I was gone again for a while. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t leave if i could help it, but my stores are empty and i’m functioning on will alone. And that has been worn thin. I know i write about the same things over and over. I intended that to a degree, but these days i’m balanced on the head of a pin, and my strength is nearly gone, and i must focus and push on however i can. My life is at stake, not to put too fine a point on it.

I nearly put the kibosh on it this week. The work was too much to begin with, and now to be in the thick of it during these times, well, if i believed in such things i would say the universe has the darkest and twistiest sense of humour of us all.
After crawling out of my cups, and getting a couple of days of perspective, i think i shall keep trying, after all. But i’ve got to kick up the honesty and the writing and the talkiness. I may be even less fun than i have been already. Heh.

I’ve got let it all in, stop trying so hard to control the flow.

So much has been rushing into me, all at once. I’m having pain, epiphanies, and painful epiphanies. It’s like i’m at the end of the river’s mouth. I’m constantly being filled and i can’t stop it, and it’s impossible to swallow it all. I’m being drowned and being cleansed.
And i try be put it poetically, to take the bite out of it.
And i try to put a positive spin on it as soon as i’m able.
And these things are not a lie.
But i’m not telling how awful it was, not really.
But i’m not telling the terrible price i paid to grow up with who i was born to.
But i’m not telling the darkness and loneliness that has been my lot for my life.
But most of all, i’m not telling about the toll of this constant anguish.

This reuniting of my body to my brain, to reconnect my thoughts, my emotions, and my physical sensations is not just the hardest, most exhausting work i’ve ever done.
It is the ugliest.
The worst part of it is i feel FILTHY. Every part of my body, every cell, feels coated with slime and evil. When i dissociated while being abused in my childhood, i literally disconnected from my thoughts, feelings, and my physical senses. From the atmosphere of the room: the smell, the smell of them and their sweat and putrid breath, the stink of their fear*, the oily, slick feel of the air itself, coating my skin. I don’t feel like i’m a filthy person, what i’m feeling is the filth that coated me as a child. Other people’s filth.
And now i’m willingly experiencing it.

It’s not like fully reliving it. I simply couldn’t, wouldn’t do that. It’s more like something one says they remember “like it happened yesterday”, only more intense. I’m not reliving my memories so much as i’m allowing/encouraging myself to connect with them. I am experiencing emotions and physical stuffs, but it isn’t like i’m back in a room with a certain man at a certain point in time. I’m not seeing my mother in my room, getting me prettied up for a “special weekend.” I’m remembering, and allowing the feelings to come, without dissociating. And they are coming. It seems like everything triggers a memory, for months upon months now.

I’m barely functional these days.
Some days all i can do is let my system cry as my husband holds me.
The only thing any of us can say is, It was bad. It was bad. It was sososo baaaad!
I need to let more of the tears out. I’ve been trying to control the flow out as well as the flow in, i suppose. I feel my system wants to do more than weep – they want to sob and wail and even scream.
I am deeply afraid of this, but i sense it must be done.

Today i am asking myself how long must this anguish last, and if i can truly affect it.
My husband is as tired as i am. My son is resigned. My friends are removed.
I’m currently fighting a mania, just to make it all extra.
Oh yeah, and then the world is going crazier than i am.
And that breaks me, too.

Today i’m hanging on by the proverbial thread, and deciding to keep working.
That may change in a heartbeat, but i can’t help that. This is all i have to work with.

Crawl into my ambulance, your pulse is getting weak
Reveal yourself all now to me, girl, while you’ve got the strength to speak
‘Cause they’re waiting for you at Bellevue with their oxygen masks
But I could give it all to you now, if only you could ask
And don’t call for your surgeon, even he says it’s too late
It’s not your lungs this time, it’s your heart that holds your fate
~ Bruce Springsteen, For You

*Yes, i say fear. Nearly all of them seemed afraid to me. The ones that weren’t were the worst, but none of them deserve to be on a spectrum.