Trauma – …on the B.L.

My parents aren’t a part of my life. Not for their lack of trying. I set boundaries again and again and again, but our perceptions of our own realities are not compatible. They are allowed theirs, but they do not allow me mine. They cannot listen with compassionate hearts or accept me as I am nor own responsibility in our downfall yet expect all of this and more from me. I might be a real adult, but I’m still their child.

Life without my family is hard. I won’t lie. But it’s so much easier than giving up who I am to be who they want me to be. Fitting into a too small box and swallowing the truth, I couldn’t do it anymore.

I have chosen the unpopular route: disowning my parents.

For so many reasons. This is not the first time. It may not be the last, but it likely will be.

One of the biggest upsides to continuing my life without them is my ability to write. I am a writer. One who has always found real people’s stories to be far more interesting than fiction. The life I’ve been dealt and the choices I have made or were forced into making sure do make great copy. My life isn’t just interesting, it’s an example of how far we have yet to go as a society. I refuse to stay silent when I have a voice and the ability to use my voice. I know why so many people choose silence when they’re confronted with abuse or the ramifications of what telling their truth means after it’s over. As a survivor, sometimes the event itself isn’t the most traumatic part; it’s the after. Choosing what to say and to whom for fear of not being believed or worse being believed and told to hush hush. I have been towing the line for eight years, trying to be the good daughter, creating fewer waves. But the waves have always been my favorite part of the ocean, and I’d rather be in them than watching them.

For the first time since the last time I cut off my parents, I’m writing again with emotional depth, clarity, and vulnerability. I have spent eight years playing diplomat. Weighing every word I type to avoid hurting them because my story and, in many ways, my existence causes them pain. Though it may not seem like it, I am a people pleaser. In order to write what I do, I have to fight against every instinct in my body to stay silent, to save people’s feelings. The problem is trying to prevent pain. There is a moral component to telling stories and who owns a story. As a victim and survivor, this component becomes even more nuanced with power dynamics and silencing tactics coming into play all but immediately. In a great many of my stories, my parents were not direct players and fall into a category of affected bystanders. Though, I have plenty of stories to tell where they are active players and even abusers, but the majority of the stories I am ready and capable of telling have nothing at all to do with my parents. The only reason they hurt over the stories I tell is because they are adjacent to me and my stories are a reflection upon them as parents, people.

Over the last eight years, I haven’t written these stories because I don’t want to cause pain unnecessarily. Except the pain is not unnecessary. This is necessary pain. I haven’t spoken to my mother or father in over two years, and it’s been within the last six months that words have started pouring from my soul again. I needed time to heal. I am writing my truth, my pain, the life I have lived. It has been a painful life. A beautiful life, but painful. And I’ve finally gotten to the point where I’ve gone beyond ambivalence.

I’m not purposefully inciting pain, but I’m not going to skirt around it anymore either. I’m bringing a lot more fuck you energy to the stories I’m telling because I’m not making this shit up, and if I’m the only one who believes me, then fine. If my stories hurt my parents, then good. I was raped for years in their house. I’m not angry and I don’t hold it against them, but let it hurt. I have hurt for a decade and a half. They parented me for nineteen years and failed to do the one job they should have done above all else: protect me. Maybe I am and was as good at hiding behind a mask as I think I am, but I asked for help and was turned away time and time again. Precedents were set that I would not be believed, my safety was not a priority, my mental health was to stay hush-hush. They chose to not protect me, to not stand by me, to not pay attention to their daughter when I needed them, when I begged for help, when I was assaulted, when I told them I wanted to die.

So what was I to do when a boy held me down and raped me for the first time? Or the second? Or the fiftieth? They had proven they didn’t care and I couldn’t trust them. So I found solace in myself and learned to depend on no one. Now that I no longer need them to parent or protect me, they want to do both and by doing so silence me, whether that is their conscious goal or not.

I love my parents with all my heart. Truly. Though no one will believe me, family is the most important thing to me, which means it is so hard every day not caving in. But it is possible to love someone and not want them in my life. I am happier and healthier without them. I wish them well. I do not wish to cause them pain, but I will not stop writing the stories that matter.

More than anything, I wish they would let me go.

“Just another career-obsessed, nail-biting, manophobic, hell-bent feminist she-devil.”

I hate the title survivor.

I’m not a victim. Not anymore. I was a victim when it was happening. But after…

There isn’t a word I’ve found to resonate with my broken pieces. And I’m a words-person. Silence. Nothing. Guilt. Solitude. Shame. Numb. Lost. Broken. They’re not titles I can put on a shirt or a sign to identify myself as one of many in a march. They are feelings. The feelings that have never left me from the moment his hands first touched me with violence in their intent.

I never say, “I’m a survivor,” or “I survived.” I can’t. It feels like a lie. It would be a lie. I didn’t. I did not stand up as the same girl he held down. I didn’t survive. Rape is murder. He murdered who I was. Every time killed a part of me.

The closest I’ve ever come to finding a way to describe myself is “raped,” but people don’t like that. If people have to face humanity’s ability for violence and destruction, they want to see someone strong and owning it or broken and hiding it. Survivor. How happy. How uplifting. What a positive spin on a tragic epidemic. It’s ignoring the actions that were survived. Focusing on the survivor having survived. Past tense. It happened. It’s done. Let it go. Move on.

Survivor. It’s a bow to wrap up a present we don’t want to open. We know the gist of what happened. Some hazy sort of violence. No specifics needed; that one word says it all. It tears down the facade we’ve so diligently constructed, letting people in just enough for them to know there’s a dark past but not enough they actually know a damn thing. Survivor: say the word. People get a sad look in their eyes, “I’m so sorry.” But stop there. It’s a bow to wrap up the story people don’t want to hear.

Ignoring the story, the nitty gritty of it, is its own kind of violence.

Putting people at ease, letting them remain in their comfort zone is easy, kind. It does not facilitate change. If people are comfortable, they’re complacent. Change comes from agitation rooted in pain and suffering. I don’t write about this because it’s fun to dwell in the dark pain of someone’s choices to destroy my mind and undermine my identity. I write because I was raped. I was raped for years. I was beaten. I was abused. I was shared. I was torn. I was hurt. I write because too many people can say the same. Some say it. Many do not. Silence is a virtue. I don’t have that virtue. I had no voice for so long, but I have one now. I tell my story to make people uncomfortable. I tell my story because it is time for change. I tell my story because it has helped people, opened minds, changed minds, softened minds, and made people angry. I tell my story because I can. Many are not able to because of pain or circumstance or they’re no longer alive to tell theirs. I am still here. A broken, tired, angry, hurt version of who I used to be. I did not survive, but I am still here.

I have been writing and blogging and processing in various ways for almost a decade. In college, I wrote under a pseudonym about being a stripper to pay for school and food and a roof not because I was ashamed but because I didn’t know what my future was uncertain. After college, I started a blog to talk about my life and how I struggle to pick up the pieces of my soul. A few years ago, I started …on the B.L., and it quickly grew into something real with a following. I haven’t kept my past or advocacy separate from this, but I haven’t focused on it either. It’s been present by quiet. But no more. This is the driving force behind everything I do. Creating change. My story, as painful as it is, keeps me going.

I hate the word survivor. I don’t feel like I survived. I feel like I just didn’t die; though, there were years I wished I had. I like the word servivor. I’m using my story to serve others by creating change in whatever way I can.

I am a servivor.

Tag: Trauma

I Disowned My Parents So I Could Survive and Write

I Am A Servivor