AFS #4: Do I have to be healthy to be loved?
At the worst time in my life, I had nobody. No one to talk to, no support, no family, no friends. I had users and abusers who groomed me, and indifferent people who stuck around because they were bored. It makes me feel like none of this is worth it or really matters. I may get better one day (as in be able to function again, not feel like dying 24/7) but even that’s not guaranteed. I’m sure if that does happen, I’ll meet people who want to be with me. But it would feel a little bit fake. Why do I have to be healthy to be loved? I’m unhealthy now but it’s not like I’m a terrible person. Would those same people want me now that I’m broken? No, they wouldn’t, and it sucks. I’ve had a lot of therapists, and some of them were good, cool people, but that isn’t the same thing. Do I have to spend the rest of my life alone?
(question somewhat condensed and private details redacted from a post on Reddit’s r/CPTSD community)
It seems like the first chapter of every billionaire’s autobiography could be summed up as: “Here’s the sob story that made me into a capitalist titan! My parents beat me with an entire tree! See how the abuse of the patriarchy made me a man?" A lot of successful people seem - or claim - to react to abuse by saying, “I’m gonna show them! I’m gonna be the best that ever was, then they’ll be sorry they mistreated me!”
I’ve… never felt that way. I’ve never wanted to show my family anything. I just wanted to be free, to be away from them, around people who liked me. I don’t find their opinions motivating, I find them repellent. I don’t want to care or even know what they think. I said this to my therapist a little while back. I said, “What’s the difference? Why does abuse turn into fuel for some people? What makes them better than me, stronger than me, that they didn’t break?"
what makes them better than me, stronger than me?
My therapist told me that, in her years of experience with trauma patients, the difference between people whose trauma proves motivating for them and those who find it debilitating and destructive is not that the former are stronger. That’s not it. The difference is, the former had even one consistent person in their lives who supported them and told them they were worthy. It just takes one person, consistently enough throughout the period of abuse, to give your sense of self something to hang onto, not be completely flattened.
Hearing that was hard, because it meant realizing I didn’t have that. I didn’t have a single person, at any point, who stuck by me and told me I mattered, told me I was allowed to be myself and that was good enough, told me what was happening wasn’t normal. Nobody, not any member of my family, not the other adults who saw what was happening, not my friends… nobody stepped in. Nobody said a goddamn word. I didn’t matter enough for anybody to lift a finger, take a small risk, go out on a limb for a second to help a child.
It seems like that’s how you’re feeling right now. The only thing that’s helped me through that is deciding that the broken person I am is who I am, and now I’m going to love who I am. I am not “incomplete,” not a shattered dish I’m trying to piece back together that will never be the same again. I am a person and I do not function like crockery.
the broken person I am is who I am
Not one of the dangerous ones. They’re less inclined to sit still for pictures. Yoda is being a brat chewing on his leash, though.
I function a lot more like… the dogs at the shelter where I work. We have a lot of dogs who are dangerous, yep, for sure. Really dangerous. They lunge at kids, bite people, devour small animals. They’re terribly scary to look at, and you shouldn’t get close.
But… those are not bad dogs. There are no bad dogs. There are just frightened dogs who’ve learned that nobody will ever be kind to them, because nobody ever was, all they got was brutality and neglect from minute one. So yeah, they bite when you move too fast or grab them, and they growl when you’re too loud or friendly, and you know what?
I do that too. I growl when people are too nice to me. I flinch when strangers touch me. I snap back and hurt people when they accidentally act like the people who hurt me. That doesn’t make me a bad person, or permanently broken, and it doesn’t make the dog bad, or permanently broken, or not worth my time. The dog is more worth my time, because it will require more care and compassion from me. It will ask me to be a better person, because that dog has known so many horrible people that only a better person can help now. It’s not my fault that happened to the dog, but it is my responsibility to be better than those people.
a high degree of difficulty
Neurodivergent people are kinda like that. We come with a high degree of difficulty in relationships. But that doesn’t mean we don’t deserve to have them, or we have to wait until we’re “completely healthy” (whatever that means) to love people or be loved. We don’t, we can’t. It will take love to climb out of the hole we were shoved into. In order for that love to help us and not hurt us, it has to be respectful, compassionate, leave us room to breathe and react and get scared and back off and try again. That’s how our family was supposed to be for us - that’s the environment a parent is supposed to provide for their child, giving them a safe space to take risks and a reason to get better.
That reason is the belief that we will get better. That’s what our loved ones offer us - their belief in us. They can give this to you, and it helps, no lie. But you can also give it to yourself, and it’s worth trying to begin, even though it’s hard. Believe that you will become the person you want to be, because believing that is how you’ll do it. Believe that you deserve others’ love and respect, because only when you believe that will others treat you right. Don’t treat yourself like the worst people you’ve ever known treated you. Treat yourself better than that, and you will meet other people willing to put in the work and do the same.
