The dysfunction and trauma of my childhood and teenage years, and the memories of such, almost ruined my adult life. Even when I was many miles and years away from those times, the scars and memories dominated my life: frequent nightmares, unhealthy behavior in a quest to numb the pain, wanting to make sure everyone around me knew what I’d been through, having to leave movies if what was on screen hit too close to home, and on and on. And when a new crisis hit me in adulthood, I would spiral down and wallow in not just the latest hurt, but from all that pain in my past.
I’m so glad there was no social media back then: my accounts would have been filled with “oh, poor me” posts. And, to be fair, those laments would have been justified: I was in dire need of support. I was really hurting and floundering. I wanted everyone to know so that I could get acknowledgment that it really was as bad as what I was feeling.
Many years and some additional traumas later, therapy, a perfect job and being in the right place at the right time – Austin, Texas – healed me beyond anything I ever thought I could experience.
The scars from my youth and other traumas are still there, and some of the pain is still there, but those memories and that pain do not dominate my life. My nightmares rooted in my past occur just a few times a year – my nightmares now are full of brand new horrors! I still struggle sometimes, of course, with new bad things that happen. Getting old and facing unemployment have been horrible, but I also have done my best to pursue any positive outlet I can, and I feel like, while I didn’t win in terms of finding one last great full time job, I never let the darkness consume me, and I ended up making some great memories in this time, through travel and exploring locally and always giving in to curiosity and pouring my love into my husband and dog.
Now, I have a new struggle: guilt from getting better.
There are times when I hear myself at 14 years old looking at my life now and she is screaming, “How dare you betray me? It’s like all this pain doesn’t matter anymore! How can you belittle the importance, the magnitude, of all this crap I’m experiencing by getting over it?!”
First of all, when I say “getting over”, I don’t mean that the past doesn’t affect me anymore at all and I don’t talk about it. What it means is that I got over that huge, massive, ugly chasm in my life and moved on. The chasm is still there and I can go stand at that chasm and look down in it whenever I want. I just choose to be farther away from it most of the time and talk more about the more beautiful landscapes beyond it.
Secondly, I get it, 14-year-old self, I do. To move on from trauma can sometimes look like I no longer honor or recognize the magnitude of the pain. It can be interpreted as, “Hey, it obviously really wasn’t that bad, because look how well you are doing now.” And I don’t want anyone, for even a split second, to think the dysfunction and trauma I experienced as a young person wasn’t horrific.
But I’ve also realized that I want a nice life now. I don’t want the darkness to win. And it would win if I dwelled on that past pain so much.
Being happy now doesn’t mean you don’t miss someone in your life who died, or that some horrible thing that happened to you didn’t really hurt you that much. Being happy now is a gift from you to you. It’s normal, it’s natural, and it’s so much better than being stuck in a swamp of misery – however real and horrific that misery was.
It’s okay to get over it and move on.
Have a healing, comforting, and maybe even exciting 2024. Stay curious.
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