Momma Said Write A Book About It

Perhaps this new book is my own confession, an attempt to rid myself of the deeply ingrained shame that I imagine most abused children experience. When you grow up under continual threat, in survival mode, and then step out into the world, it’s not easy to shift gears, and when you are trained in abuse, abuse begins to feel familiar and safe.

 

I’ve been on a long journey in my quest to feel comfort in my own body and mind, and at first I began changing the basics. At first I removed the harmful pharmaceuticals, harsh grooming products, and toxic cleaning supplies, I began eating more healthfully, we moved out into the country away from the city’s chaos, I moved my body more, I got sober, and grew stronger in my relationship with God. But what happens when you change everything possible outside of you, yet you still feel like crap? Then you must look inside, and at your own history, to understand those triggers that keep you in fight and flight mode. They say that unaddressed traumas stay in the body until you address them, and I have found that that is the truth.

 

As an example: I’ve always had a complicated relationship with sleep, it took me hours to drift off, and if I was awakened unexpectedly my entire day would be ruined. Such a simple thing, sleep, yet as a child I still recall the dread I felt at bedtime. Whatever my issue with sleep was, it was still affecting me in my 50s. For a lot of people sleep is safety and comfort, for me it was something to dread and avoid. Looking deeper I found the problem. As a child sleep was never safe and comforting to me as I could be yanked out of it at any minute, and being dragged from sleep usually meant being yelled at, accused, and hit and hurt. There was no comfort in slipping off to sleep, only fear of when I’d be attacked. In facing that fear and acknowledging it, my sleeping schedule has shifted, and for the first time in my life I now feel that comfort and safety, but I would have continued to suffer had I not gone down the rabbit hole of my own miserable upbringing.

 

In the new novel there is a scene where my lead character, Dani Donnelly, is talking to her young neighbor. The 11-year-old, Crystal, had just experienced a traumatic event, the first of her young life, and was having trouble sleeping. Dani suggested art as a way to remove the flashbacks from her mind, and I suppose this new novel is my art. Sometimes taking those images from your mind, by painting or by writing them out, lessens the power they have over you, and eases that ever-present shame and fear.

 

The title of the new novel was the obvious choice; there could be no other title, as when I was a child and would complain of the treatment I received I was told I could write a book about it when I grew up. I was told to write a book about it many times, usually with a smirk and a chuckle, as my grades in English/Lit were always terrible. So finally that is what I have done, I have written a book about it.

 

I weaved my own story into the story of a fictional character, Dani Donnelly, an author on the run from a stalker. Dani has signed a contract to write her memoirs, and with just a few fictional twists and turns to blend my story with Dani’s, most of her written memoirs are the truth of my upbringing and the early years of my adulthood. I faced incredible fear writing this one, as fear and secrecy (what happens in the family, stays in the family) was a mainstay of my upbringing. The description of the anxiety attacks the author suffers is not much different than what I endured breaking the trauma bonds that have held me captive and suffering for over fifty years.

 

So with all that said, the new novel is available on Amazon.

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BVKV59Z9

 

 

 

Healing Loudly Part Three

I had a revelation this week, as it dawned on me that it isn’t the memories kids growing up in abuse repress, it’s the emotions connected to the memories that get stuffed down and buried. I have always remembered the abuse, tucked away and compartmentalized in the back closet of my mind, but what I had buried were all the emotions a kid feels when undergoing years of systematic and intentional abuse.

 

Growing up under a covert narcissist, one determined to break my spirit, and leave me ever dependent on them, a lot of emotion gets pushed aside and buried in the name of survival. The abuser controls everything, from comfort, food, and sleep, to whatever emotion is deemed appropriate to express, and in my upbringing only the abuser was allowed to express any emotions. My emotions were unimportant, ridiculous, the mark of an insane person, and completely unworthy of any attention or concern.

 

And it was those severely repressed emotional responses to systematic abuse that have been bubbling to the surface these last few years of sobriety. I was ill prepared to deal with them as I had been taught I had no right to them, no right to feel any way that my abuser didn’t approve. My abuser had a very limited range of emotions, and I was expected… No, it was demanded that I share only the emotions of my abuser, and disregard any of my own feelings.

 

Growing up like that, all my formative years spent trying to mold myself into my abuser’s screwed-up and limited emotional range left me unsure of my own emotions as an adult, and it sure explains a lot about my own life. A kid just wants to be loved and accepted, and that is something I never experienced as a child, which left a deep longing in me, and is the reason I put up with such insane abuse as an adult. I’d been groomed, beaten, and brainwashed by the continual abuse into not only yielding to the desires of the molesters who found me during my fourteenth through sixteenth years, but for accepting even more abuse as I grew up. My emotions had little meaning to me as I tried to fit myself into the emotional range of my abusers in adulthood, just as I learned to do as a child.

 

It occurred to me last night that I experienced at least a hundred abusive episodes at home between the ages of eight (when my sister died) and seventeen (when I left home pregnant and married). If it happened just once a week, then it’s literally hundreds of times, but I will settle with just the number one hundred for now. At least one hundred times of being hit, condemned, told how awful I was, and how much I was hated as my mother, my abuser, took out all her frustrations on me. It’s a miracle I have as much sanity as I do, it’s a miracle I’m not a hopeless and helpless mess, and although I am a bit of a mess, I managed, though the grace of God and God alone, to recover a spirit of optimism and hope.

 

So for those of you wondering, talking, scrutinizing, dismissing, and choosing sides, understand I’m not recovering forgotten memories, those have never changed, I am experiencing the emotions denied a severely abused and neglected child. Finally God has allowed me a space to feel and heal those deep, and unwarranted, wounds.

 

 

Healing Loudly Part Two

I should have known. It always happens. I should have known. The day after I posted my last blog my back tried seizing up several times, and I was left with what I will refer to as that pre-seize pain, afraid to move much in case it decided to fully debilitate me for days or longer. Thankfully, after some slow, long, stretches, and breathing exercises, it has calmed now, but it always happens or something similar, when I speak out.

 

More than a decade ago my articles were very popular on the Internet, and when I’d see how many views they were receiving and I’d get the emails that always came, I would have massive anxiety attacks, trembling all over. It was the fear of being seen, of being known, of getting in trouble by drawing attention to myself, a legacy of growing up under narcissist abuse.

 

And it seems I’m not alone, most children growing up as I did, both the scapegoats and the golden children tend to end up with medical issues. I know that I have certainly suffered vague, apparently impossible to diagnose sicknesses and physical ailments, and I’ve had a lot of surgery. The constant drama, the gas lighting and confusion, the fear of being caught, even when you’ve done no wrong, and the constant fight or flight stimulation leaves victims of abuse in poor physical states. We tend to suffer autoimmune disorders, constant rigid muscles, depression and mood swings, anxiety, digestive and heart problems, and a myriad of other stress related issues. 

 

There are biological reasons we survivors of childhood abuse suffer throughout our lives, and it has to do with the development of the brain, and the chemical reactions that occur when we are under threat. Our bodies and minds are poised to remove ourselves from the threats, but as children there is nowhere to go, no safe place to escape, we are trapped, and the body holds on to that and does not forget. Over and again we experience the trauma, and over and again it remains trapped in our bodies, and soon we find that we are constantly in pain.

 

The legacy of child abuse does not end when we become adults as our brains have literally been changed by the abuse, re-wired by the abuse, and in my case, I also have the damage done by many concussions.  The changes done by childhood abuse affects the cells in the anterior cingulate cortex, which plays an important role in the regulation of emotions and mood. Studies have shown significant changes in the white matter of the brain, which is made up of myelinated nerve fibers that, much like the electrical wires in our homes, conducts the brain’s electrical system. The myelin is the nerve fibers’ protection, and those who suffered childhood abuse have a stunted myelin system.

 

Childhood abuse also affects the development of the amygdala, our system to emotional regulation and to reward and satisfaction, as well as the hippocampus. The hippocampus helps with memory, cognition, and learning new things, and studies have shown that in childhood abuse survivors that part of the brain is shrunken and it has to do with the repeated and unexpressed fight or flight reaction that bathes the area in cortisol and retards its growth.

 

Although the abuse does cause physical changes in the brain, it is my belief that consciously healing also changes the brain, for the better. When I was younger, before I knew anything about Complex PTSD, before I realized that I was raised and abused by a covert narcissist, and when I still worked diligently to fit in with my family, pretending the abuse never happened, I was in poor physical and emotional shape. I suffered many physical ailments, had strange debilitating illnesses that defied diagnosis, and felt sure that I was crazy. I took handfuls of daily medications, and never found much improvement for my issues.

 

Healing doesn’t happen overnight, and it has been at least a decade of consciously working to be physically healthy, and the changes look vast from where I sit now, but it was a slow and steady, step by step, process of cleaning up my diet and lifestyle. Still, though, I felt ‘off’ until I confronted the abuse and began to acknowledge the damage done and the traumas that I experienced.

 

I know that there is hope on the other side of these realizations, and I know that although the abuse and concussions caused brain changes and damage, I can heal. When my son experienced brain damage from a fungal infection in his cranial fluids and central nervous system, I saw the improvements achieved through simple puzzles and exercises that reopened neuro-pathways, so I know it’s possible to heal. All it takes is intention, prayer, and hard work, and consciously moving forward.

 

We can’t heal what we don’t acknowledge, and acknowledging the abuse has been one of my more challenging experiences, but I am determined. Let us not give up hope, and know that there is light at the end of the dark and scary tunnel.

 

 

 

https://www.futurity.org/child-abuse-changes-brain-1554882/

 

https://psychcentral.com/blog/liberation/2017/10/long-term-narcissistic-abuse-can-cause-brain-damage#4

 

 

Healing Loudly From Narcissist Abuse

I never wanted or expected to be a spokesperson for healing from narcissist abuse, but here I am. I read a statement recently that we should heal loudly so that others can use our experience for their own healing, and it’s been stuck in my head and in my heart, that I have some responsibility to help others heal. It goes counter to my programming and training to speak out, to really speak out with the truth, and I have to admit it’s an incredibly hard and frightening thing to do.

 

These last six months have been difficult, the realizations and the full context memories have literally knocked me on my ass a time or two, and the anxiety has been nothing like I’ve ever experienced – the fear and trembling of working out my own salvation. I was asked not to write about my abuse as it may hurt my abuser’s feelings, and for the last six months I’ve held my tongue, once again isolated, and working against my own best interests. Working against my own best interests was how I was trained, and the lies and pretense is the wardrobe I was expected to wear for the rest of my life.

 

I knew speaking out would cause others to turn their backs on me because that is simply the way it is when you grow up in narcissist abuse. Growing up as I did you have this entire world of pretense and lies thrown over you, and you are expected to uphold those lies to the world, and as the abuse started so early with me, you carry those lies and pretense just because that’s simply the way it is. You carry the pretense even when everything inside is screaming that it’s a lie, you put on a smile and face the world and pray no one sees the truth.

 

I am done, I can no longer pretend, and the truth is I was one of the scapegoats in my family. The other scapegoat was my oldest brother, and when he grew into a man, dangerous and unpredictable in our abuser’s eye, the role fell onto me, as I was just a kid and a very easy target.

 

I have avoided looking into the topic of narcissism for years, both consciously and unconsciously, knowing that once I opened Pandora’s box there was no returning to the way things were before. And strangely, there was a bit of a mourning period of letting those old illusions go, realizing that things were never the way they were presented to the world, and acknowledging that I was never the person my abuser insisted I was.

 

There are many kinds of scapegoats in the narcissist dynamic, and I am beginning to understand that I am the truth teller. The other types of scapegoats are the rebel, the caretaker, the problem-solver, the protector, the perfectionist, and sometimes another covert narcissist is born under the selfish and incredibly damaging abuse. Being a scapegoat is a very hard and damaging road to follow, and it is the scapegoat who carries the burden of all the frustrations of the family, and the blame anytime anything goes wrong. The energy has to go somewhere, and the scapegoat is the receptacle where all that gets dumped. 

 

The dynamic is very clear, written about in books, shown in movies, and yet I avoided looking into it for years, the fear of facing the truth almost greater than the pain of being scapegoated my entire life. There are several types of narcissist, and narcissism is defined as a personality disorder in which the narcissist is selfish, lacks empathy for others, has a sense of entitlement, a need for admiration, and an inflated sense of self-importance. People growing up under that dynamic are very damaged, both the golden children (the chosen favorites) and the scapegoats are damaged. No one does well in a narcissist family, except for the narcissist themselves, as the children have long been divided and conquered, and have learned the hard way that keeping the narcissist happy is the only way to find what resembles peace, but that semblance of peace is always short-lived.

 

Some may ask, why now? Why talk about it now? It’s in the past, it’s over, why dredge up the old ghosts now? But the truth is it’s not over until the injured parties say it’s over, and it sure isn’t over for me as I now have to wade through the years of my life, the traumas I swallowed as something I deserved, and consciously begin healing my mind and my body. It’ll be over when I say it’s over, and not a second before.

 

I was asked to hold my words, to not write the truth of my own life on my own blog, and to keep silent until the narcissist died, and I had planned to do that, but something broke. Something inside could no longer hold the pretense, my body was giving out, my body was rebelling against the lies. It is completely unjust to expect another person to carry lies, and the simple act of asking me to do so is just another textbook example of being scapegoated. Once again the comfort and selfishness of the narcissist becomes more important than my health, my recovery, and my entire existence. Once again the narcissist’s feelings outweigh everything else, including my own health, but that is nothing new to me as my medical needs were neglected in childhood by the narcissist. I’m not going to continue down the path that says I am less than, my needs less important because others, outside of me, deem it so. 

 

The answer is no. I told that person that I would write what God inspired me to write, but the fear of speaking openly held me back, fear of retribution, slander, and rejection. God has been pressing on me to heal loudly, to help others in what I am an expert in, and I will no longer remain silent to protect the feelings of the person who went out of their way to hurt me and make me struggle. I will no longer protect the person who deliberately and with intent made my childhood a living hell, and I will no longer pretend simply to appease others who are invested in maintaining the lies.

 

If my words can help one person, then I must put myself out there, no matter how uncomfortable and afraid that makes me. So for a while this blog will be dedicated to overcoming and healing from narcissist abuse, there are more of us out there than I ever imagined.

 

 

 

 

Old Injuries and Healing

God is good all the time even when we don’t understand His mysterious ways. And I fully admit I don’t understand, but I trust God. In the world of faith we don’t always understand what is good or bad, often what we perceive as bad turns out to be good, or even great, for us in the long term.

 

I am in the process of learning this lesson again. A couple weeks ago our very large dog (80+ lbs) hit me from behind, running full speed, and at my age and size it could have easily killed me, or at least seriously injured me. Thank God I only suffered a severe ankle sprain, a bit of whiplash, and bruising. At first I thought it was really bad, but I am finding that it is good.

 

I have been asked NOT to write about my childhood experiences to spare feelings. I have been asked to wait for the death of the perpetrator before I speak of the abuse and neglect I suffered as a child, and honestly that had been my plan as well, but sometimes God’s timetable is different than our own.

 

As I have struggled to learn to maneuver on my first pair of crutches, battling a nerve damaged and atrophied uninjured foot and leg, I have been thrown back to a time in childhood where I felt more than helpless, ignored, and unloved. The truth of that time is ugly, it almost defies belief, and it is hard to write or even think about, but God has decided it is time for me to heal the emotional, mental, and physical wound.

 

I have experienced about every emotion there is in the last couple weeks as I’ve been stuck on the couch unable to do for myself. Beside the feelings of helplessness, sadness, and fear, there’s also been abandonment, rejection, and heartbreak, all the emotions I felt at twelve years old when medical care was withheld from me for months. I do not understand why an adult would choose to withhold medical care from a child, or maybe I do, and what I see is so dark that I cringe even thinking about it.

 

Looking back on that time through the eyes of an adult, and a mother, it is worse than I’ve let myself remember, the cruelty and lack of empathy toward me hurts both my heart and my soul. The short version (because the full version is still very difficult for me to face) is that I slipped, barefooted, on the deck, unearthing a very large splinter that essentially shot into the soft spot under my toes and disappeared inside. At first I don’t think anyone believed me, even though I was crying, limping, and in awful pain. This happened in the last days of sixth grade, to my club foot (a birth defect), and I was made to walk to school anyway, as everyone has had a splinter before and didn’t act like a whining baby.

 

Within a week a knot began forming on the bottom of my foot, between the ball and heel, in the arch, and it was quite painful. I was limping, and I’m sure complaining, and the knot was obvious, but it was ignored. Day after day, week after week, the knot grew painfully, and I soon learned to not talk about it, and not to be showing everyone my “boo boo”.

 

As I understand it scar tissue had begun to encase the 3 inch splinter to prevent it from moving deeper into my system, and for the entire summer, from the end of May to the end of August I limped, the knot growing larger, my foot swelling, and it was ignored. Finally, the week before school started again I had surgery to remove the splinter, and the huge knot of infected tissue. The neglected injury was bad, and the surgeon had to scrape down to the bone to remove the mass, and I was sent home with strict instructions not to put any weight on my foot, as there was an empty, fleshless, hole under the stitches that needed time to fill back in.

 

It was decided that instead of crutches I would use an ancient office chair with small metal wheels to move around over the deep shag carpet, and as that didn’t work, I ended up hopping or scooting around on my butt. I have no idea why I wasn’t given a pair of crutches, but I wasn’t, and I was not to complain.

 

Given almost no recovery time I started seventh grade in the three-story building where the stairs were an absolute nightmare. I never received any physical therapy, and although I had gone to doctors for my birth defect previous to this, I never went to another “foot doctor” until I was an adult and could pay for it myself. Before the injury I could balance on either foot with my opposite leg in the air, afterwards I became the brunt of the clumsy and klutzy jokes, and I have fallen down more stairs than I care to remember, as my foot was no longer trustworthy or dependable. Only my big toe could move freely, and the rest of my toes only moved as a unit, up and down just a bit, and I lost a lot of mobility in the whole foot.

 

I have been aware of the physical loss for years, my inability to balance on that foot and leg, but my right leg, my tree trunk, took up the slack until a dog, happily running full speed, knocked me ass over teakettle. I have thought many times over the years that I need to work on the balance issues and lack of mobility, but never took the time to focus on it. Now, it seems, God has put me into the position to heal my left foot, and the accompanying soul wound that comes when a child’s pain, needs, and health are ignored for months by those who are supposed to love them. 

 

At the beginning it’s a miracle I didn’t fall again trying to use crutches, and keep the weight off my right side, but I am slowly gaining some balance, and I’m feeling muscles in my left calf, ankle, and foot that I haven’t felt in decades. As I am beginning to heal the old injury, and the injury to my heart, mind, and soul, I am grateful that God has given me the opportunity to address them all. Healing can be messy, acknowledging the buried emotions from being neglected left me in tears for days, but things are looking up, thank God, and although I don’t understand his mysterious ways I trust Him implicitly.

The Other Ten Commandments

 

Life is funny, isn’t it? For months now I’ve been praying for the world, the people in the world, and especially for the children, lost, abused, broken, and alone. I have asked God to shine the light on the ugliness so the good people on earth can truly see what hides in the dark crevices that is so easily overlooked. And as God moves in mysterious ways, he answered my prayer by saying, “You first”.

 

I am used to God answering my prayers in this manner, all the way back to the days of my cynical teens and twenties when I knew I had seen it all, and could no longer be surprised by the darkness or the actions of people. Even then, God would first show me the things I didn’t want to see, but needed to understand, and now with my faith stronger, He pulled back the veil in my own life. Ugly things hide in the dark, secret, destructive, things happen behind closed doors, and as I’ve prayed for the light to shine, He’d been giving me hints, but I was blind, or was simply too afraid to look.

 

My health has not been great this year, and as I try to live naturally I’ve cut out some things, added others, but that pain in my gut just wouldn’t go away. I was beginning to think it was the beginning of the end for me, and after my life it really wasn’t that bad of a thought, we all crave that sense of home, don’t we? But recently when I decided to cut someone out of my life, the pain stopped instantly, just stopped. It didn’t ease up and slowly get better; it just stopped when I told this person not to call me any more. Amazing.

 

I had noticed that the pain would ease up on the weekends, when I was not obligated to talk to this person, but the weekdays I was drained and in pain, and spending a scary amount of time in the bathroom, and often rushing to the bathroom the moment the call ended. Day after day I was getting sicker, and it simply didn’t occur to me that one simple, non-food, change could improve my health.

 

There are certain statements I’ve heard describe and define me since I was a little girl, I heard them so often that they became my own inner voice. The statements to me were often relayed with violence, with hair pulling and hits to the head, and after years I no longer fought against the words or questioned them. My mind just repeated them back to me as fact, constantly, and most especially when bad things happened, or when I was struggling to improve any aspect of my life.

 

The words told me I didn’t deserve a good life, that I was a terrible person, a person without conscience or soul. An ugly, selfish person, with no real worth, certainly no moral worth, and completely undeserving of any goodness in life. I was mean, ugly, awful, and nothing I could do or achieve could change this person’s words, still being repeated, or their voice inside my head that echoed their dark image of me. I was a dirty, crazy, whore, and no decent man would ever want a thing to do with me. I was dumb, slow, fat, ugly, without compassion or empathy, had no sense of humor, no one liked me, and I was impossible to love.

 

And for a very long time I believed those words, I lived those words.

 

Despite all the information and all the interactions with other people that showed me I was none of those things, I still, deep down, believed. I was told if I did something nice for another, that I had ulterior motives, and I learned to question my actions and myself at every turn. Why did I help that old person with their groceries? I’m such an awful person, I must be trying to get something out of it. Why didn’t I help that old person with their groceries? I’m such an awful, selfish, person…

 

I was trapped in a brutal war with myself and with my thoughts that surely didn’t come from God, but a far darker place where little girls are abused, shamed, and broken.

 

I’ve spent a long time being broken; I’ve spent too many years under the thumb of horrid definitions that were never true. I’ve spent too many years supporting lies that our family abuse only came from one source. And lately I’ve spent time pondering exactly what the word honor means.

 

In the Greek language honor means value or worth, in a literal sense. Honor was a culturally constructed evaluation of a person’s actions, which determined a person’s worth, as in their price, or value to the community. In Hebrew the word honor means to give weight to. And in English the word is defined as honesty, fairness, or integrity in one's beliefs and actions.

 

I believe that I have met the obligation of that very important commandment, and I know that God doesn’t want me to hate His creation – me. I will now be honest, because these lies, secrets, and ugly dark words have no place in a God focused life. I asked God to shine the light into the dark places, and as often happens, God has answered my prayers a little bit differently than how I expected.

 

I also know that by going against the old, ingrained, rules and airing the family secrets, a different commandment from a darker place, I may lose a lot more than an abuser, and ugly words, but I’m going to trust God on this one. I’m going to trust that God will replace the darkness with light. I’m going to trust that God didn’t make a mistake with me, and I certainly know that He has saved this life of mine more times than I can count.

 

If God sees value in my existence, then my biggest sin has been in not believing Him. My prayers have changed a bit in recent weeks, and now I am asking for forgiveness for hating myself (His creation) for so many years.

 

There is a different set of commandments in abusive families, and I’m flipping the table on those evil, destructive, rules, and I will be turning my back on anyone who tries to enforce those rules on me. Here are the rules that no longer fit into my life:

 

1)      Image, and what other people think, is the most important thing

2)      Do not air the dirty laundry

3)      Everything you say and do will be held against you

4)      Your suffering is meaningless

5)      You must serve the king or queen

6)      Hypocrisy and gossip is the family language

7)      Direct communication is off limits, all information is disseminated by the king/queen

8)      It is always someone else’s fault

9)      You have no right to boundaries, feelings, choice, or individuality

10)  Do not think of leaving or you will be dragged through the mud and slandered

 

 

And I will close with a few bits of wisdom; insults are still insults even if you laugh when saying them. Gossip and slander are very destructive sins, even when spoken under the guise of concern. If you didn’t see it or experience it yourself, you really have no idea what the truth is, and to speak of and share secondhand and third hand “truths” makes you either deceived or a liar or both.

 

Prayers going out to all who grew up like I did, please know you are not alone, and that there is hope and goodness in the world for you. 

 

 

 

 

Child abuse, Sobriety, and Triggers

   

 In January of 2019 I made the decision to quit drinking, it wasn’t the first time I made that decision, and with the exception of one stressful, temptation-filled, night a few weeks later, I have been sober since then. Sobriety is an interesting place to be after my life, a slice of happiness, calmness, contentment, and innocence that I have never really experienced. 

    My problem with alcohol didn’t develop until my only child died, and I was severely injured by a surgical mistake a few months later, and while before that I was just a social drinker, after those losses it changed, alcohol because more of a need than a want. Something inside me changed, perhaps chemically, or perhaps emotionally, but for whatever reason, alcohol became my crutch to get through the days. 

    I didn’t tell anyone that I had quit drinking, I didn’t post a sober day count on the social medias, as I had seen how that works… sometimes announcing your intentions to the world brings all manner of chaos around, like a light turned on the in dark, the moths will come. So I quietly, secretively even, went about getting myself sober. 

    It was easier this time than the others, it was almost like God reached down personally to take all the longing, pain, and angst away, and I was doing an awful lot of praying. I felt light, clean, inspired, and uplifted, completely foreign to what I referred to as my depressed normal. And thankfully, after a lot of hard work, my life, and lifestyle, is set up to maintain and support a sober, healthy, life. I’m sure my way is not the way for most, but for me living simply, with nature and prayer, has given me a new perspective and a new life. 

    The thing about being given a new life, though, is that the old one is still there, it still exists whether I am participating or not, people gotta people, after all. 

    What never really dawned on me was that the alcohol was just another symptom of a deeper issue. They say addiction is a disease, and I do think there are some genetic components to it, but I feel it is mostly just a symptom, one of many used to avoid a deeper pain. 

    I realize now that I had been full on running since I left home at seventeen, running to avoid feeling some uncomfortable and ugly truths. Running like the devil was on my heels, piling fresh traumas onto the old. There was literally no calm oasis from ages seventeen to thirty-six, no time for my body and mind to relax, but going into a deeper level of thought, running was the only way to escape the deeply ingrained fear, shame, and hatred of myself. The pain all abused kids feel, I imagine.    

    When my son, Steven, died, I hit a wall. I couldn’t function, and then the surgery threw me so low there was nothing but the bed, my thoughts, and me, and that was a terrifying place to live. When I recovered physically, Chardonnay and Merlot were my new best friends. I had successfully gotten up on my running feet again without looking down into the deep abyss inside, I had simply shoved some more stuff down in the hole, and took off in a new direction. I am nothing if not resilient. 

    You can only run so long, though, you can only stay so busy, and I know how to stay busy… Thankfully God has been quite gentle with me this time, no bruises, no concussions, no open wounds, no terrible tragic events, just a strong, loving, man, gardens, flowers, trees, water, and animals. And you know what? I still didn’t look; I buried the abyss under a hundred things to accomplish everyday, and knew I was healing and on the right path, still blind, but not self-injurious besides a few pulled muscles. 

    I always thought the word “triggered” referred to some entitled kid who became offended by a flag or a sign or a statue, it was never a part of my vocabulary, but then a text came, and I looked at the word triggered in a new way. It’s funny how your body reacts sometimes, long before your mind or emotions catch up, and I suppose that visceral physical reaction has saved my ass more than a few times in my life, but it’s different when there is no real, physical, threat. 

     I had an anxiety attack, followed by what can only be described as a complex posttraumatic syndrome event. There was nothing to fight, nowhere to run, but my body sure reacted, and I’ve learned that the word triggered is more of a psychological term to describe the reawakening of repressed traumas. Suddenly the rug was pulled out from under me, and I wasn’t just peeking down into the abyss, I was swimming in it. 

     Repressed memories are not forgotten memories, it’s more like the memories are all there, you just don’t look at them all at the same time, you look at one, occasionally, if you have to, and avoid the others. You compartmentalize them; you divide them into smaller, manageable, pieces, and set them back in the furthest corners, out of sight, out of mind. And once they are placed on the shelves, way in the back room of your mind, you slam the door, lock it, and turn forward while putting on your running shoes. 

     For the last weeks those memories, all of them, have made themselves known, in what could be described as vibrant flashbacks, or what is definitely known as nightmares. I’ve not been tempted to drink them away, though, which is a real blessing. Suddenly, it seems, God has given me the strength to face them head on, and deal with the issues that have kept me in self-destruct mode for all of my life. 

    What I am finding is that a lot of the definitions I’ve used to describe myself are not my words, and are not the truth. I feel like I’m unburying the person I was meant to be, and burying the person created through violence, brain injury, dissociation, trauma, and fear. 

     I also know that the world doesn’t accept personal change well, those flapping butterfly wings disturb the darkness in the universe and in people, and I know by speaking openly I will be inviting chaos, and I pray that I am indeed strong enough, but it is time… It is past time for me to start the healing process. 

    My life seems to have been divided into sections, eighteen years a child, eighteen years a mother, eighteen years a grieving, suicidal, self-destructive, mess, and I am really beginning to look forward to the next eighteen years. Things are looking up, but first I just need to turn on the lights and trudge through the abyss for awhile.