How Abuse Got Into My Head
When all you know is fight or flight, red flags and butterflies all feel the same ~ Cindy Cherie
Content Warning: This article talks about different forms of abuse.
A colleague tipped me to listen to the books It Ends With Us and It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover (review to follow). That’s the order of the books, and I found it strange that the end is before the start. She said she couldn’t stop listening, that it’s a beautiful story, romantic even.
I told her I enjoy detectives, but also the occasional love story, and put both books on my Audible wish list.
Before I listened to those books, my mind already made up the outline of the story. I imagined a couple falling in love and, for whatever reason, they part (it ends with them). Then in the second book, they work out their differences and fall back in love again (it starts with us).
That was almost right, but what I wasn’t prepared for was abuse being the red thread through both books.
Several times while listening to It Ends With Us, I cried. Bawled.
I haven’t expected the book to be so triggering.
I haven’t expected it to trigger me so much that all those moments of abuse in my life came crashing down on me.
Just writing that brings tears to my eyes.
When I finished It Ends With Us, I sat crying so hard, I had swollen eyes for the rest of the day. While I sat there, tears streaming down my face, I knew I had to write about the abuse.
Writing about it is acknowledging it, and accepting it has happened and I have made it through, helps with the healing.
An abusive upbringing
I grew up in the era when corporal punishment at home and in school was acceptable. This only changed when I went to high school, and I think my father stopped because I was a developing girl.
Yes, my mother sometimes punished me too, but if I have to count the number of times, I’m sure I would still have fingers left.
It’s not the corporal punishment that I now recognize as abuse.
No, it’s the preaching.
My father did a lot more damage with those.
When my mom punished me, it was that, and it was over. I knew what I had done, accepted the punishment, and moved on.
When my father smacked my bottom to the point where I cried, he left me crying for a while, then came to sit next to me on the bed and started preaching. He told me how he really didn’t want to punish me, but he had to. It was my fault. I had asked for it because of my behaviour, so he had to do it even though he didn't want to.
His preaching made me grow up always feeling guilty when something went wrong, even when I had no influence at all. If my sports team lost, I felt guilty, and I was only a spectator. When two classmates got into a fight, I felt guilty. If someone looked to be down, I wondered what I had done to make them feel like that.
I even took the blame for things, which weren’t my fault at all.
It was only when I started coaching sessions I understood how abusive my father’s preaches were, and how much damage they’d done.
The friend of my parents
My father partially grew up in an orphanage, though both his parents were still alive. When he was eighteen, and doing his apprenticeship, he boarded with a family who had a son several years younger than him.
I was nine when that young man — in my memory he was about twenty-one then — frequently visited my parents. He was fond of me and always put me to bed. Before he tucked me in, he read me a story while I sat on his lap. The book always rested over his hand, moving between my legs. Sometimes he let me stand out of view and told me to drop my pants so he could look at me.
And of course, just like we always hear in these kinds of stories, he told me never to tell my parents, as they would be mad at me and I would be punished. I believed him, especially since I already had that feeling that anything bad happening was because of me.
Raped at university
This happened in 1985, and it took me until somewhere in 2022 to share it out loud with anyone, and actually call it rape. I wrote this story here.
Nine months of abuse
Looking back on this period of my life, I can’t believe I was so stupid to fall for this married man, and allow him to ruin me to the point of a nervous breakdown.
I was just out of a relationship which I had thought would last a lifetime, and so damn sad and lonely, the perfect prey for this predator. He groomed me, weakened me, until I was like putty in his hand. And then, two months into the relationship, the abuse started.
Physical abuse.
He head-butted me. Burned me with cigarettes. Checked the mileage on my car. Estranged me from my family. Controlled my finances. My movements, my actions. Everything.
One night, I thought he would kill me, and that was the night something snapped in me. I had to get away, and as far away as possible.
I immigrated to Europe, and three weeks after I arrived, I broke down and was sick for weeks. This is the full story.
Abuse caused a vicious circle
Recently, someone asked me if my father had ever offered his apologies for the corporal punishment.
“No,” I answered, “it was normal for that time.”
I had recognized many years ago that my father’s preaching had damaged me, but never knew how to change that around. A life coach helped me with that. After that person asked me about my father’s apologies, I wish I could at least have made my father understand the damage he had done.
How always feeling guilt for everything had taught me never to say ‘no’.
How never saying ‘no’ made me feel guilty.
How ending up in that vicious circle made me an easy target for predators, and left me — not them — with the guilt.
When all you know is fight or flight, red flags and butterflies all feel the same.~ Cindy Cherie
Not only that, not valuing myself enough meant I got myself into weird situations. I never saw the red flags. I never allowed myself to step back from being mistreated, always put myself in second place and found excuses for the behaviour of the abuser. I never valued my own boundaries, but was always the first to step across them.
I can see that now.
There is no way to change my past, but it frees me from an unnecessary feeling of guilt to finally acknowledge the abuse, and the red line it has formed through the bigger part of my life.
Also read this powerful essay by
I have said before, u should write a screenplay of your life to be made into a film! Some really not nice things have gone on but u are a true trusting soul and karma will out!
I remember u told me to listen to that book when i needed something to do those long nights while my partner was waiting for a heart op - I will never forget it - and thank you for recommending it.
By naming what had happened, this was a huge and necessary act of self-healing! I'm speechless, Marie. It was so brave and powerful.