The Ragdoll

*20 Minute Read

I am holding the ace of hearts card in my hand, she is saying that it is the two of clubs card in my hand. I say to her, no that is the ace of hearts and she says no it isn’t. I try getting her to look at the card so she can see that I am holding the ace of hearts. After repeated attempts to get her to look at the card and several pleas, all the while she is telling me everything I need to change about myself in order to see the card as a two of clubs. She finally relents and looks at the card, I feel relief and joy as see will finally be able to see that I am holding the ace of hearts. After looking at the card for only a second, she says it is the two of clubs. I am exasperated and feel lost as to what the hell is going on. My eyes are seeing the ace of hearts and yet she is telling me that my eyes are wrong and that I am wrong, and I am holding the two of clubs. 

I then try explaining what letters and numbers are. I think that maybe she just doesn’t understand what letters and number are so she is just confused. I try teaching her the alphabet and she plays along like I am doing something noble, like she’s so happy to have someone like me around to teach her things. Some time goes by, I am feeling good, I am feeling happy. She makes me feel special and important. I teach her the alphabet and numbers one through ten, and I am now sure she will see the card that I am showing her. I can feel it, the day has finally come I pull out my card and show her the ace of hearts and she just stands there expressionless and says it’s the two of clubs. I am flabbergasted. I explain how the A on my card is the same A that is in the alphabet. She agrees but still says it’s the two of clubs card. I then make my next mission to teach her about the symbols on the cards. She keeps telling me that she wants to see the card the way I see it and maybe I need to try harder or stop doing certain things that I do, I need to change so she can see the card that I do. After teaching her about the symbols she still says the wrong card. 

I start to think that maybe I am the one who is insane, maybe my eyes are deceiving me, and maybe I am wrong. If I am wrong that means that I can change or should. I don’t want to be insane; no one wants to be insane. Now I have this new fear of being insane because she refuses to say anything other than the two of clubs. I suggest that we bring in a card expert, someone who is an outside unbiased party to assess the card and they can clear things up for us in a matter of seconds. She refuses and tells me that I am the reason we can’t get a card expert, I said that doesn’t make sense because I am the one that suggested it. She then convinces me that I am the one who refuses to get a card expert. I try reverse psychology on her and try showing her the two of clubs card to see what she will do and she says it’s the seven of diamonds. I try giving up and walking away, I mean enough is enough already. I reach the point of not giving a shit anymore. I accept that I see the card as an ace of hearts and that she sees the two of clubs and I will just agree to disagree. Or I really am insane which I also accept as a possibility. 

After years and years, I try leaving and she threatens to take all my stuff and leave me with nothing. She claims that since she bought all my stuff for me and that she owns it all and I am entitled to none of it. She tells me how horrible I am for trying to leave and how selfish I am and how I am so selfish. Having a heart in my chest that feels empathy for other people, I start to feel remorse and regret. Maybe I am being a little harsh, maybe I am being a jerk. I can clearly see how upset she is and she hasn’t really done anything all that bad. I mean it’s just a silly little card that we disagree about. I can stay here and just agree to disagree or I can try to leave and she will take everything from me and I will be a selfish jerk if I l leave her since I know that being alone is her biggest fear, she makes sure to tell me frequently. 

I accept that I am stuck. I decide to let bygones be bygones, I’ll do my thing and live my own life. I decide to not care about the card anymore and remove it from my thoughts. I just start to get a little happy and content and she starts bringing cards up in conversation. She’ll find a way to sneak in a remark with any of the following words in them: card, ace, heart, two, clubs, deck. I ignore the remarks for some time, I tell myself it’s just a coincidence. Finally I get annoyed and I let my emotions get the best of me and ask her why she keeps talking about cards and she tells me she’s not and she doesn’t know what I am talking about and I am just trying to tell her what to do. She goes on and on for days about how I don’t respect her and how she’s not going to take it from me. I would Love to defend my perspective but I know after all these years that my perspective is always wrong. My perspective has never been “right”. It never matters what my perspective is, she will always and inevitably disagree. I'm not allowed to have a perspective and I know to keep my mouth shut and not say anything. 

I start to retract and withdraw since I don’t like how I feel around her. She then starts to get sad and emotional because I am ignoring her and being mean to her by not spending any time with her. I feel completely lost, I can’t tell anyone because there’s no evidence. Even if I try telling anyone, she will tell the opposite story. No one would believe me, that’s been made clear. I am miserable and alone. I have tried to seek help and there either is none to tell, or no one cares. I learned to stop seeking help, I learned to stop trying to get out. Even when I would find ways to escape for short periods, she would find a way to pull me back in, either with guilt, shame, or fear. She never Loved me; she only used me for her games. I was a toy to her, someone to play with. Her ragdoll. 

She took her aggression out on me and she killed her boredom with my misery. The worst of it was that I was a ragdoll who didn’t know they were a ragdoll. I saw myself as the same as her, a person, a human being, a companion. Whereas she only saw me as a literal ragdoll, she never saw me as a human being. She never saw a person underneath with a heart that bleeds. She never saw the human who just wanted to Love her. She couldn’t comprehend that a ragdoll could Love her because she didn’t see the ragdoll as being alive. Maybe she was so dead inside that see couldn’t see the life inside someone else, that’s only one guess within a sea of billions. Only she knows why she does what she does. All the ragdoll wanted was to Love her and asked very little in return. All the ragdoll wanted was just some peace. The ragdoll just wanted to be themselves without always feeling like they were doing something wrong all the time whether they tried or not. 

The ragdoll learned to find beauty where they could. The ragdoll learned to be content hiding alone in a closet. The ragdoll learned that this is just how life is. One day the ragdoll decided to find beauty wherever they could. Find Love and peace wherever they could. To find joy whenever possible. The ragdoll knows that they were once a human and they were never anything but a human, but they have been treated like a ragdoll for so long, had been convinced for so long, that they honestly can’t remember, they honestly can’t tell. They feel like a ragdoll pretending to be a human instead of a human pretending to be a ragdoll. The ragdoll hopes to be human again someday, the ragdoll hopes to feel alive again but is also really exhausted from always making sure they aren’t doing the wrong thing that will upset their captor.

This captor kills with kindness. To everyone else this person is amazing and wonderful, and no one would ever guess this person would be so cruel to their ragdoll. This captor kills the soul, the heart, and the life out of their victim. This captor doesn’t leave any marks, scars, or evidence. They just leave the victim questioning their own sanity. They kill the victims will to live. I’ve been sexually abused, I’ve been verbally abused, and I’ve been physically abused. I’ve been bullied, I’ve been teased, and I’ve been physically tortured. I would take any of that over the psychological torture I was forced to endure. Psychological torture is torture that makes you question your very own sanity for the sake of another’s amusement, let those words sink in for a moment.  

Since the people who torture others psychologically are so good at it, they are good enough to not leave evidence, at least on the surface. The psychological scars are extremely damaging, and they definitely leave a mark. It’s easy to tell who has been tortured psychologically by how they act. Low will to live, very low self-esteem, quiet and standoffish, socially awkward or anxious, attention seeking behavior, and irregular aggression. Usually accompanied with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, cptsd, and so on. As a ragdoll, the hardest thing to accept is the fact that they will never see you as human. What keeps you trying and what keeps you staying is the hope that one day they will see you as a human and when they see you, they will feel remorse for how they treated you realizing that you are in fact a human and they will see that all you wanted was to Love them. They do not and will not feel remorse. If they were going to feel any remorse, they would have by now.

THEY WILL NEVER SEE YOU AS ANYTHING OTHER THAN A RAGDOLL! I will add in, unless they want to, but DO NOT use that as another reason to stick around. It is ONLY if and when they decide they want to stop seeing you as a ragdoll that they will do so. The thing is, they have absolutely no reason to stop seeing you that way and most never will and there is nothing you can do about it ever. You cannot make them want to change, and there is nothing you can do. It is a very hard pill to swallow. Ragdolls are usually people with the biggest hearts and the most Love to give. Ragdolls could make this world a beautiful and bright place to live if so many of them weren’t being dragged along by their captors. Want to know what it is like to be a person who is in a psychologically abusive environment? It’s like being one of the toys in Sid’s room from Toy Story. 

You can get out. You have to want to leave before you can get out and you can’t want to leave as long as you have any hope that they will change and see the light. It’s not going to happen, I’m not saying it is impossible, I am simply saying, do not count on it. Accept they will not change and there is nothing you can do. Accept that you are allowed to leave and that does not make you a bad person or mean there is anything wrong with you. Accept that they will turn everyone against you when you leave, not that they have allowed anyone close enough to you anyway. They pushed everyone out of your life a long time ago. Accept that they don’t or won’t or can’t feel empathy at least towards you. This is a hard one to accept since you yourself may find empathy comes easily to you and are convinced that given enough Love anyone could feel empathy also. If someone does not have empathy, you cannot make them have it. If someone doesn’t use empathy, they don’t know what they are missing and they don’t know just how good empathy can be. 

The Ace of hearts card in the story represents my heart, I tried to give her my heart and ended up her ragdoll. What do you do when you captor is your mother, and your natural instinct is to Love her unconditionally. When you’re born with an innate desire to trust and please her. I wanted to give up, I wanted to quit so many times, the one factor she didn’t consider and the thing that she didn’t count on was the Love I had for myself even though she tried to squash it. She underestimated what a little boy with a rock (Love) could accomplish same as David did when he defeated Goliath. No evil, no matter how big it appears, can win against Love.

The Love I have for myself is what saved me. I saved me. What do you do when you are drowning in the middle of the ocean and there is no one around for hundreds of miles? You either give up and drown or you start swimming. Just keep swimming until you find dry land. Giving up is easy and I don’t ever blame anyone for going that path. God knows how many times I came close to giving up for good. Fighting is hard when you’re being led to believe that Loving yourself is selfish. That standing up for yourself is selfish. That anything you do is selfish. Then you have to fight the fear of being selfish and stop caring what they think or say or do. You have to find a way out which they make very difficult and near impossible. I am not alone, I only feel alone because I was made to feel like a ragdoll who wasn’t allowed to have emotions, a voice, or an existence. I was made to feel as if I didn’t exist simply because I didn’t exist to that person. 

This is for all the ragdolls in the world, you are not alone, we are not alone, most of us are just in hiding and some of us have gotten free but still don’t feel like we belong. There are a few of us have been out so long we have found our original selves, who we were before our captor got ahold of us. Wherever you are and whatever stage you're in, you are not just a ragdoll, and you deserve better! You deserve to be alive and to be yourself and being yourself won't destroy the universe no matter what your captor wants you to believe. Love and Peace Family!