Tuesday 31 March 2020

Childhood abuse and the fear of becoming an adult

After one has become aware of the realisation that one's childhood wasn't was as trouble-free and happy as one may have assumed, it is this realisation that provides the mirror in which one can finally reflect on one's life so far. Especially the troubles one had and possibly still has, such as the trouble to blend in with other adults.

Thinking about it, one wonders just what it is that makes one so different. I mean, sure, one's past has been rather traumatic, and nobody expects someone who has been afflicted with PTSD to lead a perfectly normal life. Yet this is more than just trauma like that which a war veteran or a victim of violent crime might have. They can actually remember a life in which things were more or less normal, before the traumatic event.


Part of the reflection process when coming to terms with childhood abuse is the acknowledgement that the monologue which one kept repeating when tasked to think about one's childhood, along with some choice memories that would fit with a carefree childhood alibi, that all of this was just part of protecting oneself from the truth. That in reality, nothing about one's childhood was happy or carefree. At least not until the thing happened that apparently shattered one's mind at a young age.

When my mother described to me the drastic change that I underwent very suddenly around the age of five years old, transforming from a happy, carefree child into a withdrawn child who rejected any form of physical contact... it is now that I can look back on the years between now and then, and see that little has changed. I made this coping mechanism part of my new 'self', and I still am that traumatised child.

It isn't just physical touch that I find repulsive or terrifying to this day, though it is the most obvious sign. Whatever it was that adults did to me at that young age, it appears to have instilled such a strong and fundamental sense of repulsion and fear of anything to do with 'adults' that trying to grasp the full scope of it is impossible.


I think that adults as a whole have made a pretty miserable society, in which nobody can agree on anything, where help is often nowhere to be found and the wealthy freely exploit the less wealthy. I can see that an individual's life has little value in society and that for all but the wealthy it is merely an exercise in self-exploitation at the behest of others until one's last breath. The lucky ones will not have to deal with being exploited as well.

I cannot forgive the adults who made me feel this way. Who took away most of my childhood and ruined my life in so many ways. I just wish that I could remember more than these half-remembered glimpses and sensations of intense terror and panic. Who it was, and why.


I don't feel like I am a complete human being at this point. Having been emotionally and psychologically withdrawn for so many years obviously didn't help. It's only recently that I am beginning to regain a sense of self, and discovering that truly a lot of time has passed since I was that five year old kid.

Yet it is with absolute terror that I find that my view of society and this world isn't changing along with it.


Everything about society is terrifying, unforgiving, cold, harsh, unhealthy, deceiving and delusional. The only escapes that I can see are those where one can flee into the realm of logic and reason, like that of science and technology, or into innocent fun like that of cutesy video games. I feel that intellectually there is a lot in this world that I can and would love to learn and understand. I can see that there's a lot of beauty and a true sense of wonder, yet this too lies beyond the realm of human society. Human society only faces inwards and only concerns itself with humans and laws and regulations and conflicts between humans. It stumbles around blindly.

For the past decades, the realm of science and technology has been where I have been hiding, mentally. Here there are none of the requirements of human society. Only the willingness and capacity to be curious and learn.


What terrifies me about becoming an 'adult'? Part of it is simply the terror of becoming like all of the adults who have harmed and hurt me over the years. The mere thought of accepting any part of what they are and stand for is truly repulsive. It feels as though I would somehow approve of their actions towards me, by becoming more like them.

That is the core of it all, I guess. Inside of me, I can still intensely feel the pain and terror of the child. In the way that I react to situations, and the mindsets that I slip into when my post-traumatic stress disorder gets triggered feel as if regressing to this terrified child. Far too often, adults today still manage to hit exactly on those trigger points, where their actions, words and so on can only be interpreted by my mind as being threatening. Threatening in the way that shattered my mind once, years ago.


It makes one wonder whether there truly is a way to deal with, or even give childhood trauma a place.


Maya

1 comment:

Tom Farrier said...

Don't feel like there's an impenetrable wall of your own making preventing you from finding the insights you crave. When I was 5, I was hit by a car and spent the entire hot summer in traction, on a 12-bed childrens' ward. My father had to work, and my mother had to take care of my sister. I literally can't access hardly an image of this long and lonely time, even though it left an indelible stamp on my personality.

I think the smart, confident, articulate person you are today has enormous value, and is an example of how adults should be -- but often aren't.