=hacked persons=

One of the worst legacies of a certain kind of child abuse, because it is so pernicious and because it can take so long to recognize, or even be aware of, is the inability to identify what it is you truly want in life.

I don't mean being unable to express what you want; in this case, you don’t even know what you want. Except to say that what you want is what you’ve been taught to want, which is what your abuser wants, what the person in power wants. And the person in power is anyone you feel reason to fear—and that can be almost anyone. Even after the initial abuser is long gone from your life what remains is what has been inscribed in you going forward and that is the need to secure for yourself whatever circumstance will make you feel safe. And what experience has taught you is that safety depends on insuring that those around you are pleased with you, that you’ve made them happy.  

Your antennae is ever honed on this goal. Your inner radar is always scoping out another person’s desires and how you can meet them. You’re very good at this. You do it virtually unconsciously. You’re a shape-shifter. You can be anything to virtually anyone at anytime. As a result, you’ve entirely lost consciousness of what you want as an individual because all you understand about what you want is to want what others want, because that’s what safety is. It's as if your personality, whatever remains of it after the initial trauma, has been hacked. 

To compensate you find that in any social circumstance you must constantly ask yourself “Do I really mean what I’m saying?” “Do I really want to do what I just agreed to do?” “Is this situation right for me?” You have to monitor what you’re saying and interrogate yourself because you can’t trust yourself to speak up spontaneously on your own behalf or act or even think according to your own interests. In the moment, you honestly don’t know what you mean and don’t mean, what you believe and what you’re just pretending to believe, what you really want to do or what you're doing because you've already unthinkingly surrendered your will to someone else. 

A lot of the time you can't answer these questions until hours, even days afterward, when you’re alone, rerunning the encounter in your memory for the thousandth time. At that point, you might say to yourself “Why did I say that? Why did I do that? Why did I agree to that? I don’t want any of that!” Worse, it can sometimes take years, a career, a house, children, an entire marriage before you can answer.

You come to realize that it’s so much easier to avoid people altogether or, when in the unavoidable presence of people, to become mute, as invisible as possible. You can’t trust yourself. You certainly can’t assert yourself. If you're asked, you find it difficult to even say where you might want to go for dinner. "Oh, wherever you want to go." "Whatever you want to do" is the default answer always on your lips. People are dangerous for you. They can, without even intending it, hijack your will. They are like radio interference easily obscuring the very weak signal coming from somewhere far away inside you. The only time you're clear about what you want is when you're alone. That's the only time you feel safe enough and important enough to please.

Worst of all, it can take you half your life to even recognize what is going on and that there are corrections and compensations you need to make if you're ever to have any hope of locating yourself. Half or more of your life goes by before you understand that you don’t know who you are or what you really want out of life. Even then, you may never know for sure and staring into that empty void at your center you apprehend what is the most terrible self-knowledge of all. The knowledge that there is nothing there.

At that point of no return, you can't help but wonder if, in your case, the examined life was the only life not worth living.