What I truly wish, is that I had no need of a day job at this time. That I just had hours upon hours of day to spend working creatively: not only here, on this blog, but also on the numerous other projects and endeavors that I have my little hands in. Oh, for innumerable hours to exercise my body, mind, and spirit. Oh, for the time to turn those exercises into tiny morsels of truth spilling out into poetry, children's books, my novel and my music.
That time will come as I practice the patience and perseverance needed to turn my every I wish into an everyday facet of life. I believe that I am on the path to being a self-sustaining artist. I will use my many talents to forge the kind of life I want to live. I will work for myself instead of others. I will inspire.
Right now, life is a little complicated. I have been reticent in admitting to myself that working on this blog is a little hard on my psyche. It pushes old buttons and uncovers secrets I had hidden from myself. It is a brave and noble work; a work I hope will be a help and a comfort to others who are taking a similar journey. This does not mean it will be easy. Quite to the contrary, it means that it will be a difficult undertaking much of the time. All things worth doing are.
The other day I was completely out of sorts. Everything was wrong. Having roommates was annoying. Having a job was annoying. Working out was annoying. Not working out was annoying... You get the picture! (I'm sure you've had those days yourself!)
My wonderful roommate and best friend of years is not one to let me wallow in these things. She makes me talk it out. "What are the exact feelings you are feeling?" Anger, sadness, frustration, disillusion. "Why do you think you are feeling that way? What is at the bottom of those feelings?" I don't know. (My standard answer, which usually means: I sort of know but am unwilling to admit/ say at this time.) "When did you start feeling like this?" When I started this blog. (And the tears start.) (But honestly, when are there not tears with me?!)
As I rode the train into the city to go to work, I thought more about this conversation. K had gone on to ask me to think about what this blog meant for others. How it might help, and how I always spoke about how I wanted to help others who had faced harrowing trauma in their childhood.
This is always a good place to start. The desire to help others is noble. It takes us away from our pain. Away from the past and into the present. It multiplies the quantities of love that we are putting out into the universe. It extends us beyond ourselves, into the beautiful collective of souls that make up our mental picture of 'other'.
But I realized that this is not enough. I have to do this writing for myself. It's another step toward loving myself fully, and only when I love me fully will I be able to love you fully as well. I have to vocally acknowledge what my history is. A history that is sometimes dark and sometimes gloriously beautiful. And as I acknowledge and shed light on all the dark corners of my past, I make my present stronger. More solid.
More real.
There is a tendency in abuse survivors to see everything as unreal. The world around is a strange and unsafe place that can change at the whim of others who are physically stronger and more powerful. Those with this power can seem like strange figments of dream: sometimes kind and loving, then changing without forewarning into a monster with fangs and claws. Even the body seems to be a bit of a mirage. It is a toy to played with at the whims of others. It reacts in ways contrary to the survivors wishes. It finds pleasure mixed in with immeasurable pain. The body betrays, others betray, and reality betrays.
Since there is no set reality, the survivor (in this case me), retreats into themself. Into a world of make-believe, where they control the outcome. This is how they can endure abuse at the hands of those who should love them, and still go to school/church/dance class/camp and seem ok, albeit probably a little socially awkward.
For me, I retreated so far into this alternate reality that many pieces of the truth of my life were broken off and buried deep within the subconscious. I fragmented. My mind split into many smaller 'me's'. I would lose time... "wake up" in the middle of a conversation or class and fake my way through like I knew what was being said before. And the pieces of my history I couldn't live with got lost for a long time. I would have strange fuzzy memories that had no context. Memories that had key people and events veritably "blacked out". I thought everyone worked like this and I didn't worry about. In fact, I would have told you I had the best memory in the world.
And then one day, on the One train, on the way to my student job at the Theatre Arts academy I was attending, I had my first real flashback. It was Sunday, a week before labor day... I was 24. It started with a smell. The smell of sweat and car grease and stale heat. I slipped into a memory that had always confused me and made me slightly sick. A memory of my cousins chasing me across their backyard with a broom, cornering me on the edge of their deck, holding me in place with the broom across my chest. I was about 5... they were teenagers. It was Christmas or Thanksgiving and I was wearing a dress. "If you tell, we'll push you off." Off the deck and down the steep embankment behind their house. (I had always wondered, "Tell what?") My Daddy had come out and seen them and made a show of rescuing me by pretending to knock their heads together. Or maybe he really did knock their heads together; he was very angry.
And then the memory rewound, past the beginning I had known all those years, to a new beginning. To playing under the big tree in the backyard. My cousins want to play with me, and since they usually treat me like the biggest annoyance in the world, I am elated. They want to play 'Legend'. I don't like that movie, except for the unicorns, but I saw on their TV earlier that there are devils too. Mommy said it's a bad movie. But I say ok, and I get to be the princess. And it's fun... Until it isn't, and they hurt me in a private place. And that's when I ran.
When it all came back, I thought it was a strange imagination. It haunted me. It made me sick. I felt like I was in shock. But I also felt that it could not really be true, even though something in me was sure that it was. I went to Target that night with K, and I told her a little about the experience. I didn't know it was a flashback. I thought I was making it up, or going crazy.
The next day the tears began. I had been depressed for a long time, but this was different. It was like I was drowning. I could not function at school... I could not function at all. And while a part of me continued to feel like I was making it all up, deep inside I knew. I had a secret history, and I could no longer deny it. The day after labor day I quit school. Though I didn't know it then, I was beginning the most important journey of my life. My healing journey.
And this blog, I now realize, may be the most important step on that journey so far. It is the place where that little girl who was scared into silence can have a voice. It is a place to explain to so many why the expressions of a hidden pain I played out may have caused me to inadvertently hurt them.
It is a place that makes it all worth it.
I wouldn't trade my history for anyone else's. Oh, I have wished at times that it didn't happen... That damaged people didn't do so much damage to the innocent little girl that I was. But now I have a chance to turn it around. To join in the battle to stop abuse by speaking out. To be the one who says the pattern ends here. The abuse ends here.
If you have endured any type of abuse in your life, this entry is dedicated to you. Your journey is long and sometimes hard, and you are the only person who can take it. You, alone. But there is hope. If you stop running from the fear and the anger. If you turn around and face those monsters that chase you, you can fight. You can defeat them. It will take a lifetime... It will take a single moment. You are already stronger than you know, because you survived what the worst of humanity threw at you and you're still going. Remember, if that little child you were could persevere, then you can to.
You have a friend in me, and the many others out there who have stood where you are.
And if you are not a survivor, then you know one. And you can be the support to them that K has been to me. (She has survived her own story too, but I think everyone has, in one way or another.) If we all work together, we can be a community of strength. We can change the present of those who are hurting and offer them a hopeful future.
All it takes is a little courage... And a whole lot of love.
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