The Scale of Suffering

Processing Pt. 3

To continue the ever-lighthearted series of suffering and trauma, I give you the following:

I taught myself, from before I can remember, and with no influence I was ever aware of, to place my suffering on a scale. And the things I went through, dealt with, handled (badly), saw... were never allowed to even touch a space on the Scale of Trauma. They have never been considered for The Scale. I certainly used the scale. Oh, I used it to its fullest extent. But never to place on it my "hard things." Only ever to belittle myself.

I used and exhausted the scale for the sake of dismissing and abusing my mental and emotional pain. In doing so, I dismissed and abused my very existence. I convinced myself, without awareness or consideration of the consequences, that I was not hurt "enough," I was not hurt "the right way," to be considered “traumatized”. 

Turns out, this is actually a bad thing.

This means that at 24 years old, I have to go back to that 6-year-old girl I was – to that 8-year-old girl I was – to that entire childhood I had. I have to go back and live parts over again. All for the sake of realizing that I was hurt by the people I trusted, the ones I looked up to. I have to go back through the things that I've thought were so normal, or "just parenting mistakes," and teach myself how to connect those incidences to my reactions now. I have to re-parent myself. 

“Evil can be undone, but it cannot ‘develop’ into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, ‘with backward mutterings of dissevering power’ – or else not.”
~C.S. Lewis