Picking up the shards

How do you cope and get over trauma and mental health issues? With time, effort, energy and difficult self mental reflection ultimately. Finding distractions to fill the empty hours. Forcing yourself to take care of yourself while dealing with the demons raging inisde until they finally quiet down into slumber. Hobbies and someone to listen to you really helps too. Its a process and it doesn't happen overnight, that's for sure. I've spent years suffering in a mental fog, struggling to live life through overwhelming feelings of pain, depression, and shame that formed layers of ice between me and the rest of the world. Locked up behind the walls I built, I wandered through the years dragging shame, gulit, and hatard behind me. These chains I have carried far too long, and never deserved to be handed to begin with. My past haunts me to this day and it reflects in every interaction with other people. I've always shyed away from the people I actually like for fear of being humilated, and I have struggled to trust and open up to the few friends I made in life. I still flinch away if someone moves too fast too close to me or gets angry around me. I still look at food I bought or someone hands me and have to remind myself I'm actually allowed to consume it. I still struggle to voice being hungry without expecting to be punched in the stomach or smacked in the face for asking for food. It took me years to realize and fully understand I didn't deserve any of the abuse inflicted on my mind and body during my childhood. My silence over my childhood was forced and carefully constucted by both my parents, not just Jeff. My mom was nearly compliant in my abuse, esp after I finally broke down and told her about it. Her refusal to believe and help me utterly shatterd my trust in her. It broke My trust in ever being protected from him, and later made me never feel safe in general. Mom should have let me dial the phone that long ago day instead of smashing the reciever in my face when I tried to call 911 for help. I wonder what she would have done if I had shown her that box hidden under the false bottom of the closet in thier bedroom, filled with VHS tapes and old pictures. Would that have changed things or would she have simply destoryed all the evidence in a fit of rage? The blame and shame for my abuse lays squarely at my parents feet. Its not mine, and never was. They where adults who knew better and choose to abuse thier kids horrifcally anyway. My siblings and I never had a chance. My biggest crime was simply being born into the family. I held the belief for years I was the only one Jeff victimized. I now know none of the three of us where spared from our father's torture, and we all 3 carry our own scars from him. Davids words over the phone proved that. My brother is finally ready to talk about his own hidden chapters in that family too. I don't look forward to that conversation. I should have known I wasn't the only one he was vicutmizing in that house. I gotta drop the chains that surround me. Its time to try and let my past go and foucs on healing, and living for real instead of just surviving every day.