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reflections on childhood emotional abuse.
Nov. 5th, 2021 09:27 pmI follow Wil Wheaton's journal here, and it's really been fun to have insight into his personal musings, after being so smitten with his character on Star Trek as an adolescent. It's such an intimate feeling though I know it's not, really. It reminds me of my friendship with Toby Froud, before he started dating Pixie and vanished from my life entirely. Knowing someone as a human who previously was known only as a glowing moving image on a screen, in a show that was so meaningful to my development.
It's also nice that he shares so openly about his childhood emotional abuse trauma and his ongoing battle with depression and anxiety due to said trauma. He wrote an especially poignant essay a few months ago about how painful it is to have members of his own household who don't believe that his childhood experience was traumatic. Because he was picked on by his parents, but his siblings weren't.
I had a similar thing happen with my brother. he was kicked out of the house when he was 13, I was 6 at the time, so I was raised as basically an only child from that point forward, with my brother visiting from time to time. This is already pretty wildly abusive behavior - when a child misbehaves you don't just get rid of them, right? But my brother seems to think he "deserved" it. Anyway. I got all of mom's spiraling alcoholism 2am blackout screaming attacks, where she would tell me every possible vile terrifying demonizing thing about what a terrible human being I was, how selfish I was, how I would never have any friends, how ungrateful I was, unlikable, intolerable in any number of ways, that I cost them too much and was the reason they might not make the next house payment or be able to buy food or repair the car if it broke down, she would threaten to kick me out like she had my brother, but then at the same time explain how I was utterly incapable of caring for myself or making any sort of sound judgement about anything, not about my life, not about love, not about money, not about my health or well-being, not about friends or faith, I had no capacity whatsoever to do anything right, she would scream night after night after night, until the wee hours of the morning. And then I had to get up at 4:45am to go ice skate. My brother never saw or experienced any of that. So, he really doesn't believe it ever happened. And that's hurtful, to not have anyone believe that I suffered this trauma. The worst part that I never really fully realized was that my mom herself didn't even know - she would black out and forget, and the next morning bounce around the house like a bubbly ray of adoring sunshine. I thought as a child that she was just faking it and trying to smooth things over. Or that maybe she didn't mean any of it. I didn't know what to think. I just know that it was profoundly confusing and terrifying to have this jekyll and hyde of a mother, who I depended on for shelter and protection, who was also my worst enemy and the most damaging person in my life, as well as being my salvation, and my entire world, after she left my father and married someone I didn't like or trust, who spanked me and really knew nothing about how to raise a girl, or any child for that matter.
But looking back, I bet she wasn't pretending that nothing had happened the night before - it was more likely that she legitimately blacked out and had no recollection of any of it.
It's not an experience that's possible to recover from. I just learn to better limp along with this broken, distorted, traumatized brain.
And nobody in my family can ever recognize it or understand.
It sucks.
Part of what Wil said that struck me the most was that we learned, as children, how to act as if everything was okay, soas to protect ourselves from setting off the unpredictably abusive parent. We got so skilled at this that we were able to convince everyone who knew our family that everything was peachy. They bought it. And when we reveal the truth as adults, they balk, accuse us of lying, dismiss us, or decide that we are simply insane.
I feel less alone, knowing someone who is so interesting and kind, who has a much higher profile in the world, suffers something similar.
It's also nice that he shares so openly about his childhood emotional abuse trauma and his ongoing battle with depression and anxiety due to said trauma. He wrote an especially poignant essay a few months ago about how painful it is to have members of his own household who don't believe that his childhood experience was traumatic. Because he was picked on by his parents, but his siblings weren't.
I had a similar thing happen with my brother. he was kicked out of the house when he was 13, I was 6 at the time, so I was raised as basically an only child from that point forward, with my brother visiting from time to time. This is already pretty wildly abusive behavior - when a child misbehaves you don't just get rid of them, right? But my brother seems to think he "deserved" it. Anyway. I got all of mom's spiraling alcoholism 2am blackout screaming attacks, where she would tell me every possible vile terrifying demonizing thing about what a terrible human being I was, how selfish I was, how I would never have any friends, how ungrateful I was, unlikable, intolerable in any number of ways, that I cost them too much and was the reason they might not make the next house payment or be able to buy food or repair the car if it broke down, she would threaten to kick me out like she had my brother, but then at the same time explain how I was utterly incapable of caring for myself or making any sort of sound judgement about anything, not about my life, not about love, not about money, not about my health or well-being, not about friends or faith, I had no capacity whatsoever to do anything right, she would scream night after night after night, until the wee hours of the morning. And then I had to get up at 4:45am to go ice skate. My brother never saw or experienced any of that. So, he really doesn't believe it ever happened. And that's hurtful, to not have anyone believe that I suffered this trauma. The worst part that I never really fully realized was that my mom herself didn't even know - she would black out and forget, and the next morning bounce around the house like a bubbly ray of adoring sunshine. I thought as a child that she was just faking it and trying to smooth things over. Or that maybe she didn't mean any of it. I didn't know what to think. I just know that it was profoundly confusing and terrifying to have this jekyll and hyde of a mother, who I depended on for shelter and protection, who was also my worst enemy and the most damaging person in my life, as well as being my salvation, and my entire world, after she left my father and married someone I didn't like or trust, who spanked me and really knew nothing about how to raise a girl, or any child for that matter.
But looking back, I bet she wasn't pretending that nothing had happened the night before - it was more likely that she legitimately blacked out and had no recollection of any of it.
It's not an experience that's possible to recover from. I just learn to better limp along with this broken, distorted, traumatized brain.
And nobody in my family can ever recognize it or understand.
It sucks.
Part of what Wil said that struck me the most was that we learned, as children, how to act as if everything was okay, soas to protect ourselves from setting off the unpredictably abusive parent. We got so skilled at this that we were able to convince everyone who knew our family that everything was peachy. They bought it. And when we reveal the truth as adults, they balk, accuse us of lying, dismiss us, or decide that we are simply insane.
I feel less alone, knowing someone who is so interesting and kind, who has a much higher profile in the world, suffers something similar.
