Hi

[Taka]

i think i'd have been thrilled if my parents sent me to a boarding school when i was twelve, even if the school was like a bad prison.
home was hell to me, with the stupid parents i have.

if you want to talk about ruined or close to nonexistent childhood, then you might be able to find a lot of people with some experience here.

if just writing about it makes you cry, you should write or talk more about it.
you don't have to do it right here if you think it's too dark, but i'd read a pm if you were to send me one.

[Shantel]

I'm saddened at how you, edge and others have suffered such psychological damage and have become so devastated. I suppose that I should be in the same boat having also been abandoned at a boarding school as a young child along with my even younger brother as our parents divorced, My little brother cried at night missing his mommy, he was six years old and I was ten. The big Franciscan nun beat him with a wooden pointer stick and she punched me in the mouth when I snapped her stick out of her hand trying to defend my brother. She loosened my two front teeth and split my lip.
I learned to fight there protecting my little brother from bullies.

Later we returned home after our mom remarried. The man was an abusive alcoholic who squandered everything on booze and would disappear for days on end. He stole my piggy bank and spent the contents I had saved for several years on liquor. One night he returned and punched my mom in the face, I ran and got his 12 ga shotgun from the closet, loaded it and ran him out with it, she divorced him shortly afterwards. My mom was a very attractive woman with a vivacious personality which men mistook for something else. As I grew older and had enough of the miscreants that showed up as suitors, I began to defend my mother against her own poor choices beating two of them senseless and almost killing the third who fell backwards down a flight of basement stairs after getting a knuckle sandwich square in the chops. My little brother had become a rabid alcoholic by this time and finally I had enough and at 18 I volunteered and joined the Army and went off to the Vietnam War. In all honesty I can say that I have spent my entire youth defending and caring for others. I had never learned to smile or laugh until I married my childhood girlfriend who had once lived down the street from me. She knows me well and says that I never had a childhood and had missed out on so much. I do have PTSD issues related to warfare, but have learned to recognize the triggers and how to deal with it as I have the tools through seven years of counseling. I suppose that I should manifest some of the mental problems of others here, but I have been fortunate.

I am finally enjoying my childhood now here through Susan's and in my affiliation with others like myself and am still defensive and nurturing of you all at times as that has become a very part of my nature. My heart goes out to you all who suffer so from the awful slings and arrows that life serves up. We are all family here and you are all my little brothers and sisters.

[Dread_Faery]

Taka, I will share something with you via pm, but also read the creature thread

[Dread_Faery]

My dysphoria squarely kicked in just as I went to boarding school. I remember being excited, and wanting to go, but you know what I got caught up with the idea of it being a family tradition, I was the third generation of my family to go (that I know of), but my dad didn't and I think at 10/11 years old I just wanted to impress him.

It was hell, and while I do have some good memories mostly they were towards the end. I think knowing what it did helps a bit, but it doesn't stop the trauma or it's after effects. It's only recently that I've been able to acknowledge it as abuse, because it doesn't fit the accepted narrative of abuse.

[Edge]

I was put in a psych ward at fifteen partially because of damage done by abuse that I didn't realize was abuse until three years later (it was mostly psychological and they played a lot of mind games). My family still doesn't acknowledge it as abuse.

[Taka]

i had enough abuse at home to make up for not being sent to a boarding school...
and i never liked grade and middle school anyway. had one half happy year at 13/14, and that's pretty much it for childhood.
kindergarten was kind of nice as far as i remember, except for the boys rejecting me so fiercely at one time that i almost broke some fingers.

happy memories from home or school are too few, but i did have a little bit of childhood, a rare once in a while.
still had suicidal thoughts from early enough that i can't really remember when. around 10 or something, probably.

it's kind of depressing that so many of us have a history of different forms of abuse, and too often from family.
makes me wonder if abuse really can lead to gender dysphoria, or if it's us being different that people pick up on and causes them to abuse.
my mom says i always was something of a tomboy, and i suppose that must have been the main reason why she always told me to act more ladylike. always makes sure to tell me how cute i am. always tried to force me into dresses and skirts even when no other girls wore them.

[Edge]

makes me wonder if abuse really can lead to gender dysphoria, or if it's us being different that people pick up on and causes them to abuse.

For the second, that may be true for some people, but not all.
For the first, I highly doubt it and not just from what we know from current research on gender dysphoria. The sad fact is that if abuse led to gender dysphoria, the numbers of trans people would be several times higher.

[Taka]

i know that edge. it's just so many abused children here, it's scary.
if there is no causation, it might mean that that many children are abused in percentage. everywhere, every day.
causation is an easier thought to bear.

[Dread_Faery]

Gender dysphoria makes us vulnerable, and abusers use our vulnerabilities against us. How many of us as kids convinced ourselves we deviant freaks, unfit to see the light of day? I know that's how I saw myself until I transitioned. I thought of myself as unfit to be loved and saw my being sent to boarding school as proof of this. Heck I even ended up in an abusive relationship with a woman who basically gas lighted me and made me doubt everything about myself, all because she said she loved me.

The hard thing is my biologicals will never, ever be able to see it that way, they acted out of love, but what good is that if all it brought was pain and hurt?

The worst thing is how I normalised it, I remember reading a checklist of signs you were in an abusive relation ship and it was a horrible realisation ticking far too many off the list.

[Edge]

i know that edge. it's just so many abused children here, it's scary.
if there is no causation, it might mean that that many children are abused in percentage. everywhere, every day.
causation is an easier thought to bear.

They are.

Personally, the abuse I suffered had nothing to do with me being trans and, aside from distracting me from it for awhile, it had no effect on my gender identity or vice versa. Except being raped. That was the most emasculating thing ever and f-ed me up for awhile.

[Shantel]

i know that edge. it's just so many abused children here, it's scary.
if there is no causation, it might mean that that many children are abused in percentage. everywhere, every day.
causation is an easier thought to bear.

I think some people are attracted to each other, the end result being children that they want to love but come to resent for various reasons. I recall telling one young fellow who had been enjoying the delights of his loving spouse that once she announces that she is pregnant he will automatically go from being number one to number three and beyond when even more children come. Some expect it and receive that responsibility as father as provider well, others not always so and the children eventually are seen as the wedge that has come between them. Intimacy goes out the window and in time they become emotionally estranged and begin to take each other for granted. Unhappiness seeps in and is eventually supplanted by discontent and anger. Some wind up in divorce, other's take it out on the kids. Either way, the children suffer the emotional brunt of it.

[Alexi]

I know how you feel. I was bullied a lot and still bear the emotional scars and am constantly avoiding triggers. It's made me very sensitive to some things and I'm nervous a lot of the time. It never seems to get easier but the pain gets worse for no apparent reason either. The verbal and physical abuse is engrained in my mind and I use it to convince myself that I'm still the things my bullies told me.

[Taka]

in my case, my mother is just crazy, but doesn't realize it herself.
she had some troubles with her own parents, left her two oldest kids behind to run away with some foreigner, married and divorced him, met my father, and decided to be a good mother this time.
everything she did out of "love" contributed to breaking me.
i never had a warm and loving despite her ambition to not become some unfeeling cold b like her own mother.
my grandma's love was easier to relate to for me. it made sense at least.
much more sense than all the ridiculous stuff my mother imposed on me.

i'm just sad tht my father did nothing at all to free me on my own terms, and instead only saw my mother in me.
i most definitely wanted to kill him for that a few times.
my whole youth and childhood, i've watched my mother break my younger siblings, and my step father give up instead of taking responsibility for at least his own kids.

i've given up tlking to my mother about it. she doesn't understand, and the only way i could talk is to tell her perfectly honestly how much she has hurt me. i'd seriously keep going until i break her if i were to start that.
so i won't.

i'm not letting my conflict with my mother ruin my daughter's relationship with her grandma.
my girl deserves better. i won't ever do like my mom and tell her all the bad details of the past that she doesn't need to know.
i'll even lie that i love my mother, just so she won't be hurt by someone else's problem.

[Edge]

My dad's nuts and both my parents were abused when they were younger. My dad saw me as a threat to him since I was the only one who would stand up to him. My mom is just plain f-ed in the head and doesn't understand what being a good parent is supposed to entail. My siblings joined in against me because they're weak and would rather I didn't rock the boat than stand up against an abuser.

everything she did out of "love" contributed to breaking me.

Same with my mom.

[Dread_Faery]

Wow, I didn't expect this thread to go in this direction, and thank you to everyone who has felt able to share. For someone so verbose I'm at a complete lack of words, but I feel touched and grateful that we have a space that we're comfortable enough to share.

For my part I was neglected, it wasn't malicious or intended, but it doesn't matter in the end, the feeling of being cast off and abandoned still haunts me, like I'll never be good enough for anyone. It's taken me decades to even begin to start healing, to even acknowledge that I needed to heal even. For me it's hard to see where one thing ends and another starts, it all became a positive feedback loop of negativity, very thing feeding off everything else. I think Hest is trying to tell me that what I experienced was less of a hurt because others were hurt worse, but all that really matters is that we were hurt in the first place, by people who told us they loved us.

I may be a bit drunk, just got back from the pub... Cider is my kryptonite.

Thank you all for sharing, this thread has gone to a powerful place

[Edge]

I think Hest is trying to tell me that what I experienced was less of a hurt because others were hurt worse, but all that really matters is that we were hurt in the first place, by people who told us they loved us.

Of course it doesn't matter. It's not a competition and people are too different for their to be any measure of which is worse anyway. What matters is that people are hurting and what we can do about that.

Thank you all for sharing, this thread has gone to a powerful place.

*hugs* I'm glad.

[Satinjoy]

Yes quite the thread.  My dad alcoholic, me almost dead from it at twenty five, the family stalked by a predictor after my wife and daughters, I had to put two into a psyche ward's few weeks or three, or month.  And I was bullied to the max for being looking full andro.

We are survivors and we are strong.  We are trans.

[Dread_Faery]

Of course it doesn't matter. It's not a competition and people are too different for their to be any measure of which is worse anyway. What matters is that people are hurting and what we can do about that.

Totally, the scary thing is how carry that little voice that tries to normalise everything and/or make it all your fault inside your head. But that voice struggles to have power in the light, especially when you have people standing with you who understand and accept without judging.

We are survivors and we are strong.

I think that often we're stronger than we know

[Taka]

strong?
no, if i were strong, i'd be able to forgive, and to give up my entire being for those who need me more than i do.
i'd be able to help so many, and even live to help.

but i am weak, too weak to dispel the darkness within.
some days, the darkness is all that keeps me going. or at least that's what it feels like.

i will never have the strength of a saint.
the weakness of a demon is something i know very well though.

[Edge]

Eh. For me, those messages that it's strong to forgive people are part of the problem. It adds to the voice that claims I am weak, that I deserved it, that they shouldn't be held accountable for their behaviour and choices, that it was ok and I'm making a big deal out of nothing, that I should let myself be hurt, etc. It was never ok and I will never forgive. They don't get to have power over me ever again.
But then, that's also a personality thing. Part of what I've struggled with is the fact that people are constantly trying to tell me that who I am is wrong and I should be someone else when the truth is I'm not, I don't want to be, and I shouldn't be. I am exactly who I am supposed to be and who I want to be.