Releasing With Your Hands (T.W Rape)

But the rain can't wash you if you're laying in the dirt
And the pain can't change you if you blame it on the hurt

I don't know why I'm here. Which is true of life in general, but more applicable to right here, right now. I don't know why I'm back on Blogger. Maybe it's more comforting to release these words out into the internet where there is a chance someone can read this, reach out to me, and tell me I'm not as desperately alone as I feel. It's not like I've ever been a big blog, obviously, but I reread all of my posts last night and the outpouring of love and acceptance I used to get really overwhelms me. It reminds me of a different time in my life when I didn't have to be drunk to feel genuine happiness.

In September of 2014, I wrote 'This man, he looked right at me and said "When you are angry, when you refuse to forgive someone for something they have done, that's you handcuffing yourself to that person and letting them tag along with you for the rest of your life. You have to overcome the bitterness." 

But what if I can't??'

That was almost three and a half years ago and I still have not uncuffed myself. I still have yet to label myself "survivor". Instead, I watch spoken word poetry on the subject and try to imagine telling my therapist that I was raped. It is too difficult for me to face, so instead I continue to pretend like that event has not tainted every piece of my life, has not affected every detail of me, has not dictated the way I allow myself to love and be loved.

How do you begin to forgive someone who you truly believe does not deserve forgiveness?

How do you begin to heal?

I do not want to be the person who hurts others because they cannot process their own hurt anymore. I do not want to be my father. I do not want this continuous cycle of violence that has been synonymous with my last name. I do not want to be incapable of letting another human being in.

I feel more okay about the future than I ever have before. Most days I can silence the anxiety and dread that swirls within me when I think about what comes next in terms of long-term plans. And yet I still find myself white-knuckling it every day, willing every fiber of my being to not step in front of that semi, do not stop your car on the train tracks and wait for the train to come, do not go buy a gun, do not spend all of your money on pills, do not disassemble your pencil sharpener, do not buy a rope and test how sturdy that ceiling fan is etc etc etc. 

We did this activity in the psych ward where one person sat in the middle of this huge tarp, and the others gathered the edges of it in their hands and pumped it up and down as hard as they could. It was a metaphor for anxiety, because while you were in the middle, all you could see was the tarp waving all around you, never ceasing. Anxiety doesn't let you take a step back. It grabs you and holds you as tight as it can until you cannot remember how to breathe. Meanwhile, all around you are the sounds of your friends laughing and joking, and you do not want to ruin their fun by exclaiming "Help! I am drowning in this!" so you endure it silently until your turn is over and it is time to crawl back to the edge of the tarp. 

I think about this activity a lot, probably for all of the wrong reasons. It was supposed to teach you that if you would just look up from the anxiety, you would see your whole support system standing around you, ready to do anything they could to lessen the pain. But instead it taught me that no one will ever be there for you when you really need them to be. It is all on you and you alone. 

My trauma will always only belong solely to me. I have to learn how to be okay with that, how to process that, how to overcome that all on my own. More than anything in the entire world, I do not want to be here again three years from now writing about how I haven't yet figured out how to uncuff myself. 

Dear Bella, you said you found my last post uplifting, and so if you are reading this, I am very sorry for how dismal this one turned out to be. 

I love you all, please know you can always talk to me about anything.

<3 Lee