Your Opinion of Me in A Childhood Lost

was never good.
I’m not sure why, exactly. But you always thought the worst of me. And you often told me so. You’re a brat. You’re spoiled. You’re manipulative. Why don’t you care? You really hurt me. Do you think we like you? You don’t like me. You’re irresponsible. You’re selfish. You’re ungrateful. DON’T you dare fall into self pity! I don’t care what you want. I don’t care what you feel. You’re wrong. You’re selfish and manipulative for trying to make me feel bad for you. I give you everything. You have no feelings.
And, after all that, I love you so much! Everything I do is for you. I’m so proud of you. I love you.
I believed you. I really did. For most of my life, I really honestly and even earnestly believed you.
What was the alternative for me? Well, in reality the alternative was a viscous snarling hateful woman who found terrifically cruel ways to hurt me. So I suppose, I did have a choice. My choice was just unbearable. I was in a terrible double bind. For most of my life, I had to either believe you or suffer the consequences of what you told me I was.
Unbearable, too, was acknowledging your opinion of me. The contrast between your opinion and reality shook me to my core with terror, rage, frustration, and a very deep sadness. A sadness that seemed deeper than the ocean. It’s a sadness that is to this day, so deep I am afraid of it. I am afraid of my own sadness. I’m afraid of being swallowed whole by it.
Maybe that is why I really don’t like to cry. I’m not sure if I’ll ever stop. I’m never sure when I’ll stop. Sometimes, it goes on and on for days. Or months. I never really know.
This secret of mine- your opinion of me which I believed was the truth of me- was my greatest shame. This secret of who-you-told-me-I-was-and-who-I-believed-I-must-be was crippling. When people spoke to me, I stared at them in horror. I was paralyzed with fear. I couldn’t do or say anything for the fear of revealing what I really was. I was petrified to expose my true self to them. What if they found out?
More poignantly, I didn’t know how you knew these things about me. You just knew. How did you know? By my actions or words, is what I reasoned. Or rather, what I experienced. If I was silent and did nothing, the accusations ceased. At least they slowed down. It was an ebb of the relentless tidal wave of labels that you poured over me. I could control it to some extent. I could at least, turn the nozzle to low.
A slow poison is still a poison, however. And the cost to me to turn that nozzle down was… well, I actually do not know. I really cannot quantify what the effect of that was. Certainly I lost objective experiences. I can name a few off the top of my head now, but… what were the far reaching consequences? By that I mean just socially? What would my life had been like to live as a normal person and not a functioning mute?
Who would I be if I hadn’t been force fed this poison every day of my life, from birth to now?