She doesn't know anything else

 

Sometimes, you just can't explain what is happening inside. I feel like I am in this place with Spunky.  That 13-year-old part of me has been so broken.  She doesn't know anything else and is more than afraid.  There was a video with Besser VanderKolk, and he was talking about how Trauma is not about the memories but the reliving.  That hit me really hard.  I am not sure that she knows that all those terrible things that happened to her are over. She is in those moments.  It's not like the darkness is on her anymore.  It is that she can't see beyond those moments a lot of the time. I am reading this book about EMDR: Every Memory Deserves Respect, and I do believe that the experience that I had with EMDR was by a clinician who was not at all comfortable with Trauma, and that made the entire experience something that was very uncomfortable.  If you are not even comfortable sitting in the moment and breathing, it's something that a person is not ready for.  It's hard to explain.  Spunky's experience brought every single sense to a high that is hard for me to explain.  Imagine for a second every sense being on a level of 100 for an extended period of time, then becoming so overwhelmed that the world just goes black.  That was her experience for hours, and there was no escape, no relief, no safety, and the only next step was death.  So when I have to sit and focus on my breathing, to me, it's all those senses in that same place even all these years later.  It's so hard to explain.  Sitting just being asked to focus on my breathing is a kind of panic that is indescribable.  I remind myself about all the things and about being in the present moment and that I am not being hurt anymore; somewhere in those thoughts, my mind gets lost and goes back to that place of absolute terror. 

There are moments that are frozen in all senses. This is one part of the puzzle that has been the hardest to even look at because, for so much of it, there are no words. It's this feeling of being stuck, this panic that I am in danger. She is closer than she has ever been, I am more open to her than I have ever been, and I am still scared that what happened to her is going to swallow me whole. The pieces that I see are moments frozen in time, sometimes like a video that cuts in and out.  Other times, it's like a picture that has been put on pause, and you know what's coming, and there is not a single thing that can stop what is going to happen.  This is the place where she lives.   More lonely than a person can or could ever imagine. 

She deserves the world, yet feels like she is the lowest of the low.  She has no worth in a single cell and she feels so very desperate for any kind of connection.  She feels alive when she is able to connect with Whales.  I watched a movie, Patrick and the Whale, and it was the closest that she had ever felt.  Whales make her feel alive; she has a connection with whales that just is. it's a kind of heart connection that, if you know, you know.  It's something that has kept her alive, kept her breathing when all she wanted to do was stop.  There is a gentleness in whales that speaks to all the things that she has never had in life. When I bought that huge whale last week, there was a spark that made her feel alive.  She needs more of that.  I am going to do everything I can to bring that connection into all that we do so she can one day believe that she is so worthy and so deserving of all the good things that this amazing life has to offer. 

I heart your heart