What are they? Well according to the internet, these are wounds or injuries made by a bullet or small enough missile passing through & out of the body. Pretty graphic huh?! But that is what it is. So, imagine you find yourself in the middle of an intense gun fight & you get hit in the crossfire. The adrenaline pumping through you masks any physical feeling, & you remain unaware. Your flesh is rupturing from the penetration caused by a stray, life threatening, bone crushing article, so immensely invasive, yet probably only the size of half your palm. This article bullets through & exits out the other side of your body. It is so ravenous, so ferocious, so urgent in its onslaught, it devours any & everything in its path, ruining arteries, puncturing organs, vital bone density, the works. Good news: It exits. Bad news: It leaves you injured or even crippled, scarred & sentenced to a season of healing. Time to stop, time to heal. Time, which if we’re being honest, we do not always have, considering our looming life goals & the pace at which life runs on the course to attaining these goals.

You are left with an indelible significant scar. “So friggin badass” some may think of you as a hero. But let’s be real … It’s all fun & games until you can’t go to the bathroom on your own, or until your cute lil butt cheeks are exposed by virtue of a gentle breeze brushing through the opening of your hospital gown. LOL. “It’s your own fault for being caught up in a gun fight in the first place, why were you even there?!” others may judge, “Oh my goodness, that really happened to you?!” some may show real concern or “I’m so sorry that you endured that, how can I be here for you?” others may genuinely express concern & empathy, NOT PITY!! There’s a difference.

Yes sure, we’re not all the lead characters in some thrilling action movie, but in some senses, we’ve all, at one point been affected & disadvantaged by the ‘exit wound experience’. But what I wanna talk about here is much bigger than the wound from an intrusive bullet. Weighing in & toppling the scale completely onto its head is the crater sized contusion from the explosion called…emotional abuse! Now this is an exit wound worth talking about.

“The bullet”

Emotional abuse in a relationship is by far, one of the hardest, most soul-destroying types of exit wounds to heal from, because it cannot be seen, yet a scar is left behind, an invisible undeniable one. That just adds insult to injury, if I’m being frank. LOL. While living through this mosh-pit of a relationship, I imagine this psychologically jarring experience to look like a cut fighting to heal while submerged in a type of liquid. Have you ever tried to dry a cut in water? It’s nearby impossible. Water or any moisture causes a wound to swell up & it permits entry to unwanted bacteria which eventually leads to infection & soon after, to septic shock.

So, it seems kinda important to protect the wound from water or germs, by doing the basic first call to action; surfacing it out from under the water into breathable air. In other words, start breathing again. Initiate conversations about your unhappy situation, however crooked, disconnected or detached from reality your explanations may come across to others. JUST START BREATHING. This is one of the most important tools to use when trying to move toward the light at the end of this dark tunnel. Do not leave the situation to fester. Do not suffocate it with silence.

Yes, a laceration from an emotionally abusive, psychologically injuring relationship, leaves no visible scar, but the damage is real. It is also not exposed to the vital nutrients or the blood-borne oxygen essential for healing. It is not in the light; it exists internally which while experiencing its symptoms, makes it so hard to describe or articulate in plain simple words. It’s as if it were a figment of your deluded imagination, never getting a fair chance to be real or to even form a scab, as if it were permanently subdued by water.

In practical reality, as you’re flailing for help while in the relationship, you grasp for analogies & examples, trying to make sense of what you’re feeling, but feelings & emotional stirrings are most times so hard to line up with logic, so you give up on your attempts to explain. You feel frustrated with yourself because you’re so inundated with conflating information, so uneducated on the topic or at a lack of vocabulary. A wave swooped in from left field & you were caught off-guard. Your mind reels with self-disappointment because you can’t thoroughly comprehend your own experiences, let alone describe them with concision or precision. Then feelings of being a burden to others, the pelting down of discontent & constant inner conflict play up. You become exhausted, suffer burn-out mentally & physically, there is just no peace. At one point it feels like your organs are being churned like butter. ON THE REAL THOUGH, that’s what it feels like. So, you just end up conceding, crying, hoping that somehow, someway they’d get it, they’d see what your insides looked like, the knots that your intestines were constantly in, because you could barely string a sensible sentence together. You’re secretly hoping that an x-ray machine could show them exactly what it looked like inside you. Everything is upside down.

When the opportunity to talk with someone arises, you scramble to get as much information in as possible so as to paint the perfect picture with as much detail as possible, because context is everything. People on the outside of an emotionally abusive relationship often look in at the issues as common problems that should be easy to walk away from. BUT THEY REALLY DO NOT UNDERSTAND!  To them you seem a little crazy, just a little coo coo, almost psychotic at times. This later causes you to isolate, or even become a hermit. The anxiety is unbearable. Simply put, YOU ARE TORMENTED & all this in the midst of a trauma bond forming. It is so securely fastened, & yet you were completely unaware. For the sake of simplistic clarity, let’s dismantle the formation of a trauma bond.

1. They love bomb you & make you feel like the center of their universe. You can barely believe that someone can be this deeply besotted with you but it feels amazing & you don’t want it to stop.
2. They gain your trust & start making you depend on them for everything from every day menial things to deep emotional support.
3. Then they start shifting to criticism. First, it’s very insignificant, not noticeable at all, even seems normal because at this early stage it is still easy to dismiss the criticism. But it starts to grow & it becomes a lot more noticeable & much more perversive.
4. Then they gaslight you. Here, they convince you that your perception of reality is incorrect, that what you know & are certain happened, didn’t happen that way at all. They know best & you need to be more vigilant about things around you. You start believing them & start doubting yourself. You place all trust in them, because they are so extremely self-assured & confident in their beliefs, or so it seemed. They WILL NOT take any responsibility & even convince you that everything that is wrong is your fault.
5. Resignation stage – Your usual go-to methods of problem solving just don’t work, no conflict resolution methods work anymore. They will come up with a host of reasons as to why your attempts are flawed & then create chaos.  Your family, friends etc. may have tried to get you away from the relationship yet you still make excuses for this behaviour & stay & lastly…
6. You are now emotionally addicted. Your nervous system is entirely dysregulated & you are looking for anything to make you feel better. They provide both the problem (the downer) & the solution (the upper), so you’re entirely dependent on them. You are constantly running on high stress hormones, looking for the next dopamine fix. You convince yourself that real love & lasting relationships take work and you are doing the work. You become aware of the toxicity but you’re still optimistic, making more excuses about why it would be right to stay, like a junkie! IF YOU ARE READING THIS & THIS IS YOU…GET OUT NOW!

“The injury“

By what seems like a miracle, the relationship ends. After an insurmountable battle at attempting everything to try & make it work, the tailspin of back & forth, make-up break-ups ad nauseam, eventually comes to a screeching holt. DEAFENING SILENCE, & now you are left with the exit wound, the remnant of the immediately recent, highly toxic bullet; the relationship. “SHIT, how did I get caught in this crossfire?”, “At which point did the bullet hit me & why didn’t I feel it?” Honey, you didn’t, because you couldn’t see it coming. No one does! The atomic culmination of it all over time was so incremental, so subtle, so miniscule. You’re only ever really able to see it when you’re neck deep in it or if a spotlight is forced upon it. The light reveals that it’s pure evil in nature, calculating & cold.

You’re not crazy, dumb, naïve, or blind. YOU WERE A HUMAN BEING FALLING IN LOVE, TRUSTING THIS LOVE, so be easy on yourself. YOU need YOU more than ever, right now!

All this aftermath is now left in your lap & figuratively you are raw, frazzled, defensive, beat up. You’re alive, but barely breathing, you’re hyper-sensitive even to the touch, you’re exhausted & when one is tired, we are annoyed, irritated, & our vigilance is depleted. You’ve been fending off the mental onslaughts for such a long time, fighting fantoms in the dark. You’ve been conditioned to eat, sleep, shower, & even go to work with these imaginary boxing gloves ALWAYS ON, ALWAYS READY. It’s like you’re tiptoeing in the pitch dark, blindfolded, prepped for any attack from any side. At the faintest sound of any threat, you swing a punch into the thin air, dishing the first blow. Before it hits you, you swing as an advantage in your defence strategy, buying you time to regroup & steadily position yourself for the war that is sure to come. The whispering voices that started out as faint harmless wisps, have grown into deafening roars over time. They’ve dulled your intuition shrouding it with constant criticism & have made you doubt & second guess everything. You don’t know how to trust yourself anymore. The confidence you once had – GONE, the fun-loving person you were – GONE, you’re not acting like yourself anymore, because there was an energy exchange, a siphoning of your existential character & you are left barren. That is what the corollary of a trauma bond feels like. Unbeknownst to you, you were dancing in a field of landmines. IT’S BAD!

You are one of the lucky ones to have made it out.  As difficult, heart wrenching or spiritually crushing as it may feel now Love, you are better for it, trust me!

So now you exhale & get ready to deal with the exit wound, which is ready to form a ‘pockmark’.

In walks your community of supporters. What is their role again?………. (part 2 to follow)