In my childhood and early teens, I was a victim of many things.
Things happened to me that was out of my control, things that should never have happened to a child.
Things that made me feel like a victim most of my life.
What happened?
When I was 5 years old, I lived with my gypsy mother, and everything was well, until one fateful day and her brother died.
My mother was devastated and wanted to go home to Serbia to visit her family and attend her brother’s funeral.
She noticed I was very distressed by her grief, and in a loving way wanted to protect me from watching her cry and being grief stricken, so she told a friend of hers, her worries about me, and how I was handling this situation.
Her friend advised her to leave me behind, while she was away, so I wouldn’t see her sorrow.
So, my mom packed her things and left to attend a 40-day funeral. (In gypsy culture a funeral takes that long)
During that time, while I was living with her friend, I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want to eat and became more and more sad, so her friend called the state to take me off her hands.
They put me in foster care, because in the state’s eyes, I had been abandoned by my own mother and they saw it as child abuse.
They did this to protect me, to make sure I was well cared for. Though without knowing, they put me into a situation that was much worse.
From 5 to 18 I lived with my mom in the weekends and my foster family in the weekdays.
When I lived with my foster family, I experienced mental and sexual abuse.
They where extremely disciplinary, so I always felt even though I tried so hard to be the good quiet girl, that I could never please them enough.
I always did something wrong.
I was constantly scolded for small things.
Forgetting things at school, not being on time, for eating an ice cream wrongly, for not being like the other kids, for not socializing enough, for not going out and spending time with the other kids.
I was told I was behind my age in intelligence.
I was told I wasn’t normal.
I was told if I didn’t live with them, I would live a life time on welfare and be like my mother.
I was told if I didn’t want to live with them that I would be sent far away and would never see my mother again, and so many other threats.
I was never good enough, so naturally I felt that way too.
I learned quickly to hide my emotions behind a false smile, because if I was smiling no one would notice or comment on how I really felt, which was feeling scared and sad all the time.
I learned to be that mask in time and did it so well that I managed to keep what was going on a secret.
This secret became my norm.
I started to believe that I was in a happy family, that I was lucky to live this way.
I started to believe that my foster parents loved me, that it was just normal family love.
I lived with this delusion until I was 18 years old, and in a fight with my boyfriend at the time, The tower that was my life crumbled, and the truth hit me in my face, and shook me to my core. It shook me so much that from that day I developed PTSD.
That’s where I became the Victim.
I left my foster family and learned to just survive.
I felt like Robinson Crusoe, who had been living on a island alone for years to one day be back in society, the normal world and having to learn the most basic things from scratch again.
I felt I was constantly in survival mode, struggling to keep myself above water and be as normal as I could be in this fast-paced society we live in.
To no surprise I cracked in the years to come.
I couldn’t keep up with normal day life, I still had so many scars to heal, and learn the most basic things I should have learned in my childhood.
Everyone saw me as a victim of my past. They where supportive, caring, and loving, but in seeing me as a victim, I learned to see myself as a victim.
I saw my self as weak, and different.
I felt out of place and that I didn’t belong in this world.
For years I struggled to keep afloat and stay sane, to learn to heal, to improve, but this was hard.
I still had so many things I didn’t understand.
I didn’t understand why a normal family like my foster parents could be not normal. I didn’t understand what normal was, and I struggled for many many years with what the idea of what normal was.
When I was 30 years old.
I started to understand and see the world differently.
I started to rebel against the normal in my eyes and learned to embrace my difference.
That’s where I really learned to not be a victim of my past anymore, and I could see it as a strength instead.
I’m not a victim I am a survivor.
When I realised that my past, didn’t make me weak but instead made me incredible mentally strong, I stopped for the first time seeing myself as a victim.
I realised that having to learn to see the world differently, learn about self-worth, being able to open up about what happened to me in my past, but also see the positives it had gotten me throughout the years, made me strong.
It made me realise that I was a survivor, and realising how long and hard I had fought, also made me realise if I can survive this, and still remain sain, that I can survive anything.
Today I feel eternally grateful for the inner work on myself. How much I have grown from this horrible experience, how much I have achieved.
I am not normal, but I don’t see it as a bad thing anymore
I am not a victim, because this experience made me throughout the years realise what I learned, growing up and as an adult. I learned my inner strength.
I’ve managed to still have an incredible fun and loving life, where I find it natural to smile and see the world in a positive light.
To find the beauty in the simplest things.
A beautiful flower, a sunrise, a hamster running around in a hamster wheel, a smile on stranger’s face.
They didn’t take that away from me.
They never took my lust for life, and my positivity.
While trying to shape me into what they wanted, I became something different, something more, something much stronger than I could ever imagine I would be.
And I use that strength to experience my life, to learn new things, to dream big, overcome fears, and take a leap of faith into new things.
I still have a lot to learn about the world. I still have to rewire a few parts of my brain that is still affected by my childhood, but when I was 18 and my brain was a crumpled mess, now there are only a few knots to untangle.
Because I have experienced so much mentally in my lifetime.
Gone through PTSD
Depression
Borderline and other personality disorders
Anxiety
A non-existent self-worth
When I feel pain or heartache, I understand myself more, so I can get myself up quicker now.
I’ve dealt with the worst already so nothing can no longer beat me down.
I used to believe that I was broken because of my past, now I see that what is broken, can be mended in time, and get out much tougher than it ever was in the first place.
I look at life around me differently now. When I see pain and misery around me, I know that us humans are strong enough to survive anything thrown at us. That any traumatic experience can in time make us much stronger.
When I hear other people’s stories from their past, I don’t see them as victims of something horrible, I see a survivor, and an incredible strong being for having gone through their experience.
And I feel so inspired that some has turned their past into working and helping people in the same situation today.
I am grateful for the people in my life that never saw me as a victim but kept me above water in my time of need.
My ex-boyfriend who got me out of the worst experience of my life.
His mother who always encouraged me and gave me a sense of safety.
My father who got me into working in an organisation for sexual abuse victims (Survivors)
My friends who kept reminding me of my inner strength.
And my mother who has been my rock every single day.
My Mentors who helped me dig deeper into myself and discover my hidden skills and strenghts.
If you know anyone who is a victim of something horrible, know that it takes time and years of mending and self-work to get back into “normal”, but once they do, you will see a new sense of strength, that wasn’t there before.
A beautiful being arising from the ashes.
A rose in full bloom.
My past dosnt define me, it helped me grow in strenght, compassion, understanding and love.
I wasnt in control when I grew up, but now I am in full control of how I handle diffucult situations in my life, and I learn and grow from every bad experience that comes my way.
Have an amazing beautiful and strong day, morning evening.
If you have a tower moment in your life, and find everything in ruins, know that with every new block a much stronger tower will be built.
MissFaylyn out ❤
Missfaylyn 