Broken Mirrors

By Tai

We are not the product of our past but the product of our choices.

It is ok to embrace the past but not to permit it to dictate who we become.

Even the child of our past deserves to be embraced and the voiceless child is NOT to blame.

These are things it is easy to accept in a clinical, detached, logical way and yet so much harder to accept and apply to reality. Our reality, for ourselves personally. Or at least, this is how I perceive it. True, it could have been worse. It can ALWAYS be worse. The possibility or acceptance of worse does NOT, however, detract from the fact that our pasts have an effect on who we become. However, it’s what we do with our past that determines who we permit ourselves to become.

One of the few clear memories I have of my childhood is of my father-person coming to me after he’d beaten me or abused me or fought with me in whatever way he was given to on the day. He’d sit beside me on my bed and say, “I’m sorry.” You’re thinking, ‘Good. He knew how to apologize’, however, an apology is meaningless when it’s quantified and thrown back at the receiver because hand-in-hand with his apology was always, “It isn’t my fault and I’m not to blame.” According to him, he was the product of a combination of his own abusive past and me, the child… which I recognize but can’t truly accept.

Let me break that down.

On the one hand, Father (I refuse to acknowledge him as ‘Dad’ and as he’s not my biological father, either, even ‘father’ is a stretch) would blame his past and say he had no control over his behavior. He was abused and therefore abuse was as much a part of him as his physical attributes (and he was a BIG man!), a part he claimed he had no control over. So his parents, his childhood, and his environment were to blame. He blamed his family’s poverty, his mother’s weakness, his father’s violence, his older brothers, the church into which he’d been forced on account of tradition… he took absolutely NO responsibility for his own actions.

After that, it was MY fault. I, beginning right from birth by all accounts, somehow goaded him into his fits of aggression, a philosophy only supported and encouraged by my bio-mother. Whereas father would say, ‘It’s a chemical thing, I can’t help myself’, she’d say, ‘Why do you do that? Why do you upset him like that?’ Me? What the hell, realistically, does a child do to deserve abuse? Not to mention that my bio-mother thrived on the drama of the abuse and, most importantly, the aftermath, and thus took great delight in setting up suitable situations for conflict.

As I’ve spoken of before, it is inevitable there be consequences to a childhood of trauma, in my case continued well into adulthood. The bonds one develops with abusers (whether physical, sexual, psychological, emotional or a combination of any or all) become harder to break the longer the abuse and the relationship continue. My ‘parents’ played me for years and years and years. I like to call it the ‘push you-pull you’ game or the ‘come here-go away’ game, either being equally accurate. They’d disown me, stop communicating with me, send me vicious letters stating all my faults and vices and I’d break down and apologize, for whatever, and then they’d graciously concede and permit my return, until the next time.

The bottom line, the end result: I had no idea who I was, where I belonged, what value I had, or what meaning there was to my own life. As a child, I lived in an alternate safe reality and out of this alternate reality many of my stories were born. But being inside this alternate reality also means my memories of my actual reality don’t exist. I have huge, gaping holes in my memory and, once you develop this technique of being absent during crisis, the habit tends to remain. I still do it as a default technique, completely involuntarily, and though I might appear to be present during specific life-events, I later have either no recollection of them or a distorted one.

But somebody has to be present. I’m not standing there deaf, blind, dumb, and immobile. Some part of me functions. I recall Father saying that it was my ‘attitude’ which drove him most readily to violence, and I never understood exactly what that ‘attitude’ was. I understand now, belatedly. It was whoever was standing there in my place and those ‘other’ identities remain to this day, stronger than they ever were rather than weaker.

I don’t claim nor wish to claim Multiple Personality Disorder. ‘Borderline’ MPD, the psychologist called it, because I retain an element of awareness and can wear some of them at will. But the harder I fight and the more I wish to resolve the issues of the past, the deeper I dig into Pandora’s Box, the more dominant they become. It’s a battle, an internal one, one I am currently fighting blind.

At the end of the day, what I wish as a resolution is to be able to merge the individual components of ME into one cohesive whole. Ok, some of ME can f*ck right off, the voices that echo my parents; that tell me to quit, that I’m worthless, that life is pointless, that my absence would serve a greater purpose than my presence. But the others, those who have given me strength in times of trial, those who voice my stories and my alternate realities, those who are kind and considerate, those who say my past does not own me and I do NOT need to follow in either of my parents’ footsteps; those can remain. Together. United.

I’m grateful to the people who see ME behind and within the crowd. I’m grateful for their patience and their unconditional love. I’m grateful for their willingness to put aside expectation and accept there are things of which, right now, I am incapable, of the barriers I’ve built to protect the inner child. If in doubt, YOU know who you are. The ones who support me in my absence. The ones who think about me and drop me lines of support. The ones without judgment. The ones who genuinely care and consider me friend, despite my mistakes, my insecurities, my inconsistencies.

To each and every one of you… thank you. I wouldn’t have the strength to make this journey without you.

May the Universe bless each and every one of you on your own journeys and should you ever need ME in that journey, consider me here.

Aroha nui and kia kaha.

Tai