to matter more

This might be short or it might be long. I have no idea really. I’ve been having an incredibly difficult time the last little while and I simply need to write some things that have been coming up for me.

It’s hard to engage. It’s hard to just be myself.

What does that even mean-be yourself?

Who am I? What makes me, me? I don’t know how to answer any of those questions, so I don’t. When you only existed to meet the needs of others for so many years, your sense of oneself becomes crippled. You become the person that everyone else wants you to be. The lifelong journey to understand who you really are ensues and the answers are anything but easy. In truth, I don’t know how to find me again because I never really knew who I was in the first place.

Life is hard. That is truth. Once again I can feel the pull to self-isolate in hopes that I can push the memories away. The current thoughts of dying and the inner roar of self-hate are earth-shattering. I want to hide, even from T, the awfulness that I feel as I teeter on the brink of self-destruction.

Maybe I’ll run away
Maybe I shouldn’t stay
Maybe I just don’t care
Two truths, one lie
But they could never know that

It’s been a little hard
I’ve been a little tired
A little?
No, that’s not right at all

My world is full of maybes
But maybe all along
I’ve only been afraid

Growing up, I didn’t belong to me. Hidden in the shadows there wasn’t anyone who wanted to know where I was, what I was doing or if I was safe.  I’ve always felt that I was somehow inherently undeserving or different or unworthy.

I was threatened as a child about things that would be done to me had I dared utter a word to anyone. I’m struggling to make sense of it but I simply can’t. What’s the point of threatening a child with death or bodily harm? What did they hope to gain by saying the things that they said? Why tell a child that you would hang them from a tree and cut out their tongue so that everyone would know they were a liar or tell them that you would cut them with a knife or shoot them if they even thought about sharing the truth? Why whisper ‘all I have to do is squeeze‘ as a big grown-up hand was held firmly on the small neck of the child pinned below them?

I know for me, I never would have said anything. I think I knew that deep down it wouldn’t have mattered if I had chosen to speak and I honestly believed it wouldn’t have stopped. I know I believed everything happening belonged to me and that I really was the little whore that they said I was and caused them to want to do the things that they did. I know that I believed that my mother would have left me forever if she ever found out what was happening and I would lose that chance to feel important enough to her.

But why didn’t I matter more? Why didn’t I matter at all? Those who were supposed to be family could not be trusted and that those who should be protectors turned away. As time moved towards adulthood, the abuse eventually folded into the fabric of their past and for most of them faded entirely. For me though, it remains to let me know that I shouldn’t trust, or rely on others and that I was not significant enough to matter.

Sometimes, I think about what it would feel like to leave everyone behind. Would anyone notice? Or care? Could I really be blamed for walking away from all of this? Would I be giving up on that small possibility that I’d feel important enough? Or loved? Or is it too late?

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

They say nothing heals the past like time. How much time, I wonder, and do we have enough of it?