TRIGGER WARNING for discussion of abuse and control
The worst thing my abuser made me fear was not what she would do to me. Actually I accepted that without question.
The worst thing to be afraid of is myself. That’s what my abuser made me most afraid of. Me. What I really am. What I can’t stop. What I would do to her. What I would do to everyone I loved. What everyone would find out in the end about me. What the people watching thought and how they’d take my loved ones away because of me (the watchers didn’t exist, I’m told, but it was too deeply engrained for that to make any difference now).
I was supposed to love my abuser, and that made it worse, because the revulsion I felt showed I should be repulsed at myself.
When rarely, I told what had happened, nobody heard or nobody believed, but she’d already told me they wouldn’t.
I escaped from my abuser, in physical terms. And I know I’m very fortunate because so many don’t.
The one thing we can certainly never ever escape from is ourselves. The one way my abuser ensured her power over my present and future as well as my past is this terror of myself. Add to that my “alters” (the child that screams unendingly because no-one heard her when it mattered; the violent lunatic full of anger as I’m tricked again and again by those who supposedly love me) – and my abuser is not only in my mind now but sickeningly in every current relationship and interaction.
I can feel her laughter and ridicule now. I feel surrounded.
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Dignity Beyond Trauma 