Some asked me,"Nyatichi, why must you address childhood trauma when you are 30 years old and have already created a good life for yourself? Let it go and be grateful. Don't be the victim! Be the victor!"
I love this question because I understand where this person is coming from. I have always been the kind of person that turns a blind eye to the cruel and hurtful things the people I love did to me. I wanted to maintain peace and I truly believed that their intentions were not to hurt me. That's also what I believed love to be. You overlook their flaws and imperfections and they overlook yours.
I was little miss 'forgive and forget',
little miss 'genuine and kind-hearted',
little miss 'see the best in people even when they show you who they are'.
In a lot of ways, I still am. But, successful or not, there comes a time when life uses all the trauma you have swept under the rug, to bring you to your knees. Because just as good experiences form our beliefs and expectations of the world, bad and traumatic experiences do the same. But most of us will not pay attention to how these traumatic experiences shape our psyche because we are busy living our lives. It's until the build up causes us to get heart broken, loose our jobs, have a failed marriage, loose friends, develop an addiction or get diagnosed with a mental illness, that you want to make sense of the habits and beliefs that led to it.
Anyway, my answer to this question is....Because I am choosing to prioritize my mental well-being. While I always saw the honor in forgiving and forgetting, in hopes of getting my unconditional love reciprocated, it didn't. It is a form of self-harm, when the said family and friends choose; for reasons only known to them, to remain unapologetically hurtful, disrespectful and ungrateful.
Instead I am choosing to be the person that stands up for myself. The person that feels deserving of the love, patience and kindness I offer others. Besides, there are other ways to show my love and gratitude that don't involve me subjecting myself to abuse, narcissism and other toxic behaviors. I am done playing hero! And if that makes me the villain......so be it.
In a recent Tiktok video, I wrote, "I accidentally spent all of my life masking and people pleasing to make myself easy to love, only to realize that there is no special prize for doing so. For putting other people's needs and comfort ahead of my own, I am not guaranteed love, loyalty or even respect". A painful realization, right?
In another recent blog post, I wrote about a time when my relationship with a narcissistic family memebr hit rock bottom and I had an epiphany. I realized that the narcissist had always known everything that could have made our relationship healthy. They had known the entire time what it took and choose to withhold it from me until a time when I would pull away from them. This was an unsettling realization because now I could see how their compassion for me was performative, a manipulative tactic to keep me within their control.
In that moment I just knew I didn’t want to engage with such people ever again. Even though they are family.
This new perspective somehow gave me the permission I thought I needed, and that I had been craving for years. (I am hoping that this post can do the same for you. Give you the permission you think you need. Even though in truth, you, like me, do not need any permission to remove yourself from the clutches of a toxic friendship, romantic relationship or family system.)
The difficult step after this realization, was figuring out a way out. How would I tell them this? There would be war. All my life the simplest complaint or request for better treatment had ended very badly. It had always ended in me being royally abused, invalidated and gaslighted. Or them playing victim and villainizing me, and then me apologizing and consoling them.
And sure enough, when I tried to bring up the conversation, they eviscerated everything about me, and diminished me rather than sort anything out. Weeks of silence passed, and then, out of the blue, the thought came to me, clearly and calmly: I should stop fighting to be understood and seen as a good. Instead,I embraced the idea that no matter what, I will be a villain in this person's story.
And so begun my villain era. I applied this same logic to all the friendships/relations I had been dying to exit.
Sometime I miss the naive girl I once was . The girl that loved to play hero in other people's stories. The girl that used to offer her unconditional love and blind loyalty so freely. She wore her heart proudly on my sleeve until it hurt so badly it retreated deep inside her chest, wounded and seeking protection. And that is how villains are made.
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