Letters by Caleb Pt. 2

What do we do when those around us fail us?  

When dealing with my trauma, this is a question I must ask myself time and time again. It is impossible to go through this walk of healing alone, and I think that why the shortcomings of those who we love can hurt so much. 

As a warning, this letter is going to be a fair bit heavier than my first. But I promise it ends on a high note. 

Some of my loved ones do not believe that mental illness can be serious. Some people who we rely on simply fail through their own struggles. Our family can struggle to properly address and understand our pain, which can sometimes hurt even more than any traumatic incident. I come from an extended family with both an extensive history of mental illness and a lack of cultural knowledge of how to acknowledge mental illness as real and painful. My family comes from Appalachia, where mental illness can be heavily stigmatized. 

My parents either refused to take me to a therapist or talked me out of going to therapy three separate times that I can remember. Other times, they simply failed to realize something was wrong, even when it should have been obvious. In third grade, I drew a picture of a man breaking into my house and hurting me; nothing was done even when my parents were told. 

Before I continue, let me be clear that my father was a fantastic father and we love each other very much. However, everybody makes mistakes – it means we’re human. My love for my father is why it hurts so much when he makes mistakes. My father, more than anything else when I was a child, struggled at healthily addressing my trauma. We never even talked about the incident which caused my trauma until I moved out of the house. He is aware that I will be telling the following stories and he has apologized to me for them all. We love each other, which is why what mistakes he has made hurt so much. 

In sixth grade, I specifically told my father “I feel sad no matter what I do.” My father, being diagnosed with both anxiety and depression himself, should have known something was wrong. Nonetheless, he assured me that because I felt kind of okay when I listened to music, nothing was wrong.

In 11th grade, my father told me that I didn’t have any kind of anxiety disorder because I had “never been to the emergency room hyperventilating.”  

One time when I was seven, I had a panic attack while getting a haircut. My hair had been pulled a little hard and I had spent the rest of the time crying and wanting to run away. I didn’t know why I wanted to run, but it felt as if I had to either get away or be killed. I was having a flashback to the incident which gave me PTSD. My father told me I needed to “toughen up” and then he forbade me from watching any TV for the weekend as a punishment for crying. He then made me apologize to the hairdresser for crying.  

My father has apologized for all of this before, but that doesn’t mean the pain is gone. I have forgiven my father for his mistakes, but that does not mean I never feel pain because of his mistakes.  

To be honest, I still don’t really know how to handle the pain of the failure of people like my father to comprehend my trauma. You are always told that forgiveness is the answer but nobody tells how to stop hurting from sixteen years of people you love not understanding just how hurt you are. 

I often bully myself for not having forgiven some people for what they have done to me.  

Do not for one second think you are a bad person because you have trouble forgiving. I want to tell you that your pain, whatever it is, is deep and legitimate. When you have been deeply and legitimately hurt, it takes time to forgive.  

It is also okay to not be ready to forgive somebody. You do not owe people your forgiveness. They have already been forgiven by Christ Our Lord; you can take your time. The person who needs your forgiveness is you and on your own terms. 

I think what we do when those we love hurt us, is to be honest. Before I had forgiven my father, I had still talked with him about issues from the past. Even though I wasn’t ready to forgive, the simple act of vulnerable honesty that I had been hurt provided some healing. And you don’t have to be ready to forgive to start the healing journey. If you haven’t already, you can start the healing right here, right now. 

All it takes is an admission of pain.  

You are not alone.