0 
0 By Kirsty
Core statement:
“Pushing me away to focus on someone/something else. Not just someone/something else but someone/something else more emotionally important who should, by rights, matter less.”
As a young woman in my twenties with S, it was his ex-wife.
As a teenager with my mother and step-father, it was alcohol.
And, as a small child with my father, it was his work.
Selective Mutism
My mother was never particularly warm, nurturing or connected, even then. Although, I can’t think nor try and offer any tangible focus points. I just know it wasn’t me. Those are just the obvious, conscious ones. The fact is, I have found that I can trace this silver thread back all the way through my life to before I can even remember.
I know I had Selective Mutism as a very small child. It began just before starting school but not carrying on into my second year. I can’t pinpoint a precise reason as to why that developed. I was too young to remember.
“Kirsty, that suggests that something wasn’t right, even then”, the counsellor said. “Selective Mutism doesn’t just happen.”
Rational vs Irrational Fears
I know that. I’ve always known that. Everything I know about people and psychology and how our minds work and sheer common sense tells me that. Any attempt at asking my mother about that time period, however, will simply result in a highly defensive, “you were just chronically shy, there was no reason” and a debate on what she thinks the definition of the term irrational fear is (she thinks irrational fears are fears you’re born with).
Fact: All newborns are only born with two fears – a fear of falling and a fear of loud sounds. They are not irrational, they’re essential to survival. Irrational fears are learned and, by definition, illogical. They have no real threat to anyone’s wellbeing, like clowns.
This is the same woman who has insisted for over 30 years that I was “naturally anorexic” as a baby, because some hick-town quack of a doctor claimed so back in 1987. Mind you, I did discover from her I was, apparently, afraid of tall people when I was very small. Make of that what you will because I don’t know myself!
Neighbourhoods In Our Minds
Our counsellor talks in terms of our minds consisting of neighbourhoods. I don’t know if you’ve seen the Disney film Inside Out, but it’s a very similar concept to the film’s personality islands. Or, at least, that’s what sprung to my mind.
We each have neighbourhoods that are bigger or smaller and ones that are more dominant than others. It’s not for me to divulge S’s more prominent neighbourhoods but it turns out the neighbourhood known as Rejection has basically defined all that I am and all that I do and all that I have ever done throughout the course of my life. By and large, I am saturated in it.
“I think you had already suffered a small ‘t’ trauma from this emotional neglect as a child. Way before you even met S”, she said.
Mummy And Daddy Issues?
Yeah, you know what honey? I think so too. I can’t ignore it any more. Kirsty has Mummy and Daddy issues. I winced and pulled a face. I fucking hate clichés.
“If it’s ok with you, I’ll ask if we can explore this neighbourhood called rejection together. I think you’ll find it’s much, much bigger than you think. I think you’ll find it has been dominating and controlling your whole life.”
Whilst I was willing, I glanced at her at that and pulled a sceptical face. My nose scrunched, brow furrowed and my lips pursed to the side.
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“Eh, really? Ok…”
So we stepped through the gates.
Entering Rejection
“What’s the first thing you see?”
One foot over the border into the land of Rejection and it’s there, smack right in front of me. It can’t be ignored. I bumped into it hard. And, fuck me, it’s another cliche! I give a sharp, short and bitter laugh.
“Ha!”
“What is it, Kirsty?”
I squirmed, embarrassed and uncomfortable.
“Nnnghah!! It’s so cliché!”
What it was, reader, was a great, big, giant, fuck-off ginormous, screaming and glaring statement.
“I AM NOT WORTHLESS!!!”
I visualised it as a humongous, large billboard. My counsellor would later refer to it as a large bonfire, seemingly unthinkingly.
Delving Deeper Into Rejection
The energy in that statement was damn near radioactive! Had the environment we were in not been so peaceful and respectful I might have screamed it. I’m always screaming it, internally. I never stop. In any given second I’m screaming it, somewhere inside. Flitting from child, to teen and to adult. Screaming, “I am not worthless!!!” into anonymous blank faces. Into the void.
So, we explored further on a kind of dark, twisted sight-seeing tour. Oh, look! There’s the sense of having always being looked down upon I permanently experienced as a child (in particular whilst living in Wales). There’s the fact I trained my voice to sound more BBC to counter it. There, next to it, is the fact that, yes, it seems people do treat me better upon hearing me speak now. There’s my vested interest in clothes and appearance. That particularly vile, slimy suburb over there is the stigma that came from being a teenage single mother. That’s a vicious area, where haggard women in shawls lean out of their windows and empty their chamber pots filled with judgement, condemnation and stereotyping onto you, cackling as you pass by. Don’t go walking there alone. Or, at least, take a good umbrella!
Revisiting Young Me
There’s the fact I don’t like to be ignored. There’s 11, 12 and 13 year old Kirsty, home alone after school and knelt on the floor screaming and screaming and screaming down the phone to try and get through to a mother who’s been out on the piss in the afternoon for the third time that week.
She’s screaming because she’s trying to be heard over the noise of the bar because you see not only has her mother stopped talking to her because her pleas to come home have become annoying but the landlord of the bar, who is familiar with this child now because she’s called so very many times, has left the handset off the hook so she can’t call back. So, she screams and screams and screams to be heard, concluding that if she can just scream loud enough someone will hear and pick up and put her mother on.
Down the same street is 4, 5 and 6 year old Kirsty, wanting to be involved in her older teenage sister’s antics with her best mate but having the bedroom door shut and locked in her face and being left to knock, and call, and then shout and then scream and scream and scream and scream hysterically shoulder-barging and thumping the door in vain, in a feeble attempt to break it down. On the other side of the door, her sister is veering between being angry with her and, mostly, mocking her. Not once does an adult come to reassure and comfort the child, to disengage her, to cuddle or soothe or to detract her attention onto something else. Nope, she is left to scream and scream and scream, working herself up into hysterics.
Fighting To Be Heard
I don’t like to be misunderstood. I strive to present myself a certain way, true. Yet I am always, always ME. I am determined to be accepted for who I am, even if I often feel that who I am is inadequate.
Yes, Rejection Land is vast, cramped and over-populated with many twisting, turning streets and alleyways. Little shanty-towns littered with bonfires. There’s a wide, murky river running all through it like the Thames. That’s the River Rage (another thread running parallel with Rejection that I can trace all the way back since before I can remember). There’s also a third, Resentment. All three of them form an intricate plait. The Three R’s. Occasionally, it floods.
“I think you’ve been carrying this burden with you your whole life. It’s been prevalent, you’ve been fighting and fighting to be heard, acknowledged and accepted for who you are all this time. It really is a testament to the iron strength of your sheer will and courage that you keep fighting.” Why yes, I did slip in a warped kind of a humble brag in there.
The Various Angles Of Rejection
The truth of it is this:
S triggered my depression, beginning ten years ago, with his behaviour and treatment of me over time. Yet the small “t” trauma was present long before him. Probably from infancy. The events that have left me traumatised in the last ten years all derive from Rejection Land. Everything I have ever done my nut over, trauma aside, can trace its roots back into Rejection Land. If I am ever triggered, it stems from Rejection Land.
Almost the entirety of my experience of S throughout the ten years has been ‘Rejection’ in a variety of angles and methods.
S did not cause the original trauma. BUT, he fed, fuelled and exacerbated it on a gigantic scale. He may not be the root cause of my original trauma, but that does not absolve him from the fact he has been extremely emotionally abusive. It was his exacerbation of my trauma that, ultimately, left me struggling with depression for most of my adult years so far.
Do I need frequent validation?
Yes. Yes, I do.
Much Love
Kirsty
Reproduced with permission, originally posted here: muchlovekirsty.co.uk
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[…] mean, we can speculate; we explored it as part of Rejection Land with our counsellor. So, for example, I can tell you for certain that 4/5/6-year-old Kirsty being […]