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Abusive Childhood Redux

It's sort of my worst nightmare come to life—to be back in the psychologically and physically abusive home I grew up in.  After 40 years of working my way out, here I am.  Those of us who come from that world are survivors.  We survived and I survived at tremendous cost and using whatever tools we could find. 

I know that the compulsion I feel right now is to go back to those habits and patterns that got me through the first 18 years of my life.  I was a moving hiding target.  It is hard to hit a moving target and hard to be attacked if someone doesn't see or notice you.  So, you try to blend in and hide and stay out of sight.  And when you are in sight, you are quiet, you make yourself small.  Because when the person with all the power and authority in your life is erratic, raging, vengeful, and screaming you live in fear.  And if you can, you run. 

Having that kind of person with all the power in my life now brings back all the fears, real valid fears.  What's going to set him off this time? who will he attack? how will the attack happen?  what will be taken away?  what can I do to protect myself?  I feel overcome with fear, pain, hurt, and sadness.  I am taking it personally because it is a deep wound within me that I thought I had left behind.  But you don't lose the lessons you learned at the knees of a monster.  I was beaten, belittled, insulted, and broken.  

I hid and I kept moving. I climbed trees, stayed outside from dawn to dusk, hid in closets and corners, and ducked.  Run, run, faster, there—quick, whew! That was close.  Sometimes I got to safety and sometimes I didn't.   Even when I did for the moment, the day of reckoning would come when I least expected it.  Because that raging, angry, vengeful, authoritarian was also erratic.  There was no rule that worked once and could be counted on to hold.

I know I am not a child anymore and I know that I have tools today that I did not have then, still the feelings are exactly the same.  People say, "you are taking this too personally, it won't be that bad, give him a chance."  But, I know better.  I have lived with this personality before and it took me many years to learn to trust my own instincts (honed with years of experience) about who to trust.  Our President Elect is not a person I can trust. 

I aim to protect myself as an adult in ways I could not as a child.  I don't know what that looks like yet.  I'm trying to process my fears to get to it.  I do know moving and hiding won't work.  They are not an answer for me today.


For today I am here—standing still and in the open.  
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