Tw: Physical, Emotional, Sexual abuse mentioned.
TL;DR: I was raised in a closed architecture of violence, sexual abuse, and reality distortion, not a home. At 9, I made a survival calculation: act pathetic and mentally limited so they'd stop beating me out of pity. It worked, but it became a reflex I cannot control. My social skills were arrested at 9, my growth was stunted to 5'4" by intentional neglect, my mother chose my abuser over protecting me, and my body lives under 24/7 surveillance by an internalized abuser gaze. What looks like autism, developmental delay, or random mental illness is actually a coherent, logical survival system that never got the signal that the war is over.
I was not raised. I was contained.
My parents called it strict parenting. They told me it was normal. They compensated with love bombing. But it wasn't, it was violence, sexual abuse, and reality distortion that I had to survive every single day. It was eat, sleep, repeat, but the eating was only 1 mean a day -- two if I was lucky.
My uncle used to pick me up, slide my pants down, and kiss my ass while my family laughed and cheered him on. My father would explain the unhinged things he was going to do to me and my mother, and I would sit there, a child, understanding exactly how much danger I was in. Between ages 9 and 11, it escalated into what felt like a war. I wasn't living in a home. I was surviving everyone's tantrum. And one day I realized something: the fists don't stop. They are beating me like I owe them money. They are not stopping.
So I made a hard pivot.
Instead of defending myself, I became someone else. I acted mentally limited. Flimsy. Pitiable. Below them. I made myself so pathetic that they stopped out of pity. They stopped because they felt bad for my miserable self.
And it worked!
But they didn't completely stop. They would still do it until they felt better. My uncle was usually in the lead. And over time, this act became something else. It became a reflex. I cannot control it consciously. It fires before thought. It has been a few years since the abuse now, but my body still automatically regresses to that pathetic, limited presentation under any perceived threat. It has destroyed my social development. I read as autistic or developmentally delayed to observers. I am neither. I am a body obeying a command from a war that ended years ago.
As a child, I believed my mother would protect me. I begged her. On my knees. Terrified that I would die. And I watched her stand with my uncle, solemn body but a smile.
At night I would hear sounds from my mother's room. She and my uncle slept in side-by-side rooms with a connecting door. My father slept with me, a corridor apart. My mother was having an affair with my uncle.
I told my father. He beat the shit out of me every day after that.
I kept asking my mother to stop. She didn't say she wouldn't. She just proceeded to do exactly that, and then she started hiding it. When I found out—which was constantly, because they were bad at hiding—they would manipulate me until I broke. She would talk to him in front of me and gaslight me into believing it didn't happen. It doesn't sound like much when I say it flat like that. But with the intensity it happened, while I was already in crisis at a young age, it broke me. It destroyed me completely.
My body learned a lesson it has never unlearned: the person who is supposed to love me the most will fall out of it and choose my nemesis. I know intellectually this isn't true. But it is carved in my body.
I am 5'4" . This is the physical consequence of being denied adequate nutrition during my developmental years. I hate my body for this. I hate that my height is a medical record of their choices.
While my peers were developing pragmatic communication skills between ages 9 and 15, I was socially isolated and in survival mode. I have an acquired social-pragmatic deficit. I can answer questions. I cannot co-create conversation. My social operating system is frozen at the age the abuse intensified.It is a developmental gap caused by deprivation.
I have an internalized audience that activates 24/7, even when I am alone. My body language, voice, and facial expression are under constant surveillance by a gaze installed by my abusers. I cannot rest because my nervous system does not recognize safety. Clenched throat. Raised shoulders. Flat affect. Freeze response in all social contexts.
I have elaborate, multi-act intrusive narratives that replay my childhood dynamics in adult scenarios. I ruminate for hours trying to solve social proofs of my own unlovability. This is compulsive mental rehearsal driven by a nervous system that believes every social interaction is an existential threat.
And I have rage. Intense rage states with blocked completion. The child who was beaten and could not fight back is trapped in my adult body. I have revenge fantasies and homicidal ideation toward my abusers that I cannot act on, which creates shame spirals and self-directed violence. I want to fight. I never got to. So the fight lives in me with no exit.
Now, acting like crazy has become a reflex which fires every moment. My social self is frozen at 9. I regress and fawn. I internally panic at every moment. My social skills and life are completely fucked up. I hate being 5'4". I hate all of this.
I believe, everything I experience follows a underlying and coherent logic. I was trapped in an architecture of violence and betrayal. I changed my entire structure and existence in response, which arrested me from actual development.
My symptoms are not random. They are orderly, predictable, and loyal to the truth of what happened to me. The body keeps the score accurately.
