The inability to receive support from others is a trauma response.
Your “I don’t need anyone” or “I’ll just do it myself” is a survival tactic. It’s needed to shield your heart from abuse, neglect, betrayal, and disappointment from those who could not or would not be there for you.
For me it begins with the parents that were absent by choice. Always making me feel as if the decision to have me was a mistake. Never feeling like I fit their ‘life’s plan’ or that I was holding them back from becoming whoever they thought they were supposed to be.
This would then set the scene for a life similar in so many ways and it wasn’t until I was in my 30’s that it all made sense to me. It was the reason I found myself with the same kind of guy every time. The ones who offered me sexual intimacy but never a safe haven for my heart. It became the friendships and family dynamics where they always took more than they gave. It became situation after situation of being told “we’re in this together” or “I got you” only to abandon me when I most needed them. Leaving me to pick up the pieces and handle my part as well as theirs.
It became putting up with so many lies and betrayals until one day I realised that I play the role in teaching my partners what it feels like to hurt someone who doesn’t deserve it. Suicidal tendencies, chronic feelings of emptiness, as well as abandonment issues always followed. I learnt along the way that I just can’t really trust people. Or that I can only trust them to a certain point. I realised that my enemies were in fact some of the better relationships I’ve had in my lifetime because when a person says, “I hate you”, they main it. The people that say I love you, well you never really know.
I learn’t not to put myself in situations where I had to rely on anyone because then I won’t be disappointed when they don’t show up or they drop the ball because they always drop the ball right?
So you don’t trust you anyone and you don’t even trust yourself to choose people. To trust is to hope and to trust is to be vulnerable but no matter how you dress it up and proudly wear it as a badge of honour as an independent female in the world, the truth is it’s no more than just a wounded, scarred, broken heart behind a protective brick wall. It’s impenetrable, nothing gets in. No hurt gets in. But also no love gets in either.
Today, I am ok alone. Once I got through the initial hurdle of being on my own and not choosing the next relationship with someone that at the end of the day had no follow through, they meant what they said at the time but when it counts, they’re just as broken as me. Truthfully, I just couldn’t bear the thought of one more ex partner who every time they looked at me it was with the saddest eyes, full of regret for how things ended for us, and I want them to all know that I will be ok. That I am in fact grateful for the support and help the have given me along the way, especially after things went south.
I don’t know what the answer is but I do know that doing things on my own may take a little longer but in the end it’s how I manage to move forward. It’s how it was in the beginning and as they say, “better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone else” in the end I guess.
This is not where it ends for me but finding comfort in the uncomfortable is a work in progress. Realising that trauma related symptoms can have their advantages sometimes if you’re willing to see that “imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring”.
Thank you to the people who see through our very well-rehearsed ‘game face’ and rather than carry on with life because on the surface everything looks just fine, they stop and ask us if we are ok and let us know they are not alone!
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DIARIES FROM DOMESTIC VIOLENCE 