I never gave myself too much credit in life. I always thought of myself as a survivor and never equated that word with inner strength or success, I guess because we all have an instinct to survive, and I credited that instead.
I think of all of the horrors I survived both as a child and as a young adult. I won't go into it now, but I wrote about some of it over on blogster. Suffice it to say that if there are things people can do to children or young women to rob them of their sense of dignity and self-worth, then I likely experienced all or most of them in some form. Children internalize. They believe that it is somehow their fault that they were abused. If they weren't bad (behavior deserving of punishment), then they believe that it must have happened because they are tarnished somehow or unlovable.
Younger women are often as misguided, especially if they are sensitive and empathetic. They often mistakenly believe that they did or said something to deserve the abuse, or that if they behave differently- better- they can stop the abuse. Victims have no control over their abusers. Abuse is not about the victim. It is about the abuser.
To get back to what I was saying, I never thought of myself as strong because of the impact the abuse had on my life: the nightmares, the pervasive sense of fear and mistrust, in general- the PTSD. I cannot grasp how hurt and hopeless a person has to feel to commit suicide. Sure, I thought about it, many times in fact throughout my life. Why did I survive my son could not? I cannot answer that question, but I now understand how strong I truly am.
I am coping with this loss by reaffirming Life and all of its beauty. I am reaching out to those that I love and care about. I am enduring how vulnerable this makes me feel and learning to accept this feeling too as part of the Human Condition. I guess I'd rather allow myself to experience the anxiety of vulnerability rather than to feel nothing at all. But I also experience the love and caring of family and close friends, and I am looking for ways to make the people I care about feel loved and appreciated by me. From the prayer of St. Francis, "...For it is in giving that we receive...".