Accepting Help is Hard

 Accepting help can be exceptionally hard when you have a past of neglect, abuse, blame or in general not feeling heard. 

You know that I have had a hard past, but did you know I never stopped begging for help? I asked therapists, doctors, lawyers, police, my other parent, my older sister and many others.  Some used this to harm me more (childhood sexual assault by a martial arts instructor) and others really tried to help, but nothing was ever really done to fix the issues.  

My abuser was SO good at spinning the narrative as a healthy family with a sick child and making the issues in the home all my fault.  So many people believed her and so many people still believe her.  What can I do to change that besides speak my truth right?  Well this IS my truth and no-one else's. I will tell my side and use my voice, because for so long I was silenced.

I was not perfect (who is) nor am I now.  I know my trauma brain minimizes and maximizes parts of the story and in many weird ways! I know this about my brain, but I also acknowledge that my feelings and my experiences are very valid.

This ties into today in interesting ways.  I am very sick and many things that I found easy before are nearly impossible now. I have struggled to keep a job and even get a job due to my physical limitations.  I decided to move from my apartment and was looking at my finances and realized I was going to need help.  I reached out to my mother and was honest and vulnerable, but also very guarded as well.  It can be so hard to communicate to someone you really feel like has already failed you.  In my case the person who abused me the most was the other person who chose to raise myself and my sisters, who was a very toxic person and probably a narcissist  as well, but I am not a doctor.  I felt like I had communicated the abuse many times and been ignored, I felt like I was trapped and I had to protect my siblings, which pissed off my abuser even more.  I was sent away from them and treated as a burden from the time I was 7 on, and being re-homed was a very real possibility AND reality in my life.  

What is being re-homed?  It is when full or partial custody of a child is given to someone else per a semi-legal contract and this can be another family, institution or just a stranger even.  The sad reality is that this is done to adoptive children far more than most people even realize.  

I was sent good places and bad places, I was a witness to abuse in both types of situation, but I was medically abused in the institution more than any other place.  I am now terrified of psychologists, psychiatrists and it takes a LOT for me to trust therapists.

Opening up to the woman who was married to the person who abused me for 25 years was one of the hardest things I have ever done, but it has been so worth it.  I am happy and safe now, but the questions in my mind don't stop "why now" and "why not then" and even "what is so different now?" These conversations haunt me as I ask for and receive help.  And we communicate and actually hear each other.  I know realistically that my mother was being abused too, but why didn't she save us? I started trying to save my sisters when I was 6, so why weren't the adults doing anything about the issues? 

Accepting help now, I always feel like there will be a catch, a change of plans or just something more that I would "owe" my mom, but she has never said or acted in that way.  So I was finally able to put how I feel into words: asking for help makes me angry. An anger that I have to ask HER for help. Anger that I wasn't prepared for real life, anger that my early jobs were sabotaged, anger that work was a "privilege" but in the real world it is a responsibility.  My world and reality was so dang twisted that asking for help feels shameful, it feels like I failed and goes against that horrible voice in my brain screaming "FAST AND SNAPPY AND RIGHT THE FIRST TIME!!!" It isn't right, it isn't logical and who never messes up on their first try at something new? I sure do!  The difference is that in my brain that isn't acceptable, because as a child MISTAKES were disrespect.  And that is why asking for help is so hard for me, is it hard for you?  Chime in and let me know if you feel the same and why!