As I sometimes look back into my past, I get a glimpse of a little girl. I can see myself clearly, at times, but this little girl, for the first, hmmmmmm10? years on this earth, has no happy memories of family and friends but does have some memory, not all, but have the memories are of being invisible, of abuse, ridicule and of unbearable loneliness. What is difficult for me to see and understand is why the fear I felt as a young child still lives inside of/rules/affects me today, even though I am a full-grown woman.
Because of all the physical and mental abuse that I suffered as a child, I can look back today and picture myself as a little girl being afraid of many people in life - the parents, the siblings, the school teachers, the preachers. It was like I had been totally convinced as a child that no one would ever like/love me. (I was 15 when I actually thought those thoughts, with the frame of reference being that I was attending a wedding.) No matter what I did, I was afraid of getting into some kind of trouble. No matter how hard I tried (and I was 19 when I realized this) I could not just be myself, because I had no idea who or what that was.
There was no 'individual' living inside of me. That part of me (the individual) was still being formed. All I knew to do was follow the rules and try to mold myself to every different type of situation that arose and then hope for the best.
To go to church was to hear about God, and Love while everyone was one his best behaviour. To come back home, was to return to the beginning of another 6 days that had nothing to do with what we learned in Church. What was right? One hour of Peace on Sunday and 167 hours of "what will happen next?' every week.
When you are a small child, nothing makes sense to you unless you ask and an adult then explains. A child looks to the adults in life to demonstrate the correct way to do things. What if the parents of this child had gone through the very same thing as I had, and never realized the 'innocent ignorance'? But I wanted to know. What if a child grows up remembering only negative occurrences? The natural reaction is for the child to think negatively more often, and for me to go off to be alone I could lose those feelings, but replacement positive thoughts had not been provided. I was just alone.
After being abused through the formative years, I found that even after I grew up, I was still afraid that I would fail at anything and everything I tried in life. Some people may look at me and see that I've done all right in school and work and live an average lifestyle.
How can this be if I sense that I have 'failed at life'?
It's possible it is not entirely the physical and emotional abuse I suffered that was the problem. The mind, together with laws, rules and regulations, outside observations can make one override that type of abuse and the individual can become devoid of feelings, yet still lead a productive life in society.
I personally think it was all the years of not being able to find out who *I* was as a person and then to build from there. Being so afraid all the time and at every turn, until a young mind just finally shuts itself down, the robot automatically takes over and it goes along with the required program. After a while, even the robot does not know the difference between emotional, spiritual and physical feelings.
We know that there are people who lost an arm or a leg, yet they can still feel the missing appendage, as if it were still fully connected to them. No matter how much they look and no matter how much they feel, that arm or leg is not going to appear ever again.. That is how I feel about the abuse I suffered. I know that it is in the past and that no one can hurt me any more.
But the results of the abuse, the taunting, the mixed up thinking are still present within. It is an invisible thing, a sense of hurting away down deep inside of me all the time. That deep down hurt: that is ME. It is who I really am as a person. That is why I have never been able to find out or become who I really am, because that is who I am.
I guess sometimes, we just have to make the best of what we are given. However, it sure would have been awfully good to know 'what it felt like' to have been 'like 'everyone else' just one time. I see the peaceful faces, the glowing faces. I hear the laughter, the interaction, the disagreements solved and I just know that I have missed so much in life---well actually, I have missed life
