Any other trauma victims?

Funny story, this is one of the major reasons I filed for divorce.
- That... wasn't funny at all!
  
  No, it sure wasn’t!
  
  Maybe they were married to a clown?
- Why were you married to your mom?
  
  Insert “deliverance” banjo music here.
  
  What would life be like if you could file for other people's divorces?
- Have you ever told a funny family story and everyone around you recoils in horror?
  
  Like when our dog died, my dad tanned the hide, wore it as a cape, and played with the other dog?
  
  you learn not to after a while.
  
  We all have our own contexts for what is “normal.”
- Yeah same. Filed two weeks ago.
  
  Good for you. Hang in there, it’s worth it.
- Can't believe you were with my ex you ol stud 😏
- 😂

some of my earliest memories are lying in bed in terror waiting for the sound of my abusive fathers work truck to pull into the driveway. I got to where like a dog i could identify his specific truck as soon as it was in audible range. Sometimes I could pretend to be asleep and I might get left alone a while.
It's many decades later, I live in a very safe place and the patriarch who rules the roost here doesn't even raise his voice much less hit me. All the same i get a sharp spike of fear every time he pulls up in the driveway. It took me a few years of work and therapy to be able to stay downstairs and not have to flee upstairs when he got home.
It's shameful how many people's first bullies are the people they need to look to for safety. It really breaks you.
- I had a similar reaction when I heard our garage door open when my father got home.
- "save the traditional nuclear family" my ass
  if i had the chance to flee home as a teenager and live somewhere else, i absolutely would have done. even if it meant living among strangers.

Replace mom with dad, and this is my childhood.
You don't know trauma unless you've been raised by a bipolar narcissist with anxiety and anger issues. My dad was a master at sucking all the energy out of a room and ruining the vibe with his selfish, fear-mongering bullshit.
- Same here and it all starts with them opening a door and walking in. I hate that I still think about that feeling in my 30's.
  
  Know how you feel. I'm almost 40, and even though my dad has been dead for 5 years now, the feeling still won't go away. The PTSD is so bad that loud voices startle me, and I can't use a computer if someone is looking over my shoulder.
  My dad taught me how to lie and obsess over privacy so I wouldn't feel his wrath. I should be in therapy.
- 👋 hello trauma sibling

We had a long driveway. I quickly learned how to position myself to be able to see out the window and prepare before being seen.
That was also around the same time I learned how to quickly make a bug-out bag, a bit of cryptography(My dad and I had a code language, just in case), and just how far I can be pushed before physical response is my only response.
There isn't enough therapy in the world.
- Oof. Hope things are better for you and your dad
  
  Mostly, yeah. He's practically getting to live his dream these days, after going through a pretty long rough patch.
  I'm still untangling things, in my own way, but I can also recognize the strides I've been able to make with it. It's taken many a long year to get to the point where even talking about it didn't leave me shaking in anger or fear, and I consider that a major improvement. Shaking off the last shadows from the monster.

I've talked to a lot of people from all walks of life, and I've come to realize that one of the main things that sets people apart in adulthood is whether they were loved as kids. Those that were, and those that weren't, might as well come from different planets. It's so bad I very much go out of my way to avoid the topic.
They: Yeah I didn't always get along with my parents.
Me: So... how often did they beat you up?
They: Oh no, they never beat me. But my mother criticized me a lot, and my dad moped, sometimes.
Me: :-|
They: I'm kinda traumatized from all this.
Me: So... where did you spend last Christmas?
They: Well, among other things, I visited my parents, of course.
Me (who has cut of all communication for many years): o_O
- I’d urge you to give those who experienced a different upbringing than you the compassion you feel you deserve.
  It’s all relative and our traumas are relative too, to act as if you’re trauma is more than others is unfair to them and yourself if you expect people to give a shit about yours.

This is how I knew I didn't live in a happy home. My brother and I got along well when our father was not around. (I wouldn't say he was an abusive father. Just not a person anyone enjoys being around for extended time. He's an ex military man who's life was too rough for anyone to come out happy. And emotionally cold.)
- Pretty much same here, but dad was a cop. And not emotionally cold, which made it probably a different kind of fucked up. (Got both the I-love-yous and the getting-taken-care-of and the familial-physical-proximity, but then also got the "I'mma teach you
  <x>
  by screaming at you", "insulting and shaking you when you fail", and the "SHUT UP I'M TRYING TO WATCH THE NEWS" during dinners.)
  I'm pretty sure this is one of the reasons why today, as a grown ass adult, I just wish to stay at home by my wholesome / with the SO and never call my friends and family. I'm just content... nay, I'm hanging to my calm and peace with my life, to the point of it being a problem.
  
  This. And my family is like, why do you never come around???
  Spend 20 minutes with them, "you still dating her?! We think dating outside the race and a trans women... We just don't agree."
  Me "whelp, This has been fun. I'll see yall never."

The key enter the front door, and shit's about to get real.

- Those kids are literally me whenever anyone in the building makes a noise.

Had to have the landlord come and fix a relatively minor issue with our shower. About lost my mind making sure the place looked presentable for him to fix something he's responsible for. Trauma sucks

Man, my poor daughter.
This was her life. When her mom died she dealt with the guilt that followed her relief.
Having known her mom all of my life and seen everything she went through as a child, I wish some kind of ghost of Christmas past could take my daughter and show her so she can see that her mom wasn’t always like that. That at one time she was a little girl waiting on the day she could escape her own mom. At one point she was young and a lot like her.
I always figured they’d get it right when she grew up, but she never got that chance.
FUCK CANCER. Seriously.
- You know the truth and you can keep that alive.

When you hear your parents and sibling arguing in the house, and quickly take your phone out and open the dialer app "just in case"
- Honestly feel this... Will say for how much being a teenaged girl sucked I did learn the power of gaslighting and peer pressure which helped a lot. My dad and mom were always brawling with my sister and after it got used on me by my peers I realized since my dad was a momma's boy I could always threaten to tell my grandma, my mom was a religious nut so I could always bring up the devil and as long as I rearranged their arguments as "you're the crazy person" they couldn't figure out how to say shit back and would go away. I mean....still got bullied in winterguard, but weirdly helped my home life.
  (If you want to know my sister unfortunately died at 30 of natural causes, I'm practically NC with my dad and my mom found a religious cult who helped her with anger management so we're mostly cool now + she's no longer in the cult cause one of them claimed to curse her with a demon so worked out somehow...)
- You tryina call CPS on your parents? Must be bad 💀

I guess this is only funny if you were not abused as a kid.
- Ehm, I think the abuse is the joke. But the coming home part is just a stereotype (apart from drinking). The abusers I experienced become violent if slightly provoked or just randomly.
- I had a roommate that asked me if I was funny or had a happy childhood.
  
  Neither.

Change that to partner when you've been working from home

Welcome to the world of being an Indigenous Canadian teen in a non-Indigenous city in the 1990s ..... where you either get wrongly arrested, or you develop a sixth sense for the police

For me it's the sound of the garage door opening.
- This. You know your solitude is about to be broken.

Who was happy when their parents came home, and who sometimes peed their pants from sheer terror?
That's a real distinction to make.
- I'm in neither camp personally. I overheard my dad joke to my mom about how the best time to stop beating your kids is when they're old enough to fight back, and so I learned to fight against it, physically. Of course he didn't stop at first, I was small and weak, until one day soon after I cut his eye with my fingernail. That's when he finally decided to tone it down.
  And yet when that happened, I wasn't happy. I thought I was a monster for putting him in the hospital.
  
  My father stopped when I barged into his bedroom, heavy wooden stool held high above my head, ready to cave his skull in. I didn't have it in me, though, so he ended up with a swollen shin. I have never told him I was this close, and now that I've finally gone no contact, I doubt he'll ever know.

I would come home from school and watch TV or play around online until dad got home.
one day he came home after I was online and ripped the phone cable out of the wall and whipped me with it until I was bleeding. why? because he tried to call home and ask if I wanted anything for dinner. I got the whipping for dinner.
I was 12.
from ages 13-19 I had elaborate plans of how I would kill him and get away with it. every time he would scream at me, every time he would beat me, I would imagine what it would feel like to cut off his arms and legs while he was alive.
at 20 I left home. I'm much better now and don't have such dark thoughts anymore.
he told me years later that he was afraid of me because of the blank look I gave him. I told him he had every reason to be afraid with the same dead eyes and left it at that.
I learned so many life skills during that time in my life, and honestly can say in an emergency scenario I have no barriers to killing someone. I also do well in emergencies and keep a level head because of the years of physical and mental trauma.
interestingly enough I've used my "stare" at work in an office environment when a manager was threatening my job based on interoffice politics. I looked him dead in the eyes and told him I don't play games like him. If I want something done, I'll do it myself. Then casually asked him what kind of milage he gets on his car. Dude was spooked and left me alone lol.
my point is, trauma can be a strength that can be drawn from like a well if you're in need of it.
- If I want something done, I'll do it myself. Then casually asked him what kind of milage he gets on his car. Dude was spooked and left me alone lol.
  I mean this with all the compassion of a father/mother/friend/aunt/uncle/grandparent/priest/rabbi, but this is not something to gloat about my dude.
  
  when someone threatens my way of life for their own gain, it's not just an attack on me but my family.
  if someone is willing to use fear as a tool they better be ready to have it used against themselves. I understand that, and I hope they learned the same that day.
  I work well with others and try my best to work with anyone, but I'll be damned to sit back and allow someone to walk all over me.

That's my childhood in a meme.

I feel like the majority of people's default response to abuse is fear and/or submission. My much older brother was like that too.
I on the other hand always had anger and survival instinct instead, and remember even as a kid planning on how to use a knife in case it was needed, and going for the neck, or how to maybe escape a machete. Even being beaten nearly to death didn't stop me from doing what I wanted, and if anything only make my anger stronger then.
I wonder what determines how one will be? At least in my anecdotal data, it seems to be genetic. But then, why is most people's reaction to abuse fear and/or submission? Could it be thousands of years of human history, where conquering, enslavement, and pillaging led to an increased survival rate of the quiet ones passing down this trait? I'd imagine in much more ancient times, aggression against aggressors would have been more likely to have led to death after all than complacency.
And is this why we see less and less revolutions now as well, in part? Why society has become more tolerable against oppressors and injustices?
Idk. Just random thoughts had while sleepy on a really late night.