This Is How All The Abuse Adds Up by guest @kevinbarhydt

*Trigger Warning: Abuse* 

“Trauma is something that overwhelms your coping capacities and confronts you with the thought: “Oh my God, it’s all over, and there’s nothing I can do. I’m done for. I may as well die.”

~ Dr. van der Kolk

…

If the body keeps score…I’m completely fucked.

My mother relinquished me at birth. Afterward, there was a time, nine short years to be exact, when I was unaware of the scorecard. Adoption was a good thing, or so I was told.

A nine-year-old can’t spell compounding traumas, but my body didn’t need a thesaurus to define the inner ache in my bones, my stomach that churned with acid reflux, daily diarrhea, my blood pushing chemicals to a central nervous system now primed for fight, flight or fuck-it. Compounding daily, hourly, minute by minute, the scorecard mounted.

Nine years is a lifetime for a kid, but how time does fly when you’re having fun. That’s what my 4-H leader had us believe as his sister fed us brownies and he took us little nine-year-old boys to his room to show us his penis. The time sure did fly by, and so did my sexual worth. Fight, flight or fuck-it?

Fight? How?

Flight? Go where?

Get fucked?

Oh.

That.

Right.

I was now a piece of meat.

Abandonment Followed by Abuse

The abandonment by my birth mother set a strong foundation for some pretty significant neurological rewiring, but perhaps if that had been the “only” instance of trauma I might have found my way through life fairly unscathed. Being molested at nine kind of threw the scorecard into high gear, but again, perhaps if I had “only” experienced abandonment and abuse, the actual tally would have been manageable.

Adopted? Check.

Abused? Check.

What’s next on the scorecard?

Compound Abuse

Rachel assured me I could do some long-form writing here, but I already put the details into a two hundred eighty page book, so perhaps we’ll do the “reader’s digest” version just to get us started in the right direction:

I started smoking when I was 10, drank my first six-pack of Schlitz when I was 11, ODd on barbiturates in school when I was 12, was put in the back of a cop car when I was 13, taken out of my home when I was 14, lived in two foster homes, a group home, a detention center, was raped when I was 15, my oldest daughter was born when I was 16, my youngest was born when I was 17, I joined the Navy at 18, got married at 19, my wife left me for another man when I was 20, I was thrown out of the Navy, robbed my childhood friend’s mother’s house and sentenced to 45 days in county jail when I was 21, was arrested for assault, drugs and a DWI that I couldn’t remember when I was 22, and then, when I was 23, life got hard.

I’m just saying, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of hope with a scorecard that tallies up compounding traumas like mine. Or maybe yours. Oh, hell, like so damn many of us.

Recovery and Hope

Like so many of us, I thought that the past would always be prologue, and I had accepted that these compounding traumas would forever be my burden, that I was simply destined to drag those heavyweight balls and chains behind me forever. Then the day came, after so many years of hopelessness when I learned that the multitude of traumas were the heavy balls, but that the chains attaching them to me were mine to break.

So maybe we just say fuck the scorecard, because truth be told I’m not simply a sum of my traumas. In fact, I’m not a sum on anybody’s scorecard, not even my own.

I am an unimaginable number, an uncountable quality of traumas and achievements, a true concoction of all my hopes and hopelessness. I am much more than my worst goddamned nightmares, and I am far beyond my wildest fucking dreams.

So this is how it all adds up: my scorecard isn’t a scorecard at all. There is no summation of my past, present, and future, but instead a magnificent example of the mutability of me. A mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual evolution that upon each sunrise is altered and advanced with every decision I make, every breath that enters my body, and regardless of how many times my heart beats, I do the math and I know beyond a doubt that I am going to go on, that I will remain even beyond the heavens and the boundaries of time.

Every moment of abuse since my birth that has twisted and turned me into a seemingly misshapen creature of instincts in collision has also sharpened and shaped my absolute innate ability to thrive in the face of traumas, and to choose life even in the absence of certainty.

Fuck keeping score. I’m not even playing the game.

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Connect with Kevin Barhydt here:
[email protected]
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https://www.kevinbarhydt.com
https://twitter.com/kevinbarhydt
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Bio:

Kevin Barhydt is a YouTube creator and the author of Dear Stephen Michael’s Mother. His YouTube channel creates a safe space for survivors of addiction, abandonment, adoption, and child sexual abuse, and to explore the healing process.

Abandoned by his mother at birth, Kevin was enveloped in a labyrinth of adoption, addiction, and child sexual abuse. By age 20, a shell of the boy he once was, Kevin succumbed completely to a suicidal lifestyle of drug dealing and prostitution. At 45, after many years of recovery, Kevin began a painful journey to uncover his origins and the hopeful search for his mother. His book, “Dear Stephen Michael’s Mother”, chronicles the unfolding of these stories. The interwoven perspectives offer an unflinching look at the myriad ways life can cloak us in darkness and helplessness yet still resonate with joy and recovery.

Kevin Barhydt’s life is summed up with these eight words: to be of service to God and others. As a YouTube creator, actor, educator, and disability technology evangelist – as a son, husband, father, and friend – he gives of himself with one expectation: that you can only keep what you have by giving it away.

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Read more about Rachel’s experiences in the award-winning book, Broken Pieces.

She goes into more detail about living with PTSD and realizing the effects of how being a survivor affected her life in

Broken Places, available in print everywhere!