Reflections on Family Trauma at the Holidays
By: Margo James
Tags: Child Abuse, PTSD, Trauma, Borderline Personality, Holidays

*Trigger warning: abuse*

I’m working to overcome my traumatic responses. It is a long and hard road. Writing about it helps me, but also takes a great deal of emotional energy. I don’t have my topics mapped out, or a list of things I want to cover. It is not as if I am sitting down to meditate upon these topics, but rather that they play on a loop in the back of my mind. Of course, the thoughts come and go, interspersed between grocery shopping, work projects, household tasks, and responding to unopened text messages.

Yet, as soon as I’m not focusing on something else, the thoughts come back. There is no coherent line connecting them. Sometimes one or two memories will appear because of stimulus, but, primarily, I’ll recall a random moment in time.

With this being the holiday season, I’ve spent a lot more time in reflection. It is around these months that it’s common to think about the state of one’s relationships with those close to them and their fellow man. I am no different than anyone else. My thoughts go to my estranged family, whether there was something I could have done, and whether there is something I can do now. I wonder if things are actually my fault or if I made the whole thing up. If I reached out today, would there be a teary reunion in which my parents would acknowledge the errors of their ways and beg for forgiveness?

The world is still the way it is. The changed people I wish for are nothing more than a thought carried over from my childhood. I would dream of having loving parents who understood me and held me, rather than the banshee outside my door screaming and breaking things. I used to imagine someone coming to take me away, my mother feeling sorrow, or… someone out there could, one day, love me. These fantasies would occur when I was being beaten or experiencing similar abuses.

How funny it is now to look back and understand that there was no remorse or guilt there. To know she enjoyed how she treated me because she thought she should be able to. I was her child, her property, she would say. I wasn’t allowed to have feelings. My thoughts didn’t matter. I didn’t matter. I used to think it was because of stress or struggles she was experiencing, but… there was nothing. All the things she would scream about and blame me for, and my father would justify as reasons that her behavior was okay, were normal part of life. The simplest of things, like going to the store or running late for an appointment became something she could blame and scream about to my brother and I.

There have been times in the past when I have reached out to my father to attempt to establish a relationship with boundaries (thinking initially that it was only my mother who abused me). They are always unsuccessful. My last interactions with my father were so absurd and triggering that it makes me ill to think of them.

At this point, when someone implies or mentions that my separation won’t be forever because they’re my family, I am repulsed and sick to my stomach. My urge is to run and never speak to the person again. Of course, I do not. I simply say I do not want that, and do not think I ever will.

For now, the greatest gift I could ever have is to live in a world where those people stay far, far away from me.