Some days I am afraid that my grief will consume me.  I fear that I may never recover from this pain.  I keep trying to be normal… (whatever that means) but all I manage to do is to kill my heart – and hurt the heart I most desire to bring pleasure to.  I keep striving for some sense of … what?… peace? healing? wholeness? normalcy?  I don’t know.  I just know I am in so much pain… every day… My heart feels like it is a mangled, half-dead thing, barely beating in my breast.  I don’t know exactly how to feel all of this.  I don’t know how to be in this much pain.  I don’t know how to be this broken.  I do know that I am tired of trying to be whole.  I am tired of trying to be a girl who knows happiness.  I was raped.  I was abused.  I was ignored.  I was hurt.  I was molested.  I was made to feel as though I was garbage and that I did not matter at all.  This does not define me.  It was not my fault.  I do not need to apologize for these things, and I deserve to feel.  I deserve to feel the weight of my past without feeling like I am making the people around me uncomfortable.  My  pain does not make me a bad person.  My flash-backs do not make me crazy.  My fear does not have to consume me.  I am not what I survived.  My past matters.  The defense mechanisms that I developed to survive deserve to be honored – but they are no longer needed.  I am safe now and I will never be back where I was.  I am worth grieving.  This will not last forever.  One day I will breathe again.