Find Love Together – Logan Briana

I don’t tend to have a lot of anger inside me, and I’m grateful for that, given everything. It’s knowing things about places and people that people like to ignore. They see what I see from a different perspective. People will have different perspectives because each person’s life experience is theirs. That’s okay. I’ve spent most of my life keeping controversial things to myself out of survival. Bias is going to happen, and I’m not immune.

Keeping things a secret can be powerful. Exposing things can be just as powerful if not more. It’s determining when those things are exposed. I’m not just going to share everything I know or think. I have to keep some power. I can’t go with the flow anymore. I catch myself getting mad at the hypocrisy I witness. I catch myself getting mad at people and places that have hurt me.

Some people feel power by keeping things quiet. I don’t. I’ve spent so many years voiceless. It’s why I have this blog. I write about things most people aren’t able to; by choice or not.

If more people spoke up I might have not let my abuse happen as long as it did. The thing about not speaking up it gives the illusion that you’re the only one experiencing something. There’s a reason why a predator isolating their prey is a successful technique.

When people speak up things can crumble. It’s why I’ve been told to keep certain things on the down low. I get it. I do. It’s why if I ever chose to go even deeper into what I share I would want to share it tactfully. The thing about keeping things quiet is it usually takes more away from the victim. I live daily with what someone decided to do to me. It affects every part of who I am.

I work hard to not dwell too much on the past. As much as I can while still healing. That’s the thing about healing, you have to continuously reflect on why something is affecting you. It’s nearly impossible to not think about it all. Over the past six months, I’ve been heavily thinking about the relationships I had during the heart of my abuse. Relationships that ended because of what I was going through. Without even realizing it I was the prey being preyed on. I was being isolated.

I watch the people who know about my abuse but could leave and continue life. The people who are still here but get to move on a little easier than I can. For a while, after randomly trauma-dumping on people right after things came out, I went quiet. That led to me stuffing it all inside. Necessary at the time, I believe.

I’m letting people in. I’m letting myself love. I’m letting myself feel.

With that comes the aftermath of it all. I see a saying floating around online, “I survived the trauma, but I don’t know if I can survive the aftermath.” It feels ironic sometimes that the deaths and all that came with them sometimes seem easy compared to the abuse that happened to me in college. Don’t get me wrong I am very much affected by the deaths and losing my mom will forever be the worst thing I’ll experience. The thing about death is it doesn’t confuse me. Plus, it’s what I know. Life without parents is my normal.

Some of my abandonment issues come from the death. How could they not? It is the trauma bond that made it so they could control me, especially when my feelings are involved. I’ve been learning about attachment styles. I have a mix of an avoidant attachment and an anxious attachment style. I used to have more of an avoidant style but as the trauma bond developed it created more of an anxious attachment. There’s this fine line where I’ll go from being an avoidant to my anxious attachment. Being an avoidant keeps the aftermath of the abuse on the down low. I’ve spent years trying to not be avoidant. It’s what got me into this stage of my life. I decided to not isolate and let people in. Once I let someone in I catch myself feeling that up and down my trauma bond created. People with an anxious attachment style usually attract people with an avoidant attachment style. Guess what? I tend to attract people who are avoidant.

No matter the attachment style, especially since I am no psychologist and psychoanalyze people in a nonprofessional capacity, I have to deal with my abuse myself. That’s why my abuser and what he did to me is one of the few things that make me mad. There was no reason for what happened to me to happen. In a place and from a person that should have been safe. Now the smallest things instantly cause me to fall on my floor having a panic attack. Things that should not be making me feel anything let alone panic.

I have to keep going. I didn’t get through it all just to let it break me now.

I’m tired of being complacent. I wasn’t given my voice and my platform for nothing. I have to believe everything happens for a reason (even if I just said my abuse happened for no reason). My abuse never should have happened and could have been prevented if someone before me had spoken up. If someone hadn’t kicked what was happening under the rug. I could be mad about that, but I’m not. I like to think I was put on this earth to advocate for others. To fight for those who aren’t always capable. To be someone I needed during it all. My experiences. My perspective. They allow me to understand people in ways that not everyone can. I honor that privilege.

“Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to struggle against entropy.”

Vaclav Havel