Damaged Past Makes me who I am

If our pasts decide who we become, then I’ve been given a past worth growing from.

I think damage can sometimes be endearing. I value dark histories, growing pains and repressed memories. People have a tendency to shy away from me once they realize I’ve survived damage and a bad pasts, but I have learned to embrace my damaged past.  

We all leave the nest with a few dents and bruises. As Mitch Albom said, “Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”

No one comes out of life without a few scars, even the cool kids have demons. But some people have faced challenges that have truly changed and damaged them in ways that aren’t fixed by new apartments and fancy cars.

These people belong in a special class of “fucked up.” They’ve seen shit you’ll never know about. They’re rare people who have died and come back to life with brighter vision, they are the phoenixes that rise from the ashes of their life.

It’s like they’ve lived multiples times. I’ve felt the cold ground of rock bottom and danced with demons you wouldn’t want to meet. 

Ive been both victim and victor. 

I’ve overcome trails and tribulations that have shaped me into a stronger and more knowledgeable person. 

I’m not trying to romanticize or generalize the hardships and abuse many have faced. I don’t condone fucking people up in the pursuit of strong character and I definitely don’t want to give the impression that all damaged people are the same. 

I’m making an observation from my own life. And that observation is that some damaged people know how to embrace life better than those who have been coddled. 

People who have been through it all come out on the other side incredibly strong. I’ve been forced to grow up facing struggles my neighbours will never experience. 

At times I feel immune to life’s bumps and curves. But my struggles have humbled me. 

Under my hard shell I’ve grown over the years, I do have a soft inner core, even though I don’t alway like to show it.

I know what it’s like to struggle and what it’s like to love. 

I often throw myself into everything that makes me feel good and happy. When you’ve been through the worst things in life, you make damn sure to appreciate the good parts.

I’m 30 and sometimes I feel like I’ve already been to hell and you know what I’m not afraid of going back!

When you’ve already hit rock bottom, there’s no more fear of falling. Fear stems from our ideas about the unknown. When you’ve experienced the reality of every terrible situation, there’s no more wondering, guessing and worrying. Hitting the lowest point in your life is liberating; from there, there’s nowhere to go but up.

I can’t improve my pasts, but I can seize the future.

When you’ve experienced the loss of control, you seize every chance to win it back. People who have witnessed horrors of their own life are always masters of their future. I’ve had my control taken away, I know what it’s like to appreciate and fight for my freedom.

I try not to sweat the small stuff.

Until you’ve been truly sick, you can’t appreciate your health. People doesn’t appreciate being able to walk until they lose a leg. The same goes with those who have faced life’s biggest shit storms. When you’ve stood underneath the heaviest downpour, you stop noticing the drizzle. Damaged people have a perspective that comes only from some serious experience.

I know how to embrace life’s bumps and pitfalls.

People say life doesn’t come with a manual. But if we were going to make one, I’d have the most damaged people lay out the escape routes. They know how to get through things. Unlike your prissy friends — whose worst day consists of a spilled coffee or missed plane — damaged people know how to handle real situations. If our skill set for life is based on experience, then the people with the most hardcore training are always going to have the best tools.

I have knowledge that can’t be learned.

Most people with some serious damage are like old souls who have already lived thousands of years. If Buddhists are correct in saying that each new life in the cycle of reincarnation is a step on the way to enlightenment, they’ve passed a few more stages than your average Joe. They’re the Buddhas of handling fucked up situations and keeping things in perspective. They are like people who have traveled the world and become deep with knowledge and information. They’ve survived and persevered in ways some of us will never know.

That Time You Broke Me

It was one of those cold rainy nights we sometimes get in September, the ones that are perfect for cuddling, you know the type of night I’m talking about. M and I were tucked away under the bedsheets. I was in heaven.

What M was about to say wouldn’t only forever change the way I felt about being in bed with him but It would forever change the way I feel about myself.

“Hmmm, interesting” he said, caressing the backs of my calves with his big, strong hands. “What do you mean?” I said, wide-eyed as a little girl on Christmas, bracing myself for his hand to make its way up to my lady parts.

“This.” He slapped my thighs, then gripped them so hard I screamed. “You could definitely tighten these up a bit.”

My body went from generating heat to growing completely cold. I was flushed.

“I think they’re fine,” I said, sinking deeper and deeper into the covers.

“You’re so close,” he continued. The man wouldn’t stop incriminating himself. “You’re nearly there. You just need to spend more time in the gym… let me help you transform your body.”

In an attempt to not succumb to my vulnerability — and instead fight back with wit — I grabbed at the thin layer of flesh on his thigh, hoping to make a look-you-have-fat-too!-point. But the truth was, he hardly had any fat on his leg, so I just looked stupid.

Hearing put-downs from the man who was supposed to love wasn’t exactly how I envisioned that particular night going. Had I missed something? Why did I need to be “transformed?” 

Dating M was great when it was good. But when it was bad, it was awful! As with anything in life, there are pros and cons to dating a guy who spends day and night in the gym. Good sex in the bedroom, beautiful man candy on your arm and having a boyfriend who’s skilled in manual labor are just some of the pros. He’d assemble pieces of furniture for me, so I’d overlook his general douchebaggery.

But the cons were some of the biggest points of contention in our relationship. He had this insatiable affinity for the gym — both for feeling his best, but also for looking his best — while I was never too crazy about it after I quit swimming. He was obsessed with maintaining his “perfect” body.

He’d often send me “inspirational” photos, like ones of fitness model and whom I would never look like because frankly I enjoy pizza and popcorn way too much. 

He once told me I was the laziest, flabbiest, most undetermined human on the planet, and I’d nod in acquiescence, like a bobblehead doll incapable of independent thinking. Except I wasn’t, I’ve run marathons, I’m a former swimmer but he had me so diluted that I thought so low of myself. 

I’ve never been uber confident about my body like any girl who’s ever existed, I have insecurities. One day in the life of Tiara could mean feeling fantabulous in a tight white dress, but another day could mean a refusal to leave my apartment because the pair of jeans I’m wearing make me feel too fat to be seen by the world. I’ve always had body dysmorphia but M made this escalate. I once was able to look at pictures of myself and not tear myself apart but when I look at it now, I see the six-pack I don’t have. I see a nonexistent thigh gap. And I don’t see the sculpted-to-a-T arms I worship on Women’s Health magazine covers. I see tree-trunk thighs.

At the time we were dating, I didn’t take his remarks to be demeaning. I took them as constructive criticism. I wanted them to uplift me, make me want to strive to be better, not just when it came to looks, but also when it came to other facets of life. I figured that maybe, if I had a gym regimen to stick to, I wouldn’t be haphazard in things of great significance, like starting work projects and balancing my friendships.

Bettering myself meant going to the gym. And so I went, creating a sort of obsession of my own out of it. I wasn’t going to feel good or look good for myself; I was going to look good for him. 

In order to build muscle, though, I needed to lose fat. So in conjunction with working out, I started eating less and less, that is never a good rollercoaster for anyone to get on. 

My arms got skinnier, my tree-trunk thighs got smaller, and I lost 40 pounds.

M’s unwillingness to take me as I was — the jiggly butt, thick-thighed, trim-but-not-toned me — broke me.

There’s something about a man telling you you aren’t good enough that sticks with you long after the man is gone (as if there weren’t enough pressure on women, from women, to look a certain way). Being with him roused something in me, something I wish had stayed sound asleep: my insecurities. It confirmed that those trivial imperfections on my body weren’t trivial at all. They were worth changing. He made me feel like I wasn’t good enough, and that I’d never be good enough. I still don’t feel like I’m good enough.

For a long time after M and I broke up I felt different I felt separate from my body and it turned me into sort of a recluse. I struggle with trusting men, and I struggle with accepting I can’t fight the natural development of my figure. I’m still trying to get back on track.

These days, I “take care” of myself (whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean) as best I can. I eat healthily. I run on the regular and I’ve move forward from my verbally destructive relationship with each passing day, as much as I still carry around my personal piece of hell.

But I also try to remember that no one is “perfect”: not even my chiseled, Ken doll ex, because what he possessed in body confidence, he severely lacked in character.

Removing the Toxic

It can be excruciatingly difficult to recognize that your parent is toxic. Because your parent can love you, and you likely love them. Familial toxicity is often something you only realize exists once you’re an adult and you've often got to be grown to untangle the reality of what happened to you. It's a lonely process, because above everything, toxic parents will deny that they're toxic parents.

There are many different kinds of toxicity, from pushy stage mother to those who are entirely absent.They range from alcoholics to inadequate parents to verbal abusers. However, while they may come in stripes of all colours, some of their effects on their children can be the same. Even if you had an alcoholic, chaotic parent while someone else had one who suffocated them, the two of you will likely have some things in common. 

I started realizing I had a problem very early into my first relationship, I found it very difficult to trust. If parents, who are meant to be our main caregivers and providers of structure, are in some way deficient or can't give us real support, then we find it difficult to create supportive attachments when we grow up. Because of the particular model we have (whether it's a parent who exploded, was constantly overcritical, vanished, or demanded perfection), we don't have a healthy view of real, caring relationships, and we always subconsciously believe that we'll be treated as our parents treat us. I am slowly learning this isn’t true, that not everyone is going to be overly critical, not everyone is going to vanish into thin air. This can lead to self-sabotage, destructive relationship behaviour, neediness, or a variety of other attachment problems. At the root, we're worried that our relationships will fail because we've never really experienced a fully successful one. 

I freak out when I fail a test or or lose a race, do you do this because I feel you. Find me on Twitter, and let's compare battle scars. Children of toxic parents often tend to have a thoroughly terrifying reaction to anything that isn't stellar success. We had to be “perfect” to be loved and perfection comes at the loss of our sanity. 

It's thanks to a lack of what my therapists calls my "substance" — the part of you that is nourished by self-care, that can take shocks or harsh treatment, because you maintain a certain amount of belief in your innate value and worthiness. It's created by years of affirmation and security, and without it, the smallest knock sends us lurching into misery. We're never good enough, we're worthless, we have no real core, etc.

I have extreme reactions that confuse the Hell out of me. One time my boyfriend came home like 40 minutes after he said he would be home and I was like “hey, honey I’m making supper for you, hope you had a good day” like a 1950’s housewife then another time he came home 15 minutes later than he said he would be and I blew up. I sometimes freak out at things that don't seem to be connected to anything, this seems to be issues leftover in my head from a toxic upbringing. I've carried over a parent's violent disapproval about my life. These feelings could include guilt, irritation, fear of abandonment, or irrational anger.

Tracking these reactions may make you feel as if you're going crazy. For someone like me who is generally a very logical person it can often be completely contrary to your conscious decisions, and you likely don't even realize where they're coming from. 

Whether you grew up with a verbally or physically abusive parent, a manipulative one, or any of the other kind, your own emotional life will have always come last in the hierarchy of the household. And it's likely that your emotional decisions are still governed by what they're going to think, rather than what's best for you or your relationships. You're used to pushing your own hurt, anger, or worry to the back of your mind, because expressing it always led to problems instead of expressing your emotions you’ll lock them up until you blow up. 

Many children of toxic parents find it exceptionally difficult to identify who they are once they grow up. You've spent so much time suppressing your real self, from your emotions to your reactions, to deal with the onslaught of your parents that you haven't had a chance to pay attention to your own development. 

Your sense of confusion and distance runs very deep indeed. This is a key one. Self-esteem is your sense of self-worth or personal value, children of toxic parents often have a severe deficit in that department. It goes back to the "substance" problem, how you weren't given the support necessary to build a core of self-belief. But it goes further than that. Many children of toxic parents suffer from an "inner critical voice" which tells them (like their parents did) that they are stupid, worthless, unworthy, complete failures, and/or general trash.

I am slowly working through my issues and yet sometimes when I feel I’ve taken a few steps forward I feel like I take a million steps back. It’s a struggle everyday to be a better person, to be better than who I was yesterday and to communicate with those around me and not to run from them.