Too Weak To Take It

 Weak. That is a word I've heard people describe me with for all my life. I can't recall the first time it happened, but it must have been pretty early on, maybe in kindergarten already. Weakness and sensitivity have – at least for me – almost been each other's synonyms. They're sisters, very close ones too. Overly sensitive people get labeled as weak because of their emotional reactions to things that others can just "brush off" and "not take so seriously". 

weak.

Don't take everything so personally.

Learn to take a joke. 

There's a lot of 'taking' involved in these phrases that have been thrown my way. It is always me who must take things a certain way, or not take them at all. This has always been a problem for me. Why must I always be the one to take the words and actions of other people in a way they want me to take them? Why is that always my responsibility? When does it become my fault that others have abused me, hurt me, violated me? Is it when I make the mistake of not taking a joke "the right way"?

But I never gave them the permission to make that joke. I never gave them the permission to "give" me those words, those actions. And yet, I am still forced to take them.

In all of this giving and taking, I seem to be the only active participant in the situation, the centerpiece. And still, for some reason, I feel like I never have the control over it.

 Oversensitive people always get blamed for their strong reactions to other people joking on their behalf or saying anything else slightly insulting to them. We get told we're "too weak", because we couldn't react to the verbal abuse in a way the attacker expected us to. And therefore, we often become targets, victims of continuous abuse. And every single time this happens, we get reminded of the label on our foreheads.

When I finally realized the extent of my trauma and felt it consume my entire being, I found myself thinking back on weakness and what it meant to me. I started believing the words that had never stopped ringing in my ears: the fact that I was so broken over something like *that* meant that I was just a pathetic weakling, never meant to last longer than just a few years in this cold world. Because it wasn't like I had *actually* been abused, the B-word is a different thing entirely. 

I can count the amount of people who have told me I'm strong on one hand. 'Strong' is the antonym of 'weak', a word I never even dared to look for. 

The fact that you are still here, after everything you've been through, after everything other people have done to you, makes you one of the strongest people I have ever known.

My brain struggles to comprehend this cognitively. My neurons get confused whenever some beautiful soul utters those words to me. It goes against everything I have been taught. If I was actually strong, wouldn't I have survived my childhood without developing any life-altering health problems and becoming disabled because of it? In my mind, that's what being strong is about. And I am everything but that.

I am nothing but a weak Kid sitting on the stairs of their school building, thinking about if what her P.E. teacher said to her was actually true.

You are an embarrassment to us all.

A burden for my mom,

ichigonya