Layers of healing

Its unbelievable the many many layers of healing.I remember there was a time I thought there was going to be an endpoint to healing when everything would magically be behind me!   I do not believe that anymore, it kind of makes me sad.  I thought there would come a time when every emotion, feeling, thought, nightmare and trigger would be gone and somehow I would feel whole and worthy.  What in the world was I thinking ?    I think for a time I have been on the same layer making everything fit together, trying to fit pieces together and give them a place to rest. I think a few pieces may even have found their home, and that is great.  At the same time there are also pieces still looking for that moment when they too will find their place. But the thing about layers is that , there is no completion of one layer before moving on to the next.  Sometimes they are fluid and fold into each other working on different things at different levels.  I feel like I am stepping into a different layer and things are hard and unpredictable.  I think I have been in that last layer for what feels like forever! I understand so much at one layer and feel like I am clueless on the next. Stepping into this next layer is exciting seeing how far I have come, and terrifying because its unknown, because I am seeing things , and realizing things I never have before.  I am grateful to be stepping forward and so scared.  What if this is the level that I m not strong enough for ?  What if this is the level that breaks me ?  What if this is the level that I don't come out of ?  What if I fail and it takes me longer than i would like ?  So many questions.  I am getting angry at myself, beyond frustrated, believing that there are some things I should know. That some of the things need to make sense if they were true once before , they are still true now. So in one layer I get it it makes sense and yet another letter I become a bubbling idiot again !   Just so many layers to unravel and disentangle.  I know I have come a long way, I know that I have made good choices for myself. I have to learn to be OK with the choices that I face ahead;  With the things that I will face, and the mountains yet to climb.  So many things in this life of mine are so tangled in others.  I feel like if I look at this one piece then it leads me to another and another and another.  I think I am looking at things deeper, and working oh so hard to be able to put them to rest.  I won't say let go, because I can't; I will have pieces and feel the things that have happened to me all my life.  These things and everything they hold and everything they represent are layers are me, whether I like it or not and as I can I will look at each one and be all the better for it .   

I heart your heart. 

She's been blocked

I think that I am writing this, hoping that maybe it will lessen the ache, the pain the sadness of the relationship with my mom.  I am not sure why it happened tonight, why it made sense but it did.  I have realized that I have blocked her. There is a huge part of me that doesn't feel safe around her.  I should be safe in my on home, I should feel peace.  I should be able to trust the people that I live with. My heart knows that there are times that she tries to get in, times that she wants to be a part but there are just too many things in the way right now, maybe forever.  There are to many things unsaid, to many feelings and emotions that have been stepped on and ignored.  I think this is one area of my life that feels so very fragile. As a daughter its heartbreaking, it literally breaks my heart in pieces. A girl wants her mom that person that is always on her side I don't have that.  She is not in my corner, cheering me on.  She competes with every move that I make. I do not feel like I can count on her, I do not feel like we are in this life together.  She is not a support or a person that I trust.  I do not like the person that she is, I love her with my whole heart, I will take care of her but I will not, can not let her in.  We had been back in each others lives for such a short time and we thought that living together was a great idea. It was good to visit, spend an occasional night then she went home, and that is what worked. I had my home, she had her home we each had our space.  I bought this big house so she would have her own living room, and we would each have our own space.  That is not how things have worked out.   I want to do life how I want to do it, I have earned that.  I have fought really hard to create the place to call my own with my things that make me happy.  So many many life experiences were taken before their time, and this is my time to live and laugh and be the person that I am.  There have been a lot of things in this life that I have never gotten to experience, its this sense of competition with her.  There is such a power struggle, when all  I want is to be.  Being in my own home doing the things that I want to do.  Doing the things that are best for me and my children. I love to do my laundry, and carefully fold the towels; matching each seem. I love the rug belonging in a certain spot, and the pillows placed just right.  I love doing my dishes and keeping the kitchen clean.  I love things neat and in their own place where they are meant to be.  Those things make me happy, I am not less than because of the way I do things, it just makes me happy.  I love to turn my music on loud and sing at the top of my lungs. I love to dance like no one is watching. I love to sit in my chair and take a nap because I can.  I love to sit and chill listening to my music and talking with Mariska about anything and everything, I love to talk about conspiracy theories, and watch murder mysteries. Only in my house someone is always watching and always judging and always wanting to give me their input.  I can promise you its too late for that.  This place in my heart is so tender,  I have worked so hard building a life for the kids and I. I have overcome so much and clawed my way back to life  I know I can let her into that place; my sacred place.  She has been blocked.  I need to know that people are there and in my corner.  I need to have that unconditional love and I don't.  There are strings, and secrets and things I grew up with , that are not OK in my life anymore.  I don't want to think this is forever, but I am not holding my breath.  I am a cycle breaker, and I have chosen to do things different. She has chosen to stay in the cycle doing and believing as she always has, not thinking about anyone else.  I just will not live that way.



I heart your heart

Here again

I have been staring at this blank post for what feels like a very long time.  I am searching my brain for the right words; the careful words that won't hurt anyone's feelings and I can't seem to find them. The things that I want to scream at shout are burning in the pit of my mind. I am tired of talking and tired of getting treated badly.  I am tired of the self centeredness and lack of empathy and kindness towards others.  Being a single mom right now is more of a challenge and who in the hell am I supposed to reach out to? There is no one.   I am staying calm offering choices, offering help and I get nothing but nasty and I want to scream.  I want to make him sit and hear me, all the things that I have to say until there are no words left to come out.  Nothing I do is enough, and he is mean. Even often cruel.  He cares for no ones feelings and treats every one as if they are the dirt beneath his feet and its heartbreaking.  Tonight on the way home from work, I was trying to help offer suggestions, of coarse I was the one that was stupid for not understanding.  So that is fine, he can go to the bank himself on Monday and figure it out.  He is so very hurtful, that sometimes I literally want to walk away and never come back.  I cry there is nothing I tell him what is bothering me I get nothing. I try to talk to him from my heart nothing.  I tell him over and over that I will do anything for him, all I ask for is a little kindness and yet there is so very little.  I did not raise him like this and I want desperately to understand.  It's like every time I reach out he is there like a cactus ready to tell me all that I do wrong, all the ways that I don't listen and it gets very old.  He is more than hurtful.  His head is lucky that it can fit through the door, Mr.Wonderful, who knows everything.  Well my sweet son I am not sure what has happened.  I don't know where your sweetness went. I don't know where that kind heart is, but I miss him.  I did not raise a bully and the things that you laugh at and make fun of are not ok.  I catch a glimpse every now and then and I cherish it, but then in a flash its gone and that self centered unkind boy is back.  I am here I am always here, but how you treat me is not ok.  How you are disrespectful and rude is not ok.  I am your mom and I love you more than life, and how you treat me is not ok.  You break my heart and someday someway I hope that you are going to be able to understand and be kind to your mom, because I am the only one that you have.  I may not be the one that you wanted, that you treasure.  I am the only one you have and kindness and respect is never too much to ask. 

My son I so love you and you break my heart. I love you I love you I love you . Mom

I heart your heart.

This kind of Storm

Yes, there is this kind of storm raging and its feels more than overwhelming. Its the kind of storm that you can see building that you know is coming and you know that there is nothing that is going to stand in its way. I  feel this storm inside and its more than frustrating. I am tired of being forgotten and looked over. I am tired of being unseen.  I want to scream at the world , I want things different and better and everything kind.

I am working more than hard trying to heal, and do all that I need to do and I want to scream at the world until I catch up.  I am always hundreds of steps behind, and just when I think I am catching up ; something else steps right in to remind me that I am not even close. Maybe this is just me maybe I am not meant to catch up ?  Will I always be behind ?  Is there ever going to come a time when I feel that I am exactly where I am supposed to be !   Its so frustrating being 45 and feeling like you are so far behind everyone else !  I can do my job, I am a god mom and then there are times when it feels like personally,  I am clueless.  Relationships clueless.  Like there are some thing in this life when things stopped for me.  There are parts that stopped when I was 5. There were parts that stopped when I was thirteen.  I think that someday if I can just nurture those parts that are stuck, if I can just offer the things that they never had somehow there has got to be healing in that.  Maybe that is what I am working towards, and have been all along.  I didn't get this way overnight, and it may take a lifetime but as I always say I on't stop fighting even with this kind of storm in front of me. 

I heart your heart

Nobody Knows I am here

I watched this movie on Netflix last night.  Nobody Knows I'm here.  And just the title hit me like a ton of bricks.  I am not noticed, I am most often not thought of or acknowledged.  In this movie this little boy is an amazing singer, yet doesn't have the look to go with it.  So his father makes a deal with the producer for just his voice, while the producer finds a body that he believes goes with the voice.  So the boy gets sent away, to an island far away where he basically stops speaking.  He believes that he isn't good enough and in so many ways he stops living.  What made him happy, what brought him joy was his voice, performing. So all the things that he loved were taken away, and he was left to fend for himself.

Again I watched another movie where a girl is attacked and she is the one that is sent away.  She is the one that was so greatly hurt and her father says that he can't bare to look at her anymore because it just hurts to much. There isn't much of a choice and she begins to rebuild,  never forgetting where she came from and often reaching out even when no one was there to hear her.  In the end she reconnects with her family and says its like this was always meant to be,  and they all reconnected. 

Then there is me.  Just both those movies totally struck a chord.  Me, Basically I am on my own. I have been left to figure things out, and hope for the best.  I know that I have come a long way doing that, when comes the time that I am at the end of my rope and can't do it on my own anymore ?  When does the time come, for that drastic move that will make everything ok ?  I just want to be important.  I want to be able to share the things that are in my head.  I was thinking back to my Collin County College Days and that Guy that smiled when I said save the whales.  How he held the door open for me and ran to open the door before class.  There was Scott who stood up for me.  We would talk after class and we liked the same movies, we enjoyed the same things.  He stood up for me in class when I had a differing opinion about Easter, No one stood up for me like that. Those are two people that I will honestly never forget.  Like I got to share part of me with them and it felt so good. 

I feel like there has to be a place for me to do that.  To share who I am and the things that I am passionate about and the things that make me, ME.  I not talking love or anything romantic just to be valued and seen and to feel like I matter. Like I have something important to say and people to want to hear it.  There has to be a place for me somewhere in this world where I can share and be heard.  There has to be people whose time I won't waste,  who I wouldn't be a burden too.  There has got to be someone outside these walls that knows I am here ? 

I heart your heart

The Everyday

My day to day, the impact  of being a survivor is something that no one wishes for.  Many days for me now are  just the "normal" daily life work, dinner, groceries, laundry all things to do with my house, My children.  I smile and know my  life is good.  My  everyday life of being a mom, daughter, sister and teacher are awesome . This crazy life of mine is  taking care of all that needs to be done with  joy and I live every moment to the fullest.  The face that I portray when I am at work when I am doing all those normal life things that I truly love is a woman  without a care in the world. And all at the same time if a person cares to ask;  there are days when  being a survivor is  nothing normal and everything unimaginable and crushing. On the outside things seem so put together but, there are days when being a survivor knocks life right out of me, and finding my smile among those ruins seems impossible. For me I  often feel like having my feet in two places at once.  There is the present where the assaults and abuses seem miles away, in another time and yet there are times it all comes crashing in and it feels like it was yesterday. This is about those days when I feel like every trauma and hurt was yesterday. 

  

There are days I am fighting memories , dealing with the constant reminders and triggers and literally wanting to hide in a hole. The days that I can't be touched because every movement feels like another attack is right around the corner.  Sometimes my day weighs  the  weight of  10,000 blue whales and every memory and feeling is screaming to be heard all at the same time. There are moments so raw and real that the tears may fall whether they are wanted or not. One of the hardest parts is being expected to carry on as normal when your heart is being broken.  This is my everyday, this is my life and so many expect even with all of this that I am "SUPPOSED" to be what they call normal. I can promise you I am nothing normal, I am just me crazy, kind and unique with many battle scars. Somehow in the middle of everything I learned, to carry it all well, too well at times because there were so many that never had a clue about the life that I had to live. No matter what was going on in my life,  there were  just things that needed to get done.  Day to day my heart often aches, sometimes gently sometimes like a roar of an elephant protecting her child. With so many scars, I take things personally, I am quiet and observe everything all around me all the time.  Sleep does not come easy, little naps during the day are the best in the light of day. I learned to smile and say that things were fine even when I was drowning.  I learned oh so early that being hurt was something to expect. I have learned that most people don't stay, but if they leave they were never meant to be. I have learned that I am too much, I am too sensitive and I take too much time and effort. I have learned that my story is not something to be shared with just anyone. To truly be heard is a gift that I will forever cherish.  I have learned that others feel I should be over it,  I know because I often feel the same and yet some days the ache is constant and ever present. There are days I am my worst critic and get angry for my feelings, for the way that I survive and react. Still, I go through each day smiling, the weight becomes just  common place just the way that it is.  It's on those other days that I stumble, that I feel every bruise and every bump that my mind thinks about all those things that should have never been.  The things that I have survived that I should not have. The things I have seen that no person should ever see.  The experiences that took all the most precious things from childhood and adulthood.  There are days I get sad, I have missed so many milestones in life that others take for granted.  There are sometimes some really bad days, when the tears don't stop and the trauma feels like it was minutes and not many years ago. Those days are getting further and further apart, but when they do occur,  it breaks my heart and the world begins to spin slightly slower, my life in slow motion. .Yet those around me are moving at the speed of light, and there is a sense that I once again am being left out. There are days that being in my own skin feels more like torture than living because after all this time some days I can still feel their hands.  You see I will never have a normal day to day.  I will never understand the so-called "normal life, because there is nothing normal about the things I have endured in this life. As a survivor my normal are things of nightmares, that I have to process and find a place for in my mind and heart. People can ignore, and they will.  Many people pretend that they are so unaffected by such great injustices in the world, and its infuriating because they have no idea how close that these things are to the people that are around them.  I am so affected and can not pretend that all is well .  Every day there are still memories that haunt my very being, some  more haunting than others.  Some days they scare the smile right out of me and other days I am stronger and think no not today.  I wish that there was a way to fully explain the day to day ; minute to minute life of a survivor.  Sometimes it's the smallest of things that tears at my heart, ripping my wounds wide open. Sometimes it's that inconsiderate comment, or that smell of cologne from a monster who took things that were not his to take.  There  are words that bring it all back in a split second, and I am left alone in the present while my mind visits the past. The news stories of yet another survivor being shamed, and blamed, are heartbreaking.  I feel that for me as a survivor, my day to day is different because I see the world through the things I have experienced. The unimaginable that I will never comprehend or understand but affects each and every aspect of the person that I am . For me the abuse was so early and lasted for so many years that there was no before,  this is all i have ever known.  I live in a world that often doesn’t want to acknowledge that I exist, that I am surviving, that people are truly capable of such evil things so I ‘ve been blamed, shamed and made to feel like I was the one that has done something wrong.

Finally at 45 there are much better days and still days that Il go far away. There are days I feel like I should live on a completely different planet because there is no place for me here. Sometimes I feel like I will never be understood or safe on this planet. I don't have those happy carefree childhood memories, but I have new memories to make. I don't have the same every day stories when people are at parties.  I don't have the great high school memories to look back on and share.  I am different,  but I am also brave and strong and I have survived and someday that will mean something in this world that we live in.   I just finished a book and there was a line that said "try to find the words to explain what words could never explain"  I felt that with every cell in my body. I am pretty sure that I will always write trying to find just the right words,and just the right phrase to help others understand my day to day.  I will create many more of my art journals to put meaning to those things that I don’t have words for. I will never stop fighting for my own healing and that of others.  I believe that is just my way of trying to make sense out of something that can't be made into any sense at all.   There are just plain evil things in this world, and I will keep fighting, keep writing, keep trying to find those just right moments that make my heart a little lighter and my soul a little safer. I was that 5 year old little girl that prayed to God that I would die , so I didn't have to survive another night with my father.  I was that 8 year old girl raped in the van and her tadpoles stepped on because I fought too much.  I was that girl at 13 gang raped by 5 men that no one believed, because I was the chubby unpopular girl who would want to do that to me.  I was that girl who at 22 decided I wasn't going to let my father hurt anyone else so when he remarried and got a step daughter; a little girl of three ,  I pressed charges.  I was that girl struggling to belong and at 29 wanting more than anything to be normal I was going to go shopping and have lunch but was raped and became pregnant with Twins,   All these things have brought me here to this day.

Today I have survived and as hard as it is at times, I am grateful. Today I laugh until I cry. I sit on my porch watching the trees knowing just how far that I have come.  I see my children doing things in this life that I never got to experience.  I teach and I notice each child where they are and let them have a day and just be little. I even every now and then write my detective and attorney's from my case and thank them with my whole heart for being there.  I remember to have good people around me that can understand those rough days and remember those rough anniversaries. I have found a counselor that truly changed things and helps me see my courage and bravery and the things I should have always had in this life.  He tells me I have grit and how I have persevered through it all and some days I can even hear that and take it in.  Today I still remember every detail of every hurt but never ever have I let those win, and slowly they are losing their  grip and I am leaving them behind.  There are some memories that have faded and don't have the power that they once did, for that I am grateful.  Never will I stop fighting for others. I am learning that my healing is a process and sometimes there are no right, wrong or clear answers. There are bad days, but oh so many more that are good. I am learning that there are layers to healing and just when I think it's all over there is another level of understanding. I think that more than ever people are listening, our stories are heard and I will do everything in my power to make sure that I am heard and listened to. My everyday life is good and scary and unimaginable all at the same time.  This is  the life that I was given and the life that I have. My every day is affected by the choices that others made. Some days are sad, some days still are devastating but I am still here fighting, making a difference and that will never ever change. 

I heart your heart.