The experience of living in abuse is one of the constant feelings of being left out. You’re left out of your own family, you don’t feel like you’re one of them, or like everything that’s theirs is yours, or like they want you around. You feel like you’re the extra, the burden, someone who is only a complication to their life. Like everything would be better if only you weren’t around. Abusive parents will often reinforce this feeling and try to convince you that everyone else sees you as a burden as well. Friend’s parents giving you a ride? How could you inconvenience them like that? Being invited to a party? How are you going to make up to them for feeding you? Going to hang out at a friend’s house? They’re probably tired of you and don’t want you around. It keeps happening until you feel like you’re a burden everywhere you go.
And then you’re always thinking of how to be useful enough, how to do enough to not be considered a hindrance, how to be good enough for something, how to deserve to exist and to be a part of something. Even your appearance, your tone of voice, your clothing, your manners, everything seems to be exposed to criticism, and not good enough. In your group of friends, you keep analyzing if you do enough to make up for the fact they’re keeping you company, you try to not have any needs or desires that would take up their time and energy. You’re always focused on how you might be dragging someone down or slowing them down, or being in their way of something. Makeup reasons why you’re not good enough, or why people would probably be happier if only you weren’t in their life.
And there’s always something, maybe you said something that wasn’t the best possible thing to say in that situation, maybe you couldn’t do your best at something because you felt too depressed or anxious or struggled with executive dysfunction, maybe you didn’t give enough attention when someone asked it of you, maybe you were focused on your own problems for a bit and called selfish for it. It felt dreadful. Like every single rejection, abandonment, betrayal and hurt you experienced could be blamed on you, and you deserved that.
It’s not really the truth. We’re all humans, and we sometimes do things that inconvenience others. It doesn’t mean we’re burdens, or that we don’t deserve friends and company and love and all good things that come from socializing with others. People who would have us believe that every single thing we do wrong means it’s better if we didn’t exist, are people who don’t mind hurting us horribly, in order for us to be more useful to them. Abusers who make us incredibly self-conscious about how much we give to others are those who want us spending our every minute of the day trying to be more useful to them – trying to make us live our lives for them, and not ourselves. It doesn’t really matter if you sometimes inconvenience others. People are like that. And people are also warm and clumsy and sometimes funny looking and they’re impossible to live without. You are one of those too.