I Didn't Know
Dissociation has taken a lot of things away from me. I have massive gaps in my memory, both long-term and short-term, seemingly for no reason. But it has also shielded me from a lot of things; things that were too hard for my child brain to comprehend. It's fascinating how you can go for years without knowing a single thing about it, and then one day, the memory is right there, crystal clear in your mind, as if it was planted there. You question it – how is this even possible? – and think you must have just made it up and it was probably nothing. But the memory persists, it will not leave you alone, and every time it comes back to you, there is a pit in your stomach, and you feel it in your bones.
The Brain Is An Organ
The history of medicine is very fascinating. I'm not claiming to be the most knowledgeable on it – and with my non-existent credentials, it would be insulting to say such a thing – but I am intrigued by the small bits of information I have managed to gather up in my noggin. Did you know that heroin was used as a cough medicine in the 1800's? Or that cocaine was used as a "wonder drug" of sorts, claimed to be able to cure depression, alcoholism, and impotence? Many of the now-deemed toxic chemicals were once used as medication for health problems. And of course, we can't forget lobotomy.
"But School Doesn't Count"
When we are talking about child abuse and childhood trauma, a term that gets brought up very frequently is "growing environment". Time and time again, it has been stated that the kind of growing environment a child has during their formative years has a huge effect on the kind of person they will become when they step into their adulthood. A safe growing environment provides a sense of security, instills trust in your parents and other seniors, feelings of being cared of and loved. Those experiences are important in the development of self-esteem and healthy self-image, as well as feeling like you can trust the people around you, and if something were to happen with them, you'd be equipped to defend yourself and get that sense of security back.
To Forget Is To Protect
Every time I talk about the daily abuse I was facing in my childhood and my parents are listening to me, they always say this one thing to me.
"If you had just told us how things were really like, we could have done so much more."
The Pain Inside Me Wants To Get Out
They say that trauma gets stored in the body. And by 'they', I mean psychiatrists and other professionals working on the field of psychiatry. There is a lot of scientific evidence of psychological trauma not only affecting the brain, but the entire body. Human beings are not the only species experiencing such post-traumatic symptoms: the same phenomenon can be detected in animals like dogs and cats. I remember reading in one article on the science of trauma that because animals' brains are not able to comprehend and deal with the psychological trauma they might have gone through, they resort to physical reactions instead. These typically consist of shaking, trembling, and convulsing. That is the main method of dealing with trauma for animals.
The Hurt Once Caused Is The Hurt Of Every Single Day After Today
Trauma survivors are often called things like 'dwellers' by people who don't understand what having mental trauma actually means. "Don't dwell on the past, you should focus on the present!" "I mean yeah, the fact that that happened to you sucks, but why are you so focused on something that is in the past? You can't change it." You know those sentences, you've heard them hundreds of times. The idea that you could still be hurting because of something that happened to you years ago is very foreign to people who've had the fortune of not having to deal with immense amounts of trauma in their childhood. But for some reason, these are also the people who claim to know the most about your situation.