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.

Resignation Letter: Untamed Hearts

One of the triggers from my past flared last night. I bit my tongue, because it wasn't the time or place and my thoughts were all jumbled. I bit my tongue because the words I wanted to scream weren't about that time and place, but about all the years of being told that I was fundamentally wicked, not to be trusted, evil from the day I was conceived.

I don't believe those lies and I refuse to cower under their power. This is my resignation letter:

I resign from a world where my heart must be bad, my emotions not to be trusted. One misused verse from Scripture no longer holds sway over my heart. My heart is beautiful and alive. My emotions are what make me, well me. They are full of colour and keep me connected, grounded, sober.

I grew up in that world, that world where emotions were evil and my heart deemed wicked. I spent 12 years trying to bleed the evil out of my body, 16 years of my life went to wanting, trying to be dead. My heart lived on mute. Don't tell me that taming my heart is good. It's evil. Twisted, wicked, straight from the pit of hell evil.

My heart doesn't need to be tamed - she needs to be set free. To passionately pursue beauty, to run after dreams and chase down hope. Her voice will no longer be silenced. My heart is not wicked - it is the essence of me. And I, I am not wicked. I do not need to be tamed, controlled, or numb.

So while you are entitled to your opinion, I no longer live by it. Not only  do I not tame my emotions, I listen to them, allowing them to teach me, to guide me, to connect me to this vibrant world. I honour my heart's feelings, listening to what they tell me about myself and my world.

Those twisted words, yanked from context, spun around, and spat out as justification for breaking my spirit have ruled me for far too long. I've given most of my life to those words, feeling guilt and shame that are not mine. I won't live there any longer.

I choose me. I choose life, experienced through the entire spectrum of my emotions.

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.

Detaching and Protecting

I've been detaching from people all week long.  Part of it stems from having been overwhelmed with people last week.  The weekend helped to balance that out.  But I'm detaching still.  My heart is behind my walls again.  I'm protecting myself.  But why?  What the hell is going on that my instincts for self-preservation have kicked in?  

My reaction is disproportionate to the present circumstances, which of course means this isn't about the present, but is about the past.  22 years of trauma tend to make for a hell of a lot of triggers.  I know the big ones, but this one? 

What is it about re-framing how I see that is setting it all off?  Is that even the trigger?  It seems to have started there, but it could just as easily be held over from last week.  Sometimes I wish this was easier.  Right now I'd settle for a book or an idea or even some good questions.  My questions just seem to keep my brain spinning in circles right now.  

Here's what I do know.  

I'm homesick.  I miss President's Choice Blue Label products and their decadent chocolate chip cookies and deluxe white cheddar mac and cheese.  I miss my chosen family - it's been 5 1/2 long years since I last got to hug them.  It's an ache that never goes away and I don't want it to go away.  Because loving them is worth hurting every day that I'm not there doing life with them.  I'm building something incredible here - and I know this is where I'm called to be.  This space, this time has been carved out for me to have all the pieces that I need for me to do the deep healing that's necessary for me to even live day to day life.  For my marriage to even have a chance at lasting or being healthy, this is where I need to be.  Maybe one day I can have all the people that matter most to me living in the same country, or at least on the same side of the continent.  

I am grieving still for the marriage that I thought I would have.  The one where my husband isn't an intimacy anorexic.  The one where recovery was something that was there for other people.  The one where I didn't have to gear up and fight every day.  I knew marriage was hard.  I knew for us it would be horrific - it's all kinds of messy when two abuse survivors marry.  But I didn't expect it to be hell for the first 5 years.  It's better than it's ever been and I'm impatient.  I hate that he has to chose every day to be brave and connect with me.  I hate that connecting with me requires him to be brave.  I hate that he was hurt so badly, abandoned and neglected to the point that no one is trustworthy.  

I am wrestling with God, faith, belief and what that all looks like in my life.  I am still de-programming from the toxic abusive bullshit I was taught in the name of God.  It's hard, painful work.  I am still questioning how an all-powerful God allows abuse, especially that done in His name.  

I'm tired of being patient and waiting.  I'm tired of everything taking hard work.  I'm tired of continuing to pay the price for the sins of others.  

I am tired.  I don't know how to even begin to re-frame any of this.  I don't want to let go of my judgements.  yes they hurt me, they hurt people that I care about.  But letting go of one more thing?  I already feel stripped of my defences.  And yet I know this is what I'm called to do - to live with my heart wide open. This week I'm running away from that calling and that's why I'm detached.  That's why my walls are up and I can't seem to engage with my course.  This week requires an openness of my heart that I'm not ready for yet.  I'm learning - and I'm not there.  Not yet. 

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.

Chewed Up and Spit Back Out

I ran into one of my top 5 triggers yesterday.  I spent the rest of the night working through it and it's aftermath.  I hate this.  I hate that this is still my life.  That the mention of something can send me right back to being 16 and trapped.  The people who were intended to help me did yet more harm and they used their "God" to do it.  The thought still turns my stomach.  I hate revisiting teenage me.  Not because I hate her, I actually (now) really love pieces of who I was back then.  The intensity of her anger and the anguish of her daily pain - God how did I survive that?  No wonder I wanted nothing to do with faith or God.

I don't want to talk about it.  I don't want this to be part of my story.  Christian Ritual Abuse is ugly.  It takes what is sacred and spins it around, using prayer, faith, and Scripture as weapons against innocent victims.  I hate that so much of what was done to me was done in the name of God.  It still brings up unanswerable questions - and I have nothing left in me today to wrestle with them.

On my good days, I know that the "God" I was taught about is not the one that I choose to follow.  Nor do I see that "God" in the world around me or in the pieces of Scripture that I can hear.  Today is not a good day and I find myself pleading in tears for mercy.  Mercy for my doubt-riddled belief.  Mercy for my angry words of pain.  Mercy in this fight, because today I can't fight.

I can't fight.  All I can do is rest.  I wrap myself in softness and purple.  I let the music flow over my rawness.  I sit in the pool of sunshine and grieve for the child I was.

Gungor's "Please Be My Strength" is one of my favourite songs in this season. It's deceptively simple - a heart psalm, and one that I find myself often repeating.