I started 2019 wanting to prioritise the many wonderful people and opportunities in my life. I knew I still had a lot of healing and processing to do from my dysfunctional childhood and abusive first marriage, but I felt confident I could finally focus on reclaiming my present and future, not just recovering from my past. Instead, the past demanded attention, adding fresh abuse to the existing trauma, and I have had to acknowledge that I will never be completely free from the self-absorbed people who dominated my past and their ongoing attempts to abuse and control me and others I love.
I had worked so hard and it had cost me so much to create boundaries to protect myself. To have those boundaries dismissed so easily made everything I thought I had achieved seem so insubstantial. I did my best to create a sense of safety and connection for my family despite feeling so desperately unsafe and vulnerable myself. It was exhausting and almost unbearably hard to resist a lifetime of conditioned responses to the expectations of others, but somehow I did. Because no matter how distressing it was to spend this year confronted by evidence of the abusive reality of my past, giving those people power over my life again would have felt so much worse.
I felt overwhelmed by the irrational and relentless demands of those who feel threatened because I am no longer wiling to hide the reality of who they are or facilitate the false image they need others to believe is true. I felt isolated by the willingness of so many to believe easy lies instead of hard truths. I’ve felt betrayed that the comfort previously offered by words and writing was transformed to pain and uncertainty because my own words, and the words of those I trust, were used in attempts to intimidate me into compliance. The use of distorted quotes from my own writing about the trauma I’ve experienced to validate claims of fake emotions and create the illusion of past connection was particularly cruel.
The majority of this year has involved withstanding experiences that have felt like mental and emotional rape. It has been a year where connection felt impossibly hard, because connection requires communication and words no longer felt safe.
But despite it all, I have endured.
Despite the self-absorbed, narcissistic cruelty demonstrated this year. Despite the inexcusable indifference of those who have facilitated the abuse and blamed me for making it necessary. Despite a system that is broken and favours those who lie and manipulate without remorse. Despite struggling not to retreat back to a version of myself where my only value is in my ability to facilitate the happiness of others. Despite demands that I deny what I have experienced because others don’t want to face the reality of who they are and what they have done. Despite feeling so vulnerable and powerless, and the immeasurable pain of being reminded over and over that I do not matter.
I have endured because I deserve better than what the people of my past chose to offer me and I am determined to resist any attempts to force me to return to a life where others treat me like I am insignificant and invisible.
To the best of my ability, this year I have prioritised kindness and authenticity and connection. I have struggled and suffered and have new scars, but no matter how many times I have felt overwhelmed I have refused to give up. I chose to prioritise protecting those who were vulnerable instead of protecting myself, because even if caring for others makes me vulnerable to the possibility of being hurt, I refuse to treat others like they don’t matter just to keep myself safe. I resisted the false claims of others because I matter. I am not responsible for the consequences of their actions, and prioritising others does not oblige me to allow them to abuse me so they can feel better about themselves.
The photo accompanying this post is my Christmas gift to myself – a T-shirt from She Is Not Your Rehab. Their updates have given me hope that there are people willing to prioritise protection of the vulnerable over protection of the status quo and to offer words that aren’t just empty platitudes in the face of the confronting realities of domestic abuse. Their words have helped me feel seen in moments when the feelings of invisibility from my past felt so overwhelming present and real.
As 2019 draws to a close, this shirt is a message to those in my life who have treated me as insignificant (and those who continue to do so) and an acknowledgement of my own intrinsic value and worth independent of my usefulness to others. I will no longer accept that I only exist to absorb your pain and compensate for your inadequacies so you can feel whole. I am enough. I am valued. I do not have to carry the burden of your pain. Hurting me will not fix what is broken inside of you. And I am not your fucking rehab.
