There have been times where it’s been hard for family and friends of mine to imagine that I was going through abuse as a child. “You seemed so happy”, “you seemed fine”, “you never told me”, “you always kept to yourself and seemed content” …of course I did. That’s what I was conditioned for. Imagine for a moment what it must of taken for a child to hold so much trauma in and act like things were fine. And the thing is as I’ve told some of the things that happened to me I’ve had family say “oh actually you know it does make sense now why you would react certain ways to things”. So there were signs. But people don’t know what to do with that. Frankly people don’t WANT to deal with it when it’s happening a lot of times. It meaning: something negative happening, whatever that may be.
I got very, very good at dissociating. You could literally see it in my eyes when I would give up. Shut down. The blind would go down and I’d dissociate and I knew that I had to just mentally go to a safe space because the conversation, the person or what was happening wasn’t safe. Maybe that raised a red flag for people, but unfortunately in many cases others don’t want to deal with things until they are forced to. I never spoke up.
A big part of my life growing up was martial arts. And it’s incredibly sad and painful to look back on it now because I have such trauma and hurt surrounding it. Martial arts wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I joined anyway. And I got good at it because I had no other choice. Starting at the age of 5 years old I learned that you just go to a different place in your mind instead of being in the present with the pain. Now, in the martial arts discipline this is just physical endurance of the conditioning for self defense. But what wasn’t known to anyone else at the time was that it became all I knew and the perfect storm for abuse to happen at home and for me to endure it and never say anything. I never thought anyone would believe me. I never spoke up.
A lot of manipulation happened and often times for abuse to happen and go on for so long that’s what it takes. Especially for it to go seemingly unnoticed. It was little comments, threats, mind games. My self esteem was a wreck, all I knew was how to endure pain while still maintaining a smile on my face, my mental health was struggling, I had no idea who the hell I was. All I knew was that as soon as I turned 18 I had to get out. And I did.
If you or someone you know is being abused (or suspected abuse) please visit my resource pages here on my website to learn more about getting help. I’ve also provided the crisis hotline numbers for immediate assistance.
