Find Love Together – Logan Briana

It’s crazy how quickly life can change even during a pandemic.

I bought a car for the first time and chopped off at least six inches of my hair (this time. Twelve inches since March). Yes, I am already waiting for the day I can once again put it up.

Like everyone, this time has tested me in some ways. I was able to visit Maryland which can be an interesting time. This visit I came back different.

Leading up to this trip I was already beginning to feel an extreme disconnection with my history. Maryland is a whole different world. A world that I come from but am no longer a part of.

For the longest time, I tried to hold onto that world to hold onto my family. My family that I don’t remember much of. I look at pictures of my mom and a lot of the time she’s just this woman. It hurts me because I do have memories of her, but a lot of them are from her being sick in the hospital. I was ten so old enough to remember more than I do but losing her did so much damage to my brain. Damage that nearly fourteen years later I am still recovering from.

I have plenty of people talk to me as if I remember her but I don’t. Most of what I learn about her are from people’s say (which with my family is different depending on the person you talk to).

I’ve said it before and I will say it again (more for me to get it in my head than anything). I come from extreme dysfunction. As time goes by the more I uncover. They were all pretty psychotic. There is a mindset that comes with this life. A mindset that comes from generational dysfunction and addiction. A mindset that I have worked hard on not having.

I happened to have a conversation with my cousin in June about my feelings and the people we come from. We were both raised by the same women (my mom and her mom) but about twenty years apart. The thing about these women is that they were highly functioning despite their abuse, addiction, and so much more. That was a main reason why at times it wasn’t obvious how psychotic and messed up they could be. They at times could lead a decently “normal” life.

Even with being raised by the same people, we got two very different parts of them. I have been told a couple of times now how I am this special piece that in a lot of ways doesn’t make sense. I had a different lifestyle than my cousins did since I didn’t witness both women during the heart of their addiction. I am decades younger than them all yet still in the same generation. I am closer in age with all of their kids than I am with them, but also had a very different life than their kids.

This is why I don’t and don’t know if I will ever feel completely a part of my living family. I lost the people who connected me more with my blood family. It might be why I was so affected when I lost my mom. She was the one who made me make sense. Once she was gone I was this thing that didn’t belong.

I had my aunt for nearly twenty years and she did help with that feeling some, but when it came down to it she wasn’t my mom. She had this necklace that she always wore, and when she died my cousin got it. Rightfully so because she was the daughter but it was hard. It was the first time where my aunt felt like my aunt more than a mom. Though I was mourning her as if she was my mom, her daughter was too. Her daughter got the right to things, such as I have the right to things of my mom’s even if they may mean something to my cousins.

I think that’s why losing my aunt unraveled so much of the trauma that was bottled up inside of me. I started feeling all of these things I didn’t understand. I was beyond lost. I was this ball of emotions. After spending a decade of not having many emotions I was just learning how to feel them let alone understand or manage them. All I knew was generational dysfunction. One thing that came with this dysfunction were relationships full of gaslighting, which the definition according to Wikipedia is,

“Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment, often evoking in them cognitive dissonance and other changes including low self-esteem.”

During college when I was this lost ball of emotions, I had someone see that and use me to make them feel better about their own self. Their abuse became the only thing that made sense in my life, but why not it was all I had known my entire life. Their abuse lasted for three years during college. The thing is in the beginning when this person had started, I was getting compliments from others about what a different person I was becoming and how great I was looking. When I had thoughts about telling someone and cutting ties those comments stopped me. That person did help me come out of my shell and become a person that I did like (part of the time). They did help heal me in ways but gave me even more trauma to heal from. Especially when the three years went on and I hated myself more and more. I heard comments about me being desperate for attention, especially from that of men. I used to deny that I wanted any attention (which no matter who you are you crave some level of attention). I think the attention people were seeing and talking about was my way of trying to tell someone about what was happening to me. I began to heal more and more without needing that person and they began to lose interest in me.

I can’t change what I was born into. I can’t change what has happened to me. I can change what happens next.

That change will require a lot of grace from myself. I put so much pressure on myself to be this healed person. Those around me can vouch for how far I have come. It is by the grace of God that I am even healed as much as I am. Realistically, I shouldn’t be as functioning as I am. I shouldn’t have accomplished some of the things I have accomplished.

I thank the people who kept me going during those three years. They are the reason I didn’t do stupid things to later regret.

More now than ever be kind to people. You have no idea what is happening to them behind the scenes. You might end up being the one who keeps someone else from going off the deep end.