Childhood Feeling Like Your Childhood Was Taken Away From You?

[SeanCharles]

I don't know what correctly defines love and understanding.

This love you speak of is unconditional love. There are different types of love... The important thing to note here is that this self unconditional love starts within the self. You can't love another if you don't first have this foundation of love. Everything evolves from the self... for example: self-love, self-trust, and also important is self-happiness. Without these, it's not easy to open yourself to another if there is no basic trust or love. The trust is earned in time, whereas the love whether that be platonic or romantic starts with the self-love.

 

[Ladyghosthunter]

Do I feel like my childhood was taken away? All I can answer is, "What childhood?"

 

[gniyalsmi]

What bothers me most deeply is this idea that those monsters (my parents) destroyed my potential. I am outrageously smart, beautiful, and was* athletic. Due to their abuse, I have CPTSD and have had a life of anguish and didn't even know what "relax" meant until a few years ago. It's hard to focus, it's hard to even speak as well as I use to because my brain is so fried with trauma, it's been impossible to be happy the vast majority of my life, because the brain can't feel joy and terror at the same time. That being said, I have so much rage toward them, and so much love for myself, that I refuse to let them take away my purpose in this world. I am determined to fully reclaim my potential. Not only for myself but for everyone else who suffered child abuse, everyone else who has CPTSD, and everyone who doesn't even know how shafted they have been by society.

What I hate about CPTSD is there are very few visible recovered people we can look to and say hey "look at what amazing achievement person X did despite CPTSD". Just like we need more female CEOs, and more diversity in government, media, etc etc ... for the younger ones to look up to. People with PTSD and CPTSD especially need more people who they can turn to a say "He/She did it, so can I." When I was feeling more suicidal than ever (maybe my 1000th time feeling suicidal, sick and tired of pushing through it), there was NOTHING else that convinced me to keep pushing longer than a google search where I found a small paragraph on some random little website where a woman with CPSTD described her memories of being suicidal and marveled at her recovery.

We need more people recovered, and we need them to be vocal, visible, and public. Recovery is therefore my ONLY option and I am obligated write a book or two in detail to help someone else, at the very, very least. I am obligated to use all the gifts I was born with because that is part of how I will be able to communicate my survival story to someone else. I am obligated to thrive, not just to exist. I am obligated to feel profound JOY, as much as a possibly can, whatever it takes to get that. I am obligated to win, because that is how parents will lose. They've already lost. I'm ahead a few points in the game now, and I'm a much better team. I am obligated to achieve a happy life. That is literally the fight I keep in my head everyday. The effort it takes to deal with CPTSD, daily, is mind-blowing, like running a 50 mile marathon, every single day, 24/7, day after day, week after week.... year after year and often decade after decade. No breaks, no stops, no time to sit down and rest your feet. It takes so many tools, so many different types of therapies, sometimes medications, so many books, and so much self-awareness and determination and careful balancing, trial and error, there simply needs to be more information out there from recovered people because the task is so daunting, suicide is quite "logical". I have decide not to submit to suicidality because my parents tried to destroy my life, and I refuse to leave this world until I have felt the joy and self-actualization for myself.

I am legally changing my entire name because I am too valuable to be named by such unworthy people. I don't deserve the burden of carry the name of abusers, who don't know or cherish what is real and true of me.

 

[Friday]

I keep coming back to this post. Over & over.

I had an amazing childhood. Were there problems? For sure. There's always problems. My son's childhood, though, was taken from both of us. For 9 years I was able to give him (mostly) the childhood I wanted him to have. Enter some VeryBadThings, and he's had to grow up very fast. The future(s) I had laid out for him, worked my ass off to build the foundation for, are gone, and I am beyond furious about it.

Hopefully, he still has a future. I don't even know how many times he's almost died in the past 3 years, so there's a fairly constant risk of him being killed... And that's not paranoia speaking... And then he's tried to take his own life twice this past year.

Now, I struggle with ideation and I've been suicidal, so I get it. It's still gutting and heartbreaking. C'mon, kid! Fight! The gift of adulthood is being able to choose your own life.

Is it ever that simple? No. Of course not. But if he can get through this... Be made stronger, instead of giving up or breaking... He'll have the opportunity to fight for the life he wants to lead, instead of what's forced upon him. 80 years, kiddo. 80 years to make your life as you want it, 6 more years to go. To choose your own life. But you have to get there first. f*cking hang in there, kid. You can do this. I know you can.

 

[Ronin]

@FridayJones, there's not a word in English I'd know how to add; shouting the silentest prayer for your 'wish' to come true from the top of my lungs, though.

 

[Ellabella44]

@KwanYingirl wow surprised to find someone else had a knife under pillow, I also had things in my room near the door and under bed that I put in the "can I use this as a weapon if he decides to come get me and my brother instead of our mother" category. He yelled at her once if she wanted him to kill himself, and i took the knife he pointed at himself. I'd seriously not want to be a kid again. That automatically means to me arriving home to do homework and assessing if parents were a threat or about to become one.

 

[KwanYingirl]

Yeah, I know....

 

[Ronin]

I'm personally more surprised at people who *didn't* have a knife somewhere on reach.

 

[Lucycat]

My childhood was taken, yes. But T has encouraged me to have a second shot at it. I must say that the temper tantrums and adolescent moodiness were fairly difficult to deal with , perhaps even more so for my poor husband who had to look on totally bemused.

 

[joeylittle]

No childhood here, at least not in the way we are discussing. Childhood as in being cared for, loved unconditionally, able to make mistakes and be forgiven, etc.

It makes me feel better to remember that "childhood", defined in this way, is a pretty new idea - late 19th century (the victorian era). Not that I don't think it's a beautiful idea, and I am glad it exists, but there were many many children 200 years ago who never had access to the concept, even.

I guess it helps me think about how, while developmental stages are pretty consistent (how the human body/brain matures) for all of humanity, the ways society treats children are not at all consistent, and are something you either have the good luck to be born into or not. Even today, many places in the world, "childhood" isn't something that children get, and it's not that they are being abused (necessarily), it's the societal structure.

Repeating: I'm not saying childhood is wrong. But wishing I had one isn't going to get me one. And getting angry about it is, for me, a dead end street. So what I wrote above is my own way of thinking about it.

 

[Ronin]

@joeylittle, I'm so so hearing you.
I still struggle with childhood as a concept to be honest. Getting if any of presented situations is healthy for that specific child and then checking with what other societies and definitions may have about it makes more sense to me. Some basics are pretty clear cut, but a whole lot just falls into a kind of a grey area. Vexing. >.> It's just good to keep in mind concepts are 'just' that: concepts available and preferred in specific time & space.

 

[RussH]

I think we spend the first half of our life, childhood, suffering from one crisis to another, and then the second half of our life, adulthood, trying to deal with the consequences of our childhood.