The fun thing about being adrift in the middle of an ocean are the many options that are visible, with each direction offering new and thrilling adventures and outcomes. The not so fun thing is that one's vessel has no propulsion and thus one is left to awkwardly paddle around with some scrap wood that one found in the bottom of the boat. It doesn't really matter what one direction one picks, as the wind and ocean currents will determine what direction one heads into anyway.
Sometimes that's the feeling I get with my life. I can see all the beautiful vistas that I could have reached, but there's always that combination of unfortunate circumstances, lack of motivation and crippling depression from post-traumatic stress disorder that end up clobbering any attempt at improving my life. It's pretty futile to get frustrated with ocean currents and the current wind direction.
When I try and take a look at exactly why the propulsion of my vessel is not functioning, I can obviously tell that the effects of youth trauma and subsequent traumas have done most of the damage. How do you work up self-motivation when your sense of self-esteem is constantly being attacked and drained by past and present reminders of one's failures and of being a worthless excuse of a human being. Combined with too many expectations from others heaped on top of that as well, perhaps, on account of always being the 'smart kid', due to a preference for reading, learning languages and the sciences, and so on.
When you end up sabotaging everything you try to do, because a lack of self-confidence makes you falter. When even small successes look meaningless next to the many failures and things promised and yet left unfinished... at some point you'll just find yourself adrift.
Of course there are many things which I can do. Or could do. I'm not dumb. I can learn what needs learning. I can make what needs making. Or I could, if I can figure out this lump of darkness that's inside of me, like a black hole. When you find yourself trying to motivate yourself to do something important for an entire day, but you just cannot bring yourself to do it, because... it doesn't feel right yet. That's just another failure that makes it again easier to fail the next time you try something.
And yet if you force yourself to do what needs doing, tearing through this resistance, it does not feel right either. It feels as if you're hurting yourself in the process by not understanding the source of this resistance. This bleakness and lack of purpose. Because that's ultimately what is is about.
The thing with depression born from trauma is that it isn't something that is easily addressed or treated. Sure, you can try to nuke it with medication, like anti-depressants, but the effect there is limited. It's after all caused by unprocessed trauma, which causes the brain to constantly injure itself as it goes through each subsequent retraumatisation and flashback event. The only proper long-term therapy there is to address the trauma.
Over the course of this year, I have managed to reintegrate the child personality which represented the childhood trauma back into my psyche, allowing me to finally make progress with examining and dealing with the trauma. This while also using it to understand and learn to deal with the subsequent traumatisation events, including bullying, physical violence, psychological and sexual abuse.
Blaming oneself is a horrible thing. Yet the assignment of blame yelled at me when I was a young child has been seared into my brain. It seems to have sensitised me to the acceptance of blame, no matter whether it was true or not. Slowly the sense of control got wrestled away from me. Over what was true or not. The ability to trust in others. The erasure of the physical, medical facts about my body. The erasure of my identity and my sense of self.
By the time I tried to commit suicide, I had come to accept that there was nowhere that I could go, nowhere that would accept me. Nothing that I could do or change. That's why the decision to take my own life had such a positive impact on me, because it was the first time in a very long time that I was fully in control of my life and myself.
That things had escalated that far was rather tragic.
During the years following that failed suicide attempt, I have tried to rebuild my life. Not surprisingly, I fell into the same traps as before, finding myself robbed of control by the medical and legal systems, and once again suffering psychological and physical abuse by those who sought to take advantage of my overly compliant attitude on account of having no self-esteem.
So what changed about that recently? Most of all getting to know a few friends who helped me through a number of harrowing situations. Without them I do not think that I would be typing this right now. Yet it's only a good start. Regaining control is hard. Dealing with trauma is harder. And I have to do both.
The coming time this means working on myself, figuring out more about these traumas and how to disarm parts of them. Regaining self-esteem as I work on my career. As a freelancer you do need to have some self-esteem, after all. Yet I would not at all mind a few more helping hands here, as I try to find more freelance work, or perhaps something more permanent.
The thing about being adrift after all is that you're pretty flexible about solid options that appear. One would be mad to refuse a new engine, or a tow by another vessel, simply because you have set your sights on transforming your vessel into a gold-plated and diamond-encrusted yacht through the power of wishful thinking.
I feel that part of regaining self-esteem is to learn to accept that others may see something of worth in me, much as I can see the worth in others. This also means that both giving and accepting help are essential parts of overcoming trauma.
Maya
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