Its more than the memories

 I feel it in my bones. I still feel their hands and hear their words. My body hurts and there is no reason today, but I can't get away from the physicalness of it. All this time later and I can't comprehend the things I am feeling. I can remember being so afraid to go into the back of the house that I would not even use the bathroom because I was that afraid.  I feel like there are just so many pieces of this puzzle that I am trying to sort out, and I am oh so tired.  I have the pictures running in my head with every thought. I feel the things that they did in my every cell.  I hear their words and sometimes freeze thinking I hear them laugh.  I even smell them sometimes; I will pass a certain cologne and I am 13 all over again.  For the last two weeks its felt like I have a bladder infection I DO NOT, yet that's what I feel.  Sometimes things hurt so bad I think I should go to the DR then I think seriously Callahan last time you did that the DR basically said you were crazy and told you to see a psychiatrist.  I am sure not doing that again. I am not crazy, it's just that my bones remember.  I have been working really really hard with sweet 13-year-old and since then I can't get warm.  It's almost 80 and I am sitting here with 2 sweaters on, I remember every second of the coldness the shivering the exposure and there was no covering me up no safety.  When the house is quiet and the kids are at work, I sit on the couch not believing the things that I have survived, knowing that I did and wondering how in the hell that it happened.  How did I hide, how did I wake up in the morning, how did I  just keep moving on when all I wanted to do was make it all go away. How did a smile ever show on my face.  How did my heart continue to beat.  I don't have an answer for those things, but I know that there was something deep inside, there was something that was untouchable, something that held on and wanted better no matter what.  I will be glad when I don't want to understand the how's and why's of how I survived.  I will be glad when I can stand in the light and just be glad that I did. I will be glad not to flinch , not to think I hear their laugh and for my body to finally be free of their hands.  This piece is just so much more than the memories and the pictures.  More than I can even comprehend. 

I heart your heart