holiday trauma

30 Dec, 2025

going home to family throws you back into a lot that you thought you had gotten over. it brings up a lot of crap you wanted to forget and turns you into a person that is far less mature. especially as someone with their fair share of childhood trauma.

over the course of the last three years of college in a different state, i have been able to step away from the emotional turmoil of home and think about home a little more objectively. the process of working through the pain that has been caused and going on a journey of forgiveness has been complicated, but i have come a long way from where i was three years ago. i've come to recognize the things that really are my fault. but i have also been able to start recognizing what wasn't. but whenever i go home, it starts to get confusing again. and it gets ten times worse when i revert emotionally and relationally back to a 16-year-old.

today's problem was trying to convince my family that they were wrong. i know their strong opinions about things like theology or health or what it means to be a good person. and based off of everything i've been learning the last few years in my prestigious, albeit stuck-up, great books program, i'm pretty sure they are wrong. and if i feel like i have been so enlightened, why wouldn't i want them to be too? especially if they hadn't gotten the same schooling as i have. i suppose in my mind, if someone knows more about something than you do, or even if they have a different perspective, it's worth hearing them out. and if they have new information, it's not a bad thing for your opinion to change. it's actually a very intelligent thing.

but perhaps that was my mistake. because of course instead of being taken that way, it turns into blaming me for being the one who is argumentative, prideful, unteachable, and ungrateful--never mind the fact that i was the one who brought the topic up in the first place. of course, were i in my normal mental state back at school, i should have been able to react to this maturely and from a place of security, because i know i have been working on all of these things for the last several years. but instead of doing that, i argued against it, thereby destroying the entire case i had been making. because i am mentally unwell, of course i started crying like a two year old, making accusations, and lost all control of my emotions.

the worst part was that my aunt would not let up. she kept pushing my buttons even though i said that i didn't want to talk anymore, and she said multiple times we would come back to the conversation when we "had a moment to calm down," as if she wasn't the one causing it in the first place. it went from a conversation about the state of health in america to a conversation about the way i treated my mom in high school and how she did absolutely nothing to deserve it, and she is the only reason i got into school in the first place. ¹

it got so bad to the point where my oldest cousin called her out, saying "mom, just stop. go away. can't you see it's not helping??" to which, she replied that he was being disrespectful to her, but he dragged her out of the room, for which i was grateful. at this point, i was crying uncontrollably and couldn't control my breathing, but my mom stepped in for once, saying that i just needed to hear that i was doing well and had improved over the years. (she was right.) finally everyone shut up and it took me probably 20 minutes to calm down.

i couldn't stop thinking that everyone was probably right, and that i was a horrible person. even reading back everything i've written makes me think to myself how much of a terribly ungrateful human i am. that i'm the type of person who just has to be right, who's entitled, selfish, and stuck up. and i guess that's what i'm afraid of. i'm afraid that regardless of my years of trying to heal and working on myself and my issues and growing in relationships with my family and the people around me, i'm still the same idiot 16 year old who didn't care about anyone but herself and was willing to say or do anything to get her way. who was so convinced that she was right, who yelled and threw things, and couldn't control herself. who was told that she was gonna end up in jail, never gonna get a job, and would end up on the streets.

maile from college would say that those are signs of manipulation and abuse. when i revert, i say that it is all my fault all along.

in the end, though, everyone is on their own journeys. i have no idea how things could impact other people, and for all i know the claims i was making about freaking america could have triggered someone else into saying the things they said to me. maybe they were insecure. maybe they were uncomfortable. i'm not the only one hurting. and that doesn't mean "my trauma wasn't valid," it means we're all a little traumatized and we need to have grace for one another.

i think i also learned today that there is wisdom in expressing one's opinions. if i know i can't take the way someone else will respond to what i have to say, maybe it's not worth saying. if i can't have conversations like that, maybe my family and i will never see things the same. maybe i don't have to prove i'm right. and maybe that's okay.