Thriving has now began
This month marks my 13th year since my first admission into a psych ward. I weaned off my medication completely after 15 years for the first time.
I spent my Christmas Eve sleeping on a spare mattress on the floor in the corner of a crowded emergency ward. Sleeping pills did not help my growing disappointment in a failed suicide attempt. A few months later, I was in an isolated psych ward cell struggling to make words out of my mouth, wondering whether I could even function as a human being again.
At the age of 30, around this time of the year, I got the first proper diagnosis of complex PTSD.
That same month, I liberated myself from life-long bondage, the so-called ‘family by birth.’ Through this escape, I finally started cutting the chains of intergenerational trauma that ran in my family for at least four generations. Have I ever known that the actual severance took several years coupled with legal complications?
Breaking free from a narcissist was only the beginning. The ordeal of reprocessing life-long trauma, discarding false and distorted values that held the house of cards my family built, and reinstating a self-identity was a complete re-build of myself.
Against my own will, I paid dues of my mere existence with an insufferable misery. I paid for my parents’ immaturity with my childhood, innocence, and naivety. I am still paying for the consequences of their actions, as those are deeply instilled within my brain.
There were times when asking ‘why’ was just not enough for the depths of despair I have been through. My life was never my own like my birth did not occur out of my own will.
I wonder whether I ever found myself out of this long dark tunnel if I accepted the past absurdities as my fate. I am finally thankful for myself for having persevered those years to seek out the truth while being blind-sighted by dysfunctional individuals all my life.
After putting an end to my 23 years of ordeal in Sydney, now I can confidently say my thriving has begun. There are even more uncertainties than I ever had, but I am looking forward to this new chapter in my life.
