I Was Never That Person
A few days ago, my mother showed me some old pictures of me on Facebook. She had found them stalking an old neighbour’s account. It was from December 2008 and at some party my old neighbours hosted. I was smiling, carefree and slim. My mum gushed over them, going on about how pretty and how slim I was and how I smiled without a care in the world. I cringed outwardly, but inwardly I wanted to puke.
I don’t hate the person I was back then. She was naïve and lost. Sure, maybe that could go for many people when they’re 18 years old. We don’t really know ourselves then, but we think we know everything. Everything I did was a front to hide how much I hated myself, how useless and untalented I thought I was, and how insecure I felt in my own identity. Looking back, I could have been diagnosed with high-functioning anxiety, depression and possibly PTSD. I had put everything that had happened before behind me, to start anew.
Two years before, I was self-harming and suffered from paranoia and suicidal ideation. My abusive father still lived with me, my mum and my brother. They suffered under his tyranny as well, but they seemed to have accepted what had been going on for years. I did as well, until I was suicidal. I had living under his oppressive nature for years. His threats and put downs made me feel like human garbage. A single glare from him made me feel so small and powerless.
How can a family member make me feel like this? Why? What did I do that was so terrible that I feel that this is my only choice? There had to be a better way!
There was. Long story short — I got him kicked out of our house in 2006. I explained some of the abuse to my teaching assistant in confidence. I won’t go into it too much, but the abuse was mostly emotional, with threats of violence. He had a history of abuse in our family (towards me specifically, but I don’t remember it) but was able to walk away with a slap on the wrist. He never went to prison. He didn’t go to prison this time either, but social services and the police were able to evict him. It was good enough. In the same year I finished high school and got onto an art course in college.
So much happened in that year (everything happened within 3 or 4 months) that I just wanted to forget it all. It was too painful. I had been assigned a social worker and a psychologist that I had to see every week. I stopped seeing the psychologist because he said something that upset me — and that he was a man. (Yeah, I was very uncomfortable around men for a while.) Things with the social worker were okay, and she helped re-build the fractured relationship I had with my mother. So, it seemed, anyway.
That’s the thing with mental health issues triggered by trauma. Everything can ‘seem fine’ on the surface, when deep down you’re still hurting. I didn’t realise how much I was hurting. I didn’t realise it even after multiple panic attacks at university, or anxiety attacks when I started working. Trauma seeps into every area of your life and clamps down on it, until all you feel is a residual, tingling numbness where your soul once was. The real me yearned to get out, but I didn’t even know it existed until much later.
I went through over a year of counselling between 2016–2018. I revisited the trauma with a counsellor and tried to piece together what happened. I needed to re-integrate my childhood trauma and my teenage trauma with my adult self. Trauma can cause the personality to fragment, so you don’t feel whole. You feel like there’s something missing in your development as a person. I once described myself to the counsellor as ‘a kid that was forced to grow up too fast, and now I’m trying to catch up with everyone as a stunted adult. I not ready to be in my mid-twenties!’
I missed out on so much because I wasn’t mentally and emotionally present. I couldn’t celebrate my achievements. I couldn’t enjoy being social with other or have close friends. I couldn’t be confident. I denigrated myself at every turn, as if I didn’t deserve anything good in my life. I couldn’t even trust my own family for years!
When I realised all of this through my counselling, I was angry. I had lived in my own personal hell, triggered by everything that happened to me over a decade ago! How could it still be influencing me now? I’ve moved on! It was when I realised the extent of the trauma that I could start to heal from it and separate myself from it. When I started doing that, I realised that there was a completely new person underneath the pain.
I’m a different person now. I restarted counselling in mid-2018 and started taking antidepressants. I’ve made more progress than I’ve ever thought possible! Most people don’t see that, though. Most of the changes are mental, emotional and spiritual. The mask I wore to protect myself all those years ago managed to fool everyone — even my own mother! I felt like I had killed the 18-year-old me and buried her so deep that no one will ever find her! She is a ghost now. She is me and not me. I can never go back to being her, even if I wanted to. I’m stronger and more resilient than I ever thought possible. I embrace my creativity and vulnerability. I understand my strengths and my flaws. I can see a bright future ahead of me. Some people may never understand the kind of transformation I’ve taken to become a new person, but that’s okay. I didn’t do all of this for them. I did this for me!
