I wish I could snap my fingers and get over this… I wish the world would suddenly make sense. I am haunted by ghosts of my past. Just when I think I am making progress they pop up and frighten me again. I am in the Minotar’s Labrynth stalked by something terrible and unseen. In Medusa’s Lair… with the whispers and hisses at my back that vanish when I turn my head. Constantly seeking a foe I cannot see. How can I possibly defeat my enemy and escape? I fear I will not survive this.
Category: Healing
I gave one sharp cry when I died. You didn’t even notice. You were so busy basking in your glory that I sank below notice even a you drove the knife home. When you cleaved my soul in two I wanted to scream. I wanted my cry to pierce you to your heart and shatter your blessed reality. How nice it would have been to see the horror of your deed marked plainly on your face for all to se as I writhed beneath you in my throes of death. You in your stupor probably mistook my cry for one of pleasure. Filthy creature that you are, so drunk on the exhiliration of conquring me, you never noticed the look of pity. I pity you. Even in my death, even in my agony I pittied you. To the very marrow of my bone I felt sorry for you. What could have driven you to these extreme troughs of misery? You sank into the abyss of mankind and you shall never again rise to the surface. I am sorry for you because even in your act of conquer, Thanatos found you. He found you and instead of taking your life, he took your family, he took your job, he took your respect, he took your calling and left you naked and begging for his skeletal embrace. He will not take your soul. It is a neat little hell you have created for your-self, is it not? You will die in hell as you have lived…
I gave one sharp cry when I died. That cry will echo through your soul forever.
I was taking a shower today and staring at the shower head thinking about the time we had to change it. Then I suddenly remembered that there was a huge gaping hole on the other side of the wall. Changing this shower head was supposed to be simple… just unscrew the old one then screw the new one in place. Like most things in life it got complicated quickly. After trial and error we had to cut a large access hole into wall in the adjoining room to repair the problem. These repairs were taking place at about 9pm on a Sunday which meant we didn’t have much time to get the job properly done before we had to give up on it for the night and just rig it up and go to bed. Well now a month has passed and I had managed to completely forget that this huge hole existed. As long as the shower functioned properly and I didn’t have to look at the hole it was not a part of my reality. This became a metaphor for my life… I find that as long as I am functioning on a day to day level – as long as I can go to work, pay my bills, put dinner on the table, clean my kitchen, spend time with my husband – as long as I can do these things I fool myself into thinking that the gaping hole in my chest doesn’t exist. Then something horrible happens… something wonderful… my husband looks at me and says, “You don’t have to pretend here.” And I am suddenly aware of this wound. I feel it and allow myself to be broken for a moment. Just that small reminder that I am seen, that I don’t have to hide… It’s painful and wonderful at the same time. I usually don’t allow myself to feel this pain. I just gloss over it and pretend to be ok, to be happy. Something amazing happens in the middle of it all, though… Through the safe release of this pain… I find that under it I really am happy… that I really do believe everything will be ok eventually and I don’t have to rush through this healing process… I can give myself permission to be. There is so much grace in that realization.
Now that I am aware…now that I am awake, I am trying not to be hyper-aware of everything I do I am trying not to over-analyze my thoughts and actions. I want to be alive in my world, not just drifting slowly through it, but I also want to relax and enjoy the journey. I want to drink in life and stop being a passive character in my own life story. I want to be able to recognize and admit to a lifetime of abuse without drowning in this grief. I want to realize my own self-worth without becoming self-involved. I want to admit that I need to do things for me that make me happy without alienating the people I love. I want to give myself permission to be happy without seeking the approval of others. I want to be comfortable in my own skin. I want to stop hiding behind the “everything is ok” mentality when things are so obviously broken. I want to be able to admit to this pain that threatens to overwhelm me without making the people around me uncomfortable. I am so tired. So afraid. So broken. I am ready to shake off this cloak and lie in the sun. I am ready… just so afraid…
There’s so much I don’t understand. I long to life a life of transparent honesty, but that’s just not practical in our superficial polite society. It’s all about what’s easy and politically correct instead of what’s real. When someone ask, “How are you doing?” they expect a positive answer. If you tell them the truth they are uncomfortable and don’t know what to say. No one knows what to do with the pain. As a culture we are not given any tools with which to deal with pain – there’s no etiquette for this. There’s no precedence for this transparency. This seems universally true – in work, play, school, church… there’s no room for pain. No one really wants to know about your pain and no one wants to honestly share their pain. Everyone wants to pretend to be ok – well-adjusted – happy – but most of us are dealing with some kind of brokenness, some kind of pain, even if we don’t quite have a name for it.
How do we break this habit? Is that even possible? Will we always be a society of isolation? We have more methods of connecting now more than ever before – yet we have never been more alone. All communication have become trivial and the art of sharing reality has been lost. Gone are the days of love letters… we are in an era of romance via hallmark. We depend on someone else to communicate our affections or not at all. If a card or e-mail forward does not contain the feeling we wish to convey we founder – having no words of our own. Why? Because we are a society of observers… always watching, reading, listening – not thinking, feeling, sharing. We surround ourselves with media in lieu of nature, we seek triviality rather than solitude – we spend our energy on status rather than investing it in another.
Where does this leave us? It leaves us all lost and lonely. It leaves us in a home crowded by TV, radio, internet, video games – where two lonely people live who have forgotten how to share what is most important – themselves.
My grandmother is fiercely loyal to her favorite son. For reasons no one really knows she worships the ground he walks on. It is not unlike a cult, with Eddie the proclaimed prophet or savior. I will never understand where this unhealthy devotion comes from. Growing up in this family of 8 children, Eddie was the one who could do no wrong. He molested some and possibly all of his 5 sisters. When they came and told their mother, she told all of the children to keep it a secret and not tell their father. She was worried that if her husband found out he would kick Eddie out of the house. She was more willing to sacrifice all 5 of her daughters to this man than to save her daughters and put him away where he belonged.
Later, after the children grew up and some had girls of their own, the entire family gladly left their daughters alone with this man knowing full well what he was capable of. It was more important to save this “good man” this “man of God” than to be sure their children were safe. It was more important to preserve a reputation than any of the girl’s innocence. We were all disposable. Just something to be sacrificed at the Altar of Eddie.
If I live to be a hundred years old, I will never know where all of the contempt came from. Why were the girls in my family so despised? Why were we so worthless to so many people? Why were our lives not more important than the reputation and freedom of one man? Why was it ok for Eddie to molest and rape us?
I know it’s impossible to ever get answers to these questions, but I long to understand. There’s a part of me that believes if I could just understand this, my life would suddenly make sence. I know this is pure fantasy and will never happen, but I just long to categorize these experiences and make them fit into some form of sanity. I want to have simple explanations, even if they are painful ones. Instead I am stuck with this horrible feeling of worthless-ness. Of being a disposable object… a thing of contempt. I feel like I must be truly broken for an entire family to want to toss me to a monster, then protect the monster.
I know one day I will be beyond this in my healing and the quest for answers will not matter so much. I know that one day I will learn to accept that my family is just profoundly broken and twisted and wrong and completely unaware of what love actually is or what it means. But between now and then I have this gaping hole in my heart and a pain that permeates all I touch and a sadness that lingers behind my smile.
I am so afraid… I am embarking on yet another chapter of my life and I don’t know if I can do this. I am finally coming to terms with how abusive my parents were. Even though they did not molest me, they didn’t protect me and not only did they not protect me they treated me like a freak when they found out. They blamed me, they buried the whole thing under the rug and went on pretending that everything in our family was perfect. I have been surrounded by this attitued of ‘everything is ok’ my whole life. No matter how twisted or painful things were in our home we all pretended to be a happy family. I don’t want to pretend anymore. My life was pain… intense, bitter pain… and I am not ok with that anymore. I will not bow down to this cult of secrets and lies anymore. I will approach my life with honesty, even if that means I cry every day until this mourning period has passed… at least I will be real.
There’s so much I don’t understand about the healing process. I feel so lost and confused sometimes. I just want to feel whole again… I just want to be me again, whoever that is… For the first time in a long time I long to be whole, I want it so bad I can taste it. I am tired of lingering in the shadows hoping that everything will be ok. I am tired of settling for being broken. I am tired of being resigned to living this half-life where I never expect my life to be any better than it is. I deserve to be happy. I deserve to be free. I deserve to feel strong and beautiful. I am done apologizing my way through life. I am done keeping my head down and staying out of everyone’s way. I am done being beaten down and just accepting that that is my fate. I want to live. I want to thrive. I want to twirl in the sunshine with my arms flung out and my head tilted back with the wind in my hair and a laugh on my lips. I want to dance in my livingroom unashamed. I want to play and have fun. I want to revel in every day miracles. I want to blow the seeds off dandelions and make wishes. I want to spoil myself and not feel guilty. I want to pursue health and not fear. I want to be embraced and enjoyed. I want to be safe again. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I want to allow my husband to love me. I want to give myself permission to be vulnerable and let down my guard. I want to be vibrant and passionate and ALIVE. I want freedom from this pain, this fear that holds me back… I want to more than conquer it I want to stomp it into the ground and take away its power over me. I want to shake off this weight from my shoulders and sing to the sky. I will be happy one day. I will overcome this.
When I was a teenager I read somewhere that, according to an old Indian legend, butterflies could grant you your lost innocence. This thought obsessed me. I began to truly believe this. I longed for the return of what had been stolen from me so cruelly. I already loved butterflies. They are so beautiful and so fragile. Their lives, though short, seemed to have more meaning, more purpose, than mine. It may sound silly, but I began to pray for this encounter, for this miraculous return of my innocence. For years I longed to feel the butterfly’s kiss and have my healing at long last. One day, walking through the woods, I was admiring the filtered rays of sun touching the ground in a plethora of small pools on the ground before me… praying once again for my healing, for this blessed encounter when, in a flurry of wings, a butterfly smacked me right in the face! I felt my heart burst within me. I laughed, flung out my arms, and twirled in the dappling shadows. I cried with joy. No, I didn’t receive my miracle… at least not the one I was expecting. I’m not going to tell you that my innocence was restored or that the hurt in my heart just floated away to be filled with blessed light. I didn’t suddenly let go of all the pain and fear that haunted me… none of the things I wished for came true. So why did I laugh until I cried? Because in that moment I felt God’s promise come into my heart and fill the emptiness I had been trying to desperately to ignore. He told me then that I would be healed, that my heart would soar again and that the innocent joy I had been seeking would find me. In one moment, alone in the woods, faith filled me and my search was over. I am still healing, I am still journeying, and I am still full of hope. I have found my joy and my innocence waiting right where I left them. I still fall into despair, but at the sight of a beautiful butterfly, God reminds me all that He has promised me will come to pass and my faith is renewed.
captivatingbitter 
Thoughts on Honest Communication
I think we underestimate the value and the ease of honesty. We over-think things and give simplistic answers because that is what we assume other people want from us. When I ask a question I expect an honest answer – and because of this I only ask questions that I am interested in the answer to. I prefer a life of honesty. I don’t want someone to try to anticipate what they think will be best for me or easier for me to take… I do not believe in “white lies”. I just want to know what is, not what someone thinks should be. I want straight honest answers and honest feed-back. I am so tired of avoiding issues for the sake of not hurting feelings… it is usually more painful in the long run to avoid the immediate pain for the sake of what’s easy.