Our subconscious mind controls 95% of our actions, behavior, and emotions.
It is aware of our emotional & physical needs.
Self-awareness is when one starts digging into their subconscious, when one starts noticing their unconscious behaviors and emotions.
All the decisions I took in the past 7 years were taken subconsciously. Most of the decisions I took were because “it felt right at that moment”. I had to dig into my unconsciousness to figure out why it felt right. It took a lot of journaling about my thoughts and a lot of reading on human behavior and stories of the aftermath life of Adults who were abused as children.
A little introduction about myself: I was born in Patna, Bihar, and lived there until grade 5. I completed my 5th grade in Bangalore and from 6th grade onwards, I lived in New Delhi. In short, I have lived in Patna for 10 years, Bangalore for 1 year, and Delhi for 6 years.
After grade 12th, I moved to Victoria BC — Canada for my undergraduate degree. It was September 2015 when I moved to Canada.
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VICTORIA, BC — CANADA
I’ll start the story on the 26th of March, 2017. I turned 19 four months ago, which was the legal age in British Columbia, Canada. It was the day when I filed a police complaint against my ex-boyfriend. He was charged with Section 266-Assault. I actually didn’t file intensionally. He threatened me that he would commit suicide if I broke up with him. I didn’t know what else to do, so I called 9–1–1. The police came, did their interrogation, and warned him about the suicide. After everything was settled about in an hour, I started chatting with the Police Officers. Physical abuse was so normal to me, after living in an abusive environment for 18 years, that I was casually telling the police that my ex-boyfriend hits me, like a funny story. He had hit me in the past as well, about 8 times I would say.
It was the lady constable who filed the case against him for me. It was her who told me that this behavior is assault. She took me to the police station for my statement. There was a bunch of paperwork and procedures to be done. After the whole process, I came home, regretting every moment of the last 10 hours. I didn’t know if I wanted to file a case, or was I being too harsh on him to file a case? I talk in my articles about how abuse makes one subconsciously submissive. The longer & the harsher the abuse is, the more submassive one’s reaction would be.
All I realized was that no one would support me. I realized that my parents would never support me. I wanted to stand up for myself but I couldn’t. I regretted it because I had put myself in a place where I had to deal with everything alone. I had no one beside me.
This was the turning point in my life. The gossip about the police complaint blew like fire. I was in Canada and people around me didn’t know where I came from. They didn’t know who my parents were. They didn’t know how I used to be treated. All everyone knew was I had not told my parents about the case. They gave me an unbiased opinion. Every person around me told me “Do not tell about the complaint to your parents because if they come to know about the case, they would do everything to get the guy proven guilty and behind the bars”. They said it confidently, without a doubt.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what my next step would be. I was too broken to listen to the people around me. I needed support. I decided I would call my parents. I had very little hope that they would support me. I had hoped not because they were good parents but because during my childhood everyone told me that my parents would be the only ones to support me in a situation where I needed support. I knew what would happen. I always knew they never cared about me but that day I got proof. Before I could call them, my ex-boyfriend’s parents had already called them, asking them to request me to drop the case. You can’t legally drop an Assault case in Canada. My parents called me saying they wanted me to drop the case. They showed no sympathy for me. They weren’t rude to me either. They were behaving as if something regular happened. They were joking about me dropping the case.
It was the first time in my life that everyone around me had told me the basic job of any parent without having any biased opinion. I always knew my parents were abusive but earlier it was just me believing it. Everyone who knew about the incidents of my child abuse also knew my parents and they would talk to my parents before they would talk to me. And, history shows us that no perpetrator commits a crime, they make up stories to justify themselves.
Now, the fact was confirmed for me. Everyone else was wrong, my parents were abusive.
That day, my subconscious got a hint that I would need to cut my biological parents off one day. I would have to have to make this decision. It takes time to make such decisions. It takes a lot of preparation. It was April 2017.
I was ready to break up with my ex-boyfriend but I had got weak. I had realized that the abusive relationship I had with my ex-boyfriend was such an amazing relationship compared to the relationship with my biological parents. He did way more things for me than my biological parents had ever done in 18 years. He used to hit me but he also used to ask me how I was. He knew what courses I took, he knew where I lived, and he knew my likes and dislikes. There was someone who knew things about me. He wanted to be with me. He wanted to live with me despite me filing a case against him. After living in an abusive house for 18 years, that was love for me.
The first task in order to go no contact with my biological parents was to teach myself how to live alone. I was already living alone in Canada but I needed to learn more independence. After all, living in this world without any family needs a lot of independence — or maybe hyper independence. This is where my first trip to Europe came into the picture. I applied for a couple of courses in London. I thought I should also try to travel alone before my courses start in London. Being okay with being all alone in an unfamiliar country was a skill I desperately needed. I also liked learning about new cultures. A solo trip did both jobs. I planned my trip across Europe. Athens was the first stop and Paris was the last. I always had a fascination with Greece. I really wanted to travel alone. I booked my flight tickets and hostel but I hesitated.
10 days ago before my flight, I started to freak out. I was scared to be alone in an unknown country. That’s the moment when my ex-boyfriend came into in picture. He said, “if you are freaking out, I can come with you”. I was shocked. No one ever in my life had told me that they could accompany me. I was always left alone by my biological parents to do things even if I feared them. My biological mother would go a further step to ruin the day or increase my fears. Accompanying me when I was afraid was a magical thing to me. He arranged his tickets and flights and his Visa within 10 days.
So, I didn’t go solo, I went with my ex-boyfriend. We covered about 10 countries. It was okay. I liked to travel. I spent most of my time talking to strangers and he spent most of his time doing I don’t know what. I also learned how easy it was for me to go to Europe with my boyfriend. I didn’t even have to lie. I didn’t have to make false stories up. My biological father just gave me money, dropped me at the airport, and never asked where in Europe I was going or whom I was going with. He just knew I was in Europe somewhere. He knew I was fascinated by traveling and maybe thought I was traveling alone. If I would have been lost or in an emergency, he wouldn’t even have to know what country I was in.
Well, that is definitely not a common experience a 19-year-old daughter in India has. Their disinterest about my safety made me subconsciously more confident about my future plans to go no contact.
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LONDON — THE UNITED KINGDOM
Yes, I was alone. I didn’t know anyone in the UK. I cried the first day. I knew I would cry. The feeling of loneliness was real. I was afraid to feel the feeling but I knew I had to learn to be comfortable with the feeling to move ahead in life.
However, I met a bunch of Indian fellows later on. We were a group of 6–7 people and used to spend time together and I liked it. I started feeling comfortable in this new country. I’d say I had learned to find a comfort zone a little more. I had very little communication with my biological parents but they knew where I was. They knew my address at least. The 2.5 months in London went by happily. I was also talking to my ex-boyfriend because honestly, he cared about my safety and whereabouts way more than my biological parents ever did.
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I came back to Canada and we started living together. At that point I very much consciously knew I didn’t want to be with him, I was living with him because I had a very big fear inside of me — to live alone — without a partner and without parents and without family. He did not physically hit me anymore but our relationship was way too toxic. We used to fight every day and there was a lot of verbal abuse. I knew I had to leave someday, I just never had the courage. After 10 months of living together, the relationship had gotten so toxic that I was ready to pay the rent and wanted to move out at any cost. In May 2018, I paid one month of extra rent, ended the relationship, and moved out.
I learned from this relationship that physical abuse was not okay. I learned that people do not have the right to physically abuse me. I learned a little more about my rights as a human. My grades after that year fell like anything. I was at a stage where a degree would have done nothing to improve my life. I would have failed about 10 courses at University in total. Going to classes felt like a waste of time. I got A’s in a few courses as well and those looked useless to me. I was at a stage where my transcript would be either full of F’s or full of A’s, it would have made no difference in my life.
Everyone has different priorities in life. Everyone is working on something to get ahead in life. Studying hard and finding a good job was not the thing I needed to get ahead in my life. The skill I needed to go ahead in my life was: How to be comfortable living all alone in this world without a family. Where I was taking care of my own safety and no one knew my whereabouts. I knew I desperately needed this skill. I had got a very strong intuition that I would have to make a decision of going no-contact in a couple of years. Studying for exams never felt right for me, going on solo trips and teaching myself loneliness felt right. So, I applied for an exchange semester — AMSTERDAM.
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AMSTERDAM — THE NETHERLANDS
This city is maybe close to my heart or maybe it’s not. It was at one point definitely but not anymore.
I wanted to spend some time alone in an unknown country. The Netherlands does not have a huge Indian population like the UK. I wanted to learn to be comfortable in an unknown country, in an unknown culture. I also met my next ex-boyfriend there but we started dating when I came back to Canada.
Everytime I would take the train from my house to my university, I would think to myself — “If someone pushes me in front of the train and I die, no one would even know”. And yes, that was the truth.
Maybe my friends from Canada or India would have figured out that I’m not active on Instagram for a week. Perhaps the police would have found my dead body and would have contacted my landlord. My landlord anyway didn’t have any information about my biological family. The friends I had at university didn’t know my biological parents either. Maybe then the police would have figured out from my Visa status that I was an exchange student from Canada. They would have contacted my university in the Netherlands and then would contact my university in Canada. My university in Canada would have found no information about my biological parents either. The emergency contacts were my ex-roommates. They would try to contact my ex-roommates and they would have no information about them either. My university would then pull up my application form from 2015 to see my contact information from India. But that wouldn’t have my biological parent’s contact number either. I was always left to do things alone. Every form I ever filled out had my own phone number which I brought to Canada with me. They would have found the address. The address is the same. Maybe they would have tried to send a letter to India to tell them their daughter is dead. I don’t know what would have happened and I don’t know how later my biological parents would have known the news about my death.
The other option would be if the police would unlock my phone and get the number but I doubt if it is legal in the Netherlands. I also doubt how much access to their devices the Tech companies give to the police.
All I wanted was to feel the feeling. I used to feel the feeling every time I was at the train station until it became normal to me until I accepted that if I die, they might not even know after months. It was normal for me and my biological parents not to text/call for 3–4 months. I would text my biological father if I needed money and that’s about it and that would happen once in 4–6 months.
A huge coincident happened. I used to commute from Amsterdam to Utrecht every day for my university. I used to take a train to Utrecht and then a tram or a bus to my university. Just one normal day, shooting on a tram took place in Utrecht. I was there that day taking the tram at about 9 am and the shooting happened around 10 am. By the time I got to know about the incident, I was already at the university and the whole city was shut down. We were not allowed to go out of the university campus till 5 pm. Everyone was terrified. I even got an email from my university about my safety. But absolutely nothing from my biological parents.
That day, it was confirmed for me. If I died, they would not know.
My grades fell. I failed 3 out of 4 courses at Exchange. I was miserable and I knew I would be miserable.
When I slowly started to accept this feeling of loneliness, I started to enjoy my time in Amsterdam. I tried meeting random people and tried making myself comfortable in unfamiliarity. I signed up for websites like Couchsurfing and joined Facebook groups where I could meet other travelers, in hopes of trying to teach myself how to talk to strangers and enjoy with strangers. Traveling was not the only way I met people, I also joined dance classes and did a Fashion Styling course, and did some freelancing.
When I didn’t find anyone, I would go alone. I was driving and cycling all around Europe. I was happy. I had covered about 5 countries.
Then, I planned to travel to an unpopular country — Bulgaria. Bulgaria is a country in Eastern Europe and is not a part of the Schengen area. It’s not a very popular country to travel to and there are not many travel blogs available when it comes to Bulgaria. It was an unknown country not just to me but to most people in this world. However, I still wanted to go there. I wanted to explore the unfamiliar tourist spots. The first day, I got scared. I was walking on the streets and I saw absolutely no tourists. I was so scared that I sent the location to my biological parents. They had an okayish reply. After a day, I called my father and asked him to book a hotel for me. It was too daunting for me to live in a hostel in Bulgaria. He didn’t ask anything, he booked it. When I reached my hotel, I felt confident. The next 3 days in Bulgaria were pretty good. I was confident enough to talk to strangers, meet random people and explore fashion houses in Bulgaria. I even made a small 2-minute random video of Bulgaria and uploaded it on YouTube: Click here for the video. Bulgaria was my 16th country.
When I came back to Canada, I was confident enough that I can live and figure out things alone in this world.
That year, in November 2019, I broke all contact with my biological mother.
I blocked her and 90% of her side of the family from everywhere — phone, WhatsApp, Facebook & every social media. Because when you cut ties, you do not cut ties with just one person, you cut ties with each and every person who supported the abuser.
My biological father anyway never cared about asking for my address & they do not talk to each other either. So, that was it — No contact with my biological mother.
Six months later, I graduated and reduced my contact with my biological father as well. It was always weird with my biological father. He never used to call me, it was just me calling him every two months. Maybe to let him know that I’m alive and I need money. I did nothing extra, I just stopped calling him. If I needed money, I would text him. It all went smoothly. He didn’t bother to call me, I didn’t bother to call him.
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BANGALORE — INDIA
All this time, I was dating the person I met in Amsterdam. We wanted to live together. I thought maybe one day I could have someone who cared about me. He lived in Amsterdam and I lived in Canada. He accepted me for where I came from. I never used to tell anyone about my family. I wasn’t ready to tell people. I would break down if anyone asked about my childhood. I knew I was capable to live alone but I also knew I craved having a family like anything. Even if I had to risk everything just to get a chance to call someone family, I would do it. And I did. I was any way at a very confused state in my career, had just graduated, and was doing random freelance internships. It was peak COVID time and all travels were restricted. The only country we could go to was India. And that’s what we did. We both moved to Bangalore, India.
He started shouting at me often. I used to sit in a corner and cry while he used to shout at me. I didn’t know what to do. I had taught myself from a previous relationship that physical abuse was not right — but what about verbal abuse? About 7 months later, we accepted that the relationship wouldn’t work and I set off to Canada. Canada was the only place close to home for me.
By that time, I had started to accept my childhood and be comfortable with the incidents. On my last day in Bangalore, I got a ‘semi-colon’ tattoo. It was something on my mind for 3 years but I always hesitated to get it done.
A semicolon represents a sentence the author could’ve ended but chose not to — the author is you and the sentence is your life.
“You could have ended your life but you chose not to”
I used to be suicidal in my childhood. Me getting that tattoo was a message to myself that I accept all the incidents that have happened to me, I accept that my life is very different from others and I might never be able to fit in.
I got the tattoo done besides my childhood mark. When I was 15, I and my biological mother got into an argument and she started throwing glass plates at me. The cut from the incident was such that it stayed on my hands forever.
The mark represents my childhood abuse and the semi-colon tattoo represents overcoming suicide.
TORONTO, ON — CANADA
I came back. The situation with COVID had gotten better and I got a job that was somewhat related to fashion. I was happy to start a new beginning. I had taught myself another right as a human — people are not allowed to verbally abuse me. If someone verbally abuses me, I need to leave.
About 2 months after moving to Toronto, I got to know that my ex-boyfriend started dating. He started posting pictures with the girl, he changed his DP with her and he also told his parents about her— none of those things he did with me. We had a two-year relationship, we were living for 7 months together and he did things for his 1-month-old-long-distance girlfriend that he never did for me. I realized he never treated me as his girlfriend.
I realized three things :
1. I still have a long way to learn about how I should be treated in a relationship.
2. My subconscious reaction to any conflict is to be submissive, even if the conflict is abuse.
3. If anyone chooses to treat me badly, they would face no consequences.
I started taking the consequences of my childhood seriously. I started reading about abuse, neglect & its aftermath and started to connect dots with my past. I was always in the habit of journaling but I started to journal a lot. I started to notice my subconscious actions and behaviors and wrote them down. In my articles, I talk a lot about how we Humans get attracted to familiar things — be it a familiar place, a familiar habit, or a familiar personality. All the little habits related to abuse are familiar to me and that is what I got attracted to. Every time.
I did not take up a full-time job because I still needed to deal with a lot of things in my personal life. I earn enough money just for my rent, food, and other basic necessities. My biological father still pays a part of my living even though, I am at a stage where I can figure my finances out if he decides to stop providing financial help to me. Because why not? He has destroyed 18 years of my life because of which I’m facing consequences both in my professional and personal life and one of the most difficult things to explain to people was my financial privilege.
When I am not working, I study personality types, personality disorders, and body language. I study how to identify personalities so I could save myself from another re-victimization. I have met other people from the same background and they have faced the same difficulties. I started talking about the topic of Child Abuse publically because I don’t have anything to lose in life apart from materialistic things. Our society doesn’t understand the massive aftermath consequences of Child Abuse and that is the awareness I want to bring about in our society.
Child abuse is a very very complicated topic. Its consequences are even more complicated. Why do parents decide to neglect a child emotionally but not physically? Why a child never gets support from the community? What happens when the reason for survival and abuse is the same person? Why do some Humans develop a need to control the vulnerable? Why the parents do not control every aspect of the child’s life? And the list goes on and on.
The biggest thing a family provides is safety and it teaches you how to build interpersonal relationships. It teaches you what is right and what is wrong. Then, you go into the world and apply those same principles and build a life for yourself. A lot of times, you modify those principles to make them a version of yourself. You go on and make relationships in your workplace and personal life. A huge chunk of which you learned by observation while you were a child. A child from a normal family learns at the age of 4 that abuse is not acceptable behavior. A child from an abusive family will have to teach themselves the same thing at the age of 20 (if they happen to move out). The starting point for such a child is way behind and they have to figure out everything on their own.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com
