I was going to leave a comment on Tamara’s post, Who Am I without the Abuse?, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to turn it into a post instead of taking over her comments with my thoughts.
This subject was weird for me. I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this before, but I’m not in the mood to try to find the post, so you’ll have to trust me. 🙂
Whenever someone talks to me about becoming the person I was before the abuse, I have no concept of what they are talking about. I don’t have any real memories of my life “before,” so how do I know if I’m the same person I was before? I tend to think I’m not. Being abused is part of who I am, and while I’ve certainly come a long way in healing over the many years, I don’t foresee ever reaching a point where it’s not part of me.
I had a somewhat related email discussion last week about adjusting to looking at our past, trying to overcome it, then looking at the present and planning for the future. It’s not an easy adjustment. There’s a certain comfort in our pasts; it’s what we know and what we’ve always known. We cling to the same self-defense mechanisms that helped us survive our childhoods, assuming they will keep us safe as adults. They don’t. They hurt us as adults more often than not, but it’s scary to set them aside and build another life without them. That is precisely what it takes to overcome abuse. It takes the ability and willingness to acknowledge what happened, how it affected you, and what you need to do to limit those effects and still move forward, building whatever life you want.
In short, who are you without the abuse? No one knows for sure because it’s up to you to become who you want to be. The abuse will always be part of us; it’s shaped who we are, and as much as we can heal and overcome that, we can never completely rid ourselves of its influence. On the other hand, once you are ready and able to set aside all that work and turn your focus from the past to the future, you are free to make the life you choose for yourself.
I can’t wait to see what we all become.