Rough Patch : She always is

 

Things always seem to get more difficult when I am trying to get close and understand her.  She is this ball of fire, that is strong and capable yet soft, vulnerable. She carries a sadness that is unbearable.  I am learning to see her not as the women that I always have but the girl who was that way because that was all that she knew to be.  When I am really trying to embrace her, the bruises get worse, the nightmares get worse as if that is even possible. When she is around everything feels 100 times heavier from the little things to the big things. She holds a darkness, maybe it's the darkness that I talk about.  When things were so bad, and the entire world went black.  Yea that, she holds that.  I believe she has always held that to protect me.  I feel like I need to be on a beach somewhere, with the waves crashing and the sand at my feet to soften the blows of all her experiences.  Somehow the ocean has always been her friend when things were bigger than her.  The ocean was her safety and protector.  I need that.  I wish that I could gather my favorite people and bring them to a place that is all ours so I can get close enough to grab her and hold her and tell her that everything is going to be ok.  I wish there could be some kind of transfer, so she can run free, playing in the waves. I hope maybe she can run with little Callahan and enjoy all the things that she never thought were meant for her.  Then I can take what was never hers to carry and share it with those people around me, and they can love me through the ugly.  They can hold me while I cry.  They can hold space when I need the silence and then together when we are finished, when all the dark places have seen the light.  When all the shadows have been spoken about then we can all celebrate and bury the pain and hurt in the deepest sand and all dance together; because all we see is the light and the good things that are ahead.  

When I think about her it feels so lonely like we are so different that no one can ever understand.  I have to remember that I must do it in little pieces because I am still living.  I think that sometimes we both forget that those dark things that happened didn't kill us. There were many many times that we wish they did because the pain and hurt that they caused is just that damaging but we are still here alive!  Often, we freeze in the memories like they are happening in the here and now.   I am still alive; What was supposed to kill me didn't and now I am here to heal the pieces.  Pieces of me and pieces of her.  And together we can find the happy that we long for.  There are so many emotions and feelings, and the tears seem to be coming all the time.  Her sadness is leaking into my day to day. So these are just some things that are pictures into our hearts; into the heavy things that we are carrying right now.  We are trying so hard to be brave and strong.  We are doing our best navigating this healing that we want more than anything.  But the healing is harder than the hurt.

I look forward to the day when I no longer question whether I am worthy or not.  I look forward to the day that I am can be comfortable in my own skin, despite the things that have happened, despite all the things that others have said and done.  I fear I may be 90, but with all that I am I keep trying to find that worth.

I will be glad when that need to  be fixed to feel whole lessens and I can just be.  Sometimes I want so much to be understood that either people leave or I just remove myself pretending.  I am so over pretending, with myself with everyone and someday I hope that makes a difference. I want to be happy too.

Oh the noise in my head.  I hear other words and opinions and views and I take them all in.  I need to learn that there is enough negative inside for many lifetimes; I need to let things go that are not meant for me that don't feel right that don't bring me peace.  I want to hear more of those voices that are kind constant and true.

I am such a watcher.  I am a sideline sitter because, I feel it to be so much safer.  Yes, safer but at what cost.  You watch life so afraid because you know that one more thing and you could be broken forever.  Such a struggle. Wanting to belong and fearing the hurt.  For me often they are one in the same. 

Yes, A car crash in my bones.  A tragedy that is mine that I just cannot look away from.  Every second I am trying to find some kind of rhyme and reason. Something that I could have done differently to not be so damaged. I hate myself because I am working so hard, and it is taking me so long. I think there are good things out there for me and more often than not I am the one that gets in the way.  I hate that there is such a grip that I long to make things make sense when in every bone I know that there is no sense at all.  

There is a place in my head where all the things are on repeat.  I see them as clear as I see these words and there is no emotion no feeling; they are just there looking for a home a place where they can rest.  The only difference is that so many of those things don't have the air to come out of my body.  They are big and unimaginable, and I cannot for the life of me give them any breathe to come out and to be free.  I fear that once that receive the air they need that I will crumble and there will not be enough glue or kindness to put me back together.  In my head the stories play.  In the world, they are silent. 

There is such a part of me that feels so trapped.  I work so hard and yet, the nightmares persist.  I work so hard to heal and the bruises get worse.  There is such a part that feels, overwhelmed and damaged and that is the part that needs healing the most that feels the furthest away. I need this part to be free but I worry about the consequences. 

I am not sure that others understand.  By the time that i say that I am done, by the time that I say I don't have a smile left great damage has been done.  I am going to have to fight twice as hard to get what was lost back. People cannot understand this.  The weight that I am able to carry is huge!  Bigger than you can imagine but when I begin to crack, repair takes much more than if care was given in the first place. 

People have suffered greater things and are living life to the fullest.  I do not understand those days when I would rather curl up in a ball than live any kind of life at all. 

I drown daily. And no one even notices. 

Yes, it is.  I know in my head I have already lived through it I am still here a living breathing person.  But the reality of what happened, and the reality that you were failed by so many is another level of unworthiness that sticks to your soul and has tentacles that attach to everything.  Often there are thoughts that if it was really as bad as I remember then I would be dead.  Living though the life that I have lived is worse now because there is a woman in charge and not a scared little girl who wanted nothing more that her innocence. 

I will never stop, but FUCK I am so very tired. 

Yes this.  

It seems for me I was always the one that was wrong.  I was the defective girl.  I was the always that other girl that no one wanted anything to do with.  That makes things today exceptionally hard, because when things happened there was not a single person that believed in me, no one told me that what happened was the bad thing and not me. 

Sometimes I feel the growth I feel like the breakthrough is so very close.  I feel a little Freier and a little more whole.  But those last moments, so when they come, I hold on and stay still trying to hold on to them as long as I can.

I often forget that this is yet another layer.  If feels like a backslide but it's just a little deeper a little closer to the center.  I know I will be ok I always am.  But in these hard times, the joy just isn't there.  Life is hard, I want to pretend what it must be like for those that cannot understand this past of mine.  I wish for a few seconds I could forget and experience life without these trauma goggles of mine. 

Yes, this I needed so much.  And the hard part is that sometimes today I still feel like I need that.  But today as a 46-year-old woman, those things are not an option.  Like I often feel guilty for the things that I need because those things are not an option for a grown woman. 

I am not sure that I believe in the saying you can't give what you don't have. 

Because I will give and give and give and give until there is nothing left of me and not one person that I come in contact with ever has to feel the things that I have in this life. 

Oh, sweet, amazing brave girl all of this for you.  Someday you will find that happy.  Someday you will be free.  Someday, with tears in my eyes I will hug your little body and you will be excited to live the life that you never got to live. You will be a part of me that I will treasure forever. You will be free from the pain. You will no longer hurt or feel any more hands.  You will never forget but you won't remember the demons. You will always know that you will never ever be alone again. You will know that you are worthy and so loved just because that is how you were meant to be. All of this for you. 

I heart your heart. 

Untitled

 

There are a lot of things that I want to say. There are a lot of things that need to be said. There are a lot of things that I have to say that will ruffle feathers and are not pretty. I write about hard things that I have never been able to discuss and process. I write to try and figure out the things in my head that I have never been able to look at and heal from.  I was told last week that my writing had too many errors, that there were grammatical and punctuation errors.  I was told that I was writing from my story and that she was unable to connect. That if I changed how I was writing I would reach more people.  Well, thank you for your opinion.  At first, I took it personally, like oh my god stop writing now because you suck.   Then I was angry, like how dare you say those things to me.  Then I was a little angrier, because I felt like she was judging not my writing but what I was writing about.  She said I needed a proofreader basically. I wish that I had the exact words that were said, but in a moment of clarity.  I deleted the entire conversation.  I write for me and for my own heart.    I know my wring needs a great deal of work, I just write from my heart, and I am not sorry that I repeat words, I am not sorry that she could not connect.  I am not sorry that I write about hard things that all too often don't get discussed.  I am not sorry that you will never understand the kind of things that I write. And her last little jab, that last poke of the knife was a keep writing with an exclamation mark.  Well, I have to laugh like I needed you to keep telling me that.  I will always write, and I will always make stupid grammatical errors and punctuation errors because I just write to get all the words out that have been stuffed for far to long.  I am not writing to please anyone, I am not writing to make a person feel better I am writing because it's what I need.  I am writing because the things I write about are things that I need out of my mind and body.  The things I write about are the things that can crush a soul and I am done being crushed.  This even about constructive criticism.  There was nothing constructive about what was written in the reply.  One thing I do is connect, so that you were unable to hear the words is more about you than about my writing. 

I heart your heart. 

 

How I remember

 

I don't know what it's like for others to remember things.  I don't know how other people remember the things that happen to them, how they put all the pieces together.  I see the terrible things that happened to me in parts, there are pictures and feelings. Other times that I can still feel it in my bones.  For me, I remember things mostly in pictures, because my mind was usually long gone by the time the actual rapes happened.  I remember things mainly far away.  As far back as I can remember things have always happened to me, so leaving my own body was a very necessary skill. I don't remember a time not being used and abused.  I guess there is nowhere to put those pieces to process them; how a little girl figures out the sexual things that are happening to them when you are 5. There is no context not an understanding of the things being done.  As a little girl there is no way to fully comprehend the things that are happening to your body.  So, for me I remember mostly in pictures because I was either in the darkest place you could imagine or watching from the ceiling or farthest corner of the room. I can put together the things that happened as a woman today but that poor girl.  I feel like there are times that my body was in such excruciating pain and that with the pictures that I have in my head, I know what happened to me, to her.  Not often do those two things happen at the same time in my brain.  I could connect he hurt me, and I was bleeding, but pieces were missing because there was no way for my little mind to know.  I think that because so much happened so young that by the time that there was an understanding about what they were doing to my body, by the time they got to that point of the actual rape I was already long gone, far away in a place that was nowhere near what was happening.  

Its more than hard to try to explain this.  There is a part of me that feels guilty, trying to get the words out trying to put words to things that there is no sense for.  I don't know if I am making any sense at all.  I have to try. For my own sanity and sense of who I am, am I anything without these things? I need to try and get my head around this. Somehow all these parts and pieces need to go together.  Somehow, I need these things to mean something so I can breathe and put them down.

There was a nightmare two nights ago and it was one of the clearest memories, where the pictures feelings and memories were all happening at the same time.   It was the worst kind of nightmare where the things that happened were so very clear in every part of my brain. Every connection was there, and I wanted to die. I had a knowing of what was coming next; I was present and terrified. It was like a knife to my soul that I knew what they were doing, I was present and terrified.   I keep replaying it my mind.  I keep not believing that I can survive the things that I have.  I felt him, like right before he actually raped me and the panic knowing what was going to happen, feeling him and being so disgusted about what was about to happen to me.   Usually all of these pieces are separate making them easier to carry but not this one.  I woke up and haven't been able to get out of my own way.  I keep remembering that feeling right before he hurt me and it's disgusting.  I have gotten sick; I have sat outside trying to get away trying not to remember but it's there burnt into who I am and there is not a single thing that I can do about it.  SO, I have to try and give it meaning, give it a place so that it doesn't haunt me anymore. 

I heart your heart Callahan, I wish with all that I am that I could make this better. 

I am soaked in Sadness

 

There are so many things that are flowing that are feeling that are there in my heart.   It's amazing these walls that I have up then just like that, I hear a song like this and there is feeling and power and even hope renewed.  Sometimes for me there are moments of feeling that are just so freeing.  Today this was one of them.   This has been my favorite CD, since it came out a little over a week ago and today finally really listening it; it hit and this song is more than I could have ever imagined.  The singer was hurt, no he was more than hurt he was sexually abused as a child and this was part of his path to healing. This song. I think I have cried most of the afternoon.  His words so true, real and honest.  His words hit me in the heart and the tears just won't stop.  I keep singing this song at the top of my lungs waiting for there to be some kind of relief for the so deep sadness, that just won't go away that fills every cell, every bone every molecule of my being. 

I am still soaked in the sadness of all the things that have happened to me. I am literally stuck there soaking drenched in the sadness of all that was taken all that was missed out on and all that I never got to experience.   I am fighting so hard to overcome them and sometimes it seems it's a losing battle.  The sadness is so overwhelming, and all encompassing.  

To begin again.  That is what I want, and I have forgotten how.  Because all that was taken all that was done, I don't know how to live without the shame and disgustingness of all the things that were my life.  I don't know how to say those words I don't know how to be free when that is what I want more than anything.  I don't know how to live ,  there has to be some kind of beginning again and I am not sure what that looks like.  So many things that still have such a tight grip on my soul.  I don't know how to be a person outside of all the things that have been done.  I don't know how to be a happy person because that is just who I want to be. 

Sometimes I want nothing more to feel and I can't, and somewhere in my head I think well if it was that bad, then why don't you feel it ! I do feel it, but I see it in pictures and memories and smells today, there was real feeling.  Today there was feeling and hope that and something that I can't even give words too.  Sometimes when someone can give words to something when you don't have any that just hits so very different.  To be open and honest and not have to hold it on your own, that is big. 

I just keep listening, keep feeling and keep waiting for the moment when I can finally begin again. That sadness is so very heavy.  Feeling isn't easy but it would make things better.  I have to feel to find that beginning.  I can't keep it hidden keep it bottled up.  It feels like a so slow death even as I am trying to move forward.  I fear breaking in the feeling.  I am not sure I can find the healing I am looking for without it.  

This song was so freeing for me, like I felt like a ton of bricks was lifted off my chest.  Not just lifted but smashed and that is everything.  

I heart your heart