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My name is Jordan. I think I should say trigger warning for gaslighting/emotional abuse, including the threat of murder/suicide, and being physically trapped. I hope I'm not breaking rules or anything. I read the guidelines before posting but if I somehow missed something and did something incorrectly, I'm sorry. I just am trying to share.
I feel overwhelmingly alone in the world. It has felt for awhile like no one is safe. It feels like everyone is careless and unaware at best and cruel at worst. The world feels like an apocalyptically dangerous place.
As a human, I desire connection with people but I have reached a point of feeling like that's senseless. I begin to think about what it would be like to have friends and a community, and I immediately dismiss this thought as rubbish, because I can't imagine a community of people who do not hurt my feelings, if given the chance. And I feel so raw and fragile, as though I can't take much more.
I recently posted something in a trauma forum, in which I explained that I am a writer who was hoping to meet people who were willing to connect and share with me, so that I could discuss and represent trauma accurately and compassionately when I write about it. I was immediately accused of trying to "use our trauma for your own personal gain", banned forever, threatened to have my account removed, and muted. This sudden accusation of "badness", we will say, plus the isolation and revoking the privilege to defend myself or even speak has been the most triggering thing that's happened to me in awhile, as my former spouse used to accuse me of being a terrible person, berate me for hours or days, with occasional "breaks" of locking me in the closet or a bedroom, and not allowed to speak, certainly not on my own behalf, sometimes under the threat of murder/suicide. I thought it was also ironic, that a "safe space for trauma survivors", had done this to me. Though no different from your husband doing it to you, the place that is supposed to be safe, where you go for love but instead find passionate and personal rancor. It's been a few years since something has gotten deeply enough into me that I've so questioned my ability to function in society or even perceive reality correctly. It's also left me with a dark hollow feeling beneath me, as if there is no where to go, nothing I can say to garner any care or empathy or reason or stability from another person. It doesn't matter how kind I am, or how careful, or how articulate. Just as in my former marriage. One of the many ways I attempted to cope was experimenting with perfection. Can I be so perfectly patient, sweet, and forgiving that it will stop? If I could just be pleasing enough, or at least unnoticed. Obviously, that was never going to work. I can only ever conclude that there is nowhere safe, and it's as my trauma tells me: I am alone and that is, in fact, the only safe way to exist. The dread and disappointment of that philosophy is the lesser pain to deal with, and familiar at least.
I am overwhelmed by how casually the vast majority of people seem to be able to hurt one another. The Internet, of course, makes it significantly worse. The vitriol is relentless in this loud ocean of anonymous people and the best I can hope for is that my voice is lost in the noise, unnoticed, so that at least no stranger comes into my midst to harm me for sport, or maybe revenge on their own abuser. The seamless transition most people seem to make from victim to abuser is frightening. I am forever paranoid of my own transition. Have I hurt someone? Has my cynicism and fearfulness cause me to expect the worst in people such that I instantly see them as the enemy to be speared and silenced? Becoming someone who hurts others because I am hurt is my worst nightmare. That, and to be so unable to perceive reality that I have no concept of who I am or the affect I have on others anymore.
Because I'm having a hard moment right now, I don't know what I should be trying to do or think. I do think this will be my last attempt for awhile to reach out. I hope reading this hasn't caused anyone pain.
