Overcoming The Traumas Of My Past

How I survived my childhood and learned to live as an adult.

I went through a lot in my life.

• I was abused by my mother.
• I didn’t have a childhood as it was lost to the torturous world of ballet where I didn’t want to be.
• I was brutally assaulted at the age of 16 and had to endure a trial that made me feel like the defendant.
• When I finally got to live my life on my terms, the damage that had been done to my body caused me to lose a baby, born at just under 22 weeks.
• I was given opioid painkillers for chronic migraines (which opioids don’t even treat) and battled a horrible addiction.

It was a lot.

People call me strong and I hate it because I’m not.

Here’s the truth about how I survived it all.

I’m still working on it — I’m not fully okay and maybe I never will be. But I’m able to talk about most of it and I go to therapy every week to try to figure it all out. The fact that I’m still alive and am probably too self-aware for my own good — that’s a whole other story. The one I’m about to tell you.

It all started with writing.

Having an outlet.

The first and best thing I can say to anyone who has survived a trauma, let alone multiple prolonged traumas, is you need an outlet.

Writing was my lifeline when I was a kid. I would furiously write in notebooks in my dorm room bed every night. It wasn’t for anyone but me. No one read it — but it let me get my feelings out. I would write about how much I hated ballet and how I didn’t feel like I had a home. I didn’t want to go back to my parents because my mother hated me and would only hate me more if I quit dancing. It was the one thing about me within she saw any worth.

I would write about my disappointment and pain when my mother would refuse to come to see me perform. I danced for her and she wasn’t there. My entire life felt meaningless. I was very young when I started using the term ‘born to bleed’ to describe my life. It seemed like the only purpose in my life was pain. I was my mother’s punching bag, clay for my ballet instructors to mold into the prima ballerina that I didn’t want to be, and I was sick of hiding my pain.

I danced through broken bones and bleeding toes that had no toenails, blisters, and bruises that were never given a moment to heal, and all for a woman who hated me anyway. I became the best dancer in the school for someone who bragged about it but didn’t want to be bothered to come see it.

I wrote and I wrote and I wrote about all of it. After I was assaulted, my jaw broken and wired shut — writing was my only form of communication and the refusal to write was my only form of obstinance.

I became better at releasing my feelings through writing than speaking. Throughout my young life — it was the only option I had. Speaking out against the pain I was in was not only not allowed — it wouldn’t have mattered. I couldn’t escape from ballet because living with my mother would be far worse. I was trapped. After the assault, I lost my voice entirely. But I was still able to write.

When I had to make a statement in court — I wrote it. My brother read it for me. If I had tried, it would have come out as anger. By that time, anger had become the only emotion I was able to feel. The pain was far too much to handle. Anger was easier. But in my brother’s voice, it was read with such pain that the entire jury cried.

My writing changed. It was still an outlet for me but rather than writing my pain — I wrote my anger. I wrote that I hated the doctors who saved me and that they should have let me die.

The secret that the people who call me so strong for surviving don’t realize is that I never wanted to survive it. I wanted it all to end. Writing was still my lifeline but I was barely holding on. I started acting out and living my life on risks I shouldn’t have taken. It’s almost weird that I’m still here today to tell this story. I shouldn’t have survived the things that I was doing.

The more I acted out, the less that I wrote. I didn’t have time between my passive ways of not caring if I lived or died and following the rules of the life I felt dead inside of living. And the further I got from my outlet — the worse things became for me.

Trauma with no escape becomes intolerable pain.

You need an outlet.

Psychology/Therapy.

I got a degree in Psychology with a double major in Philosophy. I learned how to analyze my own pain and new ways of thinking about life and reality. I earned my Master’s in Criminal Psychology which was far more specialized than just general Psychology but it taught me how to play with therapists.

I don’t recommend this.

I saw a lot of therapists over the years. I spoke to exactly none of them about anything real. They were toys and nothing more. I just ran down the clock and would talk just enough so they had an idea of why I was there but no idea of how to help me.

I was misdiagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder by one of them and as a possible Sociopath by another. They saw me as someone with no empathy, no remorse, no connection to pain, no connection to happiness, no connection at all. They saw what I showed them. Malingering disorders was a specialty of mine and all part of my game.

I have a lot of empathy, remorse is iffy but that’s a whole other story, and I’m intensely connected to all of my emotions — but they’re severely dysregulated. Pain turns into anger to this day because anger is manageable and I can handle it. The pain of my past… letting myself feel that… it’s a floodgate I was terrified to open. Because what if I couldn’t stop it?

Therapy can change everything but you need to be ready for it. I wasn’t ready.

I started writing again. But this time it wasn’t in secret. I found platforms and an audience and that led to finding other survivors.

Allies.

There is no such thing as a life without pain and while no one in the world can ever experience your story in the exact same way — there are people who understand.

It took me a long time to figure that out. My story is unique. Most people don’t go through what I did. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t allies for me.

When I started sharing my story on platforms I called it fiction. It was the survivors who saw through my lie. They recognized that the story was too raw, too detailed, too emotional — it wasn’t fiction. And they sent me private messages with offers to talk about it.

I still couldn’t say any of it out loud. But knowing that they saw me and understood gave me the courage to stop calling it fiction and own my story through writing. And in doing so — I found even more survivors and more allies. Having people who understand you is vital. As much as the people in your life who love you can sympathize and be there for you — they have no idea how you feel. Other survivors do.

I refused to use trigger warnings so as not to risk turning people away. Maybe that’s cruel and I should warn people but honestly — when you’ve been through trauma — life is a trigger. A warning serves no purpose. I am triggered in weird ways by things I don’t see coming. I’ve never been triggered by the story of the pain of someone else. I see it as someone who gets it. Someone who knows what it’s like for me.

Finding those people changes everything. Ignore trigger warnings and face the pain of others. They understand you.

Pushing out my mother.

It’s been almost a year since I kicked her out of my life for good. I endured her abuse long enough and I ended all contact.

I had a lot of people giving me advice that they had no business giving. They didn’t understand and couldn’t understand and telling me I’d regret it if she died because she’s the only mother I have — was something someone should have said to her about me and not the other way around.

I waited because she always put on a show in front of other people. Especially my husband. She was this picture-perfect mother who baked and bought expensive gifts and lavished me with praise and pride.

I admit, I lived for those moments. I knew they weren’t real but they were the only times in my entire life that I was able to feel like I had a mother that loved me. Even if I knew it was fake, I needed it.

I also needed my husband to see her other side. He knew about my history with her and that her behavior around him was fake. I’d told him all about it long before they met in person. But all he ever saw was her persona. I needed him to see the monster that I grew up with. And last year on Thanksgiving — she finally showed him her true colors.

It was only a couple of weeks after that when I cut ties with her. We had a fight and I ended communication. My husband would have understood it without seeing it in person. But it’s what I needed. And after that, I finally did it.

It hasn’t been easy. Living without a mother — even when that mother is awful to you — but knowing she’s still out there is extremely difficult. Knowing it was you, the child, who made that choice and having people who don’t understand it judge you for it doesn’t help. Once I was free of her though, I started therapy for real. I started talking about my past out loud for the first time. I started trying to heal.

Surviving.

Surviving and living aren’t the same thing. I’m still in survival mode and will be for a while. But I’m actively working on myself for the first time.

I have a therapist that I like and trust and I see her every week and I am honest with her. I don’t play games or just run out the clock.

I still write about it. I still have my outlet. It led me to allies and they are a huge source of help no matter where they are on their journey. Some of them are farther than me and provide hope that “better” is possible. Some of them are in the same part of the journey as me and they provide understanding that no one else can. Some of them are just beginning the journey and I find myself providing hope to them. It all helps.

People ask me constantly how I got through everything that I’ve been through and the answer is both simple and incredibly complicated — I just kept breathing and turned myself off from feeling anything at all.

In other words, I didn’t get through it. I will probably never completely get through it.

I’m just now finally learning to live with it.

I’m not there yet. But I’m working on it.