystander who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And it’s easy to say, “I hurt you because I was hurting”, but that’s wrong. It’s an excuse, and it’s a way to void yourself of responsibility. Inadvertently, it keeps you in the role of the powerless victim.
There were situations in my life, where I was a victim. I was born autistic. I was abandoned by my Dad when I was four. I became a target of bullying and a social outcast for being different. In these things I had no control.
But after? How I behaved with friends, peers and partners? How I maintained the internal narrative that I was broken? How I treated my brothers? That’s all on me. No one made me do anything. It doesn’t matter what past hurts influenced me, fact is, I am responsible for my actions. Not my Dad, not my bullies, not my toxic relationships. Me.
I had caused damage and that was a bitter pill to swallow. Yet at the same time, accepting responsibility for it, meant I had the power to stop.
Sometimes “Sorry” is the only place to start.
I saw in my father a model of how to begin rebuilding my relationships. The father who was trying to repair the bridges, after being absent from my life for thirteen years.
It started with admitting there was no reason or excuse that would make it okay, because the fact was: It should never have happened in the first place. I should not have been denied my Dad for so long; I should never have been hurt like that. Just like my brothers should never have been denied their sister. For that, you can but apologise.
And I did. Repeatedly. Right along with telling them; “I love you”. Whatever else I’d done wrong, I needed them to know that.
There are lots of people I can’t apologise to. Some who are still stuck in the toxic places I found them in and where I have no intentions to return to. Some who probably wouldn’t understand what I was apologising for. Some who have buried it and don’t want to dig it up after all these years.
But at the very least, I managed to make amends and apologise to those closest to me. A lot of times, that went both ways, as we all made mistakes and could have handled things better.
But with my brothers, it will always be one way. The only wrong they did, was being born with one less burden to bear than me.
You can’t erase past hurts or mistakes, but you can learn to put it to rest. It starts with acknowledging it’s there. It starts with, “I’m sorry.” Not justifications, rationalisation or excuses. Just; “I’m sorry”.
When we do that, we accept responsibility for the things we did. And in doing that, we take back the control to be and do better.
