I can't.
This is not a statement of how I am a pacifist or that I don't believe in fighting.
This isn't a statement of how I never learned how to fight or am a coward.
I can not do ANYTHING when it comes to physical violence or confrontation. Arguing is fine. Debate is fine. Heated exchanges are fine, but when there is the looming threat of violence, I freeze. I lock up. I can not move. I can not think. I just stand there, frozen with fear, feeling like I am about to die.
I have some kind of twisted PTSD, caused by my violent father, reenforced by the endless years of neighborhood/school bullies and attacks. Year after year after year, my entire childhood, I had that trigger reenforced over and over and over. From the time I was 3 until I moved away from the East Coast when I was 21 and even some events and times after that, I had that issue re-triggered on an almost daily basis.
I have gone to a number of therapist and psychiatrists with this issue, looking for a treatment or cure. A medication or therapy that would help me overcome this issue. The SINGLE most damaging thing in my life.
The abuses, the attacks, the rape, the sexual molestations, watching my mother almost be murdered by my father multiple times... none of that has had as great an effect on my life as this issue.
It is the foundation and mortar for the self loathing and hate I feel towards myself. Knowing that I could never truly love someone or be loved because when push came to shove, all I could do was stand there like a waste while me or, gods forbid, someone I loved was beaten/raped/murdered.
How can you be worth anything if you can't be what those that need you, need you to be?
None of those therapists or doctors had a CLUE as how to help me. None of them.
When I was younger, it wasn't something that they even attempted to address and as an adult I have had every response from "I am sorry, I can't help you" to "It is just your scared inner child" to "You should just avoid places and things that would trigger that reaction in you"
Avoid those places and things? Like I had done my ENTIRE LIFE? Shutting myself away from interactions, places and people. Avoiding social gatherings and interactions because you never know when some asshole will start trouble.
All based on lived experiences where that is EXACTLY what occurred. Going to the park or the playground. To a friends house or someones birthday, only to be attacked by someone while I was there.
Having people whom I thought were my friends tell me "You disgust me" because I couldn't stand up to a bully or fight back while someone beat on me.
