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Growing up in poverty there is adversity in just being alive. When life starts out with Traumatic events, everything has the potential to become a trauma, even life’s adversity.
First I want to take a brief look at adversity. I think we all can agree that everyone faces regular life adversities. These can be having a shortage of food for the family so the parent in charge of the budget, shopping, and cooking would likely buy cheaper foods to cook with and would likely make smaller portions to go around. Everyone would leave the table hungry but had something to eat.
It could also be a particular academic challenge from struggling just to maintain a C average and getting pressure from teachers and parents to apply yourself more.
Maybe it is just the challenge to handle everything on your plate. To me, adversity is anything that is challenging while Trauma is an event. But does adversity become Trauma? If so, When does adversity cross the line and become Trauma?
For me, A little adversity was when I found out that my infant niece had died in the wee hours of the morning. It was a trauma for my sister who was the mother of the infant, but for me, it was adversity. I didn’t know the baby but I was affected none-the-less.
I was just a young teen and it made me sad and I grieved a bit and I reacted to the shock of the news. I still feel sad for my sister who never seemed to get over the loss of her baby. I can only imagine the immense pain that comes from such a loss.
The daily abuse like sexual abuse, the verbal and emotional abuse all melded together with the regular life adversity. Living in a poor community in the Ghettos of Los Angeles on 204th Street in Torrance, California. It was the Hellhouse for me. I still have nightmares about that house on 204th street.
Hell House and the 204th street Gang.
Life was hard for Tina but as she got older life events began to change as well. Or should I say esculate? Tina was 15 now. She was attending the Christian School and hadn’t even stepped foot in a public high school yet. She probably wouldn’t have survived had she been enrolled in a public school in the ghetto of Los Angeles.
Misty had passed away and Mom brought Brenda back to California but Brenda just seemed to act out and wasn’t coping with the loss very well. She probably would have benefitted from therapy back then but Tina’s parents had too much to hide.
Mom had kicked Brenda out of the house. Brenda wasn’t complying with some house rules. She really wasn’t handling her life. What example of such a thing did she ever have? Tina still loved Brenda and felt Brenda needed love more than she needed discipline or tough love.
Tina missed Brenda since she was kicked out of the house. Brenda was sleeping in her boyfriend’s car. He wasn’t a very good guy. He was into drugs and he lived with his mom. But Tina still wanted to spend time with her sister.
Brenda made plans with Tina to meet up behind mom’s back. Brenda told Tina to sneak out of the house and meet her and her boyfriend at the end of the street. Their street was run by the 204th street gang. On one of the abandoned buildings on the corner read, “Tortilla Flats” in black spray paint with other graffiti.
A man or was it two men got lost one evening and pulled over to look at the map and because they did that right there in front of that building, they were mercilessly shot to death without provocation or cause. Just some crazy and violent gang banger decided to kill them because the Gang banger was a psychopathic killer.
This evening Tina went with the plan. She laid in bed awake until midnight. She got up, got dressed, and walked out of the house. She walked to the agreed-upon location in front of that junkyard looking place with the pile of tires in it. She sat down waiting for Brenda to show up but an hour had passed and Tina got up and was going to just go home and call it a night. But when she did she heard a gunshot and she felt the heat of a bullet pass by her arm.
Someone yelled from the dark to stand still. Tina couldn’t see anyone. She could hear one of the guys begging for her life. She could hear the one guy freaking out as the shooter fired the gun. Tina stood perfectly still. She was frozen and couldn’t move. She felt the heat of the bullet as it passed her cheek. She could hear the buzz it made as it passed by her ear and through her hair.
The shooter emptied his gun on her. Not one bullet grazed her. Not one bullet hit her. Then the shooter laughed maniacally while the other guy yelled for her to run. Just run and the shooter yelled that she couldn’t go home. She wasn’t allowed to walk down her street where she lived on 204th street or he would kill her. Fear pulsed through her body.
Just as she ran away from where she wanted to go which was home, a girl from church she used to know was riding up on her bike. She was not the same little girl she went to church camp with. She was scary.
Her name was Brenda too. Tina wanted to see her sister Brenda but this girl will have to do. Tina told her what happened and the girl on the bike took Tina on her handlebars and rode away. They went to a boy’s house and they wanted to smoke a cigarette. Tina took a drag off of it but didn’t like it and coughed.
They went back to the girl’s house where she lived with her grandparents and very strange relatives. They freaked Tina out. It was a scary place to be. the girl told Tina that she was now a devil worshipper. Tina didn’t sleep hardly at all that night.
She was abusive to her grandmother in the morning and Tina just wanted to go home. Tina had enough of the events of that night and just wanted to go home and be alone. The girl’s Grandfather drove Tina home but he made sexual advances to her first.
Tina no longer trusted anyone based on anything that they may say and she started paying attention to track records although they didn’t make sense to her then. She would eventually figure out a little too late in life that Trust must be earned. It was a long hard lesson for Tina considering the abuse wasn’t going to end for many years to come. The whole thing about trust and who to trust was confusing to Tina.
Making sense of it all
As we all know, gangs in big cities have always been an issue because poverty has always been an issue. Poverty is adversity whereas the violence from gangs causes traumas. These two concepts are connected to each other. Why? Because the need to be in a gang is generated by the need to survive. People who live in poverty live in survival mode.
We don’t really need to live in survival mode these days but not being able to eat because you don’t have enough money is just the same as not having enough to eat because you couldn’t get big enough game on the hunt. It is the same. In impoverished areas, everyone is struggling to survive.
When that happens we revert back to our old ancient survival skills which can be seen in the animal kingdom. We kill for what we need. We take from others what we need. We don’t go hunting for our own game because we are too busy eying what other poor people might have.
Some of what gets stolen in the ghetto is self-worth, pride in one’s accomplishments, Dignity, control, and power over one’s own life. It can all be stolen by the people who live there. They steal if from each other like zombies want brains. People try to steal other people’s happiness to be happy but it just makes everyone miserable.
Good people can come out of the ghettos almost unscathed and welladjusted but that is few and far between. For example, I know a man who grew up in the Ghettos of San Bernardino. He was beaten up a few times during his childhood. He Was Bullied. But what he had that most kids in the ghettos don’t is a really good and loving mom.
His mom was older. He was a late-life baby and although his father was a douche and was out of this guy’s life forever and ever, His mom was protective of him. When other adults did mean things to him or abusive things she flew off at them and that gave this guy the message that he is worthy of protection. He was taught life skills that most parents in the ghetto don’t know themselves so they can’t teach their kids.
Then I look at my life and the lives of my siblings and my counterparts from the ghettos of Los Angeles. Some come out ok but most are just messed up human beings with no real life-skills stuck in survival mode floundering about.
We as human beings, can’t move forward as long as we are in the trauma or in the thick of it all the time. While in survival mode there is no room for growth because if you stop surviving you feel like you will certainly die.
Overcoming the adversity of Trauma
I found that I couldn’t heal as long as I was in contact with my family who were my abusers. Some of them may not even know what they are doing because they are being used by those abusers to abuse me. I had no choice but to go No Contact with them. If I continued to have contact with them, they would have brought me to the point of killing myself. I couldn’t survive that. I had no choice but to go No Contact.
Since I’ve gone no contact, I continue to face every day life adversity and some everyday events that might be traumatizing. Since I’m no longer in contact with them and I’m no longer stuck in an oppressive environment… well, in my home anyway… I’m no longer living in survival mode. Well, financial survival mode but not from the abuse and violence.
I have some stability at least for now although not optimum. It is good enough to provide the healing space I need. I am free to cry or talk about my traumas. The only thing I’m not allowed to talk about is the trauma that is caused by the oppression of a Communist Government.
Most importantly, I live with someone who at least tries to understand and support my goals toward healing Complex PTSD. Well, Heal from my traumas anyway.
I’m finding it easier to process these events if I look at the people through the lens of compassion. Yes, the gang members are violent and cause traumas but they are the product of their environment.
It is true. One doesn’t Have to become a product of one’s environment but for the most part, we all are. Even the rich are often a product of their environment. For the average Capitalist American, The rich produced successful kids, and the poor produced poor kids who struggle their entire lives.
What I’ve been discovering as I look back over my life and over the lives of others I’ve glimpsed into, is circumstance guides our decisions. If all of our circumstances drive us down a negative path making mistake after mistake, it isn’t likely that one would choose a different path. Even if they choose another path, circumstances will have to let them get there.
It is also true that one can make their own circumstances, in some situations, but in many, there are circumstances that can only be managed and navigated around. It can’t be changed or moved or modified. Such as what happened with the American Government in the 2020 elections followed by what that government started doing to the American people in 2021 when it fully took over.
I have had people blame me for all the traumas I’ve experienced. They did that when they said, you cause your own pain or something along those lines. All I can think about that statement is that is not a very true statement in many contexts.
In the context of Trauma, the blame doesn’t belong to the victim but it definitely belongs to the perpetrator. If it is an event like a car accident, it is something that just happened. There really is no blame. The insurance companies have to decide what caused the accident but it’s still an accident.
I’m still cautious about every human interaction I have with people and I avoid certain people or certain types of people whom I consider a danger to me in some way. Even if they are just the type to steal your happiness, I avoid them.
In the end, the majority of the human race is the product of their environment. They act and react according to their environment. I also refer to this as being bashed about by the swing of the pendulum. It is a reference to a hermetic principle.
One of the biggest things I’ve learned from this is trust must be earned and people must not be judged but we must use our discernment and our compassion when it comes to ourselves and others.
Even the scariest people have a story and you may be surprised about all the good and the bad that is in their story. Why? Because we live in a world of polarity and we all are made up of good and bad things.
When it comes to healing or reaching any goal,
I can and I will. Watch me!
