Belonging – the feeling of being comfortable and happy in a particular situation or with a particular group of people, and being treated as a full member of the group. Source: Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary.
A child suffering abuse in their family home will always face difficulties with belonging. The very core of their being and the people who should provide safety and love are the ones hurting them. Child abuse is one of the worst tortures a human being can be exposed to. The child’s basic needs of love and safety are replaced by trauma and hurt. It also comes with threats and punishments which follow that child throughout the rest of their life. The child grows up in an environment of abuse, trauma, and confusion and desperately seeks safety and love.
I was this child. I was sexually abused and neglected. I was resented for being alive. My presence was not welcomed. I was in the way of the parties and the loud music. The more the grown-ups pushed me away, the more I wanted love from them. I never got it and my teddy can testify to all the tears I shed from being repeatedly discarded by my parents and ignored by other adults who should have cared for me. Then the next second I was a sex toy to be loaned out to dirty old pedophiles who showered me with uncomfortableness and torture. I was confused and in constant pain. In my mind, I turned away from them all. I started looking around me for snippets of light in my dark world. I craved it like the air in my next breath. I needed to know that there was something good in this life. Something worth holding on to when the darkness of abuse came and robbed me of my existence. During those early years, I clung to those tiny snippets of life from nature. A blue sky with fluffy white clouds sent my imagination into overdrive at the possibility of me just flying off into happy oblivion. A tiny yellow crocus pushing up and out of a frosty winter morning blanket of snow, its stubbornness to grow in a hostile environment got me through some very dark moments. A tree with a strong trunk, sprouting big fat plump branches and laden with juicy red apples. I imagined myself climbing that tree all the way to the top and reaching for those juicy apples. The sun shone on me, its warmth caressing my skin and warming me up from within.
As I grew older, I needed more than the sun, the trees, and the sky. I needed people but I didn’t trust anyone. I couldn’t let anyone in because I had been threatened into silence. I spent most of my childhood fearing for my life. I only trusted kids my own age. I found that I could speak to them and they would speak to me in a way I could understand. It was a relief to have someone who could talk back after years of being a selective mute. My teddy never talked back. I started observing the adults around me and I noticed my friends acting lovingly toward their parents at pick-up time after school. I tried copying their behavior of running into my mother’s stiff arms. I felt as welcomed as a person could be running into a brick wall covered in a thin jacket. It didn’t feel good so why did my friends carry on doing it? The world was so confusing!
I kept on observing the world around me and especially how kids were with their families and other adults. In the food market, I spotted mothers holding their children’s hands and smiling down at them. I had a go at this too but it felt odd holding a cold leather gloved hand that was mothers. There was no smile and it didn’t last long. She said it was uncomfortable holding my hand. What was so special about hand-holding anyway? It irked me that some kids had some kind of “bond” with their parents that made them smile and giggle. It was like a special secret code between them. I couldn’t understand what it was but I wanted that smile too. I wanted to be giggly and happy with mother but it just wasn’t like that between us. She was cold and matter-of-fact. My so-called father was terrifying me all the time. His presence put the little hairs on my body at full alert. His voice was all it took to make me tremble at what was coming next.
I remember standing behind a mother and her daughter in a queue to a water slide in our water park nearby. They were so happy together, laughing and giggling and leaning into each other as they talked. I wanted some of it too and so I leaned in towards the mother listening in and almost touching her. I’m sure it was rude because she gave me a funny look and asked me who was with me. I was alone so I just shrugged my shoulders. I saw mothers and fathers dote on their children in the pool area, playing with them in the water. Parents toweling their kids dry after swimming and cuddling their kids making them giggle. It looked nice to be looked after that way. I never had that. I had to get myself toweled dry and dressed under lots of threats to “hurry up”. I started to believe it was me and that it was my fault that my so-called parents were so cold.
Over the years, I gathered lots of snippets of what belonging meant for others but never for me. It was as alien as it could be. I was the odd one out. I was different. I was unlovable and nobody wanted to be with me. I always felt on the outside looking in. At school when we were learning about the holidays and had to share our experiences with the class, I pretended to be the same as everyone else. I took bits and pieces from others and made it my own “tailor-made holiday” of happy families. The version I wished to be true because I could never tell what really happened to me during the holidays. My whole life was consumed by abuse and threats and I had to reinvent it to be suitable for others. I became a liar to protect my abusers. Yet, I still had feelings like everybody else. When I allowed myself to let my guard down, I felt it, deep in my soul. Who did I belong to? Who wanted me for… well me?
My vivid imagination and storytelling saved me. In my young mind, I conjured up worlds full of laughter and happiness. I drew and wrote to my heart’s content a huge collection of everything I saw and heard. I was good at seeing details and boy did I see and hear things! I saw people and my favorite pastime became watching others. The more I saw others’ interactions the more confused I got until finally a new dawn sunk in that it was my so-called parents and the adults around me who were the “baddies”.
I noticed so many mothers and fathers hug their kids, including my friends that it must be normal to be this way. I saw so many families laugh and joke with each other when I was over at friends’ houses that it must be how families are. I saw families relax and have fun together over the holidays. So, why wasn’t mine like that? Why was I born into coldness and pain? I refused to be like them. I wanted happiness in my life. I turned to the TV and movies to get more experience with people and situations. Then my second year of school gave me a lucky lifeline in after-school clubs and holiday clubs. My teacher was selling it to my friend’s parents and my mother happened to walk by to pick me up. She got the teacher’s sale speech for a new nature club starting near our house and a gymnastics class. My friends’ parents were excited and signed up on the spot and my mother was cornered and signed me up too. I knew she didn’t want me to go but I made it impossible for her not to send me. I succeeded and it was like a waterfall had started to run out of control. I signed myself up for every class and new adventure I could manage that was free, even though I didn’t like gymnastics, I still did it because I belonged somewhere just for a little while. It felt good. I also felt so much lighter when I was not at home. The holidays were no longer bleak and boring but full of activities away from home. It was also a valid excuse not to go to my so-called father’s place during the holidays. Sports and hobbies became my refuge and my way of belonging to something growing up. It was my “family”.
Did you ever feel like an outsider, not belonging anywhere, growing up? What was your refuge?
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Elizabeth Woods grew up in a world of brutal sex offenders, murderers, and inconceivably neglectful adults. She suffered sexual abuse throughout her childhood and witnessed unspeakable events. Elizabeth survived in an environment where most people would not. She is now able to help other survivors heal from trauma through her writing and blogs. Elizabeth is passionate about spreading awareness of what it is like to survive after trauma. There is always hope.
Elizabeth is the author of several books and has written her memoir, telling her childhood story: The Sex-Offender’s Daughter: A True Story of Survival Against All Odds, available on Amazon Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Offenders-Daughter-Story-Survival-Against-ebook/dp/B0BBSV97VF/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=0pSdX&content-id=amzn1.sym.cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_p=cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_r=134-9913214-5397651&pd_rd_wg=MPpMc&pd_rd_r=d375a758-2d9b-4c6e-9aee-52c1f5a4e6f7&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk
Elizabeth is also the author of “Living with Complex PTSD” and the Cedar’s Port Fiction series: “Saving Joshua”, “Protecting Sarah”, “Guarding Noah” and “Bringing Back Faith” available here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQRNST2B?binding=kindle_edition&qid=1711883073&sr=8-2&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tkin
I’m so sorry for all you went through. I could relate somewhat. My mother passed away when I was 13. She was our primary caregiver and loved us dearly. It was after her passing that I lost my sense of belonging because of the abuse, both physical and emotional that came from my dad, and eventually my older sister. I always felt bad and thought I deserved this, but didn’t recognize it as the abuse it was. My sister was a so full of hate for my dad, but sucked up and tried to catch me doing something wrong for the sake of her being his hero.
I left home as soon as I turned 18 in search of a sense of belonging. It was hard for me to make decisions that seemed to come so easily to others who had good relationships with their parents. I needed a sense of belonging before I could build my life. I worked at McD’s paid rent, drove to high school, and continued this throughout college. It took me decades to realize this was narcissistic abuse. I was always confused because I thought they loved me and I deserved what I got.
This family abuse has ended and I have a great husband and wonderful daughters who understand what happened, as I have been transparent with them.
Thank you for sharing your story.
Elizabeth, this is one of the most affecting letters I’ve read. I felt as if I was reading my childhood story as well (although with neglect, not abuse). Thank you for writing it, and I wish us both an emotionally healthy future.