I haven’t always existed. Having a personality, interests, a self – these things don’t come naturally to me. These things are things I created out of the wreckage.
Having a self is dangerous when you’re being abused. Having a self is the most vulnerable thing you can have. A self is up for ridicule, scrutiny, a self might be destroyed if it’s determined your self is sinful. A self is a thing that is in direct defiance of abusers who have told you that you are nothing, you are worthless, you are supposed to be whatever they want you to be, nothing more and nothing less.
So I didn’t have one. I liked whatever I was supposed to like. I had the opinions I was supposed to have. I had no interests. My entire childhood and teenage years is just one long nothing.
Becoming a person has been hard. First off, because we have this belief that in order for an aspect about you to be real, you have to prove some genetic cause. Or at least some childhood inclination. Which doesn’t work if you don’t exist, if all you are is an extension of what you are told you are. I am making myself. I’m taking pieces and seeing if they fit, if I’m comfortable with them, and that isn’t always a clear-cut answer – especially when some of those pieces go against all the training that’s been pounded into me about who I’m supposed to be.
And second off, trying to be a person is…terrifying, to say the least. Because it’s vulnerable. Because you can get hurt, being a person.
People always want to know what I like to read. Or what movies I like to watch. Or what I like to do for fun. And honestly? As little as maybe five or six years ago, the answer to these questions would have been: nothing. Would have been whatever particular Christian novel I was reading, whatever safe answer I could give. And even when it started to be something, I hid these things from others. I was ashamed of myself, regardless of whether or not we would have shared the same interest. I didn’t know how to exist and I was ashamed that I did.
When I first met my platonic soulmate, she would suggest lots of movies or shows for me to watch. And I never did – not because I wasn’t interested or was afraid I would hate them, but because I was afraid I would like them. It was terrifying to me, the idea of liking things, of having interests, of being a person. Because even if you were the one to suggest it to me, I would be afraid it was a trick, a trap, and the second I said “That was amazing!” you would turn on me, make fun of me, treat me like an object of ridicule.
And this of course, is just interests. This isn’t even getting down to the more personal aspects of who I am as a person. That has been even more terrifying.
I’ve been finding myself…or creating myself, whichever it is. Pulling myself from the wreckage and fitting the pieces together, trying to find ways to feel comfortable in this body, as me, for the last few years now. And I’ve surprised myself, by how different I am now than I was even a year ago, or two years ago.
But for some reason, these feelings are coming back. I flinch over every word I write, afraid of what people will think. Just writing this post has taken me weeks. I’m too afraid to exist, in fact I’ve been doing everything to NOT exist. Finding every negative opinion I can online, everything that would tell someone like me that I am wrong, that something is wrong with me, that everything I went through is a joke, anything and everything that would prove to me that being a person isn’t safe.
I don’t know why. I don’t know why it was okay to be a person a year ago, but not now. Maybe because I moved, maybe because now I have to realize that there is a world beyond the safe little internet community I’ve constructed for myself, and they are just as prone to ridicule and disdain as my family is.
I don’t know. I just know that I feel once again immobilized, snatching all the different parts of me and trying to shove them down, away from prying eyes, trying to make them disappear, make myself into someone impervious to abuse.
For me this exist in phases that keep changing or can be triggered by something, one moment confident enough to try to be someone and another time just wanting to erase whatever I managed to become.
Maybe changes can cause this.
At least for me every time I get into the phase of trying to be myself again I’m a little stronger but it’s a hard process.
wow, you just put into words what I could not. I’ve suffered with social anxiety all my life and I have no idea how to be a person. I’m 25 now and am expected to know how to live my life and I really have no clue how everyone else I know does what they do. I feel like an alien.
I’m so very happy that you exist and that you write. I don’t think you will ever know who I am, and if you did, I don’t know if you could learn anything from me.
When I read your texts it feels as if I’m seeing a world before me, a world that has been made dark by all the ugly people who have harmed you. I can’t reach out to you though I’d like to.
It feels as if I’ve learned something from you. I don’t know what, my experiences are not like yours and I’ve lived an uncomplicated life, but it still feels as by reading your texts I’ve learned something, something valuable.
This post made me cry. Genuine, salt-water tears. I am not a crier.
I think I probably didn’t have it as bad as you, but yes I was afraid to have preferences or tastes for my whole childhood. Even now, with as much distance as I could glean, I hate sharing things I love, things I like, even just things that made me smile slightly when I saw them.
any of those things could be used as tools to rip me apart.
[...] has become dangerous, I feel like I’m going backwards now, I feel that having a self is dangerous again. Anything I do can be attacked or mocked [...]