Yeah, that's why complex PTSD is its own diagnosis, being traumatized before you ever even had the chance to develop a "before" persona is a different beast from PTSD after you're old enough to remember a "before."
Non-victims will never understand us and victims of trauma that are less affected also have little pity for people who cope in ways they do not understand or have never needed.
Soil absorbs the water it’s given just as children absorb their environment and experiences. You can’t separate the water from the soil after it’s already been taken in.
People fail to understand that long term, repetitive, childhood abuse/trauma isn’t something that’s no longer in the past— it exists everyday through flashbacks, trauma behaviours and views, mental health, and physical health. They act as if it doesn’t have direct daily consequence on our everyday lives. They have the idea that the past evaporates after the second, minute, or hour passes. To just “get over the past” isn’t possible in the sense that we can easily, readily, walk away from it and without remnants of trauma following. The past is still here.
My past exists in the present day through my teeth with root canals after medical neglect, anger outbursts, rage spirals when people stand behind me, low empathy, inability to emotionally love, mental rituals to stop premonitions from coming true, belief that others have an underlying malicious motive, superiority complexes, fear of abandonment, etc. These facets of my personality and literal physical parts of me are an everyday consequence of my abuse.
It all circles back into cruel ignorance and expectations of normalcy that just aren’t possible for the lot of us. It’s especially disheartening when it’s spat out by other survivors (generationally abused families are the absolute worst for this). I feel like I’m forever trying to make the incomprehensible tangible, because I’m sick of suffering at the hands of ignorant people.