Parts of me that will make me whole.
Part of me….
knows I am safe
Part of me….
knows I am strong
Part of me….
knows I am loved
BUT
Part of me…
thinks everyone will leave
Part of me…..
thinks I have much suffering left to do
Part of me….
thinks I am stupid
Part of me…
thinks I am mean
Parts of me…
thinks I am too much and not enough at the same time
Part of me…
thinks I am fat and ugly
Part of me…
thinks I am not worthy
Part of me...
thinks I am always wrong
Part of me…
knows I am going to die
Part of me…
knows what it feels like to starve
Part of me…
knows what it’s like to be abandoned
Part of me…
knows what it’s like to be beaten
Part of me…
knows what it’s like to have your mom beaten by your father
Part of me…
knows what it’s like for your mother to slap you up and scream at you for not having the house clean while she was blacked out
Part of me…
knows what it’s like to have sex forced on me at age 8 by a man and then by another man with another little girl
Part of me…
knows how to keep it all a secret
All of me…
wants to be whole
All of me …
wants to be loved
All of me…
wants peace
I knew pain, heartbreak, trauma, tragedy, and abandonment all by the age of 10.
We are all born with parts of ourselves and through normal childhood development they all come together to make you, the adult. My parts didn’t get a chance to develop, they were busy keeping me alive. They put up walls, road blocks and warnings. Over the last year I have been trying to make a new map, take down walls, set up new roads and reduce the warnings. And I will admit that my brain is quieter than ever before. But that doesn’t mean it’s quiet, it doesn’t mean that most of my days aren’t hard and it most certainly doesn’t mean I am done.
Over the past 2 weeks, I have had many, many happy moments, but each one brought a soul crushing doom and gloom devastating feeling in my chest that I was unable to shake. Per my usual, I walk into therapy and tell her that I really think that my brain is so used to pain and trauma that it’s triggered by the uncertainly of happiness or being scared that it’s going to be taken from me. I was eager to get started on letting go of this feeling. But she told me I had to work backwards. We talked about this part of me that’s scared. And that I need to unburden her. I need to sit with her and process the fear. And that is going to be a challenge. Because the best way I can describe this fear is a long, dark well. The one that’s dark, the one where you throw a coin down and it takes so long to hear a noise, you’re not sure it actually made it to the bottom. She commented that I might be scared to unburden little Kristy because it wasn’t contained. Which is true, it feels like a endless void. But the truth is, that’s what little Kristy felt. Another part of little Kristy, we call her the manager, would come in and tell us that we didn’t have the time to cry, we don’t have time to sulk and be sad. We didn’t have time to play. We only had time to survive. We had no room for anything else. And now that I am safe, now that I am able, it’s time to allow myself to allow myself to feel scared without the manager telling me I am allowed to. Manager Kristy had her time, she did a perfect job keeping us alive. And it’s time for her to go on vacation. And it’s time for scared little Kristy to be unburdened and allowed to feel, to cry and then to go play with the other parts that I have previously unburdened.
I want all my parts to play, I want them all to feel joy and I want them all to know that I am so proud of them for protecting me. And that I do love them. And I want us to be whole.
“Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated the silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive. When someone enters the pain and hears the screams healing can begin.” -Danielle Bernock