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I have been thinking, I don't think that it is normal how I react to all this, but what is 'normal.' There is no normal, because what happened was not normal. Every person reacts differently to trauma, to pain. So what if I don't cry about it, if I don't truly feel anything. Yeah, it is numbness, but is that so bad? I look at everything that happened in a distant way, I think, rather than feel it. It is all up in my head, I think through it logically, I approach it all very technically. It happened, my attitude for myself is not to cry over spilled milk, crying about it now, getting upset about it now won't do me a damn bit of good, it is not going to change a thing.
I feel as though if I don't get upset about it that somehow I am stronger than it, I am stronger than what happened to me. I am not going to give them the satisfaction of crying over it now. I feel by not letting it upset me, that somehow I am taking back the weakness that I had as a girl, I refuse to be that weak, needy, vulnerable little girl again, I won't do it. I know I shouldn't, but I still hate her. I hate that person I was, I hate her, and I will not be that person anymore. I would rather go through life feeling nothing, than feel the fear, and the vulnerability that I felt then, the helplessness. I am going to be above that, and not let it bother me. I tend to look at what it has done to me as a person, and now my goal is to fix what it did, fix what is broken. Fix all that brokenness in me, try to put all the pieces back together again. My goal is to try to become the person I could have been if it all didn't happen.
It is hard not to think back, and realize that if I wouldn't have been scared, if I would have just stood up to him, if I would have just pissed him off, that it may not have happened. If I would have just pissed him off than he would have hit me instead. I would not have known what it was like to accept a person's touch that I did not want to feel, I would have not learned how to lay there quietly, take the shit, and not say a word. Maybe I would have been more apt to say no to Jason, maybe I would have had better skills to deal with Chad, maybe I would have realized that what was happening was not supposed to, that it was not 'normal'. If my dad would have never touched me, maybe it is not what I would have expected and feared from every man after that.
Yeah, I know that I was a little girl, but I am also being realistic here in realizing that if I was not the little girl that I was, it most likely would not have happened.
I feel as though if I don't get upset about it that somehow I am stronger than it, I am stronger than what happened to me. I am not going to give them the satisfaction of crying over it now. I feel by not letting it upset me, that somehow I am taking back the weakness that I had as a girl, I refuse to be that weak, needy, vulnerable little girl again, I won't do it. I know I shouldn't, but I still hate her. I hate that person I was, I hate her, and I will not be that person anymore. I would rather go through life feeling nothing, than feel the fear, and the vulnerability that I felt then, the helplessness. I am going to be above that, and not let it bother me. I tend to look at what it has done to me as a person, and now my goal is to fix what it did, fix what is broken. Fix all that brokenness in me, try to put all the pieces back together again. My goal is to try to become the person I could have been if it all didn't happen.
It is hard not to think back, and realize that if I wouldn't have been scared, if I would have just stood up to him, if I would have just pissed him off, that it may not have happened. If I would have just pissed him off than he would have hit me instead. I would not have known what it was like to accept a person's touch that I did not want to feel, I would have not learned how to lay there quietly, take the shit, and not say a word. Maybe I would have been more apt to say no to Jason, maybe I would have had better skills to deal with Chad, maybe I would have realized that what was happening was not supposed to, that it was not 'normal'. If my dad would have never touched me, maybe it is not what I would have expected and feared from every man after that.
Yeah, I know that I was a little girl, but I am also being realistic here in realizing that if I was not the little girl that I was, it most likely would not have happened.
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It's ok that you don't want to cry, nobody can tell you would you *should* be doing or thinking.
As for you hating yourself as a child, I would say that it is very easy to hate a child who is a past person, because she can't talk back.
Actually you as a child was must have been quite strong to have dealt with what was happening to you. You are here today, and well enough to be talking so eloquently about your feelings, and you actually owe that to your younger self. What happened to her she wasn't in control of, because she was so young and didn't have the resources. But she still dealt with what happened, in the best way she could. YOU dealt with what happened in the best why you could. The reason you were vulnerable wasn't because you were weak back then, but because you were small, and a child. Like we all are at the beginning of our lives.
I have come to realise this through working with children. They are ALL vulnerable, but that isn't because they all have fundamentally weak personalities, it is because they have only just come into this big scary world, and they need more experienced humans to care for them and look after them, and not to hurt them. It is such a shame that for some children this does not happen.
It great that you want to move past this *it*, and that you feel stronger than it. It shows a very determined attitude. I guess it is important though to realise that you never were a weak person, and that you were just a child try to do her best, like all children do.
It's fine not to feel upset, but hating your younger self could damage you in the long run because you as a child was still you: to hate a part of you might hold you back. It's just a thought, and by no means one you have to take on. I hope it was ok to put those thoughts on the table.
Take good care,
JAG x