I am sick as I blog this post. I am very sick. Actually, I have been sick for quite a number of days … at least two weeks. It has nothing to do with infectious diseases but more to do with releasing the toxins of things I have held onto from the past.
I first took note of a change within my being as I began to get deeper into my personal story from the past regarding the sexual assault that occurred against me when I was nine. A lot of emotions have come up because of my decision to explore this past. It has been far from easy, but the timing was right.
I have cried many tears because of the sudden “aha” moments that I recognize as I ponder over the trauma I suffered back then. I look back in time and realize I was not suffering alone. What has been painful to recall is that while I was suffering, my aunt was actually dying of cancer. If no one else was suffering, at least I knew she were suffering too.
As an adult, I have so much empathy for my aunt’s struggle now, but the posttraumatic stress that I suffered as a result of trauma during my childhood would not allow me to clearly see all that was going on around me. I do not make this as an excuse. It is just what happened to me. I was walking through a nightmare of posttraumatic stress. If I could rewind that time and change it, I would hope that my reactions would have been different. I can never know this though.
Yet, through the self-discoveries I have made about my own struggles and the discoveries I have made about why adults around me reacted to me the way they did, I have been physically struggling within my body in the present. There has been a growing fatigue that has taken ahold of me that would not let go. It has very much been like a cloud of depression – a dark stringy cloud that covers my head and weighs down upon me making it sometimes hard for me to breathe. I have often wondered if these are the after affects of posttraumatic stress as I retell and relieve some of the events through blogging.
I do not know for certain, but I have found that the more I blogged my story, the greater the need to express the details. Besides my journal, there has been no other means for my expressing this part of my past. I have never discussed this with my family, and the mere attempts I have made to share with a few people I poorly trusted was met with less than empathetic listening.
Unfortunately, this traumatic part of my past was also glazed over by the therapist that I worked with too. I have never understood the therapist’s reasonings. In fact, I all but pondered if this particular therapist gaslighted me into believing that this part of my past was irrelevant to the depression I suffered even though I knew this to be untrue. I know it is partially the result of a lot of the depression I suffered on top of other things. In fact, this therapist diagnosed me with having PTSD, but instead attributed it other less traumatic events in my life.
For the most part, I have been surrounded by narcissists all my life, but I have also suffered immeasurable trauma including the sexual assault. This is often the case in environments where narcissists reside more so because any trauma that happens within the environment tends to stay secretive. The environment cannot fully operate without secrets because narcissists use those secrets to exert power over the family system.
I do not know how the therapist could not see this as being the case for me unless it was just too much to take on. Although I was a long time client with this particular therapist, I never seemed to address the deeper issues. I had to will myself to address them on my own. This is one of the reasons I turned to journaling because writing my thoughts became another form of therapy for me.
In retrospect, it is easy to understand the reason for the therapist avoiding my deeper issues. Digging deep into trauma is fatiguing. In a sense, it is a spiritual battle. Not all therapists are equipped for the spiritual battles of others, and even if some therapists are equipped for spiritual battles of others, not all want to take them on.
These spiritual battles require the desperation to fight for healing both from the therapist and the client if they are working together. Yet, if the therapist choose to not help in that battle, then it is solely up to the client to battle for themselves. In fact, the client has to do much of the work towards healing anyway. Thus, I do not believe that the therapist I worked with was inclined for this spiritual battle with me, and that is okay. I learned to take up my own cross and carry it. It is my fight for my personal healing anyway.
For the record, I do not want to be held hostage by feelings of bitterness, unforgiveness or hatred. I do not want these negative feelings to remain trapped within my body. I want to be free, and I want to continue towards being healthy. I want to release others from having any obligation to me. I want to release others from my bitterness, unforgiveness, and hatred against them. I want to walk in peace and be at peace with others even when that peace means choosing to understand the reasons for their behaviors, letting go of their mistakes, and walking freely away from them if they choose to remain in toxicity.
For me, I do not feel I can be healthy unless I address whatever it is that ails me. Yet, in doing so, I am finding that the task of getting the healing itself actually ails me. I have noticed that I become drained and depleted of energy over the course of blog posts on the same topic because I am required to go back to the past and remember the hurt. Essentially, I am revisiting the old in an effort to create something new. That has actually required a lot of effort and a lot of feeling the pain.
Yet, for that effort, I want to grow past the anger that tormented me so much during my youth and transcended into my adulthood and tainted my perspective. My desire for growth is indeed time-consuming. I can say, however, that it is worth it. So, for the sake of not overexplaining, I will just say it is necessary for me to take breaks from a blog topic from time to time to recoup. If my blog posts seemed scattered all over the place and not making much sense for connectedness, that simply means I am still finding my way through the struggles of the trauma. It also means that I have become fatigued as I fight my way through it.
This blog has been no easy feat for me at all, but it has shed light on a lot of things for me and about me. For one, I can see those things about me that I need to address and change so that I can continue to grow. I can see that even though I am not a narcissist, I certainly bred my own fair share of narcissistic behaviors and directed those behaviors towards others. I caused pain even when I was in pain, and visibly seeing this realization as a blog has been eye-opening as well as devastating.
Nevertheless, when I become so fatigued that I become sick from the blog topic, then I know I need to take a break and rest on it … ponder over what I need to understand to become and remain free and healed. That is something that I am learning through this blog experience too. I am growing even if slowly, and I am learning a lot. I am changing even if that change does not appear on the surface, and I am glad to know that by others reading my story and maybe even relating to it that it gives me further purpose in continuing to share my story for healing and for all who read it.
But I will keep blogging. So stay tuned for more.
My Voice Unchained 