Islands of Memory

 

I have to say that I have kind of gone down a rabbit hole and as awesome as the information is ; it does take a toll.  The last two days i have maybe gotten 5 hours of sleep.  My brain is on overdrive, so many things to think about and figure out. Jim Hopper is an amazing speaker and I feel that he understands survivors and wants to do things different. I have corresponded with him on different occasions and have been more than impressed.  He has a video at a conference where he was a speaker and talked about what happens in your brain when you are sexually assaulted. I get lost in the things that I feel sometimes and seeing this took me outside of my own trauma and allowed me to see the things that happened to me from a different perspective.   I watched it some time ago and was amazed.  He is one of those people that is able to explain things in a way that anyone can understand even something as complex as what happens in the  brain when a person is sexually assaulted. 

I was asking his opinion last week on a personal question. And not being able to sleep I was on his website getting more information.  I watched his presentation again yesterday and my hand could not keep up with all the new realizations that I wanted to write down and how they fit into my story.  I literally sat at my computer in tears.  There were so many more things that spoke to me as I watched it this time.  Maybe I was ready maybe, I am in a different place.  Either way, the things that I learned were more than amazing and so useful to me where I am right now.  I was able to see so many patterns and things that I did that literally started in my brain.  My amazing brain was helping me survive one of the worst experiences of my life and trying to get me out alive.  That is more than amazing.

I am struggling right now.  Trying to process and understand the girl that I was at 13 and the things that happened to her.   I am often not kind to myself in the things that I think and say.  13 was a very long time ago, I should not still be so affected.  I should not still have bruises and memories and pictures in my head.  There are so many things that I still beat myself up for.  I am the first person to tell you that you are worthy and lovable and yet for me as a young girl I tell myself awful things that are everything opposite.  I hate the choices that I made, I hate my reactions and the way that I just kept going.  I hate that I kept living and doing all the things that were required of me. I could write pages and pages of the ways that I blame myself .  Trying to connect with that part of myself is something I am finding close to impossible. Maybe she is too damaged too hurt to ever find a connection and be comfortable in her own skin.  

There were parts of the video that hurt my heart, that made me cringe.  Just things that would have never crossed my mind.  Things that a person who has been raped since the age of 5 would never have connected the dots. There were moments he talked about consensual sex and that there are just certain things that happen when there is consent that are so very different in a sexual assault.  There were some examples that completely blew my mind.  I think in my mind sex and what happened to me are the same thing.  I can not imagine wanting that or anything like it. Sex is so far removed from the person that I am it is not even in the same galaxy.  

I love how they talked about Islands of memory.  I feel like that fits perfect.  There are things i remember and the next minute there are things that don't make sense.  There are moments that are so clear and others and others that I can't understand.  I do have islands of memory,  I think I wish that more people were able to understand that. I hope that as I grow and create new memories that I sink some of those islands and create new peaceful ones.  

I heart your heart