Is it food
or love?
Is it food
or escaping anxiety?
Is it food
or a need to numb?
HUNGER
dissociation
REPRESSED MEMORY
An email from Seth set off alarming dreams because of his association with Tom, which pokes at other memories with Chet, Danny, and one other sibling never named. 4 siblings chose to attack me. The nightmare that came with the recurring ache for a home lingers causing nights of chaos unable to sleep.
“Do you have a tape measure?” the two guys asked.
Wanting to continue with my tasks, exasperated, I lied, “No.”
Hating to be anything but honest, (just like real life), I said, “Yes,” moving to get it.
They were both aroused, one coming close enough to feel it. I lashed out shouting.
The next morning I asked Samuel, “Did I cry out in the night or move suddenly?”
“No,” he said.
But I think I did just like the first attack by Chet as a child when he pinned me down causing a feeling of suffocation threatening my life. Lying still pretending sleep was the only way to survive. But it also allowed him to do just about anything he wanted.
Naomi Judd shot herself dead. Perhaps her repressed memories drove her to it. As the weight comes off, I feel closer to the repressed trauma of Danny violently raping me. I know it happened, but my mind still won’t allow it up, even at age 69.
Some might say I already lived through it, so I’ll be alright. I might once have said that too, but it’s not true. My child’s brain went somewhere, not knowing, not remembering. To remember would be to live it. How to bear it if it does?
FULLY BEING
Awake, even the birds are still sleeping. Yet it’s been a restful night, so padding out to the kitchen, hitting the coffee grinder switch, the twinkle lights turn on just in time. After the loud pulse of fresh beans being ground, errant bird chirpings are heard.
Must be the newborns that wake earlier than their parents. A frog deeply croaks in the distance signaling time for them to finally come out of the mud from winter’s hibernation. The moon, though waning, brightly lights up the back porch, and outdoor fairy garden solar lighting is still aglow.
The cat stretches out beside me, her head popping up occasionally when she hears a rustle nearby. Restless just sitting still, it takes focus to breathe and just be present and in my body.
Much of my days are like that, slowing down to be present in the moment and in my body. Fractured pieces pull me away or try to. Living, now that the kids are raised, the jobs are done, and there’s nowhere to go because my body can’t take it anyway, is living in the moment and being OK with just that.
Naomi Judd
Thoughts dwell on Naomi Judd. We lost one of us, one of the little girls sexually abused. Though she came forward in an interview with Robin Roberts, did people still shun her as they seem to do because hearing about such things is repugnant to them?
I could sense her anxiety watching the interview, the wringing of hands that shook though she tried to hide them, the maddening back and forth of the smile we are forced to portray then the real wrenching pain of unhealed parts ripped to shreds as a child… and no one comes.
Back and forth, the smile, the paralyzing agony depressing her being so much she took her own life. That could be me.
My body does not cope with the decades of hypervigilance- daily adrenalin rushes with cortisol bursts over a tiny insignificant sound, or someone coming up behind me, even my child or husband. That happens even now.
We lost one of our own, and the sorrow cannot be wiped away. Someone needs to talk about it. People need to listen. This is happening to our little girls. Boys too, but little girls far more, we just hear about boys more.
Do a TED talk? Do a youtube? People don’t want to listen, but they must. Isn’t it time to protect our children? Who protected Naomi? She seemed so happy through the years with that smile.
Performing. There is so much performing, as families insist on keeping it quiet, and the child performs. But a body can’t hold out forever and the agony must be released be it too much eating, shopping, drinking, drugging, marrying someone to beat you, or dying.
It is hard road, and I am saddened that this woman has died because her sadness caused it to be so.
C-PTSD
Maybe it’s nothing, but that’s doubtful. After a few weeks coming back from camping with a brother who is impossible to relate to due to his brain turning to mush over the years of alcohol abuse, sleep returned consistently till last night.
Out of nowhere? No way. It could be the sudden feeling of fright because the realization struck that my odd practitioner once again foiled the activation of a renewal of my marijuana card because it had not yet come.
Why oh why do these dilemmas come in the dark of night? But there had to be another reason because the wise came spoke saying , ‘it will worked out.’
Something else had set off alarm bells beyond my control. I can feel when it happens though try to ignore it. This time ignoring it for two hours before taking something. AND THAT DIDN’T HELP!
Rarely two doses are needed, but by 1AM it was necessary. Hating to admit it had to do with an unusual movie watched on NETFLIX— that must be the root of my hyper-arousal. It was unique in that it bluntly talked about childhood sexual abuse. In her dissociation, as her husband made love to her, she saw her father above her instead.
Um, duh, of course. My issues are many and most exposed by writing except Danny’s attack so brutal it is repressed to this day. So as much as it would my preference not to have this disease it crops up without permission. IT IS NOT MY FAULT.
A mantra I have to keep telling myself… as the tears fall.
Bury the Living
Though hard, it is good to get back to the work of inhabiting my body as one. The more time that passes after being with the chaos and drama of origin family members, the better I feel and the less my mind goes in loops over it.
Moving on to the usual, facing a day with its fears, and challenges with the diligence needed to be present. That is enough without the quagmire of the past, pulled back into old grooves where no growth occurs. It has. No going back, my core will not allow stagnation once tasting the fruits of expansion.
The time spent as a robot to please while with them, dimming as each days goes by. The wonders of each sunrise begins to settle in while worries, and mental games that sicken fade. Because the mind can make me sick if around others that are stuck in loops of their own.
My internal wisdom won’t let me stay in swamps of death-like goo, memories of what was that still are in that group. Who cloyingly begin drowning me with repeated attempts at collaboration in dysfunction. No, free me, let me loose. Tentacles of what seems like family luring me down into the tar that sucks a soul dead.
My issues are many without adding to them, all spelled out in the psychiatric textbooks of diagnoses. Though terms are not my thing, it is helpful to acknowledge my own reality so that gentleness towards self can grow; DISORDERS- Depressive, Anxiety, Trauma and Stressor related disorder, Dissociative Disorder…
It takes great care to manage my life without adding more stress to it. Perhaps these doors that have been left ajar with hopes of meaningful contact need to be closed, maybe locked. To come back to the basics each day, contemplation of my own mortality which spurs my desire to enjoy the simples pleasures amidst the pain.
Ah, to be free of it. As each day passes, more freedom lightens my being. Joy replaces depression. Tears dry, without knowing why they are there, wiping them away almost daily. Maybe it is a mourning all over again. Each failed attempt at connection comes with the price of mourning.
Bury the dead while they are alive? In a sense, yes. Or more succinctly, Live and let live…
The Toll of TRAUMA
Bend me like an origami paper project. That is how others have been allowed to treat me. Growing up hostage to a brother’s sexual needs caused me to learn my needs don’t matter, in fact don’t make it on the table.
Just plow through and take what you want, when you want it. No boundaries were learned, so though burning with rage inside at the maltreatment, both then, but later all through life, my voice remained gagged and stifled way below.
My body cannot take being struck by waves as if a buoy on open ocean waters. It causes me to take action for my own self-preservation. Where once, not so long ago, like two days ago, I’d chat with a friend on-line because it fit her schedule at that time (not mine), then suffer the repercussions of taking on too much in a day causing my body to go into overdrive and not be able to sleep, my decision to not answer a brother’s insistent and repeated attempts to have an on-line video chat came next.
He is not one to ignore. He attempted 7 times at least, my tablet practically vibrating off the table. But equilibrium from being up in the night had not fully returned, tiredness still remained. After no answer, he called on the phone which I still let ring. I have called and emailed him in the past when he doesn’t bother answering with no explanation or apology.
And since it’s me it doesn’t seem to matter. But if it’s his itch needing scratching that isn’t scratched, wow. Really? Stop stalking me. But sitting down at the computer, I finally responded by sending a kind note explaining the rough month with sleep issues. That when in a sleep deprived stupor, I am unable to chat or talk to him. That nothing is wrong, and he is very dear to me. (Now leave me alone until I gather my parts all disconnected and discombobulated)
Much of my life has been spent in a disassociated state. Talk to me and no one’s here. I’m off in my ‘safe’ place. But with the start of learning to meditate over 15 years ago, moments of being present and feeling safe began to occur.
But it takes energy to be present with another. After a morning of a lot of exercise and busyness not enough energy is left to chatter happily with another. Yet if that’s what you want, I do it anyway, other’s needs coming first. Until now.
In learning to like myself that all begins to change. That taking care of me, even if my needs seem weird or made up to others, makes me more able to be there for others. But when I choose to, not as the doormat I was raised to be.
Time alone is necessary, crucial to my well-being. How can you explain to others what your footsteps are like unless they have been there? That energy resources can be depleted so easily because of a life of stress and feelings of always being in danger?
That takes a toll on the body that often others just don’t understand. I do, but still haven’t learned to say NO. But I am learning to.
SAFE ZONE
Each day a gift to open, unwrapping moments with care, working at being there for each one. Yet often having to shake myself from a deep reverie some call dissociation. Still going to that safe place, perhaps more now due to the changing season coupled with tumultuous weather, needing a safe zone where the winds don’t blow.
Patricia J Grace 