We are now safe.

It seems the more difficult sessions with my therapist often lead to me to avoid writing about them, so today, a week after my last therapy visit, I am forcing myself to write. I am not enough, unless I am perfect. I can't give anyone a reason to leave me, to hurt me, or to dislike me. If I am am giving all of myself to someone they can't possibly leave me and maybe they'll love me. Who could love me, as I am. I do have friends, I have family, I feel like I am their obligation. Often I feel like a burden. That they all feel bad for poor Kristy, so we tolerate her. This is me, deep down. Just being everyone's charity case. And no matter how hard I try, i just can't shake this.  I *know* how I feel about others, I know that I don't pity other survivors of trauma, I feel their strength, I know they are the badasses of the world. For some reason I can't turn that inward. That's my next step, turn that inward. First, identify this Kristy. Oh, I am familiar with this one, this is one that tried so hard to make her mother happy. She just thought if I could just let her sleep a little longer, if I could just clean a little more, if I could just manage to feed everyone before she woke, she'd be a happier, she wouldn't yell so much, she wouldn't be so disappointed and mean. And  maybe there wouldn't be so many nights she fought with my Dad or cried about him or called hospitals and jails looking for him.  Maybe if I made her life easier she would love me. Maybe if I was a better daughter she'd love me. And that later turned into if she loved me than she'd come home, she wouldn't have left me. This is the Kristy that no matter how hard she tried and sacrificed herself, she wasn't enough for her to receive her own mothers love.  I wasn't enough her for to stay, for her to get better, I just wasn't enough. How do you even start to feel worthy of love, of basic humans rights, when that is where you started. I was devastated last night trying to recall a time when my mother may have told me she loved me. I don't have that memory. She must of said it, but I don't have the memory of it. As I laid there last night and these thoughts were crossing my mind, I started having flash backs, of all the times I was yelled at by her, and I so desperately want to ignore them.  I don't want to believe that this was me, that all these mean horrible hideous things happened to me. But they did, and it's okay to sad by them, I need to start feeling them, because I am allowed to feel them now, I am safe, I don't need to be protected. That is all over. I have spent the last 25 or so years try to push them down and away. I put them in a box, sealed it shut and put it up on a shelf I couldn't reach. Because it was scary. Because it hurt. But that didn't do me any good. Here I thought if I could separate my childhood from me, it can't hurt me anymore. I didn't realize, I didn't really lock my childhood away.  It's been inside of me the whole time. And it's had control of me always. I just refused to see or believe it. I don't have to hide from it. I can feel it now. In the safety of my home, and my life. Far away from danger.  And I am allowed to be sad about it.  I can't adequately sum up the feelings I have but it's really fucking sad. All of it. And it's also sad that I don't even realize how fucking bad it was most of the time. You know I walked in to therapy last week and asked her if it was normal for someone who has "multi-level" trauma to feel one is worse than the other? Like, I asked if it was normal to feel the neglect and abandonment was worse than the sexual abuse. Like, I seriously asked that question. And I saw nothing weird about it until she said, "no one should have to rank their abuse because they shouldn't have it in the first place, and for you to think that it's not okay to feel worse about on than the other is also very upsetting."  When she said that, tears poured from my eyes. I realized how sad that is. I was ranking my trauma and abuse, man that's fucked up. I have these moments where the impact of childhood comes raining down on me, and that was one of them. It felt like a very legit question to me. But insanely horrifying to another.  

Back to allowing neglected, abandoned abused Kristy to finally feel sad, she's always been stopped. Stopped by some protector Kristy that tells her she's not allowed to feel those feelings, that I cannot handle feeling the horror and sadness. I have to stand up to her and tell her that I am adult, I am safe and that I got this, I can handle it. Last night I fought the urge to push abandoned, neglected, unloved Kristy to the depths of my stomach, I told protector Kristy that we are safe and we can handle this. And it lead to just an outpouring of tears and sadness and some confusion. And even though these Kristy's are still very much in my emotional driver seat, I did take the first step in reminding them we are now safe. 

"Unlike simple stress, trauma changes your view of your life and yourself. It shatters your most basic assumptions about yourself and your world — “Life is good,” “I’m safe,” “People are kind,” “I can trust others,” “The future is likely to be good” — and replaces them with feelings like “The world is dangerous,” “I can’t win,” “I can’t trust other people,” or “There’s no hope.”  - Mark Goulston

"Survival mode is supposed a phase that helps save your life, it's not meant to be how you live." - Michael Rosenthal

“So many broken children living in grown bodies mimicking adult lives.” Ljeoma Umebinyo

"You are not your abuse. 
You are not what they did to you. 
You are not your trauma.

You are the cleverness that survived. 
You are the courage that escaped.
You are the power that hid & protected a tiny spark of your light." -unknown