The Price of Mother's Day

Trigger warning for self-harm, estranged mother-daughter relationships

I want to carve my pain into my arms, to watch the blood drip down onto this pristine white floor, mixing anger and grief, loss and love as if somehow it will cleanse my heart of the secrets it carries.

I played good daughter today. I called my mother, told her the truth, told her that I love her. I buried everything else inside through that stilted, brief phone call, voices of my siblings in the background. Siblings who were there, with her today.

I hid out in my apartment all day. Actually I hid in my bed, curled up with the man who loves me watching movies on a laptop. Periodically I checked Facebook, comforted and stifled by the words of others. Words of acceptance for grief like mine. Words I wanted to like, to share to shout from the virtual rooftops.

Instead, I sat silent, withdrawn, pulled away. Immobilized by fear. Fear  of it getting back to my mother, of causing more pain for her than I’ve already caused. Fear of further estrangement from those who believe my family to be supportive and loving. Fear of fucking it all one more time.

Today I choked on my own truth. The truth that my Mother is a complicated woman who I have a complicated relationship with. The truth that I am not a mother, may very well never be a mother because I don’t want a child who will bear the scars of my mistakes. A child who may very well thirty years from now fight tooth and nail to call me, to reach a hand across a divide that cannot be bridged. A phone call that costs her everything, that leaves her wrung out. Too many emotions, not enough words.

I don’t want to pass down this legacy to my daughter. Each year I’m reminded on Mother’s Day of the cost my heart pays for that choice. Each year I question if the cost is too high. Each year I work to remember that even though she never protected me, never bonded with me, my Mother loved me as best as she could. Each year I hide my truth from myself and everyone else in the name of love that tastes of guilt and obligation.

Stories From the Past: Scars

Trigger warning: self-injury and suicide

There are hundreds of scars criss-crossing my body. Faded reminders of the pain from the not so distant past. I have hated these visible reminders of how bad it really was. But I still mourn as they fade and sink into the background of my skin. They are markers of my life. Twelve years of pain documented on my body.

I can still see the very first scars. The ones made with a broken bottle shard sitting under a tree near the highway. That first time, I wanted to die. Wanting to die, trying to die, those weren't new things for me. I'd already tried several other ways with obviously no success. This would be it, the ultimate escape. Back then, death was the only option I could see for getting free from the life I was trapped in.

Broken bottle shards do not make for good cutting tools. I cried because it wasn't sharp enough and then had to hide what I was doing when a classmate showed up uninvited. The burning stinging pain in my wrists got me through the rest of that week. It opened a whole new world of coping to me.

It spiralled out of control until I had to cut to make it through the day. It got harder and harder to hide, to excuse away. When I was arrested two years later they had to document any injuries on my body. I had almost 40 current self-inflicted wounds covering my arms. I wish I could say that I got the help I needed and that the self-injury stopped then. Instead I got creative. I found other ways that didn't leave a mark that could be seen by others. I continued to cut and it once again took over my life when I got a place of my own.

I'd love to say that I would have stopped on my own, but that wouldn't be the truth. I needed an external consequence that was serious enough to motivate me to stop. I still almost didn't make it. One day at a time added up to years. Four years, four months, and twenty-one days.

I wish I could say that I don't miss it. Some days that pull is still there. I don't know that it will ever go away. On the days that the pull is too strong, I trace the scars and remember. Remember the pain that drove me to cut for relief. Remember the self-hatred that demanded I punish myself for existing. Remember the lies that if I could bleed enough then maybe I wouldn't be evil. Remember that I have other tools now than this one and that I deserve gentle care from myself, rather than more scars.

Soul Howling: The In-between anniversaries

trigger warning: aftermath of sexual trauma

You know when you're not okay, but there's nothing that will make it better, so you keep on doing the right things, putting one foot in front of the other, making time for self-care as the howling of your soul threatens to deafens you?  I've been treading water long enough that the motions are mechanical, my thoughts incoherent, every last ounce of my will focused on not drowning.

I'm in between sexual trauma anniversaries for this month. One down, one to go. Maybe then my body will stop feeling what my mind doesn't want to remember. Maybe then I won't want to throw up when my husband kisses me. Maybe then the restlessness in my bones will quiet down enough that I can think.

It's been 8 years and 13 years respectively since these traumas happened. You'd think I'd be over them by now, that I'd have healed enough that they wouldn't haunt me like this. That my body wouldn't wake me up over and over again in the night with the feel of their hands, their bodies where they never belonged.

It's all I can do to put one foot in front of the other. This is normal for me. This is a normal state of being - this howling of wordless pain and degradation. Much of the time I'm tuned out. It's there - it's always fucking there, but I become deaf to it. I could tell you the details of how my body was treated like a commodity, a tool for his using and leaving, but those aren't what haunt me.

What haunts me is that both of these men knew. They knew I was multiple, knew I was abused, and had presented themselves as safe people, in places that were supposedly safe. My soul howls at the betrayal of the shreds of trust that I still had that had been placed in the hands of yet another who used me.

My fear tells me to run, to flee, to hide myself away from everyone and everything. To never share any of who I am with anyone, ever again. It's tempting. It wouldn't help me heal, it would be going backwards, but my mistrust of the world as a whole is at it's high point for the year. I don't feel safe, not curled up here in my office on the couch, not wrapped in layers of blankets in my bed, not in my husband's arms, not in my therapist's office.

I'm tired of riding this out. Tired of choosing the right thing with the immediate result being extreme restlessness. My heart came alive in a new way this year and now I can't numb myself to how this feels. I know this too is healing - and so my soul howls, wordless broken terrified.

When Faith is Messy

This process of peeling back layers of my life, my story it's vulnerable, painful, yet some how, some times exhilarating. There's something about telling the truth - MY truth - that smells like freedom. I want to race to the end, to sprint ahead, but this is still a marathon journey. I do not have the strength to sprint the rest of the way.

As I write more pieces of the truth, more pieces show up. I've spent my weekend emotionally reeling from seeing the connections between all the pieces of what I thought were highly disconnected spiritually abusive groups. I knew there was some cross-over. I hadn't connected that they were all connected, that they all trace their own histories back to the same tainted source. Whether it was the extreme charismatic signs and wonders, the never-ending worship and prayer services, the character seminars that promised to reveal the hidden principles of a successful life, or the commissioning of house churches to serve under regional apostles it all traces back.

I've spent my weekend floundering, wondering if there is any part of my faith that hasn't been tainted by this toxic teaching. Desperately hoping that there has been something from the first 25 years of my life that wasn't connected to this filth in the name of God. It's painful to face the inevitable questions - is there any of it that was real? Have I ever had a faith that wasn't tied to a cult?  Where do I go now? Is there any faith community that could be safe? How would I even know?

What will I learn 5 years from now about the church that I've been a part of these past 5 years? This church that has been a haven and a family, yet that feels like it's now choking the new life being born in my deepest self. My fear and my fury are mixed together. My prayers are wordless screams again. I can't see straight about anything and I want to run. To run from anything that looks like Christianity or religion. To run to the water, the trees, the sunlight where my rawness has room to breathe.

There are so many questions: Do I dare? Do I dare follow where my heart is leading me? Do I dare try one more version of Christian community? I still need the Church. I know this to the core of my being. I need Her. I need her humanity, her history, her example. What I don't know is where to find her in a way that won't deepen my already bleeding wounds.

For now I stick with what I know. I run to the water, to the trees and the sunlight. I run to the thunderstorms and the cries of the geese. I allow my prayers to be wordless screaming and angry profanities mixed with heart-wrenching sobs. I honour the place where I am trusting somehow that Love will meet me here. And for now, that is enough.

Easter

Easter is not an easy holiday. It is gritty and raw. Every year I gain a new piece of why there is only pain and a rawness in my soul. Here's this year's piece:


For two days you ask me to journey deep into the darkest recesses of my soul. Just as I settle into the wonder and the weeping, you show up. Emotional whiplash. I'm not ready to rejoice.  There is more here in the dark. More that needs to be felt for, discovered, grieved over before it can be unearthed. I'm not ready for resurrection.

The light is too bright for the rawness that is my ravaged heart. I find myself face down, eyes streaming, begging to go back to the darkness. The work you were doing in those hidden places, it mattered. Now the light has chased away my shadows, the fleeting pieces of my jagged edges. I've lost them, yet again. These snatches of untold story that were starting to unfold. The sudden light has shoved me into painful unseeing once more.

I'm not ready to rejoice, to sing songs of relief and gladness. I'm still back in the remembering. My eyes had adjusted to seeing the beauty and nuances of the darkness. I cannot grieve for you one day only to turn around and embrace with whole-hearted ecstasy this supernatural gift. This fleeting gift of your presence here. Far too soon you will leave and retreat to this glorious world outside time that you left for only a short while. Your transient life makes me retreat back into my darkness, alone, but for the half light of a spirit, your spirit that allows my weary soul to dimly see the next step along my road.

Marriage and Grief Work

I have two other posts started, sitting in my drafts from today. I can't seem to complete either of them right now. I'm processing a lot from the past in between fights with my husband. I don't know if it's just where we're both at in our individual journeys right now or if there's something else going on. There are big themes behind the fights, themes of broken trust, lies of omission, and withholding self. It's exhausting.

It's layers of healing.  Frankly I don't know how to talk about what's happening in my marriage, what has happened in my marriage. Intimacy anorexia isn't a common term.  It's still pretty new as a label for a grouping of issues.  I don't particularly want to do the whole information post on it. I know it would be helpful to have one more voice out there in the world talking about it, but I already do that in person enough.  I don't want to become the poster child for what it looks like to live with a spouse who intentionally withholds intimacy in all it's forms.

It's better than it's ever been and there is still so much healing work to be done. The fights are nothing like they were our first year of marriage. They aren't even like they were a year ago.  The conflict is healthy most of the time. It's still painful.  It's painful to still be rebuilding trust - and when that takes a step or two backwards in the span of three days, it's a little much for my heart to bear.

When that shit hits the fan at the same time as some of my own identity work - it's messy.  My brain hurts and I need to scream.  There's this picture in my brain of me standing in the middle of no where, screaming until I crumble, sobbing like my heart has been broken until I throw up and pass out. That's how it feels right now.  It will feel better and hey at least I'm not medicating how I feel.  This is raw and ugly but my feelings are mine. I'm honouring them for what they are, what they have to teach me and releasing them in healthier ways than I have ever done before.

A Prayer for Mercy

O Lord, this holy season of Lent is passing quickly. I entered into it with fear, but also with great expectations. I hoped for a great breakthrough, a powerful conversion, a real change of heart; I wanted Easter to be a day so full of light that not even a trace of darkness would be left in my soul. But I know that you do not come to your people with thunder and lightning. Even St. Paul and St. Francis journeyed through much darkness before they could see your light. Let me be thankful for your gentle way. I know you are at work. I know you will not leave me alone. I know you are quickening me for Easter - but in a way fitting to my own history and my own temperament.
- Henri Nouwen A Cry For Mercy: Prayers from the Genesee


This was a timely reminder in my email this weekend. Too often I want to skip the process, to not have to journey through the darkness. Healing is a process, one that is uniquely tailored to the pain and horrors that have happened to me.  It's itchy and I hate it...

...and I love it. I love how it is perfectly timed and ordered, even though I can only see that order in hindsight. I know, that it took time for me to get to where I am.  The healing that I've already done has taken time.  I can't heal from all of it all at once. That's just not the way that it works. The times I tried to rush the process were overwhelming. 

Years ago in one of my "why-wont-You-hurry-up-and-heal-me" phases I remember clearly for the first time seeing the extent of my pain. Every time I want to hurry this up I flashback to that moment. It was the moment that it became real. Real that this was going to take years of hard work and that it would forever alter me. It was a major crack in my minimizing what had been done to me as "not-a-big-deal", "normal" and "my fault". 

Now in my racing ahead, trying to stop being "broken girl" I know I am avoiding. Of all the stages of work that I go through in healing, this stage of grieving not only for what happened, but for all the losses and the continued fallout - this is the stage I will avoid, run from, and try to rush through. I hate grieving. I hate the sadness that works it way up for the core of my body. I hate the crying, the migraine, the puking, the sinus headaches, the curled up in a fetal position screaming through sobs. I hate how spent I am, that this takes every scrap of energy that I have.  I hate that there is no room for anything else and yet I need those other pieces to keep me from spinning out and losing everything I've gained over the years. 

I want redemption NOW. I want the other side of this to be here now.  I am weary and my heart is grieving. Whether or not I choose to acknowledge it doesn't change that it's happening. I find myself doing the next right thing and begging for mercy.