Understanding Oneself

What will your mom do when you steal a pencil? She will yell at you and make you stop stealing. Stealing is something that is in your control. It is like an urge that can be controlled. Now, what if your mom is picking on you for your grades? If your intellectual capabilities are limited, over-doing the yelling will traumatize you. Mom skinned me alive by paying close attention to what I did, somehow manipulatively linked it to grades and terrorized me each and every minute. Not only her inhuman gaslighting words, her ugly face expressions AND constantly wanting to push me under the bus also traumatized me. For example: how will you feel when you tell your mother that you got raped by DEF but she pushes you back into DEF's room and locks the door from outside? She purposefully hurt me several times as she couldn't stop being angry on me. She wrote my grades on a peace of paper and showed it to everybody who walked by to insult me. I have complex PTSD from the time I was 4 years old. I am constantly under the state of stress. Because of the intense emotional trauma, my rational mind did not develop. I remained a child in an adult's body.

For an outside person, I seem like someone who is completely messed up. They are right. I am totally messed up. But, to understand that you yourself are messed up, it takes a lot of courage. This is my story regarding how I found out that I am messed up.

My cousin told me that three days before her death, our grandmother snitched to both my aunts that my mom told her "I am waiting for you to die. I don't even want to call you 'mom'". At first, I didn't even react to it. Mom constantly disrespected me to the point that I don't even know how to make respectful adult conversations. Then, my aunts (for the first time) expressed anger on her by not talking to her for three months. They were forcing me to talk to my mom when I was complaining about her before BUT when it came to their own mother, they were angry.

I got into thinking "why are they angry all of a sudden?" Because mom was MEAN with our grandmother. She was constantly yelling at our grandmother. She didn't let her have peace of mind by restlessly belittling her. So, my aunts were unhappy that she didn't have peace of mind even before her death. THIS PATTERN SEEMS VERY FAMILIAR. Wait a minute. Isn't this what mom did to me my entire life? Did mom ruin my life since childhood? Is my life not like other kids? Were they happy with their mothers? AM I A LAB RAT?

Let me dig into my childhood.

I was 7 years old. The neighbor Dimpie's mom gave me the coloring book of Dimpie's brother. I colored 2 more pagers than I should have as I got lost in coloring. It wasn't exactly my fault. I apologized and she told that it was all right. The next day, I asked if he faced any problems in school. Mom popped in and told "yes (firmly), they even called and asked Dimpie". Mom wants to constantly make me feel guilty as her way of raising a prefect child. But constantly trying to fault your child for no fault of theirs will only negatively affect their self esteem.

She gaslighted me several times. She would be very jealous when her nieces get praised that she yelled at me for not getting praised. If her nieces get praised, she should teach me those qualities. She instead made me feel guilty for not getting praised like them. Because of her, I have a very low self esteem. I felt that I never did anything right. I became selfish, evil, cruel, self-observed, self-centered, greedy, jealous, occupied, unempathetic, etc. She went as far a calling me 'ugly'.

Yes, I was treated like a child who is born as a result of rape. I was treated like an unwanted object. I hate my step father who molested me. She was forcing me to talk to him. She brought up his topic during a movie, after the movie, while taking about a neighbors kid, while narrating the stories that he told her, etc. Every time (50+ times in a day) she brought up his topic, she followed up on me asking if I would talk to him. She shoved the phone in my ear (without telling that it was him) and pushed me to talk to him. She told that we were going to Rollakal and took me to the bus stop. There he was in his car. I had no idea that he would be there. She dragged me into his car. She likes to push me in the corner and make me have no choice. She never treated me like a human being. She makes decisions for my life, and if I don't follow them, she becomes so angry that she treats me like trash. She wasn't giving me a choice regarding my stepfather, she was forcing him on me by being very repetitive and gaslighting.

I deeply despise him. I communicated my likes and dislikes like other human beings. But, not only they were thinking that I was lying, I was in return receiving hate. Grandmother was also irritating me by repeatedly following up and calling me "arrogant". If my grandmother's mother remarried, would grandma readily cut ties with her loving dad AND treat this new stranger as her OWN dad? Instead of irritating me and making me feel like a worthless person, can they not put themselves in my shoes and behave like human beings? This was my feeling "Now, he is sitting right across me. Everybody is looking at me. I am inside a pressure cooker. Let me force myself to smile. I don't even know what to ask him. Let me ask if ABC movie is good. Else, these people are going to torture me. I can't take this repetitiveness anymore. I will force myself and talk to him. May be, one day, I will fly away from mom and this torture".

She just screamed for my grades one minute ago. Why is she screaming again and again? She is being aggressive. She is not even standing half feet away from me. She is on my face all the time. She is squeezing my arms. This behavior is sadistic. It is okay to not get the grades she demanded me to get. I have BPD. It is not my fault. But how do I get out of this situation? I am being tortured. I don't even know how to deal with this. I am not able to take this anymore. This is very irritating. I know this will happen tomorrow too. But if run away, I could be raped. I have no choice but to stay with her. But this level of torture is making me go crazy. I sacrificed my entire life for her. She jailed me with books. My classmates are happily enjoying. They are going to friends' houses, paying, watching TV. Their parents won't say anything even if they get 60%. After doing all this, she still feels that I am not doing enough and is constantly angry at me.

Just now, she is screaming again. I am a human being. I CAN'T get her the grades she wanted me to get. She is harassing me and making my life impossible to live. How do I get out of this situation? Let me beg. Let me say things that she wants to hear. "I will study well from next time". And she brushed it off as nonsense. She is constantly belittling me. If I am saying something, she is belittling me more. How the hell do I get out of this situation? Let me also be repetitive like her. I don't want to live like this. But I have no choice but to take in. I want to stab and kill her. This torture is too much. I am not able to bring myself to kill her. I hate not having peace of mind every single day of my life. If soldiers are in a war, the war only lasts a few days. Imagine being born in the battleground and your mother is your enemy!!!!

I want some happiness. I urgently need some amount of happiness. I want some company. Your company makes me forget mom for a little bit. I will quickly fall in love with you. I then display the behaviors I displayed with mom (because she is the only life I knew. She is my comfort zone). I had to hold to high standards and 'show-off' for survival. So, I will talk nonsense. For example: I once told my college professor that I didn't listen to classes and study from Havisha's notes. I am fucked up. I know. That was my way of being friendly: belittling and sabotaging myself. Mom didn't let me develop a rational mind by being very disrespectful.

I was thinking that I was very friendly and that you would like me. I am now coming in terms with harsh reality that everybody got irritated with me and thought that I was CRAZY.

Yes, I display the people-pleasing behaviors I displayed with mom. I make those stupid conversations because I was skinned alive everyday by mom with her repetitiveness. She forces me to do things regardless of my wishes. So, though I don't want to, I feel obligated to give too many details about my life. You would feel that I am very self centered. But it was my survival with mom as I am constantly under stress. In the process of making stupid conversations, people thought I am CRAZY. Nobody's life is more cursed than mine.

Though people hate me, my body was desperately trying to find happiness as a trauma response (to keep me from loosing my mind). So, though people run away from me, my ambition drops at being content. I will be happy finding just one person. I find so much joy in their company. I sacrifice for them and live more for them. Because of BPD, my body helped me escape mom's trauma by instantly assigning whomever I meet THE ROLE OF MY BEST FRIEND. As a side effect, I learnt to beg. When a conflict arises, even if it is not my fault, I immediately admit fault and appear timid. I hated NOT HAVING PEACE OF MIND while growing up. Also, appearing timid was a trauma response to evade mom for survival. I now realize how stupidly I let some people exploit me. I assigned them the role of my best friend in my head (BPD) and refused to accept the truth that they didn't love me. I guess, all my mind does is play "this will pass. This bad situation ends soon. Chase after temporary happiness for now" repeatedly in my head that I hardly live in the present.

It has done that for long now. I didn't even know that I have racing thoughts that are not common for other people. I realized that my life is anything but normal. I have strong intuition though. So, in spite of fighting one-man-army battles since childhood and coming in terms with the reality that my MOM PURPOSEFULLY HURT ME, I still felt in my heart that I am INNOCENT. So, with high hopes, I told dad that mom was traumatizing me. He broke my heart by forcing me to stay with her. As an outsider, you would think I would go completely MENTAL at that point. Do you know how I survived the MASSIVE heart break? You will be surprised to know that it is because of TRAUMA. What is TRAUMA? The repeated racing thought(s). One of my racing thoughts is "this will pass. Just beg them for now. Just get out of this situation ASAP". I had to have this trauma to survive the intense inhuman emotional abuse. But surprisingly, that TRAUMA saved me from going insane. When dad didn't believe me, the trauma (racing thought) quickly acted "okay, if your dad didn't believe you, someday someone will. This will pass. Don't give up. You are a fighter."