Tonight I woke from a nightmare. Nothing new there. I have nightmares all the time. I probably have more nightmares than the average person. It wasn’t the nightmare that bothered me the most. It was the empty bed that I was laying in.

I’ve thought about love too much lately. Despite all that I know and all that I’ve learned, I still am completely confused by it. I still don’t understand why it seems so far out of my reach. Thinking about it leaves me terrified. I fear I’ll never feel it. I’m not talking about me being in love. Lord knows I’ve loved far too many and far too much. I’m talking about someone loving me…

It’s the whole “damaged goods” mindset that traumas like incest leave you with. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Even if you don’t want it. Now, the more I read and learn about it, the more fearful I become. All these answers to questions I never thought to ask haven’t brought me a single step closer to experiencing this image I have in my mind.

That’s what happens when someone who’s supposed to care for you uses you and abuses you. I remember how my abuser used to dote on me. How he used to drown me in attention and obsess over me. I remember how sick I would feel. Wanting to escape, but I couldn’t because I was a child. I was stuck there. Trapped in the chaos of his obsessive love.

I remember how I would cry and beg him to please stop. Telling him that I didn’t want to do this anymore. I couldn’t do it anymore. He would beg me. Claiming to love me. Saying that others might think us to be wrong, but they could never understand the love we felt. But I didn’t feel love for him. I just felt sick. I prayed for his death many times. I prayed for an easy escape. One where I didn’t have to fight him off of me. I prayed for a different life. One that I wasn’t desperate to escape from.

During that time, I lived operating under severe denial. The psychological torment was so severe that my seizures were worse than they had ever been.

I remember the first time I tried to kill myself. I was home alone and feelings of dread were overwhelming me. I had been holding this knife for hours. I wanted to kill myself. Yet, I didn’t want to die. I merely wanted him to watch me die. I wanted him to know that it was his “love” that killed me. I wanted him to hate himself as much as I hated him.

My death wish was a cry for help. I needed him to know how badly he was hurting me and how much I was suffering because of him.

He came home and found me sitting there with the knife. But he didn’t understand the message I was trying to convey. Or if he did get it, he didn’t care. I was insane with emotion. Out of control. Either he was going to stop, or I was going to die.

The memory of the fight is gone now. Like the memory of most of the abuse. Don’t get me wrong, I know it happened because I lived through it for years. There is no doubt in my mind that he used and abused me. I just decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to dwell on it. I wasn’t going to think about it. Every time it popped into my brain I would brush it aside. I call it “noping out”. That’s the only way I could continue to exist in that reality. It was the only way I could survive. By pretending to be “normal”. By faking fine.

The fight between us escalated. I couldn’t nope out of my feelings of desperation to be heard. I was not going to let him continue to hurt me. If I had to die, then I would die. I had hoped that by expressing my misery he would realize the damage he was doing to me. The more I pulled away the harder he fought to hold on.

It all ended as abruptly as it had started. I grabbed the knife again. With hope dead so was I. If this was going to be my life I decided I didn’t want to live it anymore. As I was about to slit my wrists he struggled to stop me. We fought for control of the knife. During the struggle, he grabbed the blade of the knife, and I slit his hand wide open. The blood came pouring out of him. I froze. He flicked his hand towards me. Throwing his blood in my face he yells at me “Look what you did!”

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I just stared at him in disbelief. Did he think I was going to feel sorry for him? Did he really believe that I cared about the way he felt when he had disregarded my feelings for so long?

He left in a hurry. Driving himself to the ER. As the door closed behind him I collapsed to the floor crying. I cried so hard I screamed. I was exhausted and hyperventilating. Up until that night I frequently questioned whether he loved me. I was so confused. On one hand, he would profess the depths of his love for me, praise me, or spoil me. He did any number of things to make me feel “special” in an attempt to prove his love. Yet, on the other hand, the way that I felt meant nothing to him. I could cry. I could beg. I could scream. I could damn near lose my mind and threaten to take my own life. He was not moved by it. The way I felt meant nothing to him.

Every assertion of his love for me was just a lie he used to manipulate me so that he could keep using me. I came to that realization that night and I don’t think the feeling has ever left me.

I won’t let it leave me. To this very day, I continue to fall in love with men that invalidate me. Men who are emotionally unavailable and don’t want my love. Men who don’t value me. And I still fight to be heard, to be respected, and to be loved.

I’ve come to learn that reenactment is just the subconscious’s attempt at resolving a toxic worldview. It stems from what I learned in that trauma, that the people who claim to love me and go to extreme lengths to prove it are only there to use me and hurt me. They only seek to ingratiate themselves at my expense.

In every single relationship I had, I have tried to convince men who were either unable or unwilling that I was worthy of love. I have jumped at any chance to prove my love for them. I’ve done things I didn’t want to do. I’ve sacrificed the things that I need. I’ve swallowed my feelings time and time again until the resentment I felt boiled over.

The end result is that I’m left to suffer, once again, with my thoughts of being too broken for anyone to love. My fear that I’m not good enough has been repeatedly reinforced.

These beliefs became facts. They are still impossible for me to shake. It’s reached a point where I’m annoyed when people compliment me. Despite the trauma I’ve suffered through, I’ve been able to survive, and many people would think that I’m thriving. You might look at me and see a beautiful, sexy, intelligent, confident, and successful woman. Hell, I look at me and I see it. I know I’m one badass bitch. I work hard. I love hard. I’m understanding, accepting, and forgiving.

Up until recently, I’ve been stuck deep in the depths of my denial. I used to be completely unaware of the pain I welcomed into my life. I didn’t realize that I was loving broken people because deep down I felt that I was broken, and if I could show them that they were worthy of love, despite their flaws, then maybe they would realize that I have a big heart and that I’m worthy of love too. I thought surely someone would see past my flaws and into my heart. Maybe they would appreciate how I have never stopped believing in love and the strength it takes to keep trying to show people love. I thought if I showed them that I still had hope for love, despite everything I have been through, I would eventually convince someone that they could be hopeful too. I thought that if I accepted them and loved them despite all of their flaws maybe they would appreciate that and love me too.

Instead, I’ve been labeled a hopeless romantic. I’ve been labeled as needy or desperate. I’ve been seen as a pushover. A doormat. I’ve had my inability to find someone to love me thrown in my face as evidence of how pathetic I am. I’ve had my kindness and giving nature labeled as stupidity. The forgiveness and acceptance I show people are seen as foolish ignorance. I’m perceived as not loving myself or knowing my worth. They can’t grasp the fact that the affection I give and the compassion I show are qualities of my character that I’ve struggled to keep alive.

Kindness, nurturing, caring, cherishing, spoiling, and helping, are parts of my soul that I’ve refused to let die. They are signs of my stubborn resilience and strength, not evidence of weakness, helplessness, or dependency. They don’t get that if these parts of me die, if my hope dies, if my heart becomes cold, and I abandon the dream that I’ll one day experience the feeling of someone truly adoring and cherishing me, well then I’ve let my abuser win. Then I’ve let him devalue what I hold dear. Then I have truly embraced the damage that was done to me. If I abandon what I value and give up on what I want to experience in life, then I have truly abandoned myself and accepted thoughts of being too broken for anyone to ever love.

The truth is, I don’t ever plan on abandoning my longing to experience the deepest levels of intimacy. I’m a good girl God Damn It! I have faith that someday, somebody will come along and feel grateful that I clung so tightly to those parts of me. I deserve to be loved for who I am. I deserve to be loved at the same level I want to give it. I’m fucking worth it!