Just two months after I started college freshman year, I made a post titled “good shit i’ve noticed after being away from my abusive family for 2 months.” The post wasn’t very popular, so I kinda forgot about it. Although, now, I think it’s about time I remade that list – for my own self-measurement if nothing else, but more than that… I hope this can be helpful to anyone else going through a tough time, facing a situation similar to what I was.

• Independence gets easier. Like, a lot easier. At first, it was hard to do everything – anything – on my own. I couldn’t accept that I could be something without my parents’/family’s voices always egging me on, with their deceit to crawl back to. But overtime, I’ve grown to fully understand how they didn’t meet my needs anyway, and it wasn’t that I needed or wanted to be around them, but that my sense of familiarity with them made me believe our relationship was good/necessary to my identity.
• The wonderful sense of identity and agency you start to gain. Related to the previously point, now that I don’t have my parents to baby-talk me into and out of situations, I don’t always have their voices in the back of my head telling me what to do in every situation. I can choose whether to buy myself a tacky shirt and only have myself to worry about the repercussions (if there are any, which there usually aren’t other than some facepalming because I didn’t think of how hard said shirt would be to clean). I can choose whether to go to class or hang out with someone and not have their opinions constantly hanging over my head from the questions such minute things would produce. The only thoughts I have to worry about are my own, (and of course friends to an extent,) and that voice is getting easier and easier to deal with.
• Talking about money gets a lot easier. I used to feel really guilty whenever I would have to talk finances with my parents, friends, or acquaintances. I’m essentially paying for college on my own right now, except that I need my parents to sign the private loans to cover the remainder of that. I used to agonize over this because it felt like I was “using” my parents’ money even though I had no intention of ever seeing them or going to visit them. Now, I remember that it wasn’t as though we had a close relationship to begin with; this business-like attitude with fake cordiality that I’ve taken up with them is what I need in order to give myself a good life, to separate from them, and to be with people who actually care for and understand me. They are the ones who produced this relationship in the first place, as they never cared about my emotional state while I was living with them, and we only had a superficial relationship based on physical needs anyway. Don’t let your conscience weigh you down. Sometimes your own drawing of boundaries for self-protection and -preservation is what they need to grow too (but don’t expect them to).
• Drawing boundaries gets easier. I sometimes fear taking time for myself not only affects my reputation to my professors/colleagues, but drives my friends away, making them question my loyalty and thus our friendship as a whole. This is not the case. As long as you clearly communicate what you need and can/cannot do at the time, even if it’s at the last second when you’ve already made plans, anyone worth being around will understand and not hold it against you.
• The suicidal thoughts disappear, and the depression becomes less frequent with time. First semester of freshmen year, I was riddled with lapses in my mental state, which filled me with immense confusion, especially after I had just escaped my family. It made me question if I really had made the right decision in moving away from them, if anything would ever make me happy. This reaction came from the sudden schism placed upon me in relation to my peers, who hadn’t just come from a broken household. It made it impossible for me to relate with anyone or have friends for the first few months to a year that I was in college. The smallest triggers have set me off ever since then too, ranging from feeling exhausted and unmotivated while on the computer to having a full-on panic attack during class. As my mindset has changed, however, it became easier to open up to people, and thus easier to make friends, and in turn to heal, grow, and thrive.
• The hyperalertness and exhaustion disappear. When I first got to college, just hearing other people in the same dorm as me exhausted me. Just walking to the cafeteria was all I could do after class because being around other people was just so exhausting, as I was always on high alert, just as my parents always taught me. The more time I spent doing things I enjoyed, making friends who imbued me with confidence and energy, and growing in all these other ways, my stamina increased while my sense of danger decreased. Now I have energy to go to class, get food, go to the gym, to work, to do homework and socialize all in one day – and even if school in general is exhausting and I need to take a day off here and there, I find enjoyment in a certain level of tiredness.
• People aren’t scary anymore. Because of all the things I’ve already mentioned, making friends and becoming more independent, I don’t feel like I’m constantly in danger around people anymore. When I’m in a new situation, I generally feel like I can handle it because I understand that most people aren’t looking to pick apart my mind and soul at every given second – only someone who is very mentally disturbed (like my family) would do such a thing – and if I make a mistake, I remind myself that I’m still learning how social situations function after getting out of the hell hole that was my household. For the most part, though, most people are too self-absorbed to care about what anyone else is doing and don’t give a flying fuck.
• I can recognize unhealthy/toxic behavior in other people and in my own thoughts a lot easier. Anyone whose energy rubs me in the wrong way is ignored; as I’ve already had a lot of experience dealing with toxic people in my family and can more easily recognize my triggers to when I used to live with them, having been away from them and with more easy-going people now, I can quickly pick up on someone’s toxic behavior. I had a fight with my friend recently, and just realized that since I didn’t/don’t feel I could say my side of the issue, just like my family would have done to me when I lived with them, that that friendship probably isn’t healthy for me anymore – I should feel able to speak my mind without the fear of being minimized in the face of someone else.
• I’m interested in dating??? I’ve never been a very outwardly romantic person in my real life, but now, I’m wondering if it’s because I was forced to become a statue of a human around my family, seeing as they jumped on any emotion that wasn’t focused on themselves. Now, I find myself wanting to scream my feelings to the world sometimes – not just negative ones, but positive ones too. I’m not so worried about being judged for my emotional reactions, and in fact feel that I’ve been able to grow closer to the friends I have now when I’ve allowed myself to show and feel more of what’s going on inside me. I may want to extend this to my current crush too !
• Being alone in a crowded space isn’t lonely anymore. I always feared I was “doing something wrong” if I didn’t always have someone with me – whether in the cafeteria, running errands, or otherwise – as I did when I was living with my parents. They were my supervisors and ensured I wasn’t “alone” in the world. That isn’t true – I’m very much someone who needs time to myself, and my parents only proved to be a force that withheld my agency from me as they constantly made decisions for me. Being alone in a busy place puts me at ease sometimes more than being with another person, as I’m allowed to observe and meditate in my own little space without anyone directly around me.
• The trauma… it slowly dissipates, becoming less with time – and, slowly, you get to become who you always wanted to be and never could before. I know this one sounds like the cliche line from every story in human history, but hopefully all of my former points have demonstrated this. I still deal with my trauma in my daily life – every day, pretty much. I don’t go many days without thinking about it. But it’s no longer a behemoth overshadowing every thought in my head and every action I take. It doesn’t impede my energy and mood every moment; it’s a little observer that sits on my shoulder, not separate from me, as that would be impossible, but no longer commanding all of my attention nor possessing the loudest voice amongst all the things swirling in my head. I have to gauge it, watch it, make sure it isn’t taking over too many of my thoughts, but also listening to it when it speaks, taking what it says into account. I have to take care of myself sometimes in ways that no one else understands – neither friends, colleagues, college staff, nor professors – and that in itself can be lonely and exhausting, even depressing at times. It isn’t easy. My development up until this point hasn’t been out of mere spontaneous happenstance – I’ve been going to therapy since freshman year, and still find myself overwhelmed by all the thoughts – all the voices – blurting things out in my head. However… I also find myself doing and thinking things – encountering new situations – I never would have imagined possible before, when I was in middle school and high school, living under the toxic roof of my family.
  

Most days are still hard. I still have a long way to go, that’s for sure – but the amount of recovery I’ve made up until now, in such a short amount of time, has already made me cry on more than one occasion, knowing in how dark a place I’ve come from, and how much farther I can still go.

Don’t give up. You can get through this. You will get through this, and things will be better if you keep your mind focused on what matters, which is your health.

I’m nowhere near complete with my recovery, but more than anything that fact gives me hope on how much I know I can still improve. I’m already feeling the effects substantially after only 2 years! I hope hearing my experience and progress with a lifetime of trauma recovery will give you hope too. So many people talk about the elusive “light at the end of the tunnel” that they reach once one has “recovered,” but so few people talk about the actual steps you take in the darkness, and how scary and exhausting and lonely and frustrating that can be. I might talk about that more in another post, but I hope this was helpful for anyone else going through a hard time.

I wish only mental clarity and hearty happiness upon anyone else trapped in a similar situation. I didn’t think I could make it, but here I am. I know you can too.