Offloading

I have been writing since I came home from therapy almost two hours ago and I really need to share some of it. 

I don’t think a trigger warning is needed, but perhaps a caution to those who know me. It’s honest and perhaps a little darker than normal….

 

As I made my way home, I was driving towards the clouds.  I noticed the light cutting its way through them and an almighty rage within me began to grow. Rage at the world.  At the light.

At Him. 

 

How dare there be sunshine today? How can there be light and beauty in such a dark and ugly world?

I cannot help but feel that He is mocking me..today, He is but a cruel and distant King.

 

The very ones who should know better. The ones who proclaim to serve Him. Them. They did it. And so the list grows longer. Too many. 

 

What is wrong with them? What is wrong with me? 

Was it me? Could it be my fault, for being her?  My fault for being me?

 

There will no be closure. Not for this. There are no answers waiting for me. Who would even believe me? 

 

 

So, how can there be beauty today and how does the sun continue to shine? 

When all I see is darkness, how dare there still be light?

 

 

 

 

 

Missing me.

Things have been better.. I have felt better. 

Although the nightmares have worsened and the flashbacks at times intense, I have been relaxed. I have been content.

I have felt grounded, I have felt at times a sense of peace. I have felt freedom in the good that has consistently been following the bad. I have felt powerful. I have felt strong. I have felt more like me than I ever have before.

Isn’t that incredible?

Being truly me, is the most liberating feeling I have ever experienced.. That, I know now, is the key to finding peace. 

 

Yesterday  it all came crashing down, tipped over the edge and back into reminders of what I am containing, what was done and what I still have to face. The fall was so much harder, than I ever could have imagined. Like I was pulled out of the heights of freedom, back to the depths of my hell. I hit the ground with a bump, I can tell you. I feel worse than ever right now.

I am back to feeling burdened. I am back to feeling trapped.

 I am surrounded by darkness, I am stuck in this funk, again. 

 

I am not sure I feel anything but an inescapable emptiness.

 

I feel as empty as I did back then. Is this a flashback, am I triggered? Is it a part of healing? Is this just a feeling? 

The emptiness worries me greatly, because only one thing could ever fill that void. And that scares me, more than anything else in this world. 

 

I long to feel as I did just a few days ago. Even while feeling pain and trauma, I remained confident and strong.

(Perhaps it is the feelings that make me more like me?!- something to explore another time?)

 

 

Where is the person I have been beginning to like? Where has she gone? 

Growing.

The deeper I go in therapy, the more I learn about myself. Who I was, who I am and how I feel. It’s been a rough ride. It still is.

As part of that learning process, I am getting closer to having to face who I used to be and that causes such discomfort and pain. It is all so very close right now. I remember how it felt to be betrayed, to have my trust broken and how it was to be so alone.

My memories are clearer, I am remembering new memories or filling in incomplete ones. It’s scary and painful, but I am managing to compartmentalise at least. Filing away issues and memories until I am ready to process is something I am becoming quite good at now.

In this process of self discovery, particularly recently, I am beginning to find aspects of myself that I like. And surprisingly, despite the shame, I am even finding myself increasingly defensive over who I used to be.

I am self soothing better than I have ever done before, which is particularly helpful during all the pain I’ve been experiencing lately. Not only do I know how to comfort myself,  but I actually want to. I finally feel I deserve that at the very least.

There has most certainly been a shift. A change in my self perception. It is split into two, where there is fear and shame and self loathing, but at the same time there exists a very real and growing self worth. There is joy in what I have now and great hope for the future, that even in the darkest moments lately, still shines through.

I am growing stronger, I feel more powerful than I have ever done before. I feel that strength and power residing within me, as part of me. The more I feel, the more aware of it I am. Whether it be love or pain, or joy or grief, it continues to grow. Is it that the closer I get to feelings, the more I become the person I should have always been? Is this what feeling is?

 

 

Something happened last night. Something awful and terrible. Or perhaps I should rephrase. It actually happened many years ago. Last night, through an awful flashback, I remembered that something. It is something that has been hidden from me. Or more, I hid it from myself.  It is something completely unexpected, something outside of anything I have explored before, that has me questioning myself. It is something that is feeding the shame that is already so very close. It is something that has the power to make my world implode. It is certainly trying to shake my foundations right now.

I think, had this happened any time before now, I wouldn’t have been able to handle it, not in the way I have today. Because today I am confident in my own abilities and I trust myself enough to know that this did happen and I know I am not lying.

That trust in myself doesn’t take away the pain and the conflict or even the shame and it won’t distinguish the very real fear of “who will believe me?” ..but I feel I have something to hold onto.. and that something is me. I am the only one who has been here for me all the way through. I protect me, I save me and now finally, I am confident that I believe me- I long for the day when that is enough.

Now, for that something? Well, I cannot keep it to myself, but how do I admit to this? I have to put it away I guess. Put it aside, just like every other new memory lately. I have to hold onto myself, because I know, as all the times before, it is my strength that will get me through.

Exposed.

I feel so exposed. Have I over shared? Did I go too far today?

I wish we were done with this. I am so sick of using that word. It’s a word I despise. A word I refuse to type right now. A word I loathe to say.

It is a word I have used a great deal lately, to describe a part of me that I cannot shake. It is a part I have faced today , a part I have been hiding, even from myself.

It all fits a little too well and with something so deeply ingrained, it cannot simply dissipate.

No matter how much I reject it, or argue with myself, that word remains, swimming around my head.

Am I her? Or is she me?

 

They created her. It was a given identity, one that was never ever wanted. One that has never gone. How could they do that to a child?

 

I find myself with horrific nightmares this week. Not of rape, not of trauma, but of words that were used to describe me. Nightmares where I am again, the identity they forced on me. It is those words they used that have me waking most nights lately, screaming into my husband’s chest. I am shocked by the depth of the wounding. I am disturbed by the impact this has had. Broken. A shattered soul. Not just from rape, but from what I was forced to become. It is a label that has never left me, no matter how hard I try to conceal it from the world.

 

When I am triggered, I feel like that person again. A darkness descends, sort of enveloping me and I become cold and even aggressive and spiteful. I barely recognise myself, yet at the same time, it’s oddly familiar and even comforting somehow. I cannot continue living as two people though. The cross over feels like a death itself. It is draining forever clawing my way back from that Hell.

I do not want to feel those things. I do not want to be her. I do not want to feel like a lesser person, living half a life again.

I do not want to be despised any longer for surviving the only way I knew how.

 

 

I am filled with rage right now. Angry at those who do not deserve to know my pain. Even here I am beginning to feel exposed and unsafe.