I've been crying for days.
Crying at sappy commercials, TV shows with emotional story lines, the
written word by writers I admire and in the cracks between all that, for love
lost, years of my life lost and this strange space I'm in right now. I'm tired, not body tired, but heart and
soul tired. This battle for healing,
for becoming the most whole version of me I can be feels never-ending just
here, just now. I don't want to hear
how the journey is a spiral and it only "feels" like I'm back at the
beginning. I want to know it, know it
from deep down in my soul that this path is nearing completion. I want to feel the sun, the light deep down,
so deep inside that it illuminates all the darkness, burns it away leaving
nothing but joy and love and light.
This space, just here is exhausting and feels unending. A
moment that lasts for an eternity.
I'm tired of the darkness the abusers left behind, tired of questioning
my own right to be here, alive, breathing.
I yearn to know peace... To know
that I deserve to be here, that I have a right to be here, that I don't have to
apologize for the space I take up in this world.
In truth I feel as though I am false, that I somehow create
a negative space, a black hole, that I shouldn't be here. It's a battle between heart and mind. My heart feels, knows that I have something
to give to this world, that I want and can make a difference, even if it's in
some infinitesimal way. My mind argues,
knowing that lives have been lost in my story. That the abusers did damage far beyond what
they did to me.. that there are empty places in this world where others should
be doing their own healing. Why did I
survive? Why me, here on this path, and
not those that were lost along the way?
Perfect. The label I
was branded with so deeply, far more deeply than any physical brand could do, a
branding of my heart and mind, of that unobtainable thing, perfection. I have always felt I was a lie, I knew I wasn't perfect, that fucking word
that they tattooed on me from
birth.
Somehow I have to stop resisting. I am closed down like a fist, fingers
wrapped tightly around thumb. I want to
scream to the universe that I cannot take another moment, another memory, any
more knowledge of what I've survived, can it be enough that I did...
survive? But my body and mind are
beating their drums, waiting to tell their story, and I know... I know, that so
long as I resist, their war drums will grown louder, kinesthetic memories will
continue and I will continue to feel like I'm drowning.
But to not resist?
To open to what comes next, feels like death. I hear the sound of those damn hospital
monitors, the sound of flat line, no breath, no beating heart, no brain waves,
hear the wail of sirens, and terror rises up like water, choking me. Death.
Because to break the rules, any
of them, always meant death.
There was no other thing. If you
remember you die. If you tell you die.
And yet here I am, putting word to paper, I am here and they are dead and
gone. Mostly. Except when their not, in dream and night
terror.. flashback and body memory.
There are stories I need to know, my body is reminding me
that it needs me to listen with every panic, sweat filled night terror, every
kinesthetic pain and spasm.
So, where does that leave me? Still trying to sort out how to open that
clenched fist, how to open my body and heart and mind to the truth, still
trying to stop resisting no matter how loud those drum rhythms of impending doom may sound. In the face of terror how do I open, soften
and simply be with what comes next? That is the piece I need to figure out just
now. And so here I am, putting word to
page and fighting the screaming fear that is raging through me.... Today I will
try to soften, just the littlest bit, instead of fighting the fear I will fight
to unclench my hands, my mind and just
be, present.
I hear you body, I hear and I will do my best to listen, to
feel, to see. Today that will be enough.
