Child abuse has been foremost on my mind lately. Namely, how utterly fucked up I am from it.

I want to become a specialist in child abuse. Advocacy, teacher intervention, and counseling with adolescent and adult survivors. I want to educate people on the subject. I want to write memoirs, and self-help guides, and academic works on the subject, and perhaps most of all, fiction that kids and teens can read and know that they are not alone.

I have recently learned (a little - basically the Wikipedia version) about complex ptsd. It's not like typical ptsd. It's a totally different diagnosis, stemming from chronic trauma, and can present without full-on flashbacks.

So.... Yeah. I totally have that.

I noticed the other day that I was having kind of emotional flashbacks. I often get completely emotionally overwhelmed at the thought of ding housework. Cleaning house was a huge issue for me in my childhood. I didn't pick up on it as quickly as reading or math, and my grandma didn't have any patience to teach me. But she had plenty of energy for punishment. If it wasn't perfect, if it wasn't done exactly right or exactly on time, I was in for a session of severe abuse.

Flash forward to the present day: I am an absolute perfectionist. If I cannot be absolutely certain that I can complete a task perfectly, and (this is important) without interruption, I will not begin it at all. I focus in on absurdly small details. I can spend hours cleaning the refrigerator. I use up every bit of energy in my body. By the end, I am frothing at the mouth from dehydration. And very little has gotten done. It is physically and emotionally exhausting. I can only do this once a month or so.

It is impossible for me to keep up with the messiness of everyday life.

My social skills, too, have suffered. I confuse deference with politeness. I wait and wait and wait on people. I don't express opinions unless someone has already expressed that opinion to a favorable response. I appear to be a follower or a parrot.

I am so afraid that people will reject me, that I lead them to do so. It is also exhausting. I have lost so many friends. It hurts to make more as I try to improve my social skills. It hurts because I know there is a chance that I will lose the next batch, too. It greatly discourages progress and practice.

That's another thing. I don't like doing anything I am not already good at. I have never been exposed to patient, encouraging tutelage. I don't even know how to take encouragement.