Nero’s Reviews > What My Bones Know > Status Update

„See, for people who are traumatized, all they know is rupture,” Dr. Ham explained. “They always have to come to the abuser with an apology. But it’s never about them having their own”

„Trauma isn’t just the sadness that comes from being beaten, or neglected, or insulted. That’s just one layer of it. Trauma also is mourning the childhood you could have had.”

„I exited the sessions with a voice in my head saying, That was stupid. You’re wasting your time, or maybe you’re just too dumb to get this. I knew that voice was my mother. But I still couldn’t get her to shut up.”

„You’re right,” he said in astonishment. “Of course you’re right about it all. How did you become the parent and I became the child?”
How did he not understand that this had always been the arrangement?”

„Over and over, I create excuses: Maybe EMDR is bunk, maybe the teachers are right, maybe some level of privilege erases abuse. But this narrative gives me a false sense of control. If it’s all my fault, then I can change it. I can fix it.”

„The abused child… […] She will go to any lengths to construct an explanation for her fate that absolves her parents of all blame and responsibility…. The abuse is either walled off from conscious awareness and memory…or minimized, rationalized, and excused, so that whatever did happen was not really abuse.”

„No matter what I do, no matter where I try to find joy, I instead find my trauma. And it whispers to me: “You will always be this way. It’s never going to change. I will follow you. I will make you miserable forever. And then I will kill you.”

„I believe that they hated themselves too much to love me; their sadness made them too selfish to see me at all. The reason I hadn’t been loved had nothing at all to do with me or my behavior. It had everything to do with them.”

“The abuse was not your fault.” […] “Yeah, sure. I know that.”
“Do you?” [..] They forced me to repeat it, made me sit on their couches and awkwardly recite “The abuse I suffered was not my fault”.
“And how do you feel now?” […] „I guess good?” I said. “Yeah, it’s true. It wasn’t my fault.” But I was a void when I said that. A voice and a body reading facts from a leaflet.”

„Their grief is not your fault.”

I’m fucking sobbing