A true love story, or: on relationships and childhood abuse

When I look back on my childhood, there is one memory that increasingly haunts me. In it, child me is sitting on a couch, and my mother comes up to me and tries to hug me, only for me to shake her off. When I talked about this topic with my mother a few years back, she told me that I had started doing this all of a sudden when I was about five years old. Before that I loved nothing more than to be hugged and hug back, being the kind of child who would run into a room with strangers and end up hugging them. Until I suddenly turned inwards and began to reject all forms of physical contact.

It's only now beginning to dawn on me that my mother never stopped trying to break through this shell of rejection that had formed around me. Never stopping to hope that one day I would respond again to motherly love, even if she did not know what had happened to me to have caused this change in my behaviour.


In that regard it is interesting to look at what else happened between then and now, to try and understand a bit more of past 'me' based on those events. What kind of contacts I had, what relationships with others I built up, and so on. There a pattern forms of me being essentially taken in by various people like an abandoned puppy, some doing it out of pity and compassion, while for others there appear to have been... other expectations.

The low point there was undoubtedly the eight month period where while I was recovering at my mother's place after my failed suicide attempt, this one woman contacted me after seeing me in one of my media appearances on the topic of intersex. I guess I must have felt pretty lonely at the time, so when she asked for help with fixing some issues with her laptop, I agreed. She ended up visiting me, with a laptop that had some minor issues from what I recall, but nothing serious.

For some reason it ended up getting pretty late by the time she was supposedly leaving, and she insisted that her parents would not let her inside the house when it was that late, and she had forgotten her keys. This led to her staying the night, sleeping in my room. The next morning, she left, but would inundate me with messages, and call me at night, to hold entire monologues that lasted until the battery in my phone ran out. She also told me that I loved her. I guess part of me must have believed that, or was just happy to get some kind of attention.

I was searching for a new job at the time, and somehow she'd end up accompanying me to job interviews, even trying to convince the interviewer that she should also be present during those interviews. When I found a job (one I did attend just by myself, fortunately), I had to find a place to rent that was somewhat close to the office. Unfortunately due to Dutch rental practices, even my decent salary wasn't enough to rent more than a hole. Understandably, there was a lot of competition for such apartments, which meant that I spent a month or so travelling over two hours each day to and from my work with public transport.

Then this woman suggested that she could put her income from social security on top of my salary, so that we could rent something better. Together. Part of me figured that it'd be cool to help her out. We would be flatmates, was the idea. Sharing the apartment, but each with their own room.


I still cannot really write in too much detail about what happened afterwards, as it's too much to cover, and very upsetting. Summarised, she told me that she wanted to date me, that we were now each other's girlfriend. I guess this made me feel happy, as now I was more 'normal'. More like other people.

The real-estate broker who showed us around showed two places, one with two bedrooms, the other with one bedroom. We ended up with the latter. I remember thinking that I still wanted my own room, but with the choice for that place, it was settled. I spent the last of my savings on getting carpet laid in the apartment (another quirk of Dutch rental properties: you can expect a kitchen, but nothing on the bare concrete floors) and getting not only my stuff, but also her stuff moved to the apartment. This was also when I met her parents. I had been told to pretend that I was just 'a friend' who was helping her move to her own place. Her parents warned me for her, telling me to be wary of her, and showing me all the medications that she was taking for mental issues. Initially when we arrived with the moving truck, her parents refused to let her in, insisting that she should first talk with her, that they had a right to know what was going on.


The next months are a nightmarish blur. I'd get up during week days at 6 AM, go to work, return just in time to cook dinner, to then try to do something for myself and relax. She was glued to the television. Pretty much every waking moment, based on the power bill. When pushed, she'd tell me that she was afraid to go outside, that her family would figure out where she lived and would do something to her. When she had to go somewhere, she'd force me to accompany her. I used up most of my few vacation days at work to take time off for her on these trips. Other than groceries, I paid for everything else.

She'd force me to stay up well after midnight each working day to watch late-night TV. This led to me getting four, maybe five hours of sleep during the week each night. At work I was having enormous trouble trying to stay awake, with me dozing off in the midst of work when it became physically painful to keep my eyes open. That was the time when I first began to suffer sciatic pains in my right leg, with the painful sensations and numbness that would last for hours. When taking more days off for hospital visits, I began to discover another psychotic side to the woman I shared a flat with.

She hated doctors, hated psychologists. She got very upset and angry every time I had to go to a hospital appointment. She'd berate me, and yell at me, tell me that she would take care of me instead. I just had to trust her. Similarly, every time I talked about other people, she'd get angry, telling me in a loud voice that those people were all stupid and dumb. I remember when talking about me playing soccer as a teenager, she got angry and began a half-hour long tirade about how soccer is the most stupid sport ever and that everyone who plays soccer is a complete idiot and moron. If I dared to interrupt her, she'd get even more upset.


She'd always be around. Always knew where I was. Often, when I took a shower she'd be standing there, watching me. She trusted me in a sense, when she showed me her medical file, and the reports from psychiatrists which had led to her being marked as being completely unfit for any kind of work based on her severe mental issues. She was adamant that those conclusions were wrong, that there was nothing wrong with her, but everything with the world around her. She'd tell me about this older guy with whom she had had a relationship, telling me how he had just used her and how she'd take revenge, showing me invoices for wardrobes and other things she supposedly had been forced to buy for this guy.

This world collapsed when I had found a new job, working for a German company who had asked me to drop by for a week to get acquainted. My new boss then contacted me, telling me how he had been contacted by this woman, that she had insisted that she absolutely had to accompany me to Germany. He had refused, obviously. After this point her ire turned towards me. How could I let this happen, how could I not call up my boss and tell him firmly that he should pay for her to come along as well.

That last night involved hours of yelling and screaming from her at me. I couldn't interject, I couldn't do anything but cover my ears, walk away while she followed me. What could I do? Walk out of the apartment? I ended up barricading myself in the bedroom while she tried to push her way in, yelling that she would help me, that I was obviously unwell, that she would fix this.

Then she left. Moments later I heard her talking to my mother via the phone, telling my mother that I wasn't doing well, but that she would take care of me. This was the point where my mother felt all her misgivings come true. After somehow getting the phone to be handed to me, my mother told me that I should pack anything I really needed and leave the apartment ASAP. She'd come pick me up as soon as she could drove over from half-way across the country. And that she did. Over an hour later I was safely inside my mother's car, enjoying the peace and quiet.


Months later, I tried to get my belongings back, but the woman had changed the lock on the apartment and was apparently living there with some guy. The moment the door opened after we rung the doorbell, she took one look at us and immediately attacked my mother, raking her face with her nails. The moving company guys who were with us told us later that they had never seen anything like this before. That was the day when I lost almost everything. No money, no belongings but what I had taken from the apartment and what my mother had kept.

In hindsight my mother was absolutely right when she told me at the beginning that she didn't trust this woman. There never was 'love', or a relationship. A relationship is built upon mutual trust and understanding. Here there was none. I do not wish to express any conclusions or definite statements about these months of agony, but I do feel that I learned a fair bit about this person which struggled through those months.


If I had to change anything, or rather if I could change anything, I would have gone back to my child self and changed whatever led me to reject true, unconditional love back then. It's very hard to see oneself struggling through life without such connections with even one's own family. Maybe processing the horrors of the intervening years and giving everything a place will help me there in some way.

It still galls me that I cannot remember exactly what happened to me as a child which led me to change my behaviour so dramatically. I got a few fragments from which I can deduce a lot, but without knowing the exact circumstances, it's hard to do much with it. Yet even if I do not have that information yet, I am grateful for the love I always got from some people close to me, even if I didn't realise it until now.


My apologies if this blog post reads as more of an unhinged rant. It's been very tough to write, and there is probably a lot I didn't cover, or not well. Nobody said that dealing with trauma is easy, I guess. Consider this another small step forward in that process.


Maya