I'm linking up with Marvia Davidson's Real Talk Tuesday talking about truth. This is my truth.
I couldn't settle to sleep, so I stayed up all night reading Every Shattered Thing by Elora Ramirez. If you haven't read this book, you need to. It wrecked me. Because while I've never been a victim of human trafficking, I have a good friend who is. This shit is real. It happens. And the lucky ones escape.
My words are tumbling around in my brain, as I fight tears. Because this story, it reminded me of something I'd forgotten. It reminded me of how bad the abuse was. About how it really is a big deal. I forget that. I forget now that it isn't happening every day. Now that I don't live my life in terror. Now that I don't have to worry about my room being searched or being caught doing something that would dishonour the family.
I've buried my stories. The fear and terror. The shattering of my soul. I've told them, detached, clinical. Listing the details as though they were nothing. Because they were normal. But Stephanie's story, it reminds me that it's not normal. Her desperation, her tenuous grasp on hope, it reminds me of my own. I forget how far I've come. I minimize the healing that still needs to happen. It's easier that way. It's easier to shrug it off. It's easier to live my life half-connected, but that's no life at all. It's this washed out watercolour existence, that has more colour than my life ever contained so I think this is living.
I'm still surviving. In too many places and too many ways. I'm surviving. I'm still hiding. Hiding my words here, hiding my face, my passions, my dreams. I'm hiding the nightmares and sleepless nights. I'm hiding the daily pain, the constant reminders of medical treatment and care that I was denied.
I don't tell. I still don't tell. I feel like I've written this post a million times here already, and somehow I need to keep writing it. I need to keep telling myself the truth, because really that's what this is about. It's about truth. My truth. I forgot what it was like to find stolen moments of time. Time to myself, hidden away from the parents. The lies upon lies that I told praying that he wouldn't catch me in it, that he wouldn't take away the tiny pieces of freedom that I had earned.
I understand what it is to be property. My value was in the work I could do around the house, the free babysitting, the way that I bolstered his image as a good father - and when I didn't bolster his image then came the rages. The screaming words hurled at my soul - the ones that I don't have to hear ringing in my ears any more because I wear them, carry them in my bones. They weigh me down and keep me trapped.
fat, lazy, rebellious, witch, liar, bitch, slut, disappointment, demon-possessed, why can't you be better, why can't you be like so and so...on and on, his words defining me, shaping me. Demanding respect, demanding love, demanding affection, demanding unquestioning, unthinking obedience. Demanding, pushing, pulling, tearing at my skin.
And I feel the numb set back in, the fog settling back down, sinking deep into my bones. I feel myself start to float away from these memories, back into myself, back into the present because what's back there is too much, too hard, too painful.
It isn't enough though that I survived it, that I was given a place, a home to escape to. I owe it to myself to heal, to come alive, to be the person that he was desperate to destroy. I don't know how. I don't know how to unlock these stories. I still don't know how to tell. Yet I'm convinced and reminded yet again that I have to tell them, in halting words and imperfect details. I have to tell them so that maybe my soul will stop shattering with every anniversary, phone call, visit, sleepless night, flashback, memory, and trigger. I don't know how to heal from this. There isn't a manual. But I'm determined to try.
Showing posts with label trauma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trauma. Show all posts
Friday, June 20, 2014
Thursday, June 12, 2014
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.
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.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
A Plural Life in a Singular World
You don’t end up as a poly-fragmented multiple without severe, prolonged, horrifying trauma before the age of 7. I know this. All the literature agrees, well all the literature that acknowledges multiplicity as real, as possible. I laugh at the idea that something that I live can be debated still as to whether it even exists.
It’s always existed for me. I split before conscious memory, long before narrative memory. I will never get to know why. There is no story that I can tell, no threads to weave together into a tapestry that explains why when I was a preschooler I already had 5 distinct separate personalities. My abusers refuse to acknowledge the harm they did to me and I do not yet have the strength to force a confrontation. It’s around the age of 4 that I have conscious narrative memories. That is where my stories start - the first time that he thought I was demon-possessed and decided to cast it out of me. The first time that a friend wanted to play a game with me - a game that I've learned to label for what it was - sexual molestation and object rape.
There’s the story of the bullying, the name calling, the being pushed down on the playground. Of being excluded, always, forever left out. These are stories that I could tell, that I need to tell - and every story, every incident shattered me further. My words feel too small, too insignificant to do justice to the harm done to my very being in the name of God, love and family. I don’t have a before. All that I have is the abuse and the aftermath.
I can’t tell you the story, the first story where I learned that because I was a girl I was less than, I was evil. I can’t tell you the story because it was in every interaction with my father. I saw it every time he belittled my mother. I was taught it every time that the story of Adam and Eve was told. It was Eve’s fault, she destroyed the perfect world God had made. I have a three year old part inside who’s name is Eve. We only found her a year ago - locked in an internal hell, perpetually being punished for being a girl, for being sin, for being totally depraved to the very core of her being. Christianity taught me that. My good private Baptist school taught me that. My current church teaches me that. It’s taught every time a man gets up to speak and a woman doesn't. It’s taught every time a man is put into a leadership position over a woman. It’s taught in ways that are driven into the depths of women’s souls.
To stay in my church right now is telling Eve, this precious piece of us, two separate messages. Because we rescued her from that hell - both her and the young boy that was created to torment her for all eternity. We rescued them and have been teaching them both that they are more than that story from so long ago. We are teaching them that they each are beautiful and worthy and loved. But when I stay, I'm telling Eve that there’s a piece of that old story that tormented her for so long that is true. She is different, less than, over-looked and unseen because she is a girl. I can’t stay in a place that tells this beautiful piece of my heart that she is evil.
I must leave, and I don’t know where to go. It’s only been in the last 4 weeks that the internal structure that has kept us trapped in a cycle of torment and obligation about our faith has stopped. It’s shifting, changing once again as we take this next step to healing. This is my hard thing - my internal world, that is more real to me, more a part of me than anything else on this earth and this next step in my healing, finding a church that doesn't add garbage into my still open wounds. I want to live open and honest as me, as us. I don’t want to be the poster child for healthy multiplicity. Most multiples who heal choose integration into one whole self. That’s not an option for us. We've never known a life without each other’s company, opinions, voices, and our internal landscape. It’s not easy to live as a plural person in a singular world. We are always checking our tenses, terrified we said too much, that we spoke as a harmonious collective instead of a solo voice. It’s the secret that doesn't get talked about - not with the family, not with most of my friends, not in the places that I minister. There just doesn't seem to be room for all of me.
Yet all of me is here, we exist - and the more that we write, the more the struggle to stay singular seems worthless. And we’re scared. Scared people will run away like they have in the past. Scared people won’t engage with us as we are. Scared that we will turn into this sideshow freak. Scared to write this, even more scared to post it. We've been kicked out of things before for being plural and owning it. Our biggest fear though is that we’ll be ignored. The one thing I cannot bear is silence.
There’s no tidy neat bow to wrap this up with. I hate that this is an on-going writing, something that continues to surface. This healing from abuse is painful. Living in the aftermath is even worse. Maybe that’s why my eye keeps being drawn to trees growing out of rock faces. Trees that are thriving, and growing in the most difficult and beautiful of places. Maybe my eye sees what my heart doesn't dare hope for yet - that there is beauty here, growing out of these hard places.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Dark Days
{Good Lord this post sounds melodramatic. It's not meant to be. It's honest. As honest as I know how to be right now. I'll be back to a more balanced place in a little while. Too often I don't acknowledge my own dark days. I'm trying that here, with this.}
Some days my broken gets too big. It eclipses every thing else in my life. I sink down, mesmerized with my own pain, sucked into the aching hole of my own private dark places. When I say some days, I mean at least once a week. Introspection is a good thing. At times I go overboard and know myself a little too well. I forget to look around. I've spent long years believing I was other and alone. I was told to get over my broken, to see that others suffer more than I can imagine.
I've heard the platitudes and comparisons with a little Jesus sprinkled on to make those who offer such filth feel righteous. They ring in my mind, in my memories. Some are etched in my soul. Other still block my ears and blind my eyes, tricking me into believing that what was is still now.
My voice is panicked, defiant, and silently screaming. There is no objectivity. Things that I know are right for me are called back into question once more. I back into the corner, desperate for protection, needing permission to choose for myself, to function, to breathe.
This is the fallout I hate. I hate my brokenness at times. I hate the way it dominates everything, that THIS, this is what I know. It's all I know. Trauma and recovery. I wish I could rip my heart out of my chest, to find some way to let all the darkness pour out of me once and for all. Darkness I never invited, never wanted, never deserved yet that darkness haunts me, torments me, taints me.
I lost the first 22 years of my life to abuse and I've spent the last 8 finding myself and healing from all the damage. I don't know anything else. The only beauty that I possess comes from ashes. Most days I embrace the mystery along with the pain - the mystery of why this was allowed in my life. The mystery of the purpose that it may one day serve. The mystery of abuse done in the name of a holy merciful God.
On these types of days, I loath the mystery. I demand answers. My heart's voice screams "why?!" until it's hoarse. There are still no answers. No more of a response now than there was back then. My pain swallows me and everything I know, all that I have learned is once more lost in the howls of a soul in agony.
Some days my broken gets too big. It eclipses every thing else in my life. I sink down, mesmerized with my own pain, sucked into the aching hole of my own private dark places. When I say some days, I mean at least once a week. Introspection is a good thing. At times I go overboard and know myself a little too well. I forget to look around. I've spent long years believing I was other and alone. I was told to get over my broken, to see that others suffer more than I can imagine.
I've heard the platitudes and comparisons with a little Jesus sprinkled on to make those who offer such filth feel righteous. They ring in my mind, in my memories. Some are etched in my soul. Other still block my ears and blind my eyes, tricking me into believing that what was is still now.
My voice is panicked, defiant, and silently screaming. There is no objectivity. Things that I know are right for me are called back into question once more. I back into the corner, desperate for protection, needing permission to choose for myself, to function, to breathe.
This is the fallout I hate. I hate my brokenness at times. I hate the way it dominates everything, that THIS, this is what I know. It's all I know. Trauma and recovery. I wish I could rip my heart out of my chest, to find some way to let all the darkness pour out of me once and for all. Darkness I never invited, never wanted, never deserved yet that darkness haunts me, torments me, taints me.
I lost the first 22 years of my life to abuse and I've spent the last 8 finding myself and healing from all the damage. I don't know anything else. The only beauty that I possess comes from ashes. Most days I embrace the mystery along with the pain - the mystery of why this was allowed in my life. The mystery of the purpose that it may one day serve. The mystery of abuse done in the name of a holy merciful God.
On these types of days, I loath the mystery. I demand answers. My heart's voice screams "why?!" until it's hoarse. There are still no answers. No more of a response now than there was back then. My pain swallows me and everything I know, all that I have learned is once more lost in the howls of a soul in agony.
How long will you forget me, Lord? Forever? How long will you look the other way when I am in need? How long must I be hiding daily anguish in my heart? How long shall my enemy have the upper hand?Answer me, O Lord my God; give me light in my darkness lest I die.
Psalm 13:1-3
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Reclaiming my Beauty
Once upon a time I executed a perfect pirouette and felt myself beautiful...until my body type was shamed as "not right" for a ballerina. Those shaming moments that came time and again beat down my sense of my own beauty. A sense that already came far too infrequently and already carried baggage with it.
The first sexual assault on my child body was when my body's beauty became used for someone else's exaltation of power and control. I was four years old and no longer innocent. The pattern continued, one perpetrator after the next, using my beauty for their pleasure. Beauty became something that needed to be hidden. Every time I started to reclaim my own beauty there was another perpetrator stealing what belonged to me.
In my pain I harmed my body. Cutting it hundreds of times in a vain attempt to purge the evil in me. I hid my body and my beauty. I buried it with clothes and when that didn't work, I buried it with fat. Now I could shame my body, to tell it how disappointed I was, how it had failed me in this too, that I now could never be beautiful again. There will always be scars and stretch marks - my life story written on my skin.
I believed that I had destroyed any beauty that was left in my body. I desecrated it and now what's left served only as a mockery of what could have been, of what was intended to be.
Over the last three years, I have journeyed with my body. For a long time I've referred to it as "my ugly". It wasn't mine. It doesn't look like me. As I've learned to let go of some of my self-hate and the false blame, my relationship with my body has come front and centre. I could see that who I was might be beautiful, but the skin it was housed in was deemed ugly and not suitable. My awakening heart wanted to feel beautiful, to be beautiful and I resigned myself that it would never happen.
I began belly dancing about a month ago. After that first lesson I walked out sore, alive, and more connected to myself than I had ever felt. I felt like a woman. Each lesson connects me more and more to my body. Every time I practice I see glimpses of how right now, in this moment there is beauty in my body. Beauty in the movement. Movement that comes from MY body.
As I learn to dance again, I'm learning that my beauty matters. Deeply. In times past when I felt my own beauty I was authentically and unashamedly myself. Feeling my own beauty, embracing it grounds me in my body and in the moment. Time seems to hold it's breath as my essence twirls in celebration. I owe my body an apology for the abuse I heaped on her and compassion for the abuse that was inflicted on her by others.
I cannot change what has come before. However, I can learn how to see myself right now as beautiful.
The first sexual assault on my child body was when my body's beauty became used for someone else's exaltation of power and control. I was four years old and no longer innocent. The pattern continued, one perpetrator after the next, using my beauty for their pleasure. Beauty became something that needed to be hidden. Every time I started to reclaim my own beauty there was another perpetrator stealing what belonged to me.
In my pain I harmed my body. Cutting it hundreds of times in a vain attempt to purge the evil in me. I hid my body and my beauty. I buried it with clothes and when that didn't work, I buried it with fat. Now I could shame my body, to tell it how disappointed I was, how it had failed me in this too, that I now could never be beautiful again. There will always be scars and stretch marks - my life story written on my skin.
I believed that I had destroyed any beauty that was left in my body. I desecrated it and now what's left served only as a mockery of what could have been, of what was intended to be.
Over the last three years, I have journeyed with my body. For a long time I've referred to it as "my ugly". It wasn't mine. It doesn't look like me. As I've learned to let go of some of my self-hate and the false blame, my relationship with my body has come front and centre. I could see that who I was might be beautiful, but the skin it was housed in was deemed ugly and not suitable. My awakening heart wanted to feel beautiful, to be beautiful and I resigned myself that it would never happen.
I began belly dancing about a month ago. After that first lesson I walked out sore, alive, and more connected to myself than I had ever felt. I felt like a woman. Each lesson connects me more and more to my body. Every time I practice I see glimpses of how right now, in this moment there is beauty in my body. Beauty in the movement. Movement that comes from MY body.
As I learn to dance again, I'm learning that my beauty matters. Deeply. In times past when I felt my own beauty I was authentically and unashamedly myself. Feeling my own beauty, embracing it grounds me in my body and in the moment. Time seems to hold it's breath as my essence twirls in celebration. I owe my body an apology for the abuse I heaped on her and compassion for the abuse that was inflicted on her by others.
I cannot change what has come before. However, I can learn how to see myself right now as beautiful.
Friday, March 14, 2014
The Sweet Spot
There is a sweet spot for going to bed and getting up. If I miss those windows, I will struggle to sleep and no matter how many hours I sleep, won't feel rested. I missed the window tonight. I know better and I'm trying to not beat myself up over it. There were things that I needed to finish tonight because otherwise they wouldn't get done.
I'm now in that place of wanting to stay up, to play, to have the day that I didn't have earlier where there was time for continuing to explore Found Poetry pieces and reading the three books that I've got going right now. I want to do and be and create yet what my body and mind need more than anything right now is to rest and sleep. I'm not sure why this happens. Maybe it goes back to being in college and getting that second wind. I'm really not sure what it is. But something happens after 10 o'clock and no matter how tired I am, I can't make myself go to bed. I'm a little kid staying up way past her bedtime, insisting that no she isn't tired yet in between huge yawns. It would be cute if I was 3. It's not so cute at 30.
It feels humiliating to have to ask my husband to make me go to bed as if I'm the child and he's the parent. I probably need to explore why this happens. Sleep and I don't often get along even when I do make it to bed in time. It's always a crap shoot. I know that going to sleep doesn't feel very safe. That if I go to sleep I can't protect myself. About half of the sexual trauma did occur at night, specifically around going to bed so that's a piece of it.
There's this frantic what-if-I-miss-something feeling that goes with it all too. Again the roots of that are in trauma and not being allowed to forget anything or miss anything. "I forgot", "I didn't know", or "I didn't hear you" were perilous phrases.
There's something else though. Something before where my memories kick in. Something, someone young and terrified of beds and sleeping and being too warm because that's when you can't breathe. I could guess what caused that but it would only be a guess that I could never confirm or disprove.
All of this to say, sleep and me aren't very good friends - except for the times that we are. I can sleep during the day, and if I'm not careful will sleep all day and be up all night. That's a recipe to fuel a major depressive episode. I'm talking myself in circles here, trying to find the magic button that will let me go to sleep. I feel like I'm rambling, aimlessly wandering and there is utterly no purpose to pushing publish on this. It seems whiny and self-indulgent really. Pointless to put out there in public except...it's me being vulnerable. I hate talking about how normal day to day functioning is messed up because of PTSD, DID, vertigo, or because I'm recovering from several addictions. I hate living a life where I can't take eating, sleeping, showering as things that I can do. Each of those basic things requires elaborate planning and forethought for them to even happen.
All of it makes me look at God and go, "I survived for this?" I'm tired and cranky and nothing good happens in my brain after 11 o'clock. Time to get help to make myself go to bed. I know things will look better in the morning.
I'm now in that place of wanting to stay up, to play, to have the day that I didn't have earlier where there was time for continuing to explore Found Poetry pieces and reading the three books that I've got going right now. I want to do and be and create yet what my body and mind need more than anything right now is to rest and sleep. I'm not sure why this happens. Maybe it goes back to being in college and getting that second wind. I'm really not sure what it is. But something happens after 10 o'clock and no matter how tired I am, I can't make myself go to bed. I'm a little kid staying up way past her bedtime, insisting that no she isn't tired yet in between huge yawns. It would be cute if I was 3. It's not so cute at 30.
It feels humiliating to have to ask my husband to make me go to bed as if I'm the child and he's the parent. I probably need to explore why this happens. Sleep and I don't often get along even when I do make it to bed in time. It's always a crap shoot. I know that going to sleep doesn't feel very safe. That if I go to sleep I can't protect myself. About half of the sexual trauma did occur at night, specifically around going to bed so that's a piece of it.
There's this frantic what-if-I-miss-something feeling that goes with it all too. Again the roots of that are in trauma and not being allowed to forget anything or miss anything. "I forgot", "I didn't know", or "I didn't hear you" were perilous phrases.
There's something else though. Something before where my memories kick in. Something, someone young and terrified of beds and sleeping and being too warm because that's when you can't breathe. I could guess what caused that but it would only be a guess that I could never confirm or disprove.
All of this to say, sleep and me aren't very good friends - except for the times that we are. I can sleep during the day, and if I'm not careful will sleep all day and be up all night. That's a recipe to fuel a major depressive episode. I'm talking myself in circles here, trying to find the magic button that will let me go to sleep. I feel like I'm rambling, aimlessly wandering and there is utterly no purpose to pushing publish on this. It seems whiny and self-indulgent really. Pointless to put out there in public except...it's me being vulnerable. I hate talking about how normal day to day functioning is messed up because of PTSD, DID, vertigo, or because I'm recovering from several addictions. I hate living a life where I can't take eating, sleeping, showering as things that I can do. Each of those basic things requires elaborate planning and forethought for them to even happen.
All of it makes me look at God and go, "I survived for this?" I'm tired and cranky and nothing good happens in my brain after 11 o'clock. Time to get help to make myself go to bed. I know things will look better in the morning.
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