Still bleeding from his wounds
he returns to me…
He reveals the depth of his pain –
and I am lost in the torrent, lost
in the extent of the damage.
How can one, so wounded, still live?
He is a road-map of scars,
a patch-work of bruises;
and in my hand the mace.
(Warning: Contents may be triggering and not appropriate for all readers)
Fear threatens to consume me again… just when I think I have a handle on things I feel that familiar threat rising up to consume me… I feel that self-doubt… that heart-pounding… that palm sweating… I feel intensely aware of my weaknesses and short-comings. I feel wholly inadequate. I feel so insecure and I avert my eyes in the mirror – too ashamed to meet my gaze. I hate this so much. I feel my heart break…
I was thinking the other day about one particular instance in my child-hood. I was forced by my father to kill my pet rabbits. In his mind I was not feeding them enough… or feeding them often enough… so he decided that since I was (supposedly) starving them that I should just have to kill them. He made me get them out of their hutch one at a time and hit them in the head with a piece of two-by-four and then skin them. There are not words to express how horrifying it was to do this… to hold something in your hands that you love and kill it. To be so ruled by fear that you obey without question. One of the rabbits came back to consciousness in my hands as it was being skinned and twitched and screamed… I can hear it to this day and I will never forget the terror in its eyes. My heart aches to recall it and I feel this terror and this shame rise up in me… I felt like a monster doing this… and that feeling lingers and sometimes I am afraid that I became a monster all those years ago. I don’t know how to forgive myself. I don’t know how to absolve this guilt or assuage this fear. I don’t want to go the rest of my life hating myself for this but I honestly don’t know how to ease this dark ache in my chest… this pit that opens up every time I remember.
I’ve got that feeling again… the buzzing of angry bees in my chest. I wonder sometimes how long this struggle with anxiety will last? Will I carry this with me always? Will I ever get to the place where I can feel safe and at home in my own skin? What battle am I fighting today that I feel this way? When do I get to rest? I feel like I have been fighting one battle or another since the day I was born. I guess we all are in some form or fashion. I long for peace. I long for comfort… I long to feel. I have been numb for far too long. I guess I am finally learning where the bees come from… those angry bees that swarm in my chest and make it hard to breathe. I think they are all the emotions I have refused to let myself feel. Now to loose the bees and regain some measure of peace I am choosing to feel all the painful things that I would not (or could not) feel. I am crying and raging and curling up in a ball and allowing myself to feel small and vulnerable… I am fighting for me. I will win.
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.
How do we cope? How do we deal? How do we ‘get over it?’ How do we get through this? When you’ve been raped how do you get on with life? What does ‘getting on with life’ even look like? We study, we read, we become experts in body language, we become invisible, we become smarter, harder, distant… some see us as cold…
I studied… I studied psychology, psychopathology, maladaptive coping mechanisms, anxiety, depression… I watched people, studied body language, facial expressions… I got to the point when I was aware of my surroundings at all times… I kept my back to the wall, knew where the exits were, listened to everyone in the room.
After many years I am finding my peace again, finding my center, leaning on God, learning to pray & trust and that it is ok to hope again. I want to help others now. I want to reach out and share my story… I want it to matter. I want the things I’ve seen & survived to make a difference… desperate to make a difference. I am desperate to have my pain mean something…
I can feel it again… that tightness in my chest…
the tears, the throat so tight I cannot swallow.
Grief fills my lungs with cries I will not utter.
I feel the pull… the desire to be “ok”
the desire to bury this pain and pretend
that I am not in agony…
I feel it again… this drowning
all-consuming tidal wave swelling
toward me… so much pain… and I stand
on the open beach… arms out-stretched…
do your worst.
Haunted by memories I grasp for you and quickly push you away.
I cannot stomach this closeness yet I desire your touch – crave it – NEED it…
Fear arises as the brush of your hand resurrects ghosts thought long exorcised…
My body trembles, haunted by the abuse that still lives in my skin and in my breast, beating like a second heart.
It is chaos here… shouts, whispers, whimpers, cries…
Locked in the asylum of my mind.
captivatingbitter 