Domestic Violence

And the Guilt it Fosters

As a child living in the constant fear of the top finally blowing off the pressure cooker and blowing up the entire house, it becomes challenging to breathe. Reading the temperature of someone’s mood is necessary for survival; just being a child is out the window. When the sounds of flesh on flesh, the snap of a broken bone, the constant screaming, the arguing, the sound of broken glass, and the constant pleas to stop are all more common than laughter or any sound of kindness, you almost have to make up a tolerable world.

As a child, we try to make our world make sense. We fabricate justifications that seem sane to a child. The ever-present mental torment; ‘What did I do? Why is this happening to me?’ Guilt often arises from thinking you have done something so terrible that this punishment must be justified. And you seek for things to make the punishment make sense. The punishment must equal the fabricated wrong that you think you have done. Even though it is made up, totally imagined, the guilt, too, must meet the punishment. So, we desperately seek something that makes it all make sense. But even as adults, we will never be able to make sense of insanity.

Even without the violence we are subjected to, children are prone to take responsibility for what they did not do. It is simply part of the human condition, but add to that the idea of being punished when there is no tangible evidence that they have done anything wrong. The sense of guilt, only magnified by the real-time, underlying fear of being punished, becomes a double whammy.

The violence in my own home as a child was excruciating and constant in every form. I internalized my grandmother’s broken bones, my sister’s bruises, and my inescapable terror. Her bruises and my terror were all my fault!

Just before my mom passed, I saw her alive the last time she asked me for a goodbye kiss. She had a big sore on her lip, and I refused. I got a spanking for that one act of refusal. The next time I saw her, she was in a casket, and it was my fault. A five-year-old’s innocent action spawned the insanity in my home. And I set forth to sabotage anything good that came to my life because of ‘the thought of a child.’ If they knew I killed my mom, they would not be nice to me.

As a child, I was always looking for evidence to justify my guilt, and therefore my punishment was warranted. And in looking, the proof was always found. And the fear that I lived in, I found a reason to believe was deserved and just punishment for my wrongdoing.

When a child is traumatized, they are robbed of hope, and no, this is not only true for children; if you are being abused or traumatized in any way by anyone, all of this holds for you as well. Without hope, the world is a terrifying place to live, and the traumatized find it almost impossible to hope; hope itself becomes frightening. Even more unthinkable is the act of trusting anyone. I believe this especially so for a child who has been traumatized by one supposed to be caring for, loving, and protecting them. Imagine for a moment trying to trust anyone when the person in your life who is supposed to be protecting you is the very one you need to be protected from.

So, what is the answer? When trust seems terrifying, hope always leads only to disappointment, and you see no light whatsoever at the end of the tunnel, especially if you have done nothing and are still holding on to a lifetime of guilt.

I had to face the two-headed beast that imprisoned me in fear. The first head of the beast to be met, I had to allow myself to hope, even though I still felt no evidence hope would take me anywhere but to even more harm. Still, even more frightening, I had to take the risk of trusting someone with all the deeply buried lies that only led me to self-destruction and self-loathing.

Please allow yourself to find a little glimmer of hope. Allow yourself to find someone you can trust, and make the leap of faith not seem so terrifying.

There is hope you can trust, and healing is not only possible but needed. Forgiving yourself and the people you feel harmed you. Please try to believe and trust that to forgive the victim, which is you, forgiving the victimizer is paramount; for me, it was the only way to personal freedom.

P. S. Please be mindful that forgiving does not equate to allowing abuse to continue, and detaching from an abusive situation may be necessary for forgiveness to be possible.

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