A few years ago – when I was still doing talk therapy – I brought T with me a couple of times. I felt like there was tension we needed to talk out, and I was right. It just wasn’t the tension I was expecting.
TW for abuse, shitty parenting, emotional incest, self-harm
Growing up, I’ve always been that person who tries to cheer everyone up. It’s a habit that developed early in life. Living between two combative abusers, I learned very quickly that they were less likely to cause harm if they were happy. Naturally, then, anytime they were sad or upset, I would do my darnedest to cheer them up.
It’s a large part of why I’m such a sticker around rules, too. If rules are followed, rule-makers don’t harm us, right? (Of course, the political activist in me shudders at that sentence and wants to vomit, but it is what it is I guess?)
Of course, that also meant hiding a lot of my own feelings for the ‘benefit’ of others. For a long time, I had two moods – happy and brooding. When I was happy, I would dance to the latest radio pop and hip-hop songs. When I wasn’t, I listened to a lot of Linkin Park and the beginnings of screamo.
It’s hard to find healthy coping mechanisms in a space full of harm. When I got out and away from my family, I still had to deal with a lot of abuse. It wasn’t until four years ago when I cut contact with my mother that I actually was able to start healing.
The euphoria of that separation, of cutting off codependency and emotional incest, combined with getting married was something I was able to ride for a long time. As they always do, though, that high wore off. I began to realize that I wasn’t as healed as I thought. That’s when I started therapy which helped for a little while.
