Traumatic Blessings

“It doesn’t matter how tough we are. Trauma always leaves a scar. It follows us home, it changes our lives. Trauma messes everybody up, but maybe that's the point. All the pain and the fear and the crap… Maybe going through all that is what keeps us moving forward. It’s what pushes us. Maybe we have to get a little messed up before we can step up.” -Grey's Anatomy


I'll be the first to tell you that having a traumatic experience in your life sucks. No matter what you do to try and forget it, you really can't. There is a scar that runs deeper than anything skin deep; one that cuts straight to your soul and makes you feel like complete and utter crap. That pain is something that hurts more than anything imaginable at times...the times when you feel like you can't do anything to change what has happened to you into anything positive. It's a drowning feeling, like being stuck out at sea without a life saver or anyone there to grab you from the water. But mostly, it's  a dull ache that resides in your chest, laying dormant for weeks, months, or even years, just waiting for the opportune moment to seize hold of you again and drag you back into the pits of your own personal hell. For me, it's the moments when I'm forced to look at my past that hurt the most and bring me down to the hell that I feel.

For much of my childhood on into my teenage years, I was abused by someone that was supposed to love and protect me from birth. Constant verbal, physical, emotional, and mental abuse that went on from the time I was old enough to understand what it meant until I was almost seventeen. At one point, it was a daily thing when my mother was at work or at school for my "father" to tear me down as a person, telling me that I was never good enough and that I was never going to amount to anything. When I would do something wrong, he would slap me on the face or shove me into a wall, saying that if he didn't have "so much control", I would have been thrown through the wall. Or if, God forbid, I refused to do something I was told, he would hit me some more, yell at me, and then "spank" me with a belt. (If you could even call that beating a spanking.) I would have bruises on my legs and back from the belt for days after. Sometimes I'd have bruises on my arms from where he grabbed me to push me into a wall. None of which any of my friends knew about because it was easy to hide them. It got to the point where I feared my "father" and his fits of rage and the terror he would inflict upon me. I never wanted to go home after school or band practice. And I never wanted to even be in the same room as him. Finally, it all ended when I was seventeen after my mother filed for divorce. But even she doesn't know some of the abuse that he inflicted on me, nor will I ever tell her because she felt guilty enough as it was.

But through all of this trauma, I've been pushed forward toward what I want to do with my life. I chose Psychology as my major in college for one reason: I want to help people. I want to help them through the hard times where they feel alone and like no one is listening because I've been there. I've been the scared sixteen-year-old, crying out for help to a wall of people who knew nothing about what I was going through. Just as I have been the confused twenty-something year old that has a traumatic past I don't like talking about lightly with new people. But through my education, I've learned that the best kinds of counselors are the ones you can relate to the best. If my trauma can offer someone that little bit of comfort, that edge of ease, then what I have gone through is worth it. Because I can reach out to those that otherwise might not open up to someone else...I can help them. And that is something that I consider a blessing.