I have talked about this a bit on my personal Facebook account, but I have otherwise made little to no mention of it online. Last August I began writing a book about my life. It is biographical in nature, but I don’t consider it a biography, because the focus of the book is not my journey as a creative individual, or anything else I am happily proud of accomplishing or doing. It is about the abuses I endured as a child through young adult, mostly from my immediate family, how those abuses affected me, and how I worked to recover from them and become a person I could be proud of.

When I started the book, it was with the caveat that I might or might not actually finish it and seek publication. There are a lot of things about my childhood and youth, a great many interactions with my family, that have a tendency to turn circles in my brain. I am fairly certain that is because I never had closure with my blood family.

A great many years ago I realized that seeking any sort of apology or even acknowledgement from them was counterproductive, and would only lead to a resurgence of gaslighting and other emotionally abusive behaviors. A relatively short time ago I finally reached a point where I realized I was far happier without any contact with them at all.

Any chance for closure comes solely from me, so my brain did this cyclical dance, seeking closure from reexamining scenarios and critically reevaluating events. I would contemplate the things I wanted to say about what had happened, to tell them if only they were the kind of people who cared enough to change their behaviors. Those monologues danced circles, desperate for an outlet that was never going to happen, because I knew the people who most needed to hear them would double down on the gaslighting rather than admit any wrongdoing. It wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t accomplishing anything. It just kept the wounds open, scrubbing them so frequently they couldn’t finishing healing.

I started writing this book because I needed to create a new outlet. I needed to write down the events and give them solidity, so they were no longer caged animal circles in my brain. When I started, I didn’t know if it would be enough to write down a few events, or if I would need to share it with the world. I didn’t know if it would be a healthy release, or if it would just become a new unhealthy obsession.

Writing this book is exactly what I needed to do for my own sanity and healing, and I do need to finish it and seek publication. My abuses were mostly emotional in nature. Aside from a few spankings with a belt as a small child, I was never hit. I was never yelled at. I never experienced any of the obvious abuses which immediately throw up flares and are easily identified. No. It was far more insidious than that. It was dismissal disguised as love. It was constant lying to hide selfishness. It was constant manipulation and gaslighting. It was behavior that was easy to dismiss and excuse, but because it was pervasive and ongoing, it was tremendously damaging. Some of that damage I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

I only have a couple more new sections to write. The majority of the content has taken form. Past interactions with my family rarely dance in my head anymore. Writing down these events helped me in ways nothing else had to this point. It’s almost done, and that’s where it is getting hard. Now I need to read back over everything I have written (and it is a lot of writing), for editing, content, flow, and to make sure I am covering all the points I want to. Exactly what goes in those last couple sections is partially dependent upon what has already been covered, or should be added into sections which are already written.

This is the not fun part. I could stop here and call it good, never to be published, but I don’t want to do that. I’ve put so much into it, that I hate to make it one more unfinished grand project in a giant pile of unfinished grand projects. Besides that, I think it might help other people, and I like that idea.

The kinds of abuses I endured are anything but uncommon, but society usually reinforces gaslighting and discourages victims from putting up boundaries. Abuse doesn’t have to be legally actionable to be valid. It just has to cause damage to the victim. If I can give voice to other people who are having difficulty identifying the abuses in their lives, or placing clear boundaries, or cutting off toxic people from their lives, I think that is a very good thing.

I completely cut off my immediate family over three years ago. It is what I needed to do for my health and sanity. Even if they did change (however unlikely that is), it is not my problem or my solution. There are too many years of toxic and abusive interactions, too many years of chronic lying, for it to be worth the risk. Those waters are too tainted, too poisoned, for anything healthy to grow there. Years ago when I gave them another chance, they continued shitting in the pool like that was normal and acceptable, because to them it was. They just made sure to do it when they thought I wasn’t looking.

They’re not the only ones. It’s staggering and disheartening how common it is for parents to behave similarly to mine, and for the most part American society lacks any of the tools or supports or education that might help emotionally abused children identify and recover from the abuses. I want to put my story out there, to help others find a way, to help them know they are not alone, and that they are valid in demanding respect and placing boundaries.

So I will finish this book . I’ve just hit the not fun, non-therapeutic part of the project. I’ll start sharing small excerpts from time to time, as I go back through everything and make sure it reads well and conveys everything I want. After that, I will send it to a couple friends to read over and edit before submitting it to publishers. Exactly how publishing will go is hard to predict, but the hardest part is writing it. Getting it published should just take perseverance.