There's a whole side to human existence that I have no clue of, either out of utter inadequacy that I don't understand or out of fear stemming from profound abuse in childhood.
I could write books with all that I still am unaware of, the consequences of a narcissistic child-mother, her son-lover and the transparent father. The deep loneliness and abandonment I felt then, have shaped all of my existence, my mother's despair for me to become "something" has frozen all I love.
Yes, I have two passions, one, quiet and pouring all over these pages you can see. The second contrived in fear of judgement, rejection and ultimately, hate. My voice. I feel the fire burning within, but I'm still choking in dismissal.
How can I tell you, my love, all I have been through without pitying myself? How can I explain I like who I am, but I know I'm not free, from myself as well? How could I voice my heart's wounds without a fully open mouth?
And you sit there, oblivious to so much, even if you do try to reach out, while my own void swallows me whole leaving not even a single bone behind.
How can I sing when I don't even scream when I am terrified? I've crossed paths with death a few times during my delivery days, in none of them, I said a word. Even as a kid, 10 years old, I went on a rollercoaster, and not even a peep came out of me. How can I sing when my voice is barely a whisper of itself?
How deeply can trauma go? How many more years of "trying my best" until it gets easier?
I keep retraumatizing myself with each relationship I was in, and even now I do, every single time I don't speak my truth, each time I accept and nod in complacency even before checking in with myself. How many times was I dating my mother, my father, my brother... How many times have I embodied the pains they inflicted on me?
Why do you think I really left? I talk about freedom, which is indeed part of it all. But truly, it was an escape from the pain that comes back each time we interact, his jokes based on deep despise; his love lacking a heart; her absorption of all character I had, her dismissal of all my emotions, her need to be cared for by her child.
I grew up too fast, convenience, one day I was to be fed, the next I had to sleep with her, treating the wounds she had made on herself.
I don't want to touch you, any of you, ever again.
How can I, a single human being, take care of the mess you all made?
Yes, I will never abandon myself because I am the most beautiful treasure I've ever sensed! Yet I am also the heaviest to carry, at times I feel like a never-healing wound and the loneliness I bear proves exactly just how inadequate I believe myself to be.
A passion? It's not free, from freezing fears. It's not free, money-wise. It's not free, for this wounded child to embrace. A passion, this passion, is a literal tower o the major arcana. So how do I destroy it all and begin the metamorphosis? How do I get over my deepest fear, my deepest wound?
How do I get myself heard when for 23 years, I was nothing but an accessory to everyone else? And for the last 6, I`ve just begun to kiss my own forehead to sleep, yet re-lived in each relationship before now, that same reality?
Insecurities, for how can I believe anyone could truly love me as you say you do when, ever since I was born, I was used to fill up my mother's void? If since I could walk, my brother abruptly ignored me? If since I could speak I was shut down, if since I could long for I was rejected? If since I could write I was only told my mistakes, never content, just grammar and such... If since I could reflect upon things, I was a therapist, dismissed in all I suggested but guilt-tripped into listening to her.
My teacher hated me, I still don't know why. I was 9.
And well, there is always the pain of the ghost: a father that, even though there is not much to say that's remotely as painful as the other two, he was just a ghost, no voice, no wishes, "let's not fight", barking never biting. Why was I so angry at him? Is there something my own brain has covered up to forget or is it just the reflection of his own frustration due to his lack of courage and discipline, his lack of self-trust, his incapacity to manage his anger without running behind me with his hand up as if he was going to hit me, screaming... yet once I would hide in bed and cover my entirety with the blanket, he would sit and say "why did you do that?".
I was terrified. I am still terrified.
I envy all of you who aren't, those whose fears are less abstract, whose emotions are cleaner, whose brains make sense. Not indecipherable hieroglyphics like mine.
My passion, honestly, is to sing and to write, yet in none, dare I go further than this half-assed attempt to free my soul, surprise: it does not work. In both, I am choking on an invisible smoke, disappearing behind it, anonymity... safety - PAIN.
Still, after this bleeding session, the question remains:
Why does no one want to be my friend?
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Why do they forget about me? Why don't they write, call, reach out? What am I doing wrong? How do I make it right? How, curse, inadequacy How, How Auslander, How... What's wrong with me?
I always said I was an alien, I thought it was a silly joke. Yet I knew even back then, 5 years old, crying in the car back from grandpa's town, looking into the darkness of the mountains by the highway, letting my imagination fill my little brain with fears of el Chupacabras and other folk stories... For it was easier to believe I was an alien than trying to understand why I didn't have any friends.
Just as it was easier to believe I had died than coming to terms with the fact that my mother wasn't coming home. Another terrifying night in fear of being the ghost who would forever haunt my own home, crying for my parents when they would see my dead body, exploded on the pavement outside the front door, or the one with all the broken bones at the feet of the staircase. In the backyard sliced through with the spikes over that dividing wall...
I was alive, she had just lied.
I can tell you this story laughing at my own "silliness", yet as I write it, I can't stop crying, for the pain of it runs through my veins like the blood they will draw tomorrow, to find my grandmother's cancer in my thyroid. They will open me and I will die before they can close me up. It's a mess... I wonder if she loved singing too.
After all my attempts, after all my healing, all the support, the help... after all I've committed and tried and re-tried and changed and transformed and tried and tried and tried again and again... Why am I still asking them to play with me while they reject me or comply with the burdensome feeling of "having to"?
Mother, why did you have me when I was just a burden? Another mouth to feed? Did you ever love me for me? Or is it only for you... it has always, everything, been for you. You were the first to reject me, my brother came second, my father the third, and my sister left to find herself, leaving me alone with you, just as I left the continent to get away from your possessive claws of desperate, narcissistic love.
I had one friend someone took her away. I was good at singing, yet never chosen to do anything but blend in. A cool girl wanted to be my friend, she took me to the bathroom and forced me to lick her. I did - she never talked to me again. My grandfather died of cancer. I was good at writing, Carolina also did math. I got a boyfriend, he only wanted sexuality. I failed the year, my mother cried and I... became her personal therapist as she became a bag of meat and fat on her bed after losing her dignity by staying with the worst man. I found a good school, she wouldn't put me in it. I made a friend, she was in love with me so when I got a boyfriend, she hated me and spent years sabotaging my other friendships. I made a friend, she took them away from me by becoming their friend, proving she was better than me... proving my inadequacy. I made a friend, for years, he was in love with me -he was never my friend (this, times 10) I had a boyfriend, his mother hated me. His friends pretended to be my friends. Once it was over, his mother loved me and his friends never talked to me again. I made a group of friends and by this point, I sabotaged it myself with my own fears and cowardice. I got a girlfriend, I fucked it up as well. I fucked it up even worse later on. I dropped out of university, my mother cried, I blocked the memories in my head -what happened then? I moved continents only to repeat the cycles with men who used and abused me calling it love and feminism... I got sexually abused, went through a miscarriage alone on the floor, he was out drinking with his coworkers -he had a passion for videos, an internship with the Colombian lads. Went on dates, got verbally assaulted, but "they were jokes" and I was a bitch if I didn't want to have sex or see them again. Got chased by strange men on the streets 3 times in 2 years. Met the next abusive guy, pretending to be queer, everything was excused by his depression and I was the monster who would go over his boundaries... Little did I know, it was not that way at all. All my requests, my needs, my wishes, were completely normal in a relationship. Opened the relationship. Got ghosted, insulted, called bitch and ugly, received unwanted dick picks, exchanged my intimacy with people who later said they were not the guys on the pictures they sent. Power games. Met a snobby tall science man, got shamed for my spirituality, my music taste, my choices. Soon met the next abuser, I can't even begin to summarize this, I hit him in frustration, he wouldn't let me leave his house, I cried screaming while he kept telling me all that was wrong with me, then said he loved me so much, then hated me again... I tried to kill myself, it was a dumb attempt. We broke up, got back together and broke up over and over. He would pay attention to me like no one's ever done, but only from the obsession of trying to get away from the frustrations of his own life. Lack of commitment to himself. Amidst the clearest cycle of abuse I've ever lived, with help from my therapist, I broke it off and left to go home. Got back. Had made a friend, he was a rich cunt, another narcissist know-it-all, who was "too smart" for this world and didn't want to scapegoat my old abuser, cause him threatening me and kicking me out of the house was somehow on me, asking for help was scapegoating. Moved in with the last abuser for a couple of weeks, it only got worse, the screams, the tensions, the smoke, the alcohol, the drugs, the lack of sleep, the rage, the not letting me leave, the hits, the following me down the street, the dark cold nights outside, the physical push to not go into his house, yet living there...
I found a new place to live, it's a mess, but the best I've ever had. There are no fights here, there are adults who talk, except for one. I met someone, someone I can talk to, someone who listens when it's important and who's human. Someone who hugs me when I cry, who cares without possession. Someone who is imperfect but has the kindest eyes.
I haven't had a fight in months now. I can feel my feelings, I am connected to myself. So what I am doing now, is healing those deepest wounds, instead of getting distracted in new cycles of abuse.
My biggest passion is singing. The second is writing. I love knitting, sewing, designing furniture and spaces for humans to feel comfortable, welcome. I love giving space for others to be fully themselves, to feel safe. I love the depths of brains and the universe, something between psychology and spirituality. I love the sensitivity of the human body. I love creating a future that embraces community instead of competition. I love being held in your arms.
As for friends... That's a question I can't answer now.
- I didn't write this for pity, many have had it much worse than me, most even. I am very aware of that. I am writing this to see the big picture of my life, understand and be compassionate with myself. with my pain, with my hypersensitivity that was made fun of or dismissed since the beginning of my life. I wrote this to fully put out all that burdens me, heavy in my heart. I wrote this to connect with myself, to feel my feelings, to mourn my pains, to remember, to see clearer, to not commit the same mistakes again. To find answers and to dare.
