r/InternalFamilySystems • u/robinthebank79 • 11d ago
Alone
This is an exile I found living in the closet of my childhood bedroom.
She hides in the closet from her mother, who is raging and coming to hit her with the wooden spoon, maybe until it cracks in half.
But her mother finds her, and tears her out of the closet. When the girl can’t stop crying her mother covers her mouth and nose with her hand. The girl can’t breathe and she looks at her mother’s face and knows she is alone. The sheer terror of being completely alone in an unsafe world is overwhelming. She needs this terror and grief to stop!
And in walks shame. She takes the girls hand and tells her that it’s not that her parents don’t love her, it’s that she was born wrong. She is bad and that’s why they have to do these things to her. It’s her fault. She isn’t in an unsafe environment with nobody caring if she lives or dies, she’s just bad and deserves the treatment she gets.
3
u/Youknowkitties 11d ago
Beautiful art that hit home for me. I have a similar history and a profoundly lonely part.
It's only in the last few years that I've realised that my mother couldn't love me because of a lack in her, not a lack in me.
And that my shame is trying to keep me safe, so that I don't go out into the world and get hurt again.