Where did everything go wrong? Where did my mind seem to break? How did I let things get this far? Questions that haunted me every day. As I began my soul searching journey to mental wellness.
I am a domestic abuse survivor. I almost lost my life at 21. I will talk a little about that. First, I want to open up and give a small glimpse into my past and some of the events that I believe led up to developing Borderline personality disorder, depression and anxiety. Hopefully I can identify with others who have been through the same experiences. Sharing what I have learned and continue learning in my journey and walking through this together.
As a young girl, I grew up in a pretty conventional home with strict catholic Hispanic parents. My father had put himself through medical school and was working with an organ transplant program at a hospital in San Francisco. We grew up in a house near the beach. I can honestly say that for most of my childhood, I grew up a little spoiled. I had everything I asked for and spent a lot of time enjoying travel.
My father was very stern and wanted me to really understand the importance of education. He was very unbending when it came to learning. I was required to stay very active in and out of school. I was disciplined very harshly. I was hit more than most. My father felt at the time that hitting was the best form of punishment. Maybe too much to an extreme. I was beat for things that to someone else may have seemed minor. This went on in my life until about 15 years old. From then on, I began to associate love with physical pain.
From the age of 18, I fell into a cycle of abusive relationships. At the age of 21, after a high school sweetheart marriage gone wrong and one beautiful daughter, I met another young guy who was not into the greatest of careers. Street hustles, drug dealing. Being young and very dumb. I began dating him. To make a long story short, It was the beginning of the worst abuse of my life. I was strangled with PlayStation cords, had my nose and eye bones broken, I was lit on fire while sleeping, stabbed with dull knives and so much more abuse that I could go on and on about. I endured extreme mental and physical abuse.
The mental abuse is always the hardest. When you are humiliated by someone you care about, made to feel worthless, that you are nobody. It is a hard mindset to change. Especially when it happens time and time again. After many failed attempts at relationships and three failed marriages later, I am just now starting to deal with the emotional effects from past situations that I thought had been put away and forgotten. I began to realize that there is no timeline for your body to follow. Traumas can affect you at any stage of your life. Especially traumas never really dealt with.
I understand that every trauma in my life left behind a scar. Scars that would later on in life begin to slowly open up and let some of the old pain leak out. These events have forever changed my life. I now understand that although you tuck things away deep inside, they still have a way of rising up. I have had to deal with my traumas and understand that I am a survivor. With a purpose. I now have the chance to take these events and let them destroy me or I can take this opportunity to do everything different and better. To change my mindset and use it to propel me forward to be the better me. The one I did not know how to be when I was younger. I have been given a second chance to make a better life for myself and my family. I hope that this gives you hope to know its never too late to change.
There are resources if you find yourself in need of help in an abusive relationship. I included a link on how to know you are in a emotionally abusive relationship. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/signs-of-emotional-abuse-relationship_n_5a999fbee4b0a0ba4ad31a4d.
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