On Maturity, Strength, and Healing
It's been almost a year and a half since the Christmas day on which my brother traumatized me. In many ways, I'm stronger for all the work I've done since then to stabilize my emotional state -- and by extension, my physical state -- but the hurt is still there.
All my life, adults have told me "you're so mature!" and "you're so strong!" but it used to fall completely flat. How could I be strong, I thought, when I like I was holding on by a thread? I a very young age, I was exposed to domestic violence. One of my brothers dropped out of school and got into a lot of trouble with the law. The other was struggling to finish high school. In the summer before my fifth grade year, Mom, Travis, and I moved from Massachusetts to North Carolina in an effort to get away from some of the many bad situations we were in. That winter, I came off of my anti-seizure medication in a household that had much less stress than had the MA one. We were away from all other family causing problems, my mother's boyfriend of the time did fairly well financially...and it had been over a year since my last seizure. I haven't had a relapse, so far as I can tell--petit mal seizures, at least, can be hard to recognize, and I had both that and grand mal as a kid.
Trav graduated from high school in 2002, the same year I finished 5th grade and moved on to the middle school. Shortly thereafter, he moved back to Massachusetts. A year or two later, my mother started getting very sick, and the doctors couldn't diagnose her. Then her boyfriend started getting abusive. Then, six weeks into my freshman year at White Oak High School--incidentally, the end of the first grading period, and a full two months after I had started band camp--and we moved to New Hampshire. I switched from block scheduling, which meant four classes per semester, to eight classes a semester. At first the NH school said that I couldn't complete my freshman year and would have to stay for extra time. My mother fought on my behalf, and won. I switched from an earth science class to a physical science class, started Honors Geometry after the head of the math department had tested my Algebra 1 skills (I had that in 8th grade), and within two weeks, with a little tutoring, had caught up to the class. I took two histories in spring semester, since both were one-semester courses expected of freshman (economics and civics & gov), "learned" (okay, stumbled along pretending I knew the music and sets) a new marching band show, and caught up in a few other classes, all largely on my own.
The guidance department was flabbergasted. My mother wasn't surprised; I had tested into the Gifted program in elementary school. But the move also meant I was extremely lonely. By the time winter break ended, I had one person I considered a friend. By the next year, I had quite a few band friends, and was doing better.
And then the other shoe dropped. The friend-of-my-mother's we were living with kicked us out. Some of it was due to her abusing alcohol with her new boyfriend. Some of it was probably due to my mother. I'm not really sure anymore. All I knew was that a woman who had promised I could stay there until I graduate suddenly reneged on the promise. We moved to an aunt's two-bedroom apartment in Chelmsford, a 20-minute drive from my school. We stayed long enough to finish the first semester, and it was miserable for all of us. My mother and aunt shared a bed. I shared a room with a younger (male) cousin, and an older cousin slept on the couch. Five of us, in an apartment meant for two or three people.
When we moved back to my hometown, I at least remembered some people from elementary school, especially among the band students. None of them really became my friends. I made new friends, but precious few close friends. I barely survived senior year because I had to make up history requirements in order to graduate, and so took an AP US History course most people had junior year, and which most people struggled to keep up with in conjunction with honors classes. I was taking two other AP classes, because I was bored in honors English and "Pre-college math" probably would have had me tearing my hair out. As it was, I enjoyed Calculus AB a great deal, somewhat less my English class, and did extremely well, although I was very stressed, in my history class. But. There was an ice storm in December of '08 that resulted in the schools and city shutting down for over a week before winter break; heads in Boston decreed that we had to make up the time. We lost our February vacation. I started seeing a therapist because I was breaking apart under the pressure. We didn't have a spring break until April, and it was only a week long. I needed longer than that to recover; I considered dropping out just a few weeks before graduation because I felt like the sheer amount of work was killing me.
All this, while also taking care of my mother and being stressed about finances and, and... I was essentially parenting my mother, and doing a lot of physical tasks for her that she was no longer able to do. Climbing on furniture. Kneeling down to get things on the floor or out of cabinets. Holding things. Being her confidant. All this made my teenage years almost literally Hell. I was mature because there was no one else to do what I had to do. I had to be strong, and I had to do it alone.
It was college that taught me the importance of friends and a solid support network. It was seeing healthy relationships there that confirmed that all the things that were wrong about home were wrong in truth. I experienced living without emotional abuse and manipulation and not worrying about where food would come from--except when anything happened at home. The more awful things happened at home--of which I've written about in the past; Dave, Travis, going hungry, my mother, pressure to be who they thought I was rather than the stronger young woman I was becoming--the more I withdrew and lived at school. I started going home for just parts of breaks and coming back early to work or do homework. I found other places to be when Dave and Mom started arguing. I finally called 9-1-1 when he started throwing things at my mother in a drunken rage. I made it clear I wouldn't be staying as long as he was there.
Eventually...Dave left, largely because I made my mother choose between him or me. She chose me. And then--
And then I realized how bad Travis had gotten. How much he abused substances. How very ... I guess abusive, he was getting, himself. He made fun of me all the time, including about things that were extremely important to me. He used misogynistic, racist, homophobic, ...ist language, and saw nothing wrong with it. After the first time he yelled "c***" at his phone, my mother winced and then said nothing. This despite how bad she considers the use of that word. At some point previous to Dave leaving, Trav, on my birthday, walked his dog while he was passing out drunk. My mother called me an hour later in a panic because Raina had been beaten up and pepper sprayed by cops when she went into "protect" mode over my unconscious brother. If mom and Trav hadn't qualified for enough CareCredit to cover the vet bill, we would have cleaned out my checking and savings accounts. Raina needed surgery. The roof of her mouth was broken and she'd lost teeth. It cost more than $500 to fix that. Trav's behavior...seemed to get better for a while, and then it got way, way worse, culminating in the Christmas I mentioned at the beginning of this post.
Honestly, when I first tell people he traumatized me, most of them assume it was sexual assault, when it wasn't. It was verbal abuse and physical intimidation. And it left me more anxious and depressed than I had already been in the months leading up to it, or even since starting college. I don't really remember the spring of my junior year. I know I did well in music theory, but the other classes I took? Took a bad hit. I prioritized the class I loved and which gave me joy over the ones that were simply adding to my already-stressed mind and body. I had panic attacks. I had worsening physical symptoms. I had high, high anxiety, almost all the time. I got knocked on my ass when Norovirus went around campus because I was hitting burnout at the end of February. I don't remember the 24 hours I was sickest very well. I know I started feeling shot of breath and not quite right one morning, and assumed my stomach was simply acting up again. I went to class, after emailing profs to let them know I might not make it. I was trying to support a friend who was having anxiety at least as bad as mine. And then about 11pm that night, I went to bed because I was feeling awful. An hour later, I was puking my guts out, and it continued until the wee hours of the morning. At 8am I finally called the health center begging them to say it was okay to take my anti-inflammatory meds, or any of my meds, despite a sick stomach. I was aching all over, barely conscious, dehydrated, and, in a word, sick. Once the vomiting finally stopped, I slept for most of the day, and got up for about three hours that night before going back to sleep. I remember, at points in the worst of it, getting up to run to the bathroom, and being unable to walk more than a few steps without passing out. My dance training let me fall without hurting myself, but I also remember passing out in my doorway. I'm guessing no one saw me, or they might have called 9-1-1. I don't know how long it took me to get to the bathroom that time. And...that's most of what I remember.
The rest of the semester is honestly a blur of one problem after another. I was sick. I was in pain. I was sick again. My wisdom teeth started giving me trouble. Etc. I had a panic attack over spring break because I went to my mother's house to say hello, and she wouldn't hug me goodbye until I'd hugged Trav. I went home and cried on my father's shoulder. Anxiety from then on just got worse, and worse. It felt like I was barely holding on, like the anxiety was becoming a force on its own, and was ruling my every decision.
And still people told me I was strong.
And you know, it wasn't until this past year that I began to actually feel strong. My step-mom supported me for the entire summer, including paying medical and mental-health related bills so that I could get treatment over the summer. She helped me talk through a lot of things. She suggested everything was bad enough that the school would allow me to have an emotional support animal. She was right. It took a while to get the approval, but my therapist at school was a tremendous help, once I finally managed to reach him, and I adopted Gabby shortly after returning from retreat. Gabby gave me an uncomplicated love in my life, and we rescued each other. The retreat? Was one of the best things I could have done for myself. It meant almost NO communication with anyone. What communication there was was only a small part of the day, it was face-to-face or little notes passed between yogis and teachers, or collaboration to do a yogi job. No internet. No email. No phone. I didn't even bring my phone with me, but left it at home. Just a week of blessed silence and introspection. When I went home, I was better able to handle things. I didn't have another panic attack for over a month, and when one came, it had a very clear cause. At which point we upped the dose of prozac I had been taking since August or so to deal with the remaining symptoms.
And then I struggled, but managed to go to the first semester of senior year, and pass it. As each day passed and I felt better, I was more confident that the next would bring another good day. I started meditating nightly over winter break, and was meditating irregularly all through the fall semester. In the spring, I was finally able to say, one day, that I was happy. And sometime around that day, I was able to say I forgive you in my heart to both myself and my brother.
Having gone through all that, and done most of the work to regain my stability for myself, with nudges here and there from my support network, including my step-mom, my therapist, my doctor, and my friends, I can finally say I feel strong.
But it's taken what feels like most of my life to get to that point. I finally know my own strength. I know how and when to ask for help. I'm willing to ask for help at the first sign of trouble, rather than when it gets completely out of my control. I know how to better manage stress. I'm finally able to love myself and those around me, and to extend some level of trust that most of the people I interact with won't hurt me the way my family did. I finally have family I trust, too, in the form of my dad's side of the family. I practice metta and can finally see my mother, my brother, and even Dave with some level of compassion and an understanding of their humanity, rather than as the monsters my mind once (and occasionally still does) painted them.
The maturity came with hard circumstances that forced me to grow up and to be responsible for a great many things at a young age.
The strength? That came from within, and cost a lot of hard work and tears, but I am better for it, as are those around me. And I finally can look someone in the eye who calls me an 'old soul' or 'strong', and say with confidence, "yes, I am strong, and it's all my own doing."
Because finally, I have found some measure of peace and love within myself.
In the end, maybe that's what matters most.
All my life, adults have told me "you're so mature!" and "you're so strong!" but it used to fall completely flat. How could I be strong, I thought, when I like I was holding on by a thread? I a very young age, I was exposed to domestic violence. One of my brothers dropped out of school and got into a lot of trouble with the law. The other was struggling to finish high school. In the summer before my fifth grade year, Mom, Travis, and I moved from Massachusetts to North Carolina in an effort to get away from some of the many bad situations we were in. That winter, I came off of my anti-seizure medication in a household that had much less stress than had the MA one. We were away from all other family causing problems, my mother's boyfriend of the time did fairly well financially...and it had been over a year since my last seizure. I haven't had a relapse, so far as I can tell--petit mal seizures, at least, can be hard to recognize, and I had both that and grand mal as a kid.
Trav graduated from high school in 2002, the same year I finished 5th grade and moved on to the middle school. Shortly thereafter, he moved back to Massachusetts. A year or two later, my mother started getting very sick, and the doctors couldn't diagnose her. Then her boyfriend started getting abusive. Then, six weeks into my freshman year at White Oak High School--incidentally, the end of the first grading period, and a full two months after I had started band camp--and we moved to New Hampshire. I switched from block scheduling, which meant four classes per semester, to eight classes a semester. At first the NH school said that I couldn't complete my freshman year and would have to stay for extra time. My mother fought on my behalf, and won. I switched from an earth science class to a physical science class, started Honors Geometry after the head of the math department had tested my Algebra 1 skills (I had that in 8th grade), and within two weeks, with a little tutoring, had caught up to the class. I took two histories in spring semester, since both were one-semester courses expected of freshman (economics and civics & gov), "learned" (okay, stumbled along pretending I knew the music and sets) a new marching band show, and caught up in a few other classes, all largely on my own.
The guidance department was flabbergasted. My mother wasn't surprised; I had tested into the Gifted program in elementary school. But the move also meant I was extremely lonely. By the time winter break ended, I had one person I considered a friend. By the next year, I had quite a few band friends, and was doing better.
And then the other shoe dropped. The friend-of-my-mother's we were living with kicked us out. Some of it was due to her abusing alcohol with her new boyfriend. Some of it was probably due to my mother. I'm not really sure anymore. All I knew was that a woman who had promised I could stay there until I graduate suddenly reneged on the promise. We moved to an aunt's two-bedroom apartment in Chelmsford, a 20-minute drive from my school. We stayed long enough to finish the first semester, and it was miserable for all of us. My mother and aunt shared a bed. I shared a room with a younger (male) cousin, and an older cousin slept on the couch. Five of us, in an apartment meant for two or three people.
When we moved back to my hometown, I at least remembered some people from elementary school, especially among the band students. None of them really became my friends. I made new friends, but precious few close friends. I barely survived senior year because I had to make up history requirements in order to graduate, and so took an AP US History course most people had junior year, and which most people struggled to keep up with in conjunction with honors classes. I was taking two other AP classes, because I was bored in honors English and "Pre-college math" probably would have had me tearing my hair out. As it was, I enjoyed Calculus AB a great deal, somewhat less my English class, and did extremely well, although I was very stressed, in my history class. But. There was an ice storm in December of '08 that resulted in the schools and city shutting down for over a week before winter break; heads in Boston decreed that we had to make up the time. We lost our February vacation. I started seeing a therapist because I was breaking apart under the pressure. We didn't have a spring break until April, and it was only a week long. I needed longer than that to recover; I considered dropping out just a few weeks before graduation because I felt like the sheer amount of work was killing me.
All this, while also taking care of my mother and being stressed about finances and, and... I was essentially parenting my mother, and doing a lot of physical tasks for her that she was no longer able to do. Climbing on furniture. Kneeling down to get things on the floor or out of cabinets. Holding things. Being her confidant. All this made my teenage years almost literally Hell. I was mature because there was no one else to do what I had to do. I had to be strong, and I had to do it alone.
It was college that taught me the importance of friends and a solid support network. It was seeing healthy relationships there that confirmed that all the things that were wrong about home were wrong in truth. I experienced living without emotional abuse and manipulation and not worrying about where food would come from--except when anything happened at home. The more awful things happened at home--of which I've written about in the past; Dave, Travis, going hungry, my mother, pressure to be who they thought I was rather than the stronger young woman I was becoming--the more I withdrew and lived at school. I started going home for just parts of breaks and coming back early to work or do homework. I found other places to be when Dave and Mom started arguing. I finally called 9-1-1 when he started throwing things at my mother in a drunken rage. I made it clear I wouldn't be staying as long as he was there.
Eventually...Dave left, largely because I made my mother choose between him or me. She chose me. And then--
And then I realized how bad Travis had gotten. How much he abused substances. How very ... I guess abusive, he was getting, himself. He made fun of me all the time, including about things that were extremely important to me. He used misogynistic, racist, homophobic, ...ist language, and saw nothing wrong with it. After the first time he yelled "c***" at his phone, my mother winced and then said nothing. This despite how bad she considers the use of that word. At some point previous to Dave leaving, Trav, on my birthday, walked his dog while he was passing out drunk. My mother called me an hour later in a panic because Raina had been beaten up and pepper sprayed by cops when she went into "protect" mode over my unconscious brother. If mom and Trav hadn't qualified for enough CareCredit to cover the vet bill, we would have cleaned out my checking and savings accounts. Raina needed surgery. The roof of her mouth was broken and she'd lost teeth. It cost more than $500 to fix that. Trav's behavior...seemed to get better for a while, and then it got way, way worse, culminating in the Christmas I mentioned at the beginning of this post.
Honestly, when I first tell people he traumatized me, most of them assume it was sexual assault, when it wasn't. It was verbal abuse and physical intimidation. And it left me more anxious and depressed than I had already been in the months leading up to it, or even since starting college. I don't really remember the spring of my junior year. I know I did well in music theory, but the other classes I took? Took a bad hit. I prioritized the class I loved and which gave me joy over the ones that were simply adding to my already-stressed mind and body. I had panic attacks. I had worsening physical symptoms. I had high, high anxiety, almost all the time. I got knocked on my ass when Norovirus went around campus because I was hitting burnout at the end of February. I don't remember the 24 hours I was sickest very well. I know I started feeling shot of breath and not quite right one morning, and assumed my stomach was simply acting up again. I went to class, after emailing profs to let them know I might not make it. I was trying to support a friend who was having anxiety at least as bad as mine. And then about 11pm that night, I went to bed because I was feeling awful. An hour later, I was puking my guts out, and it continued until the wee hours of the morning. At 8am I finally called the health center begging them to say it was okay to take my anti-inflammatory meds, or any of my meds, despite a sick stomach. I was aching all over, barely conscious, dehydrated, and, in a word, sick. Once the vomiting finally stopped, I slept for most of the day, and got up for about three hours that night before going back to sleep. I remember, at points in the worst of it, getting up to run to the bathroom, and being unable to walk more than a few steps without passing out. My dance training let me fall without hurting myself, but I also remember passing out in my doorway. I'm guessing no one saw me, or they might have called 9-1-1. I don't know how long it took me to get to the bathroom that time. And...that's most of what I remember.
The rest of the semester is honestly a blur of one problem after another. I was sick. I was in pain. I was sick again. My wisdom teeth started giving me trouble. Etc. I had a panic attack over spring break because I went to my mother's house to say hello, and she wouldn't hug me goodbye until I'd hugged Trav. I went home and cried on my father's shoulder. Anxiety from then on just got worse, and worse. It felt like I was barely holding on, like the anxiety was becoming a force on its own, and was ruling my every decision.
And still people told me I was strong.
And you know, it wasn't until this past year that I began to actually feel strong. My step-mom supported me for the entire summer, including paying medical and mental-health related bills so that I could get treatment over the summer. She helped me talk through a lot of things. She suggested everything was bad enough that the school would allow me to have an emotional support animal. She was right. It took a while to get the approval, but my therapist at school was a tremendous help, once I finally managed to reach him, and I adopted Gabby shortly after returning from retreat. Gabby gave me an uncomplicated love in my life, and we rescued each other. The retreat? Was one of the best things I could have done for myself. It meant almost NO communication with anyone. What communication there was was only a small part of the day, it was face-to-face or little notes passed between yogis and teachers, or collaboration to do a yogi job. No internet. No email. No phone. I didn't even bring my phone with me, but left it at home. Just a week of blessed silence and introspection. When I went home, I was better able to handle things. I didn't have another panic attack for over a month, and when one came, it had a very clear cause. At which point we upped the dose of prozac I had been taking since August or so to deal with the remaining symptoms.
And then I struggled, but managed to go to the first semester of senior year, and pass it. As each day passed and I felt better, I was more confident that the next would bring another good day. I started meditating nightly over winter break, and was meditating irregularly all through the fall semester. In the spring, I was finally able to say, one day, that I was happy. And sometime around that day, I was able to say I forgive you in my heart to both myself and my brother.
Having gone through all that, and done most of the work to regain my stability for myself, with nudges here and there from my support network, including my step-mom, my therapist, my doctor, and my friends, I can finally say I feel strong.
But it's taken what feels like most of my life to get to that point. I finally know my own strength. I know how and when to ask for help. I'm willing to ask for help at the first sign of trouble, rather than when it gets completely out of my control. I know how to better manage stress. I'm finally able to love myself and those around me, and to extend some level of trust that most of the people I interact with won't hurt me the way my family did. I finally have family I trust, too, in the form of my dad's side of the family. I practice metta and can finally see my mother, my brother, and even Dave with some level of compassion and an understanding of their humanity, rather than as the monsters my mind once (and occasionally still does) painted them.
The maturity came with hard circumstances that forced me to grow up and to be responsible for a great many things at a young age.
The strength? That came from within, and cost a lot of hard work and tears, but I am better for it, as are those around me. And I finally can look someone in the eye who calls me an 'old soul' or 'strong', and say with confidence, "yes, I am strong, and it's all my own doing."
Because finally, I have found some measure of peace and love within myself.
In the end, maybe that's what matters most.