I've been thinking a lot lately about emotional abuse. It's one of those things that feels hard to define despite how incredibly destructive it is. I spent more than a decade with a partner who took his anger out on me, not with his fists but with his words. It's strange because the few times it was physical - that's tangible, that's wrong, that's clear. But when I try to describe the emotional abuse, I feel embarrassed and ashamed. How could words have so completely destroyed me? Bruises and fractures - people can visibly see how your partner broke you. But I don't have physical scars; I have emotional scars. They are invisible, yet deep, pervasive, and so intertwined with my identity that I don't where they end and I begin anymore. I feel hardly recognizable.
What do you do when your whole soul is scarred?
We point to depression and anxiety to describe the impact, but that's not even the half of it. It's the years of isolation that led to distanced and broken relationships. It's the numbness to both joy and sadness, the loss of feeling that was so critical to surviving the cruelty. It's the fact that you literally can't cry anymore because your body has been hardwired not to because it knows the penalty that comes with your tears. It's the pervasive trauma that prevents you from having healthy relationships because you are always bracing yourself for disappointment and pain. It's the loss of boundaries and feeling constantly overwhelmed because you don't actually know what 'healthy' boundaries look like. It's the belief that somehow it was your fault... and the shame of knowing that's not true, but feeling it anyways. It's the conviction that you're not lovable because if he didn't, who could? It's that you don't even know how to love yourself anymore... and the growing recognition that maybe you never did.
I'm coming up on two years since I separated from my ex. And while in some ways I've made tremendous progress in my healing journey... it feels like the further I journey, the more clarity I have of how entirely broken I am. How much those words changed me. How fearful and mistrusting I have become. How much pain is buried in the depths of my soul.
In 2016, I dislocated my knee at my son's birthday party. Insurance was slow to approve my MRI so I didn't start physical therapy until several weeks after my injury. Unfortunately, by then scar tissue had formed and my knee never properly healed. The incident has long passed, but the scar tissue affects me daily creating a degenerative situation that will likely eventually lead to serious knee, hip, and back issues.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately... how similar my emotional scars affect my daily life. And how, left alone, will lead to more serious issues, particularly in my relationships. It's so difficult to have healthy relationships when you are constantly triggered, bracing for new pain to be inflicted. Waiting for the new wounds... and new scars.
I've been in and out of therapy for my knee. It helps, but as soon as it ends, the problems start again. The solution? Daily stretching. Every single day I have to work on my knee to ensure those scars don't destroy the rest of my body.
Maybe emotional scars are the same. It takes daily effort to challenge the words in my head that tell me I'm broken and incapable of being loved. Daily effort to reach beneath the scars to find the pieces of me that I buried so deep. The pieces I buried to protect them. Daily effort to build my capacity to trust again. Daily effort to manage my triggers and write new stories, new beliefs. Daily effort to learn to trust, love, and be loved again.
I wish I could say I stretched my knee every day. I don't. It's usually when my back starts to hurt that I remember to finally do it. But whether my knee or my soul, I recognize that daily effort is how I will achieve the full life I crave.
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