I don’t know how to navigate this… How do I prepare myself for pain? How do I mourn what I have not yet lost? I can feel the emptiness threaten me already and I don’t know how to prepare myself for this agonizing ache… this absence of you… I keep trying to tell myself that I am ready for this, that this is inevitable and that I should stop mourning…that I should just be ok… Move on… I want to close my heart and stop feeling this way. I have been through enough. I have done enough. I have mourned enough. I am tired… so very tired… Can I just quit now? Please? I don’t want to keep putting my heart through the ringer. I don’t want to keep hoping only to feel like I could be put on a shelf at any time. What do I do when my heart refuses to listen to me and loves you despite all my warnings? What do I do when I find myself – again – alone at the end of the day? I was just getting the hang of alone… or so I thought… Now I FEEL lonely.. that is new. I wasn’t lonely before… I was just relieved… Now the weight of the silence and the absence of the voice I long to hear weighs on me and just hurts. Please show me the way out of here… I don’t know how much more I can take.
Tag Archive: fear
I am haunted by you.
You dog my steps in
the silence of the night
and I lie awake …
tensed for the sound
of your rage.
Drifting off, exhausted,
I startle to every sound,
every breath the house takes
makes me catch my own…
heart pounding…
waiting for pain.
How do I exorcise you
from a place
you never lived?
How do I, instead,
evict you from my heart…
to live no longer haunted?
To breathe again..
Free?
Days like today are hard…
reeling from loss and hurt
on my way to joy, but the journey
withers my heart sometimes… I
need the night sky, the wind
in my hair… the
naked fingers of moonlight
gently stroking my skin…
I need to feel alive…
No other way to
swim in these currents of grief
only by surviving, striving,
rambling my way to joy
ramshackle though it may be.
One day this shadow will lessen…
will give way to the light.
There are endless
Hours of conversation between us…
Among the laughter, tears… joy
Never far away… but – grief stays close as well…
Knowing you has helped me to know myself…
You have been a guide and a mirror to me
On this strange journey… one
Unlike any I have ever experienced. I am
Feeling things I thought long dead
Only to see them rise again, full of hope…
Relieved to find that – against all odds
Love is possible for me…
Only you can say you know me as you do…
Vulnerable, hesitant, afraid… yet
Intrigued and embracing fearlessness and
Never giving up hope even when I
Grasp for bravery, and find it eludes me…
Mesmerized by your steadfast love… I find
Eternity staring back at me.
It has been far too long since I went on a hike with my camera. My life had become such that it was rare for me to find joy in anything at all, let alone my hobbies…and peace was so far away that I forgot what it felt like… It has been a tumultuous few years and now I find myself embraced by peace again… and that longing to delve into the wonder of nature….even if it is as simple as a walk in the woods near my home…
This hike was exactly what my soul needed… I can’t wait to share with you what I find on my next hike.
I remember splashing in puddles
Clomping and stomping
All down the road
Letting the water spray us in
Little geysers, dirty and fun, the
Evening sun turning the sky golden,
Delighting our eyes and
Hearts. Such a glimpse…staggering
Evidence of who you could have been.
Realizing the mother i could have had
My heart shatters remembering your
Onerous, offensive touches
Mortifying me…torturing my soul.
It is a strange thing to me….to be known… It is often easier to write these thoughts out and put them in the ether knowing that they are going out to strangers who do not know me and who I will, likely, never meet… It is another thing entirely for someone who knows me (and who I know) to read them… It makes me feel laid bare…exposed… And I carry the burden of knowing that my life has been what it was and it makes me afraid to meet their eyes…lest I find there the pity and the pain echoing in their gaze… I find myself tempted to edit…to temper the tempest within my breast to make those who have to look me in the eyes more comfortable with the rumble of thunder behind my smile… Then, sometimes, something so profound, so beautiful happens…. Someone discovers my tempest, rides out my storm, feels my pain…and meets my gaze unflinchingly – unafraid and with such compassion, such acceptance… it is truly humbling. And to those sacred few… thank you. Thank you for allowing me this. Thank you for being willing to see beyond the surface and to stare into the dark with me…. for being willing to listen for the sound of the storm and be unafraid of the lightening.
She sat quietly in class
Never hearing a word-
Her mind screaming,
Racing, ravaging her thoughts…
She sat calmly, pen in hand;
Honor student….horror filled
And anguished.
Automatically, she made conversation…
She passed tests
She chatted with friends
And longed to die
To escape this pain…
She sat quietly in church
Longing for salvation
Imprisoned by religion
Preached at by her tormentors
Looking for horns
Disguised as halos.
She sat quietly at home
And smiled at the monsters
While cutting the pain
Of her soul out of her skin…
Watching the blood ooze and
Drip…with dry eyes
And emotionless face
Hiding the raging terror
In her heart.
She sat quietly in the therapist’s chair
Giving reassurances to the one
Who was supposed to help –
Praying they see
Behind her stillness
To the utter turmoil within
Not trusting anyone or anything…
Somehow comforting them
For her pain
And living with the hopelessness
That almost felt like a friend.
She stood quietly in the bathroom…
Staring at her calm face
Unwilling to meet her own gaze,
Unable to keep avoiding the horror…
The pain ravaging her from inside
And without warning-
Almost in slow motion
The avalanche began…
All the silence broke
The tears came in a torrent,
The rage, the pain…
The still, quiet girl is gone
Replaced with a woman
With a face full of anguish
Unable to sit quietly any longer –
Not willing to still her face
For the comfort of strangers
Haunted and crumbling
Shattered
Shuttering violently with each
Invasive
Intrusive
Memory.
Stumbling and falling
All along the path
To be whole.
Who mourns the death of a tyrant? Do you mourn the loss of the person who caused you unimaginable pain? I recently found out that my mother died. Apparently she died back in May. I didn’t know how to feel… mostly because I kept waiting to feel all the things you are supposed to feel when your mother dies… I kept waiting for tears, for mourning, for pain, for confusion… What I mostly felt was … relief. The world felt a little safer to me… Don’t get me wrong, I felt pain… but it was largely the pain of my life…of every time I was abused, neglected, insulted, criticized, misunderstood, raped, hit… The pain of everything she could have been but wasn’t.
It feels scandalous to say out loud that I was relieved when I found out my mother died…but that is the ugly truth of it. I wonder if everyone that is abused feels the same… is this a truth that we all just don’t say out loud? We face polite society and cower in the face of judgement from others. I did. Honestly, I have been judged my entire life. I have lived in pain all my life and been judged for saying I hurt… been judged harshly for saying what you did hurt me… I have been flat out told that I had no reason to hurt. When I confronted my parents with the truth of my pain I was ignored, told that there was nothing wrong with me… when I asked for therapy I was told I don’t need it… I was told over and over that in so many ways that I was crazy…. So now…when I know she is gone – I feel relieved…. I feel like there is one less person trying to gaslight me. One less narcissist to go around pretending like we had this perfect little family.
I will not remain silent… I have been quiet for years – I backed into the shadows… This has brought me back into the light… this had made me feel a little safer in the world, a little more at home. The world with one less monster in it feels like a better world to live in… a safer place for my heart, my memories, my thoughts, my anger, fear, pain, triumph, hope…. safer for me.
I felt for the last several years like I just wanted to hide from everyone, from my past, from the world at large… learning about my mother’s death makes me feel invited back out into the sun…. I belong here. I am not going anywhere and just because the truth makes people uncomfortable doesn’t mean that I will ever stop speaking it and putting it out there. I realized that me shutting up doesn’t protect me – it just makes the monsters more comfortable and that is not the way I want to live anymore.
So…. I am accepting the invitation. I am going to walk in the sun and tell the truth and put my heart back out there… hiding it was not protecting my heart – it was only protecting their reputation… So here I am. In pain, broken, hurt, angry – but full of hope and enjoying the sunlight and not afraid of my own heart anymore.
Some days I feel like I don’t exist anymore… and in some ways I suppose I don’t. I am not the girl I was years ago… I am not the woman I was a few months ago. I am changing all the time. For the longest time I fought that tooth and nail…I thought that was a bad thing. I thought that changing meant I was losing a piece of myself ~or worse ~ all of myself. I thought I would not be me anymore. Turns out – I wasn’t. But that is ok. I began this blog to journal my healing journey. I have been runnin’ a lot lately. I have been hidin’. I have been sneakin’ around hidin’ behind syntax and proper grammar. I have been flowerin’ up my language and tryin’ to be proper. Truth is, I am so angry. I am so dang mad I could scream…and have! I have screamed, cried, prayed… I have felt lost and confused and abandoned. I have felt needy and weak. It feels like the deeper I dig the more junk I find and I feel like I will never be ‘done’. Like I will always find more junk to dig out and toss away. My current list – well, it’s loooong – but I am working on it.
I found someone in my family decided to throw away a 20 year marriage, he has just thrown it away and utterly failed his wife and son. He has been cruel and abusive and I am so disappointed in him. He hurls insults and he is so hateful. I doubt I would even recognize him anymore. Not that we are close. Those days are long over.
I am still working on my trauma therapy, having been beaten, raped, molested, abused…I just want to live, you know? To really live. I find myself tiptoeing around – literally. I find myself trying to make myself small and not to be a bother. I find myself waiting on the pain to rain down on me. It is killing me. It is killing my marriage. My husband married me, but got this docile, hiding, timid woman instead. I don’t even know who I am some days.
I am … well, not thriving… but hoping to thrive. I am tired of living on bread and water when there is steak and wine. I am ready to have my heart feast instead of hide. I want to swim in the ocean of emotion … swim, and possibly, drown. But I am ok with that. I don’t want control anymore. I want to be lost.
captivatingbitter 