What the mask does to me.

 

As always I live life feeling like there is something terribly wrong with me.  I feel like there is always something wrong, some memory that hurts my soul; So I should just smile and keep pretending that I am fine.  That deep dark sadness is back and its fierce.  I hope that someday soon it will lessen , I feel like I can't keep being sad over the things that I can't change.  The weight of the things that I have survived is so suffocating.  I work so hard to be a normal, unaffected person. Yes, terrible things have happened , but shit Callahan pull up your boot straps already and move on.  The weight of all that I have survived is a kind of internal suffocation that is a thief stealing whatever it wants, whenever it wants.  There are so many reminders, triggers and flashbacks being back at school.  And I literally feel like i ma drowning.  I had an ARD on Friday and I literally was amazed at myself.  I was somewhere else in the room, waiting for my principle to tell me all that I had done wrong but  I was calm and focused ; aware of my words and I think it went well.  I was in the room alone, with my mask off and yet felt every thread across my face. 

Wearing a mask every day is such a heavy burden EVEN when I take it off. All the thoughts, emotions and memories are still there all vying for attention. I am Wanting to be calmed,  I want them to be different. Wanting them to be some kind of nightmare that I can wake up from, take a deep breathe and know all is well with the world. So many terrible memories, sensations and feelings all coming at me. 

Whether it was that suffocating feeling as my father would straddle my neck on the waterbed.  Or the many pairs of hands that would cover my mouth trying to quiet the screams, or whimpers.  Their breathe on my face, that closeness as they hurt me is something so personal and close that there is nothing more that I want than to run a million miles away and find some place in the world where my face is gently held and cared for for.  A person's face is so personal so close,  I don't know there is some kind of personal barrier when a person's face is involved.  I am not sure that I even have the words to explain it.  Like with just a rape there is space and distance somehow but my face , that is a trauma that is more personal for me and terrifying.  Wearing a mask is all these things on repeat, while trying to be a normal functioning adult.  All the times that men were on top of me taking what wasn't theirs.  That closeness to my face, feeling each breathe waiting for them to be done with my little lifeless body.  So am I sad, oh yes because every second takes me back to the things I am trying so hard to forget and move on from. 

My heart hurts. 

I heart your heart.  I will make it somehow, I am not sure how but I know that I will.