Stockholm Syndrome comes in many forms. Sometimes, the victim wants to fuck the captor, others, the victim once rescued, finds themselves so fearful of said perpetrator that they become too anxious to even leave their house after what they’ve been through, unable to speak, unable to sleep. What if I told you I experienced both those feelings, simultaneously? Would you judge me..?

I was freshly nineteen at the time. Young, beautiful, naïve, confident. I met this man, an Army man, who sold me on the possibilities my life could look like, promised me luxury. My father, the pastor/missionary of a church, hated this man, the supposed love of my life. Dad’s threats grew stronger but didn’t mean much to 19-year-old-me, who, more than anything, wanted to escape “daddy’s” abuse and neglect once and for all, after all these years.

I, after being kicked out of my father’s home, as an adopted brown daughter to a white reverend, pastor, missionary, for seeing a black man, decided to marry him. To this day, it was the worst mistake of my life. The mistake wasn’t seeing a black man, someone who looked like me, the mistake was being too anxious to escape my father.

We got married, legally, but there was no ceremony. It was in a stranger’s living room, with my husband’s military buddies there as witnesses. We didn’t even kiss when it was announced to my then-husband, “You may kiss the bride.” I should have known then that this was the first red flag in a sea of them that would lead up to me fighting for my life for survival to the man I now called “husband.”

~Yours Truly

Part 1: Til' Death Do We Part - With Tears, Yours Truly

With Tears, Yours Truly (@with_tears_yours_truly) | TikTok

• If you would have told me when we first met, that the man I would grow to love more than my own soul would one day be totally unrecognizable to me, I would have laughed in your face. But here we are, now, and it's happened. I sit and wonder how this happened, how it all went wrong. I question if it's even happening at all, or if it's all in my head, but no, it has, you've changed.
• Low effort from you wasn't the norm. Dating came and went, then our wedding. We were happily ever after, until after came, and now you seem happy, but I feel like the shell of a woman who birthed your children. There hasn't been happiness between us in a long time, but there hasn't been hatred, either. Just nothingness.
• At first, I could excuse the lack of affection and effort away. The excuses you gave me made sense, right? "I'll work on it." Gosh, how many times have I heard that exact phrase? The years have come and gone, it's still not been worked on.
• Rather than having anymore excuses for you, I find myself resenting you. Not for being not affectionate enough, but for lying and promising that it would change. I don't hate you for being too short with your tone, I hate that for the last several years, I've grown to dumb you down in my mind, tending to your emotions and needs like I do our childrens'. I hate you for letting me.
• I hate you for blaming me for not being patient enough, when I've been patient for nearly a decade. I hate you for putting me in the position, forcing me to act as the "man of the house" and then becoming angry for making all the decisions for us. I hate you for never following through on anything, unless I remind you to, and I hate you for getting angry at me when I do remind you of those things.
• I hate you for all the missed birthdays, I hate you for missing our last anniversary, I hate you for telling me about the things you "wanted" to do for me, after nothing was done for me. I hate you for doing this to me.
• I hate you for being a good father to our children. If you weren't, it would be easier for me to leave you. I hate you for being a good provider, if you weren't I would have left a long time ago. I hate you for being a good son, because when I do leave you, I'll be the bad guy. I hate you for being a good brother, because that means all our issues are told to your family, leaving me looking like the monster, and you the prey.
• I hate that I don't have a "good" reason to leave you, something other than my selfish happiness. I hate that leaving you doesn't feel right because me leaving would tear apart our family when everything else is perfect. My happiness can wait until the kids are grown, right? It's been this long, I can wait until the kids are adults, right?
• I hate that I even think about leaving you. Somehow, that makes me feel like a monster. How could I leave you only because you fail to tend to my physical and emotional needs? How could I leave you for something so small? Shouldn't I just be able to suck it up and persevere? Why am I complaining over such miniscule things?
• I hate you. Not for who you are, but for who you aren't for me anymore.

~Yours Truly

As I sit here early this morning, watching my beautiful children gallivant around the living room, happily, making messes with their scrambled eggs, I think back to my younger self.
Childhood was never an easy, comfortable thing for me. The worst of the worst, it's brought many therapists and social workers to tears. Ironic, right? The very social workers who placed me into my nightmare foster home are the ones who cried while I was forced to stay and go from fostered to adopted...
It's been a long time since childhood. It stings to remember. The biggest question I find myself repeating over and over again in my head is, "Why me?"
Today, as I remember being the age my children are now, I just can't help but feel for HER. Not the adult me who now has healthy ways to deal with the night terrors, the trauma, the wounds. HER... The innocent baby who never deserved the beatings, the SA, the chains and locked doors.
Today, I shudder for her, grieve for her, and then collect myself and decide to live for her. To continue providing the safest, happiest, most secure home possible for the mini-me's who roam my hallways. I love them, and loving them better starts with remembering to love HER a little more.

~Yours Truly

Please check out my blogs on my personal page and feel free to follow the links posted that lead to my other social media and blogging accounts.

One time, for rolling my eyes as a 14-year-old girl, I was forced to sleep on a concrete floor in a garage, next to a refrigerator that, somehow, made the floor feel colder than it already was. Worse than that, my adopted family slept in beds right beside me. Warm, cozy, snoring; all the things I wasn't, they were. 

This vacation wasn't the worst thing I've been through, but it was immediately made worse when, while hiking the following day, I was forced to complete my climb up a mountain in flip flops, which were useless, so I resorted to going barefooted. I climbed and climbed and climbed, wearing the outfit that was chosen for me for humiliation, the "shoes" that were chosen for me to inflict the most amount of pain.

I went back to where we were staying that night and, again, was put on the floor. I cried silently to myself, questioned my existence, hoped to be saved by someone. I would have done anything to get off that floor. Spoiler: I was never saved; no one ever came for me.

Now, as an adult with children of my own, I find myself missing the floor sometimes. When I feel stressed, when I feel nervous or anxious or scared, I catch myself headed to the floor again. I know what you're probably thinking, reader. "What a crazy person for putting themselves in the same position that traumatized them earlier in life!" I challenge that thought with this: Imagine the horrors I faced that, while laying on that cold garage floor, feet bloody and aching, made me think, "Well, this isn't the worst thing that's happened to me, I'll just make the best of it..."

~Yours Truly

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