The I in Me

This internal doubt continued my entire life from 1976 until 2005. I look back and know all the years that I wrote in my journals and cried for no reason was because I did not admit the full truth and did not seek education and self-awareness of my own identity in therapy. I listened to my DNA family for words of comfort, support, encouragement and truth. I sought them out for truth and to hear those words that: “I was a survivor!”

I want to live and not just survive anymore. You can never get the truth from a lie no matter whom the individuals are that you love. The lie in my life is that I would not share the truth or admit that I had to release from them.

I feared their rejection if I did tell the truth. I felt that society would not understand this truth. I feared being alone. I feared being tainted. I became scared. I would be a category of a damaged person. Most of all, I feared this truth. The truth in me disappeared silently for decades. I did not know if I would be strong enough to admit the bad and the good that I survived. I did not know if I could make sense of these layers myself.

I knew I had to. I did want to live. I did want to feel free from this burden of silence and lies. I do want to scream that it all makes sense now. I now knew why I do this and did not do that with all the choices I have ever made in my life. I was learning to grow up for me with no influences. I was seeking my own identity to claim something that I wanted to help my daughter and me.

The entrapment of emotions, flashbacks, thoughts, smells, surroundings and blaming myself secretly within is because of PTSD. It is a hell that words cannot show you or make you feel. This feeling that “You are never right”, and even when you think you are; it is easier to believe that others are correct.

As a child, I was a hostage to their belief of lies. I believed their fake smiles, laughter and the compassion this family represented. I began to believe this truth as an indicator of the real world too.

You believe them when they tell you that you will survive. You believe these adults in your life when they tell you that you will be okay. These adults do appear to be fine. You believe these lies from your abusers because you have a hope of a child's heart that never grew up. You are a child in an adult's body who was hurt and did not want to accept the truth of the reality they gave you. It is easier to believe and live a lie than to accept the darkness of truth from these people that consumed your life. These adults are your years of molding. These adults become a primary definition of the word “family”.

It is not a child's fault. The responsibility belongs to the adults who knew better and did nothing. When these adults hugged me and told me that that they loved me, I believed them. When they told me that I was a good child, I believed them for the right reasons and not the lies they used to control me.

I was beginning to see this for myself and trusting my own heart. I used my own eyes and began learning as an adult woman and as a mother to my own child. I began to set the example of truth for my daughter. The hardest reality was admitting these horrific facts myself.

I practically had been living a lie of their thoughts, their wants, and their needs before my own up to that point of my life. I was trying to hold together a hope that a child wants in their family when there was none.

It is a mind aching difficulty to trust your own judgment. Life becomes evidence of these controlled lies. How do you live truth when all you know is lies, secrets, and deceit that camouflage your true soul to protect others and yourself from the criticism that lay in waiting when you do tell? How can anyone grow to believe their own heart when others constantly tell you that you are wrong or stupid for it or that it is not their way so you must be wrong?

Individuals who have never felt child abuse and trauma from the hands and voices of a loved one will never comprehend the layers of mending that adult child abuse survivors have to evaluate within. It is an internal process of restoration to obtain a peace-filled mind and a heart of innocence for survivors. These are two major elements robbed from adults in an abused childhood.

The innocent heart and mind of a child is an adventure of self-identity to find their destination into adulthood. A disruption of adventure occurs for abused children. This abuse will halt a childhood that will become lost in time. The survivors search will begin for this era of structural value. A foundation for building has been stolen that will never be retrieved.

It is like taking the air out of our lungs and filling them with harsh chemicals that we cough up and never knowing what clean fresh air feels like. We only know that our souls are choking daily in this silence. It is like being in a shell of four walls and never having the contents needed to complete the interior decorating that makes every person complete. This is Child Abuse. This is Incest. This is Ritual Abuse.