This blog started from a comment on a post a friend made on the Meta Demon…
One of my strengths is that I never try to prove anything to my abusers.
I just go no contact, more on this later.
My greatest failure is that I have to prove it (the abuse) to myself again and again and again and again and again and again and again…
I have to be a record keeper of the abuse for my own safety and growth. Little Sabi is constantly longing for the connections she’s lost. They keep me up at night every day. Even just now I’m waking from a dream about my abusive sibling where he actually cared about me and I was trying to care for him and connect.
Almost daily and several times a night I awaken grieving people who tried to destroy my life, my spirit and heart.
When I face death I want him to consume me because the echos of those abusers lives in my psyche every second of the day. Suicidality isn’t cute or fun and it’s never any further from the forefront of my thoughts than my skin is from my muscles; it’s always right there. It’s been this way since I was 8, or earlier. The anxiety of existence has been there since then too – waking to palpitations that hurt and praying it was a heart attack that would end me.
I used to find life in helping others as I’ve known my responsibility to care for this planet and the plants and the animals who live from her soil. This started sometime in my teens as I started dreaming of other worlds more and more and drawing humans on paper who eventually had names. Helping others wasn’t about purpose, most of the time it was centered around shame and keeping the voices of my abusers at bay. With duty I could redeem my sins. My sin was existence itself. I shouldn’t have ever dared to breathe.
This desire to reduce harm has constantly brought more cruelty to my door. Especially every human I ever encountered before 2021 and even a few after. After learning of toxic and harmful behavior patterns it was easier to spot the shadows some humans carry carried that were ready to feed my own shadows a source of fueling their ego and their card houses built on fear. I’ve told the story here and there of how my emotional support bunny, Dalilah, changed my life forever. This was the nugget of life that started to unravel the narrative my abusers inflicted upon me.
Suddenly in making a simple vlog about my ESA I had evidence that her little body and mind went from the brink of death, abandon and fear to thriving with joy, safety and connection. For once in my life I felt I could bring life and light with my existence. It was never about caring for a life as a means to avoid contemplating self deletion, though nowadays the only thing keeping me from it is my new ESA. The life and light Dalilah gave me was a reflection of truth, a tether to reality, we are all capable of birthing a better world, even if everything you learned about yourself was toxicity from the fears of your ancestors.
In my secret world where I escape I call these lies Shadowmen. That’s how my CPTSD feels to me, like the shadows of my father’s guilt and shame that latched onto him like a curse are now his shadow that lives in my psyche permanently burned into every thought, every feeling and every moment I exist. I was conditioned to believe them and their narrative about me that was downloaded from my father, reflected from my brother and many others to come.
It didn’t matter how many times Mom called me beautiful or smart or kind or sweet or gentle or patient or anything she ever sung to me without provocation or instigating from anyone or anything. The shadowmen left by my father, my brother and even faith based culture would devour any bit of light or love she gave me for a long time. I had immediate emotional flashbacks of the times she was hurt to protect me, my spirit could feel the violence she endured while being my incubator, my nurturer, my protecter my mother.
Everyday the shadowmen tell me I bring death and suffering to all I touch. Dalilah helped me see me instead of the distorted reality I had come to know. My delusion was crashing and it came with its own amount of fear. If I can’t control the violence in this world then the world itself is violent. The humans I see hungry and abandoned are there because this world is unsafe not because I neglected them.
I felt powerless.
Suddenly the hopes and dreams of my childhood self felt louder and larger than life, heavier than they ever felt. While in one hand the suffering of the world felt impossible to end I wanted to follow my light and love this world with all my might. This brought more shame as I felt egotistical and grandiose for the first time in my life and my light felt childish and arrogant and ridiculous. Daily the shadowmen were not only telling me to die, they were also telling me I’m disgusting for wanting to be who I am. A constant disempowerment was living in my bones.
Sadly this lead right into the hands of my next set of abusers. More delusional and sinister than any before. The one I call TAM and shortly after a whole workplace that left me permanently disabled and destroyed my naivety around trust and eventually blew the door open with naming my curse – the scapegoat. I don’t want to go into detail it will take to long. The gist of it all is my conditioning lead me right into the hands of what pathologizing psych would call “narcissistic” behavior and in the end I could no longer accept that I am a villain.
I do have to accept my responsibility in my patterns of fawning, avoiding conflict, fears of neglect and abandonment without the bravery to self advocate in the face of these shadowmen but I for once don’t carry my father’s shame and guilt, nor the systemic guilt and shame created to make us livestock to be dried up and discarded nor the guilt and shame of every enabler who makes agreements with the shadowmen. I don’t consent to abuse or shame – shame is a tool of the abuser.
The chains are broken but the shadowmen still haunt me. It’s a life long struggle to find glimmers and reflections of truth, to stay grounded, to know reality, to find the gray in so called white and black. I honor myself by soothing Little Sabi when they try to kill her. I honor myself by releasing Teen Sabi from the lies that rage and self defense and emotions are “unreasonable” or “unhinged” and remind myself that the truth is I am having a logical and reasonable reaction to oppression, injustice, violence and abuse.
For my entire life my truth was getting snubbed out. Now I sit with reality that a part of me cries for the connection I was denied as a child and as a result she weeps and clings to harmful humans with coding that says I’m the problem – if I see injustice or lies or harm it’s because I’m paranoid, confused, impatient or the source. So I don’t block abusers instead I withdraw, I stop giving, I stop soothing, I cut off the supply and when I’m ready I process my truth in plane sight.
If my truth remains in my head space the shadowmen take over and start replaying the echos of my abusers. If it remains in head space Little Sabi yearns to appease and mend and extend grace upon grace upon grace as she is pure and scared and doesn’t want to be alone. If it remains in head space Teen Sabi gets infected by the shadowmen and starts to plan destruction of me since I seemingly refuse to protect her.
So I manifest truth outside my mind to ground me, to remember, to have a reflection of reality birthed from my heart and soul. This person is unsafe, this person is not for me, our values do not align. I leave the door open because anytime Little Sabi misses them I have to remind her of their cruelty and the main shadowman TAM left is a narrative that I burn bridges and then cry about it. I only block to protect others from me, from Teen Sabi or when they won’t stop their violence once the facade falls.
The pattern is my abusers are all covert and 95% of them suffer from saviorism. I don’t “call people out” or “hold them accountable” that’s not my responsibility unless I see active harm to someone I have agreed to protect. I leave names out of my creations. I don’t care what people think of them, I don’t care what the general public thinks of me. People determine their own realities based on their perspectives – that is one of the only helpful lessons Dad left me that I can remember.
I know who I am.
If you got anything from this please spread the word!! You can tell a friend who might benefit or tell an enemy you want to annoy it helps to maybe keep me alive to care for my disabled family.if
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