trauma
At its core, trauma can be thought of as the psychological wounds that persist, even when the physical ones are long gone.
The Sad Story Behind My Tattoos
The sad story behind my tattoos all begins with the first tattoo I ever got. A friend of mine was a tattoo artist with his own shop. He actually designed the tattoo for me as well. I got the tattoo in the middle of my upper back; it is of two female cherubs holding a banner between them which had both of their names tattooed inside of the banner. I got this tattoo in memory of two babies I had lost. I got the tat done on my 28th birthday, it took almost 4 hours just for the outline alone and then another 4 1/2 hours to shade. When it was finished and I was able to see the end result I literally cried because not only was it beautiful but it was also my first tattoo and it actually held sentimental value for me. I wish I had pics but when my old phone was destroyed so too were all of my pics. I loved how my friend had actually given the cherubs the exact eye and hair color my babies had been born with. My second tattoo was the semi-colon butterfly. The story behind that tattoo goes back to 1994 when I was only 14 years old. I became friends with the boy next door after moving up to Maine from my home down in NYC. He was a good looking Asian boy with manners and a smile girls would literally swoon over. His names was Tim, and because this is a true story I will protect the privacy of my friends family by not giving any last names. Anyway as I was saying Tim was exactly a year older than me, not only did we go to school together but we were also next door neighbors so we hung out a lot. His mother’s family owned a Chinese restaurant right next door to the park we would play in. Our families became fast friends. Well anyway to get back to what I was saying. The story starts with Tim dating a mutual friend. I had warned him against dating her but poor kid wouldn’t listen so he wound up learning the pain of a broken heart the hard way. The chick ended up cheating on him and breaking up with him in front of the entire school. He became really distraught and started becoming anti-social. All of a sudden I get a call one Friday night asking me if I’d like to go to his place to watch the Lakers game on the tv down in their parents basement bar. I was so happy to hear him sounding so upbeat I agreed to be there. I woke on Saturday morning all excited to finally get to hangout with my best friend. Well about an hour into the game I see Tim get up and head to the stairs. I let him get a head start on me only so he wouldn’t see me get up therefore he wouldn’t know that I was following him. As I got to the top of the stairway I saw Tim go around the corner and into his grandparents room. I heard what I thought were bullets being loaded into a gun and then I heard the hammer as it was being pushed back. I literally ran into the door of the room while opening it. There Tim sat in his grandparents bed spinning the chamber of the gun he held in his hand. I asked him what he was doing and his response was to ask me why he wasn’t good enough. I began telling him how he had done nothing wrong and how she was just being a gold digger and how he was smart and funny and cute and how one day he would forget all about this and find someone who will truly love him. He kinda scoffed at me and went quiet for a second. I finally asked him why he had the gun and why he was playing with it. I then lectured him on how dangerous guns could be if not handled properly. He looked up and smiled at me then responded with where he had found it and how he had been taught from a young age how to carefully handle a gun. I told him to put it away and to come back downstairs cause his friends were down there waiting for him. After all he had invited everyone so that automatically made him the host. He then began to empty all but one of the chambers of the gun. He spun the chamber back in place and asked me if I’d ever heard of Russian roulette, which I had thanks to the types of movies I was into. I told him to quit screwing around and to empty the gun, put it away where he found it and come back downstairs with me. He then put the gun to the side of his head and pulled the trigger, it clicked but nothing happened due to that chamber being empty which meant one of the remaining four chambers had a bullet inside of it. At this point I start to panic. I start begging him to put the gun down. I told him he was scaring me. I began sobbing as the second click sounded indicating he had 3 more chambers left and one had a bullet waiting to be fired. I started screaming for someone to call his parents and inform them of the situation. I went over to the bed and tried talking the gun out of his hand and then I grabbed for it but had it quickly yanked back out of my reach. Third click....my heart is pounding trying to get my best friend to relinquish the gun to me. He pushes me from the bed and onto the floor and as I scramble to get up he stands up directly over me, looks directly at me and says “Tell Belinda I loved her.”and then he proceeds to pull the trigger, this time there’s a loud bang and lots of blood and I watch as Tim’s lifeless body crumbles to the floor. Tim had taken his own life right in front of me and there was not one God damn thing I could do to stop him. I was so torn up over his death that I refused to attend his funeral or the memorial that was held in his honor at school. I was so pissed off at myself for not knowing what to do to stop him and then I was pissed off at Tim for doing such a thing to me; his best friend. I was traumatized. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I stopped talking. I just didn’t understand why he’d choose to take his own life over a failed high school relationship. It blew my mind. Everyone at school blamed the girl for his death. To this day I still think about it and I still find myself asking why. I have since come to lose many other dear friends to suicide. It feels like it has become an epidemic. I still don’t know how to feel about any of it because I too suffer from depression and I too wanted to take my own life. I came close to doing just that twice. I just could never understand being so upset over a silly little high school fling that I’d have ever wanted to kill myself. Two months after I got this tattoo a very dear person who was close to me took her life as well and it broke my heart. And her reason in the note she left behind had to do with her relationship. Then a year later another of my friends ended his life over some chick breaking his heart. So yea this tattoo has a bittersweet reason behind it. It is in memory of not only my friends and family who took their own lives but also to all of the other lives lost to suicide around the world. This tattoo also reminds me of all of the shit I’ve managed to overcome in my life and it reminds me that my story isn’t over yet for there are many more chapters that need to be written before my book comes to its conclusion.
By Phoenix Cobain5 years ago in Psyche
The Promise I Couldn't Keep
I will start off with a back story. I was raised in an very abusive household and beyond that, raised in a horrible environment including my neighborhood and my schools (Gangs, shootings, drive-bys yes even at the schools.) Growing up I've seen 3 people die in front of me, one being a fellow classmate during recess in 4th grade. Needless to say I was raised in trauma. Fast forward to moving to a small town and meeting the only person in my life I've ever been close to. My best friend/sister Daytona Hudgins.
By Victorya Dianna Marie Smith5 years ago in Psyche
Affects of Abuse
She looked at herself in the mirror blood on her face and what would most likely be a black eye. She couldn't help but to wonder how she got there. She remembered the first time that she sow her mothers face the same way. It must have been happening for a long time before she sow it, she realized. She toke a deep breath and did the only thing that she knew to do, she cleaned up. She cleaned her face up, and got herself together. She went out into the living room and realized how much her life had become just like her childhood. The life that she swore that she never would have, the life that she promised herself she would never let happen. But somehow it had become the one thing that she never wanted, the one thing that she knew maybe. And just like when she was her a child she cleaned up so that she could go to sleep and wake up like it never happened. She went to sleep telling herself that she just needed to not make him so mad, she just needed to change and be better.
By Talara Nolan5 years ago in Psyche
Abuse and what it’s done to us.
Abuse affects the brain, abuse, and neglect and trauma changes the brain structure and chemical function. Potential effects include feeling fearful most or all of the time. Trauma disorders cause extreme fear of anxiety depression outbursts flashbacks and other symptoms that can cause significant impairment. I've seen how all this affects my child and I. My child's outbursts are often extreme. She has bad behavior and cannot regulate emotion and functions poorly socially. This is hard for us at family gatherings and when it comes to school and friends.
By Kayla Hofer5 years ago in Psyche
The Seer
My childhood was rather haunted, repressed memories of my uncle sexually assaulting me is only scratching the tip of the iceberg. All around me at a young age i saw the death of strangers, some real, some just imprints of past deaths left behind. Drug abuse was at the epicenter of my mother’s side of the family, namely my grandmother. My mother and father always resented each other with me in the center as a middle-man. Within myself i found some semblance of peace, my imagination filling in the gaps for things i wanted to forget. Invincible heroes and justice that persevered and struck down evil, fantastical environments that overshadowed the deep dark i lived through daily. I lived like that for so long until life lost its magic when i started developing emotions, needs and wants that couldnt be hidden behind the curtains of my sunconsious projections. My reality became shattered in my early teens when i started experiencing just that; reality. Everything broke down in front of me and i built an ego to protect myself and build and image of normalcy, though that barely worked. I made several attempts at my own life before i created a makeshift solution; the seer. The seer by no stretch of the imagination was what you could perceive to be “real” but to me the seer was very real. As i denied myself the capacity to process all of my negative emotions i just shoveled it all into him as a way to kind of invent this seperate entity for them. I didnt feel bad things, i didnt feel sadness, or at least thats what i would tell myself. But as it progressed he only grew, the shadows of my subconscious guilt weighed me down to the point of lucidity, he took shape, he had a voice, and most of all he had a philosophy.
By Dominic Dorato5 years ago in Psyche
Relationships After Abuse
Abuse doesn't start right away and it doesn't start 10/10 it starts as 1/10 and slowly works its way after the fish is hooked. It starts with little comments like " oh your going out in that?" or " that was dumb" seemingly harmless comments and comments that ill be forgotten within a couple of days. The comments will slowly turn into " you look ugly today" then to " Your such an stupid idiot". Which one time comments like this from someone you went to high school with is one thing but totally different from the person who says they love you 5 minutes later.
By Chronic Confessions5 years ago in Psyche
Abuse has its own demons!
Being in a childhood full of distress and dismay, hurts and is painful growing up. Trying to adult with the toxic life that was given to you is hard in itself. There is either failure or success. Unfortunately it is rarely in between. Some days I feel like I am just surviving this life. Some days I feel like I am a failure to my own children. My children will always be number one in my life, because of the trust I seem to not have in other people. It gets hard to question their existence and actually feel like they are safe with any human being. My life was just like everyone's life. If you really just peaked in for once, you would think that my life was wonderful. My life was less than normal and defiantly something people can relate to. My story starts truly when I was four years old when my parents decided to divorce and my mom running off with other men, all the time. There would be weeks upon weeks until we seen her. It was the worst. As a child, emotions ran through me wondering why I was never good enough for her. Why she was always leaving. My dad was around and had to work full time to keep food in our mouths, so I understood that part. He always provided no matter and made sure we had what we needed. I did lack on some emotions with him for being my dad. I really felt disconnected from him where I needed a parent in my life to stay. When my parents divorced, it was the worst. I remember my mom saying stuff to me about my dad. She would share bad stories of my dad. I remember it making me so mad and actually start hating him at some point. When I was five, my dad met my stepmom. They ended up marrying when I was six years old. I really hated my step mom. I remember being so mean to her and always wanted my dad and mom back together. I was deceived as a brat, but honestly, I wanted my dad and mom back together and it had nothing to do with her. When people marry in with other children, it is good to remember that it is not always about you, but emotions behind it, because they are still trying to process what really is going on. Many children can't grasp that until it can be clear to them, or even explained to them better. My step mom has three children. Two girls and a boy. It was five kids all together. I was the oldest. The ages was from six, five, four, three, and two (the two youngest were like the same age for a couple months). All I could think about was Cinderella. How they took my dad from me. It was not the same anymore. My dad was different from my step mom, my feelings were that he was more with us until he was married. I really never felt any love off of him. I remember following him around when I was younger because I wanted his attention. I remember the feelings I had when I figured out that I was a girl so it was not really good to teach me guy things. Little did he actually know, I am so much like him. I learn quickly and only need to be shown how to do it once. I felt angry for that. I remember living with my mom and my dad only taking my brother and leaving me. It made me furious. I did take it out on my mom. It broke my heart. I don’t even think he knows that from this day. I really don’t even know his family either. That really bothered me my whole life. I always doubted if I was actually his daughter or not. I always questioned why I never looked like him or my brother. Children's mind wonder when they are younger and if we are not careful for what is said, then it can be blown out of proportion. One thing I learned about being a parent to my children, is catching myself do the same thing my parents did. I don’t know if it is from habit or because it was done to me in the long run. How I process things to understand it.
By Teresa Hurley5 years ago in Psyche
