On Being Crushable
CW: physical violence, suicidal ideation, self-harm, queerphobia/slurs
Hard-hitting journal entry today, mostly for my own emotional processing.
Today was maybe the one-month anniversary with my new therapist (but hey, who's counting). The catalyst for my getting in touch with them was being physically assaulted by my former friend earlier this semester, the fallout of which I've still been working through.
I don't think you really realize how much physical violence affects you until you're made to confront it after the fact. Humans really are quite resilient creatures, and sometimes it feels quite natural for us to bury our feelings of vulnerability, sadness, fear, and loneliness away in some ancient, musty cavern, then fill in the hole with imaginary concrete, thinking those emotions will stay buried forever. But concrete isn't permanent; the acidic pollutants in the atmosphere will inevitably precipitate onto that highly alkaline material and eventually erode it away into nothing.
Really, the whole situation with my friend isn't what bothers me the most, even though I've had some recurring nightmares and the incident probably triggered the worst mental health episode I've had since I was a teenager (say it with me: "but hey, who's counting"). Well, it does bother me, but I don't think it should have bothered me as much as it has because in all honesty, it wasn't as violent or sustained as you're probably imagining.
However, when I was describing how it made me feel to my therapist, I broke down. I couldn't hold it in. I just sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed, inconsolably, until the end of our session. And I think the reason wasn't just because one friend, an aberration, assaulted me, it's because the episode reminded me of the exact same violence my dad had inflicted upon me when I was younger.
I don't think physical harm is what lingers (excluding serious injuries and the like, of course, and I don't mean to minimize those). It's the memory of that harm, and the ways in which it rewires your brain to constantly be on the lookout for danger, and to find fault in yourself for being a victim. And it's the lingering understanding that you really aren't safe, even though society tries very hard to coat itself with the veneer of civility—the truth is that many people are uncivil, and that's an incredibly difficult lesson to have to learn when you're young and vulnerable. I think I put it aptly when, between shuddering convulsions, I gasped to my therapist:
I felt so small. The people who were supposed to care about me, they could just crush me like I'm nothing.
Like they never really loved me at all—like they never really cared. Like the only thing between me and violence was my simply existing in a way that rubbed them the wrong way at a given moment.
I'm small. If they wanted to hurt me, or cripple me, or kill me, I couldn't even do anything about it.
I would just die.
At the hands of someone who was supposed to care.
And they did hurt me. And they did cripple me, even if those injuries are invisible. Are they in the process of slowly killing me too?
Earlier this semester, I had too much to drink one night. It hurt too much. I ended up in the hospital, and I didn't stop retching until the next afternoon. When I tried to drink water, I threw up; when I tried to keep down a single bite of food, I threw up; when I tried to take an antiemetic pill, I threw that up too. By the late morning, I was puking some primordial green bile because there was nothing left to puke. I didn't even know that was an option!
That was a low point, but it wasn't the lowest. I had my roommate throw out the alcohol. I swore it off. But I still found other ways to hurt myself. At some point, you're so deep into your own head that the only thing that can bring you back to reality is nails against your skin, or a blade.
And how do you even begin to tell anyone that you're doing something like that to yourself? I don't think a single soul knows that it's gotten that bad before. When even that doesn't work anymore, your only consolation is the knowledge that you can walk over to the bridge whenever you want and throw yourself into the frigid waters below. If the impact doesn't kill you, the current or the temperature will. But nobody needs to hear that. Despite all the soapboxing about mental health awareness, to some extent it's true that depression is your own battle to fight. There's nobody who can fight it for you.
I am managing better now. I haven't hurt myself in a couple of weeks. But I've never felt more alone, more small, more crushable than in those moments alone in the bathroom, shivering, half-naked, with a knife pressed against my chest. I felt the same way I did when I was a teenager and did the same; I felt so vulnerable, yet nobody was there to rescue me. Even when things are better, I still think about that feeling, and that aloneness. It's unsettling.
That's what I mean when I wonder if those people who hurt me in the past are in the process of killing me. Even after I've forgiven them and even after I've repaired those relationships. My dad and I get along well. I don't blame him. And yet those wounds are still there. They're never going to disappear. Those wounds come back in the form of skin scratched raw, blade marks, and thoughts of suicide. The omnipresent baseline anxiety I feel while just existing probably has something to do with it too. And people can read the pain, the despair, and the fearfulness on my face and on my body even though I try to hide it. People know something is wrong but I CANNOT TELL THEM.
Because if I do, I am vulnerable again. They will hurt me. They will scar me. I'll be reduced, again, to being a terrified child curled in the fetal position, just trying desperately to avoid more pain. And those who don't hurt me will leave me in the muddy ditch. I know because some of my former friends have. And I've done it to other people too. I've hurt them. I've left them in the ditch. I get angry, and I get avoidant, because in a world full of violent, angry people, it's the only way I know how to protect myself.
I am a full person. I don't want to be controlled by what other people have done to me in the past. But it has been so, so hard to find my feet again. It is so hard to find myself when every survival instinct in my body is screaming for me to hide. What will happen when I try to come out for the second time? Will he beat me again? Will he call me a faggot, a yaojing, or just a plain old fucker again? Will he accelerate recklessly down an icy side road with me in the passenger seat with death in his eyes again? And will I still be a fucking failure to him, someone he's ashamed to even talk about around other people? Because the version of him that appeared when I was no longer his son is still lurking inside there somewhere, and it might emerge again.
I still feel so small. So powerless. So crushable.