Layers

There are times that I wish things were "easy" - less complex... Dealing with trauma is difficult, but when you add a whole other layer of difficulty and complexity to the mix, it seems to become almost impossible. One step forward, two  twenty steps back! I make progress (in my mind) and the next time I turn around, I am even further behind than when I had started.

A friend once told me that it is like the layers of an onion - layer by layer you peel away the emotions and memories until finally in the end - you dont have a huge, solid onion - you have paper thin layers. You will shed tears along the way - but in the end - it's over and done. I'm not sure which layer of the onion I am on at this point. I think my onion is regrowing new layers!!!!

My rape (HOLY CRAP - I can't believe I just called it that - blech ...) was complex...at least to me. Even now, trying to process it is difficult. I don't see it like others do. I see it as a movie - complete with graphic and horrifying images and scenes. Even when I read what I have written about that night - I still can't get through it in one sitting without the movie becoming too intense in my head. Will it always be like that?

Yesterday in therapy I mentioned that I wish I had experienced a normal rape. A quick "in and out" - wham bam thank you ma'am - and the end. I don't know how to process all that "my" rape was. There are so many levels to its intensity that I almost can't process it. I get so mad that it happened at all - then I immediately feel stupid. Stupid that I allowed it and stupid that I (at times) participated. I am SOOOOOO not looking forward to sorting though the layers, but I know I need to.  It's time.  I trust my therapist - I just wish I had a hand to hold through it. ......

Broken

I've been doing a lot of cleaning lately - "spring cleaning" if you will! I have successfully gutted and purged every ounce of crap from the basement (oh yes I have a basement in Florida), the master bedroom and closet, my craft (aka "crap") room, the guest room and my sons room! I have very little left to do upstairs and still have to tackle the downstairs ... sigh ... but while cleaning today, somehow I managed to knock over a vase and watch it hit the ground and break into a few pieces.  No big deal - more of a pain than anything - just clean it up and pitch it. But I started really looking at the pieces and realized that some were missing. When I tried to piece it together, there were gaps - like those shards just disintegrated due to the trauma.

This made me think - how much of who we are/were does just this? Completely disintegrates when we are dropped and broken? How many times can we be broken and glued back together without there being some form of inconsistency in our appearance?

Does being continuously broken make us more fragile that the average bear? Once you have glued your broken vase back together, I would think you would make sure to take extra special care of it as it is in greater danger of shattering again ... Are we like that? Once broken, should we be handled with kid gloves and placed on the top shelf out of harms way? What happens when we once again hit the floor and shatter? Are our insides just as fragile as our outsides? For me, my heart seems to be broken easily - something as simple as not hearing from a friend in a month or two can cause me to go into a tailspin. Why? Am I too broken???

There are so many ways for us to be "broken". I wonder if people like me - people who have been to hell and back on a few occassions - are too broken to resemble what we were made to be in the first place. You can only glue a vase back together so many times before it stops serving its purpose (to hold water). What if someone can only go through so many traumatic journeys before they can no longer fulfill their purpose? Do they just find a new purpose? Maybe ... even a broken vase can serve a new purpose - a beautiful mosaic.

Is it time?

How do you know when you are ready to talk about everything? All the details ... I've written them out - but never spoken of them - even in therapy I tiptoe around it. I don't like to talk about it - partly because I truly am afraid that someone (in this case my therapist) will be disappointed in me - or will think differently of me. Stupid, I know - but it's still there. (Maybe that's a whole new therapy session!)

I've been told you know it's time when "it" keeps poking its ugly head out over and over to the point where you can't ignore it. What if it is ALWAYS there? It never goes away - HE rarely ever goes away. I can push him/it into the closet and when it starts to play in my head, I can usually change the channel and find a new movie to play in my head, but somehow, the horror film always returns.

So if it is time to talk about it, where do you start? Is it cheating if I have my therapist take the reins and lead me though this?! Even thinking about going through all of the details - I feel like a child just needed someone to hold my hand though it ... it is like walking though hell alone (see above pic - I am TERRIFIED of clowns)...

Its Never Going to Make Sense ...

"Its never going to make sense because it doesn't make sense". I heard this the other day and it has stuck with me, popping into my thought stream every time I start to question "why".

I have so many questions - and all of them start with why ... Of course there are the usual "Why Me?" and "Why did he do it at all?' ... but there are others ... "Why wasn't I strong enough?" - "Why was I so stupid?" - and of course "WHY?".

I have never had any intention of telling my husband about the abuse I have suffered in my life. He knows that I was raped - that is all he knows. Somehow, the other night, he needed more. He asked questions and learned of my childhood abuse as well as the rape. His question - "Why didn't you tell your mom..."  I'm so tired of the Why's  -  mostly because I keep trying to make sense of it all. I am the type of person that wants  needs to understand why someone does what they do.

So here's to my short term goal - "Stop asking why" because it's never going to make sense because it doesn't make sense.

Shhhhh

Sexual abuse as a child and rape as an adult (if 21 is truly considered and adult) are both life changing things. As a child - it happened regularly. There was a routine that was followed - structure was present - and an understanding of "dont tell" was always in the air. Obedience was expected and demanded - disobedience was punished.

Rape, for me, was completely the opposite. There was nothing routine about it. There was no structure - for me it was complete chaos. He ordered - I fought - lost - eventually obeyed. I guess the last part was exactly the same. Obedience was expected and demanded - and disobedience was punished. As far as the "don't tell" part goes - yeah, that too was there. Although I often wonder WHY I didn't tell. Was it because he was the police? Was it because bad things happen when you tell? Was it because I was too afraid? Or too conditioned? It wouldn't have changed anything ...

Long Lost Friend

Cutting has always been my release - my coping mechanism - my "friend."  I don't remember how it started but I do remember how good it felt to release all of the pent up feelings of confusion and hurt and pain and numbness... the euphoric feeling immediately afterward was worth the scar it would leave.

I was around 14 or 15 when I started. I don't know how I heard of it, but the first time I ever hurt myself, I took a pair of cuticle cutters and snipped my skin all the way around my wrist. I had my own bloody bracelet. I felt better - relieved - and had something to show for it.

As time went on, I changed instruments from cuticle cutters to razor blades. If I couldn't find a razor blade, I would use anything else that was sharp. I even ventured into burning myself with an iron  few times - that, however, is much more difficult to explain. You can only "land" on an iron so many times before people get suspicious.

When my cutting got really bad, a friend of mine stepped in and "required" me to get help. I trusted one person and she "helped' --- ie held the can while I went through some major mental vomiting! (cue the purple crayon!) ...
            For some reason, anytime I've had to talk abot what has happened to me or what I was going through, I have always done it as if it were from someone else's perspective. I don't know that I have ever "owned" it and claimed it or accepted it as mine. Even the movies that play in my head are from someone else's viewpoint. hmmmm....

I have cut once in the past several years - I have a deep scar to show for it. It scared me a little - It wasn't a "surface scratch" (not that the others are but in comparison they are!) ... it was deep, clear into the fat layer of the skin cut.

Lately I have felt this urgency to cut return. It seems to surface when my life gets shaken up. My friendships change (although nothing has happened, I just feel abandoned), my job has changed, I've lost my father and a child unexpectedly - and things start to all around suck .... Cutting will make me feel better - hmmm... only temporarily. I have to keep telling myself that it isn't worth it.

I miss my dad - I miss my baby that I will never get to know - and I miss my mirror ... Guess it's just one of "those" days.

Six Hours

I have always had a hard time talking about things - and still do. Who would want to listen to someone go on and on about the trials they have been through in their life? We have all been through garbage, and if you are reading this, you have come out the other side. Whether it’s bruised and scarred or completely unscathed, it’s a remarkable feeling when you step back and realize that you did it. You went into hell and came out the other side… but at what cost?

That has always been my question to myself. Six hours isn’t a very long time in the scheme of things. Most people sleep more than 6 hours in a night. We usually work more than six hours on any given day. So six hours isn’t much … but when you are face to face with a demon, six hours is an eternity.

So why is six hours taking me 11 years to get through and still going? It took me a long time piece together the events of that night. It took me even longer to put those events into words. Immediately following that night - I told 2 people what happened - just that I had been raped ... I thought. One told me to sweep it under the rug and get past it - the other told me that it was a serious accusation and many girls who choose to have sex for the first time end up regretting it and call it rape. I'm pretty sure that I was raped - battered and bruised - ... yep.

Did I want it?

Maybe being hurt and violated as a child made the entire thing seem less of an issue than it really was. I NEVER contemplated calling the police - he was the police. I obeyed and did as he instructed - still to this day not completely understanding why or how I could just do it.  I still get disgusted that I willingly participated in pieces of that night - whether it was truly willingly or not. He told me over and over that night how much I wanted it ... I participated in parts - deep down, did I enjoy it????  That part goes back to that "forgiveness" piece - I still wish I had fought harder or been smarter. Really - how does this happen to someone twice? Losing your virginity unwillingly as a child - and again as an adult - no sexual partners in between.  It makes me tired to think about this ... I feel my brain shut down. I'm sure I need to talk about this more openly and deeply in therapy - it's easy to talk about it from someone else's perspective and not own the feelings and memories. It was a movie I saw - a bad, terrible movie that leaves that awful feeling under your skin when you walk out of the theater - but that feeling goes away with time. This will too - Its only been 11 years ...