Yin and Yang

photos by Patricia

When trust is lost as a child in a harsh traumatic way, no amount of therapy brings it back. Years and years of therapy didn’t make my teeth stop grinding at night when the monsters came. Monsters at night, people by day. Daytime people are just as scary.

Teeth guards for grinding. Toe dividers for bunions. Powders for areas on the body that are dark and moist. Vitamins for this, that, and the other thing. Drops for dry eyes, white noise for ear ringing, and on it goes as a body ages and needs more care.

And those things are tended to, but what about the psyche that craves things not found in a bottle or bought in a store? Things in my psyche broke early on and there’s no fixing them.

As spring waves in green overtaking the falling snow, my brain chemicals go awry and this is yearly, some years more frantic with upheaval than others. Tears roll down my cheeks as the harsh childhood voices break me in two, feelings of badness embedded into my personality booming as the ghosts of what my child suffered become real once again.

Bad, bad, bad. Looking around at others during that time when traumatic attacks were suffered by brothers loved and trusted, I felt ashamed wanting to hide. It wasn’t them, it was all me. Trash, rotten trash. And spring brings the feelings crashing in like a steam-roller.

Waking in the night with these thoughts of every thing done wrong in my life, returning to slumber was impossible. That made the day impossible with teary episodes throughout it. Yet magic still occurs when both sons call and their love is palpable.

When one son says after seeing tears that couldn’t be hidden, ‘Go out and get some vitamin D. Love you,’ with eyes intense looking straight into mine. (through the tablet)

And the walk was glorious on a crisp spring morning. Yin and Yang.