Warning: I am posting my answers here. They contain child abuse.

You do not have to read these. You can answer the questions on your own. If you start to read but it’s triggering, please stop right away. You can either ground yourself or examine the triggers, so long as it is tolerable.

Please see the questions above or go to Chapter 1 – Childhood: Where the Story Began for all available questions and exercises.

RQ1. What are your earliest childhood memories? What emotions come up when you think of them?

I don’t remember the order of these events or how old I was in them. Most of them are before we moved from a single room we all lived in… so between birth and 4 years old.

They aren’t full memories. They’re postcard memories or short clips. Most of what I know now is from conversations with my brother when I was older. Most of these memories didn’t come back until I was in my teens and 20s.

My mom beating me with a wire hanger and the metal cutting into my skin as she beat me… while I curled up on the floor. I only remember the first lash, if that.

• Anger
• Pain
• Sadness
• Fear
• Hate

Standing naked as the man and woman got the shower started. Everything goes blank when the water turns on, and they pull me in with them.

• Fear
• Confusion
• Feeling Unsafe
• Uncomfortable

Pretending to be asleep in their room and porcelain dolls on the walls… was I in the bed with them? It was nighttime, where were my parents?

• Fear
• Uncomfortable
• Scared

Being so hungry, I tried to boil the meat to defrost it, hoping my mom would cook/feed me. Mom was really pissed off.

• Loneliness
• Hungry (if you count it as a feeling)
• Scared

My birthday party. Me not allowed to be out there with everyone else. I was in the room all alone. Everyone was outside the window, drunk and fighting. My mom telling me I didn’t deserve gifts because I was a bad kid. That she would give them away to other kids.

• Loneliness
• Confusion
• Scared
• Unlovable
• Unwanted

Burning my chest with a hot iron. No adults around as I screamed and cried. My mom was mad at me.m when she finally found me.

• Loneliness
• Scared
• Pain

My dad beating me with a leather belt and my mom sending me out to take care of him even though I was in pain and terrified. When he got in the car drunk to leave, she made me go with him to take care of him because I had upset him.

• Terror
• Confusion
• Fear
• Terror

I don’t know which of these is my first memory. I was small in all of these. I’m pretty sure they all happened before the woman started taking me to the bar and leaving me with strange men.

This one memory from somewhere between the ages of 4 and 7 keeps coming up, so I’m just going to write about it.

My dad almost drowned me at the kitchen table. I couldn’t swallow a pill, so he forced the pill into my mouth and poured a large jug of water into my mouth, and it also went down my nose. I remember the fear and the painful grip on my body. I couldn’t breathe. My nose and throat burned really badly. It hurt so much, and I was terrified.

• Intense Fear/Terror
• Fear just fear

RQ2. If you could describe your childhood in 5 words, what would they be? Why did you choose those words?

Fear/Terror/Scared – I never felt safe as a child in my home or with the people I was left with. Even school and the bullies felt safer than being at home.

Lonely – I always felt so alone and abandoned as a child. I never had anyone who actually cared about me.

Uncomfortable – I never felt comfortable. I always felt… I don’t know how to describe it. I just didn’t want to be there.

Pain – Emotional and physical. I was beaten. I was alone. I had no one to take care of me. I was verbally and mentally abused so much that I always felt emotional pain.

Confusion – I never understood what was happening. What I did wrong. Why no one wanted me. Why no one liked me. Why I was alone and unworthy. Why they hated me. Why everyone was angry and violent. Why they hurt me. I never understood anything that was happening to me or why they did those things to me.

Reflective thoughts:

My therapist keeps telling me to sit with my feelings and name them as much as possible, so there it is. I feel like crying. It hurts. It makes me sad. And yet, like always, I am struggling with dissociation.

These are about one-third of the memories I retain before the age of about 11. Most of it is a blank. They call it dissociative amnesia. My brain still doesn’t want to remember.

I don’t see the child that experienced these emotions as a version of me. It feels like reading a story and looking at pictures or Vine videos (the really short ones from eons ago) that are happening to someone else, not me. This is the depersonalization part of my disorders.

But right now, as I sit here with an ache in my heart and a need to cry, I am experiencing derealization, another part of my disorders. Physically, I can feel it, but everything feels dreamlike. I am not completely attached to my body or my feelings. This allows my PFC to remain active and think through this logically. I cannot tell if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Is it better to feel the pain and cry or to use logic to examine the past and my reactions?

I am noticing that the loneliness and the fear of people are the reasons why I tend to push people away. Why I act so out there… so eccentric. Why I warn people I’m crazy before they get the chance to see it and leave me. Part of it is the fact that I don’t really trust people not to hurt me.

When the people that were supposed to love and take care of you didn’t, you learn not to trust people. You struggle to give people a chance at all. But the thing with me… once I open up… once I care… they had complete power over me. That child inside that was so desperate to be loved and cared for… so desperate that I overlook everything. I gave up everything to be loved. I tolerated so much abuse… things I have come to associate with love. Not the love I received, but the love a child has for their caretakers, regardless of what they do. I would put up with any and all abuse… at least that’s how it used to be.

I have improved. I went for the nice guys, but even the nicest ones can hurt you.

I allowed someone very special into my life. I gave him all of me… but he hurt me deeply. I was already trying to change. I asked him for honesty. I asked him for communication. I told him what I needed. He never lied, but he omitted very vital information that hurt everyone, especially me.

He abandoned me when I confronted him. He shattered me. Now, my trust issues are worse than ever, but that child part is hungry and desperate for love.

Finding the balance between allowing myself to love and be loved, taking down walls but keeping clear boundaries, and walking away when the relationships are unhealthy is rather difficult… but I am practicing. Learning to be uncomfortable with the unknown… with healthy love. It weqqqq will be difficult… but one thing I know for sure is that I will not be putting up with people’s shit anymore. I am learning my roots, facing my fears, my past, and I will do better.

FAFO mode is activated.

Now excuse me while I do something else my therapist wants me to work on. I’m going to go talk to that child. I am going to let her know it’s not her fault she had such a horrible family. That she is lovable. That she deserves to be taken care of. That  I will protect her from now on, and I will not let anyone else hurt her.

To anyone that reads this:

You are so brave to face your shadows. It will not be pretty. It will not fix everything. But it is a step forward. If you decide to do your own shadow work… I am so proud of you for doing something that feels so hard and heavy. If you are not ready to face your shadows yet, I am so proud of you for surviving thus far.