It’s not over when you leave. If only it were that simple. You leave, get on with your life and never think about them again. You’re safe so you don’t give them a second thought. As anyone who has had to leave an abusive family behind knows, this is not how it plays out within you, or the world in which you are trying to create a new life. There is grief which saturates everything. Grief, which you have to face if you are going to recover at all and here’s the kicker, the mind fuck; you want to go back. It’s the attachment you have to them, calling out with that undying hope they will change. The belief that saved you when you were small. My family were arch manipulators of this attachment, they did it to control me, to make sure I would never leave. They would love bomb with gifts and beautiful things, with what looked like love. They told me they loved me, gave me hugs, compliments, read me bedtime stories, made us wonderful meals. They put me at the very centre of attention within a huge family. And then they would switch. The colour drained from life instantly. They became like statues. Complete silence descended. It was a coldness that was complete. Nothing. I became invisible before the physical and sexual abuse. The panic this caused me was like a tornado inside of me. I was lost in it. That was the intention. What had seemed like love was only a prelude to more abuse, but given the nature of what came next, all I wanted with every cell in my being was to get back to the bit that seemed like love, with the desperate hope it would never switch again. They created this confusion intended to blind me, render me frozen and stunned. They were the architects of my dissociation, as all families involved in organised abuse are. It is this terrible bind, this evil twist they create, that you have to face down and see for what it is, after you leave them. Because it’s this bind, this trap of confusion that makes you want to go back. To return to the time before the horrendous abuse, when there was still an illusion of safety. Perhaps it would last this time ? Perhaps it would not switch ? You cling to this hope like the life raft it is , because what choice do you have ? It’s not like you could leave at the time, you were a child , you were trapped. It becomes a pleading within you. Please see me, please don’t hurt me, please love me. It is the score to your life and when you finally leave physically, it is what must be faced in all its reality if you are to become whole and free. As pleading goes it is doomed, it was doomed from the start. Once you are out and away from them it builds in momentum, until it hurts to breathe. So you say to yourself, I must face this, I must feel it, hold it and get inside this, to know how I felt back then, to understand, so I can grieve and release myself from this bind. This pleading that only I can meet with love and kindness. This is grief. Perhaps it is the worst bit, you still have to deal with the nightmares and the flashbacks of the abuse, but it is the grief that makes you feel you want to return to them. So, you must work at both side by side, to stay safe, to stay where you are.
You cannot go back, no matter how much you are pulled within by these installed ties. Because if you do there will be no apologies and no admitting to the truth. Whatever it is you wish to happen is that pleading wish of the child you were. It is a child’s wish, so you must validate it within yourself and tell her you, as the adult are there for her, you will never leave her. You will keep her safe and love her. That she cannot return to them because they will hurt her again, but this time she will not be able to leave. You have to hold her against the onslaught of the pain of this abandonment. You have to hold her in your arms to soothe her through this belief in a hope that things could be different this time. It is this belief which kept you alive, so having to face the truth of its lie feels like dying. Talk to her, love her in a way only you know. Tell her you will keep her safe, that they never did, that they never will. And show her with your actions, words are not enough, they are the start, but you have to walk the walk. Keeping her safe means allowing her to tell you everything she had to forget and loving her enough to hear and hold her pain through to the point of release, in every part of your body. When that time comes you will stand at your window watching the swallows soar, feeling pure joy and know you really have got her out. When you establish safety like this you are able to look deeper to see nothing has changed with them, that nothing will ever change. Time has stood still where they are. They have never looked within to question what they did, they simply cannot face that or themselves. They are incapable. Within all of this truth is the awful recognition that there were good times, or what seemed like good times, because this is the tragic complexity of it all. There was laughter, fabulous holidays, music and what seemed like a closeness that was unbreakable. You blink, you see the facade. You loved them, they were your family, you really had no choice, it was survival at its most basic. But you really loved them, it is not black and white. It never is. You had to forget who they were and make them into something else. Pretending became an art. Seeing them for who they really are and having to leave them almost killed you. It has taken another decade to grieve and break the attachment to them. You realise any parent that allows their child to be trafficked is lost forever. You don’t understand it, you never will and you don’t have to. You have done a lot of looking back to see the closeness you thought you had was not real. The pain of this was on another level, a place of pure detachment, somewhere the animals live, a better place.
You allow the hope they will change to die. It has often felt like this would take you with it, but somehow you are still here breathing, evolving through the pain of its death. And so you stay away, they are dangerous people. When you ask how could what you felt be such a lie, how could it not be real, now you know. All of the yearning and the longing for them to love you, feelings that have been there forever, die in the truth. This is even harder to stomach, it is release finally, but it hurts, it is grief. When you cry you fall to a place which is familiar now. A place which is your centre as your tears fall , warm and all embracing. They fold you over within yourself in a pure vibration of energy that takes over your whole body. There is light, lots of light within the pain because you are awake now, exhausted, but wide awake. No more fighting. You have worked for years to get to this point of pure truth which releases you from all the lies you had to believe. In its purity it feels like the greatest love you have ever known. You are facing the reality which caused your dissociation, the whole reason you had to leave yourself behind. In returning to yourself you experience a joy beyond words where there is no fear. Who would have thought you could break this attachment ? I didn’t. I thought the pain would never stop, it went on for so long. But in that time I never stopped facing the truth, I saw they did not love me, today I know that. It’s as simple and painful as that. There was no love.
So I give love. The place it ends is me being there for me. Giving love and more love. Listening, noticing, being there to comfort. It’s simple work, but it’s work and it takes practice every day, until it becomes a habit, one which makes me and all my child parts feel safe enough to reveal all their dissociated stories. They will not tell, show me anything if they do not feel safe. I want to know all their stories, I need to know from deep within my body the wounds call, causing symptoms holding truth. So I listen, I attend. This creation of safety, this beautiful work of love and commitment to the little girl. You do this work, you build the foundation you were never given and in doing so you meet your own needs. You don’t abandon yourself, like they abandoned you. You learn to soothe yourself in kind and loving ways and the longer you do this work of loving your small child parts , the harder it makes it for you to ever return.
The work it takes to heal. A lot of work, every day, that no one else sees. All you ever wanted and needed was to be loved. Somehow you have managed to do this for yourself. This is a miracle born of love, crafted through pain, and delivered through commitment. Whatever else happens in your life you are a success for this achievement. You never gave up on love and now you feel it all around you, every day. You found it in yourself, your daughter your wonderful animals, the beauty of nature and the splendour of life itself.
So, was the pain of the truth worth it ? Yes, to create a life with real love, the pain was worth it.