how to stop abandoning yourself when life hurts
on self-erasure, the habit of disappearing, and the shame that keeps it all going
I used to think I was born with a taste for worst case endings. I had one main explanation for life. Horrible things happen always. They happen easily, casually, without needing a reason. And the good bits never stay.
But I didn’t sit down and pick that belief. I more concluded to it, a grand crescendo of a childhood that cycled around tension, relief, and tension again. After enough repeats it stops feeling like a belief and starts feeling like basic common sense, and in some way, it was.
When you are a child, you do not get many choices. You do not get to pack a bag and go and pick a kinder adult. Instead you do the things that feel remotely like control, with the little power you have. You become good at predicting and start building little if-then equations in your head.
If X happens, Y follows.
The thing about childhood trauma is that it is not really a single event with a start and a finish. And it is not always the size of the harm that is the decisive factor. Often it is the volatility.
The child learns that the present moment is only an intermission. So “nothing is happening” becomes a state you endure rather than a state you rest inside. The mind uses this time to work, to run its calculations and collect tiny data points. Working out what mood the key in the lock means tonight, reading the tone instead of the words spoken, listening for the sound that usually comes before the sound that hurts.
The self becomes increasingly more and more convinced that “nothing is happening” is not the same as “nothing bad is going to happen”. Instead it carries the colder tone: not yet.
And it feels like common sense at the time, because it works. If you expect the worst, you feel less foolish when it happens. You don’t have to do the humiliating thing of being surprised by what you should have seen coming. And you can tell yourself you were right. At least you were prepared.
Predictable pain terrifies, but unpredictable pain trains.
