TheGioBlog

A report on trauma, silence, survival, and the attempt to restart

Giovanna Melim

I think I remember being 12 years old when I realized I hated my mother, that I truly felt this hatred in the midst of my tears. I know these are strong words and may even sound cruel in a way. I grew up with parents who supposedly gave me everything, even more than what was necessary, things she always made a point of reminding me of. I remember never being able to properly count on Mom for anything. If I was doing very badly, she would make that become a problem of her own. Suddenly, she was doing very badly too. If I needed her to see me in some problem, it was too futile, while at the same time, if I were attacked, she would react like a lioness, and later use what was said in the attack to belittle me even more.

I always recall the humiliations that were just a mother trying to make her daughter wear something that didn’t fit her, because she wasn’t a very thin child. At 11 years old, I already hated my relationship with food. Mom always did everything to make me lose weight and was deathly afraid of me not getting thin, reflections that were placed on her by her mother and by society. Thus, we maintained the bond.

It happens that, at 12 years old, I already felt a pain and an anguish difficult to describe at such a young age. When I told her, first she didn’t understand me, but, as she had been diagnosed since my birth with depression and anxiety, she even went to a psychologist in search of treatment upon encountering her daughter’s mutilated arms. At the time, it would be labeled as something “trendy,” self-mutilation. At 13 to 14 years old, I despised the sound of my mother’s voice. Her illness was never easy to deal with. Since I was younger, I remember dreaming of having a family and saying: “I will never be like they are”. My mother’s steps are memorized in my head. At 13 years old, we fought every day, constant humiliations, threats of separation from a father and husband who had been forced to deal with all of this, every type of verbal humiliation. I remember the guilt: “I know I love her, but how can I want so much to have come from someone else?”. “If this family was my choice, why did I put myself in this situation? I cannot endure this soul”. I went through many emotional traumas in this phase, at 14 years old. She was present as far as she could be. And of this I know: seeing the fear of losing her daughter, my mother acted.

For a long time, I had closer relations and others very distant with Mom. Sometimes, she would act as if we were colleagues and friends ; right after, the humiliations, the screams, and the psychological pressure returned. It would be impossible to communicate all the pain she caused me, for she would never understand that her mistakes do not make her a horrible mother, just someone like all of us, who erred. Everything within her reach to hurt me, she would use. Here I narrate the facts of the pains of dealing with the instability of my home. I am grateful for my mother and everything she provided me in her life, always.

During my 15th to 19th years, I was in a relationship with someone who was capable of taking away my femininity, my self-esteem, my value, my mental health, everything. I was just a 15-year-old child. If you stop to look based on real data, there is no discussion: 15 years old is still childhood/adolescence, it is not adult life. The brain itself is not yet ready. Research from the National Institute of Mental Health shows that the brain only finishes developing around 24-25 years old, and precisely the part that controls impulses, decisions, and the notion of consequence (the prefrontal cortex) is still immature at that age. So it is not “lack of maturity” in a moral sense, it is literally biological. It’s not just science, the law also makes this very clear. The United Nations considers every person under 18 years old to be a child.

Playing adult at such a young age brought countless consequences to me. Even after finally managing to escape the abusive process I lived inside, I felt, and sometimes still feel, fear just remembering his voice. From 15 to 19, I lived within a doctrine, where I was forced to see life as meant to be lived by him. He had control over who I spoke to, who I interacted with, my friendships, my bonds with my parents, things of value, everything. From time to time, college classmates recall the happiness of school days; I only thought every day about how I wanted it to end. My high school years were full of absences. Still amidst COVID-19, I managed to escape the school environment for two years and live almost trapped in him. In my final years, my nightmare had no end. The offenses were constant, verbal abuses, diminishing my intelligence, my integrity as a woman, not to mention those that came in the form of discrete little jokes in front of his family. If something wasn’t his way, he punished me with the silent treatment: he ignored me, ignored calls and messages, until he decided I was forgiven. He ignored me for an entire month, without any explanation, and from that month onwards, I was never the same. I felt disgust at the control he had over my reactions and actions, disgust at being so repugnant as to let someone shake me that way, I felt disgust at having let him enter my mind. “I’m going to go out and make out with whoever I want, you can kill yourself there.” That echoed for a second in my mind. I saw an eyebrow razor and it was enough. Afterward, only the blood from my arms came. After that, the pain, which distracted from the disgust of having let a person lead me to that point.

Various barbecues were held at his house, where I was introduced to drugs for the first time and to the effects of alcohol addiction, with constant fights and offenses from third parties related to me. I will narrate only three episodes, as I know how this is a trigger for those who suffer and have suffered abuse. The first time he grabbed my wrist, we were in his aunt’s kitchen. I wanted to take it in a container, and he called me stupid, said he would leave because I hurt him. He held my wrist tightly and said: “You are not going to make me embarrassed”.

One time, we were arguing in the car. He had recently gotten his license and loved to drive recklessly. During the discussion, I remember being heated, and him starting to accelerate the car, as he always did, until he lost track and almost caused an accident that would have hit, accidentally, two people. The discussion worsened after that, given that he put our lives at risk. He decides to drive to a deserted and poorly lit street, stops the car and says: “Get out of my car now, deal with it, walk back”. I remember, already in tears, accepting, getting out of the car, throwing far away the ring he had given me and declaring right there that the control was over. He pretended he left and came back with the speech: “Look how stubborn you are”.

The same repeated another time. After a fit of rage, he kicked me out of his house in the middle of the night, threw my things on the street, didn’t even let me put on my socks while I cried, which I was already used to. I didn’t want to have to call my father, because I knew I would forgive him later. That said, he left me outside the garage, on the sidewalk, crying, without socks, for 10 minutes, until he reappeared crying and begging for forgiveness. “We won’t let it get to that point, ok?”.

For some time, before I healed from him, he haunted my house, my songs, the people around me who had done nothing to me, just through the memories of the war I waged with a man for the first time. After seeing me healed, he kept trying to return to the space he had, but I grew too much for a 15-year-old. My parents never interfered, and honestly, they hardly could. Such was the blindness I had already entered. Until the day I notice that my father became very worked up upon seeing him grab my wrists in the middle of a discussion. I just wanted to go into a store. He didn’t like it, he got angry. Upon trying to touch him, I felt that he grabbed my wrists and pulled my arm. I didn’t imagine that my father would see, and I would never imagine seeing him react to something that way. Upon realizing he was hurting my father, I ended that relationship, in my head, that day. My father manages to touch sensitive points of my soul. I couldn’t let him hurt my father.

Dad was never, and will never be, that type of father who demonstrates love and affection through words or gestures, maybe when I was younger. My father always brought some subtle and satirical way of showing me that he was present in my life, and I admired him from the start, with stars in my eyes. Dad didn’t scream at me, nor did he attack me with words. But, as life goes on, we see all the looks from all the people. My father grew in life through his own effort and came out of the void. He was never arrogant and also never knows how to say no to requests, even those undeniable ones. I always felt that I could share things with my father without fear of being judged or of him keeping it as an arsenal of offenses later. Today, at 21 years old, I maintain a stable relationship with my father. I am very grateful for all the opportunities he has already given me in this life and everything he has done. We are not as close anymore. I notice that my father, countless times, witnessed absurd things being said inside this house, calls for help, among other things, but remained monotonous, as he always was. His disbelief in therapies or psychiatrists was always evident, as something that would never change what I and my mother are.

For years, I pleaded with God for a new family, one that would understand me, support me, and believe in me. I was deathly afraid of growing up and becoming aggressive like Mom. And that was exactly what happened. In various phases of my life, from 18 years old until now, I perceive myself as my mother, screaming louder, humiliating more, making her feel what I always felt trapped inside this house. My mother spent years of a life she regretted losing, trying to find culprits to fire all her hatred and lost time at, regarding the options of what she could have lived. Normally, it was me.

Knowing all this, my parents never believed in anything I dreamed of. My father never believes in anything that is not logical, that can be inside a little box and with a profit margin. Growing up hearing all their discouragements hurt a lot. I don’t blame my parents’ mistakes. It is their first time here. I only feel comfort in exposing everything that for so long I kept inside me. I don’t have someone to tell my pains to without later hearing them being made into a mockery. I don’t have someone who motivates my dreams without telling me to get real. I never had someone who heard me and loved me for me. Few times I can count on my fingers when I heard from my father an “I love you” or an “I am proud of you”.

At 10 years old, I dreamed of living abroad and felt that my place was there, in England. I always made a point of telling and trying to plan something for the future with my parents. “You need to leave the world of imagination, this is real life.” But even so, I insisted on it until it was not possible not to accept. And when I went, one month in England already bought, I only heard that I should give up, because I never had that capacity. And that’s when I discovered, that’s how they see me: incapable.

If I were to describe myself while I lived in England, I would say I was the most capable person in the world. I lived, in one month, the most liberating feeling in the world. There was silence, there was peace. I proved to myself every day that I was always capable of doing everything for myself. I am not useless. I am not a bum. I am not a lazy pig. I am, yes, capable of getting out of this box. And I thought this way throughout the whole month, until I returned to the arduous reality of living in my house and with my parents. I would give anything in the world to never have returned. I returned feeling that they had ripped the ground from under me, that they had given me a taste of what it would be like to be free and happy and taken all of that from me. Suddenly, there I was, in my bed, crying. What I felt is not an exaggeration, nor drama. There is a name for this: reverse culture shock. According to the U.S. Department of State, returning home after an experience abroad can generate feelings of loss, emptiness, and displacement, very similar to a grieving process. According to the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, this process involves the temporary loss of identity built abroad, which can generate symptoms similar to grief, such as deep longing, emotional isolation, and even depressive symptoms.

I consider myself someone very emotional, stressed, and deeply sad. The fact that my exchange program bonds were broken so quickly sank me into a gigantic sadness. I suffered more than the death of some relatives. I never had close relatives anyway. I was always the child who already had too much to be given the little that a child asks for: attention and love. Except for an aunt, very dear to me, who worked taking care of me in childhood; I even came to idealize a mother like her when I was younger. I remember feeling anger toward everyone when I returned home, as if everyone around me should just leave me alone, suffering from the utopia that was snatched from me. Mentioning my aunt, I remembered two factors. I am a person with a massive abandonment syndrome. Having had favorable financial conditions made me use that to feel more loved. How tense, right?. From my two families, I was never the favorite granddaughter, cousin, or niece. I was the one born with a silver spoon in her mouth. I was the one who couldn’t play because the girls didn’t have it and would be upset. I heard offenses from adults out of pure envy, in a world of such pure children. I learned early on that offering something, usually material, makes a person consider you and see you a little more. Just, never, expect that back. Be content with the little, with the fact that the person is still there. Nowadays, it became a habit to gift those I love, but I never expect anything whatsoever.

After that first relationship, I had a few other experiences. I decided that, to overcome that abuse, the only way to get out 100% would be by giving myself 100% to another person. Yes, a terrible idea. A year and a few months later, a completely arrogant and egocentric family and completely without manners, a boyfriend who wanted to control clothes, photos, and even interactions. We broke up. I noticed how I had grown, by the fact of having tolerated much less and run as fast as I could. I don’t blame this second boyfriend; in the end, he very much made me who I am today in good ways. I hope he learns from what we lived.

Love still scares me. The idea of imprisonment, or of giving strength for someone to hurt me, still hurts. There is always a part of me that remembers everything, that doesn’t forget what was already capable of happening. I hate dealing with pains, even if they are from small loves. Therefore, I try as much as possible to avoid letting something be so present in me. There is always a limit, a care, an attempt not to allow myself to feel everything again, the fear of pain. And this is not just a sensation. According to the World Health Organization, people who have lived through abusive relationships can develop lasting symptoms such as anxiety, constant fear, difficulty trusting, and even cases of depression. The body and mind learn to live on alert, even when the danger has already passed. Studies by the American Psychological Association show that victims of emotional abuse frequently carry traits such as hypervigilance, low self-esteem, and fear of abandonment, precisely because they learned that love can come accompanied by pain.

But, at 21 years old, I learned, after living my exchange program, that there is nothing in the world that I cannot do alone. I proved that to myself every day, far from everything, far from everyone, being just me. Today, I appreciate my solitude as much as I can. There is peace in not depending, in not needing, in not losing myself inside someone to feel whole. I am still learning that loving shouldn’t hurt. But, for the first time, I also learned that I don’t need anyone to exist. And maybe that is the beginning of everything.

I have the same dreams, since I was 6 years old, when I wanted to be a singer and never received an incentive or compliment regarding that. I always heard that I should live in real life, and not in the world of fantasy. Without support, it is much more difficult, but it will never be impossible. I proved that when I traveled 11 hours alone on a plane. I proved it when I lived my exchange program, when I saw that there was a world where I fit, where I was capable, where I was not limited by the voices that grew up with me. And I will prove it again when everyone knows my name; I learned that only I am for myself when I need to be.

Today, I conclude by talking about me. Of my search for my future, in England, for the future I always dreamed of. Alone. I learned to root for myself, because many times I was the only one who did that. I learned to fight for my pains, to understand that they are valid, even when no one around me understands. According to the World Health Organization, emotional pains and traumas do not cease to exist just because they are not visible, and they need to be recognized so that any type of cure can exist. I am still in the middle of the process. I still make mistakes. There are still moments in which I lose myself, in which it seems that everything returns a little, even if I don’t want it to. But, this time, it’s different. I know I can find myself again. I am learning, little by little, to extend a hand to myself. To not abandon myself, even when everything inside me tries to do that. The American Psychological Association points out that emotional recovery processes are not linear, they are made of relapses, attempts, mistakes, and restarts. And maybe that is exactly what I am living now, a restart that still hurts, but that is still a beginning.

I also recognize everything my parents have already done for me, including the financial support that made many things possible in my life. That is real, and I am grateful for it. But, even so, I keep trying to build my own independence. I keep trying to prove, mainly to myself, that I can. Going toward a version of me that always existed, but that never had space to be. Going toward a future that, even without emotional support, I chose to build. And, this time, it’s not about proving it to anyone. It’s about finally doing it for me.

There is also something that I have carried with me for a long time: a cycle of pain and hatred between me and my mother. A cycle that did not start with me, but that, for a long time, lived through me. I learned to respond in the same way I was wounded. To scream louder, to hurt deeper, to return exactly that which one day destroyed me. And, for a long time, that seemed the only way to exist within this relationship. Being mirrored. But today I see it differently. I don’t want to carry this with me forever. I don’t want to repeat this story. I don’t want to be one more continuation of something that started long before me. Ending this cycle is also part of who I am becoming. And maybe it is one of the most difficult things I have ever chosen to do. Because it’s not about forgetting. It’s not about pretending it didn’t hurt. It’s about looking at all of this and, even so, choosing not to continue.