The Bullies and the Abusers

A few days ago, during an intense EMDR* session, a flood of memories came back to me how I was emotionally and verbally terrorized by my own family.

The days that followed, I had to process the depth and width of that abuse. I came to the harsh realization that my whole life I have been abused or manipulated by others. My whole life…the entirety of my forty-six years on the planet have been riddled with it. The people that should have loved and protected me were in fact frauds of the highest order. They perverted familial love out of their own mental health struggles.

I am still processing. From it I came to certain truths. My family abused me because there was no one to stop them. I am the youngest in my family, and hence the easiest target. From my mother’s abuse, to my father’s indifference, and later to my brother’s abuse, no one stood up for me. No one in the family unit stopped what was happening to me.

And, I wish I could, but how could I stop the abuse? And, that is why it perpetuated for years. No one stopped it and I didn’t know I had the option to stop it myself. It was so ingrained and natural for me that I didn’t know that there was something unequivocally sick about it. I felt like it was my fault. That I had done something wrong to merit that level of cruelty.

But, now I do. Now I have the strength to stop it. Now I see the grand arc. I had no champion as a child, but I have one now. I have myself. I know my strength, I know myself, and I know I don’t need their emotional or financial support.

I can finally stand up to the bullies in my life, even my own family of abusers, because it was never my fault, but a sick mirror to their own depravity.

Now I am finally free to choose my own path, set my own boundaries, and be the person that God intended me to be without the sick influence of those that claimed to love me.