I am watching the day die slowly
As the cicadas and frogs
Begin to sing loudly
Drowning out the sounds
Of the city around me
And the light fades to
Gold, then gray…
Enriching the colors
Then draining them…
I feel the heat of the
Fading day against
My skin…somehow
Comforting and not
Oppressing despite the
Lack of a breeze.
I feel so alone, yet
Somehow not lonely,
My mind reaching
Into the silence, searching
For You….Hoping to find
Myself… at last.
I have found such unexpected joy lately. I am not ready to get into it yet…but it has been a very long time since I felt beautiful, since I felt joyous, since I felt like I had something to offer. I have had someone walk back into my life recently that reminded me who I was… and who I can and will be again.. Such an unexpected joy. I feel powerful and passionate and alive and beautiful and full of potential. I am awash in my hobbies and pleasures and passions and interests… I feel like I am coming back to life. This person has showered me in compliments, in passion, in adoration, in teasing and humor and has brought me back to myself… the me I was years ago… I left myself behind so long ago that I was lost in my pain and anger and confusion and I forgot who I was. I forgot who I was created to be. I am starting to remember. I am coming alive again… adrift and awash in Joy… finding a love I thought I had lost… finding the me I thought I had lost… Thank you my dear, wonderful, unexpected love… thank you for bringing me back to life.
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.
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.
My mother passed away recently as I posted a while back… I am still trying to figure out how I feel about it all, but what I have concluded is this…I lost all hope of having a mother years ago… In many ways I lost my mother long before she died. I lost what it was to have a mother. I lost any concept of being loved by a mother or having a mother to love and celebrate and look up to. Now, here I am at 44 trying to reconcile my aching heart to the loss of a woman who hated me and did so much to crush my heart and who was far more concerned with being a martyr than a mother. I don’t know how to navigate these waters. I loved my mother and I was also so crushed by her and so utterly hurt. Sometimes my heart just aches within my chest and part of me recognizes that ache as the ache for family…for her. I dreamed of having a mother I could say anything to…who I could talk to about anything at any time. Someone I could tell the truth to and who would always tell me the truth in turn. Someone who would help me to know what a Godly woman looked like, what a good wife was, how to be a woman. I wanted someone to demonstrate femininity and not to revile it. Instead I was raised in loveless house of lies and my heart just hurts… I am not sure now how to mourn her, how to mourn myself…
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.
Hi, my name is Becka and I am codependent. I got a chip at my first CoDA meeting and I am taking things one day at a time. I am step by step journeying back into my life ~ breaking free of this disease and learning to be healthy and whole. I know I have a long uphill battle ahead. I know this won’t be easy. This codependency has seeped its way into nearly every aspect of my life and the depths of my mental illness has permeated me to my very core. I go days, sometimes, feeling nothing at all.
Numb…such a hateful four-letter word. I used to think it equated to safety but now I see it for what it is. The destroyer of all my humanity. My empathy, compassion, warmth, silliness, passion, anger… all faded to apathy and numbness until my world was all grey and I forgot what color looked like… what color felt like. I forgot what love felt like, what warmth felt like… I even forgot the fierce red heat of anger, I forgot the beautiful blues of sadness and all the vibrant hues of desire.
I found the stair-case…now I am climbing out… Becka-Dragon Girl… hear me roar…
captivatingbitter 