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NitaAnn Jul 2014
Can someone tell me what it's like?
I need to know...
To just be held one time
To feel a parent's arms wrapped around me
To be surrounding by love and tenderness
Is all I have ever longed for
All those little girls out there
That know what it's like to be held
Please tell me about the warmth
Please tell me about the safety
Tell me what it's like to just be held
How it feels to lay your head on their chest
And to hear their heart beating
How does it feel to cuddle close to her
And to fall asleep in the arms of love
I've never felt any of this
I've never had a parent's arms of comfort
I don't know the safety of those arms
All I have ever wanted
Is to just be held
Whether it be as I cry heavy tears of sorrow
Or I am scared, and just need to feel safe
Or maybe just to fall fast asleep
And to know they will be there when I wake
The little girl inside of me
As well as the grown woman
Just longs to be held...

Can someone tell me what it's like?
I need to know...
NitaAnn Jul 2014
In addition to the messed up 'abandonment' issues,
Over the past several days,
My body has been expressing all this pain,
And I try to suppress it,
To dissociate and push it away…
As though it is not really me…
But it is not working anymore.

Much like the ‘pushing away’ of the memories
The past as I did for so many years,
It is here, demanding to be felt!
But I don’t want to feel it
I don’t want to remember any of it.

But my body and I
We are now in this tug of war,
Suddenly my body has become "Mission Impossible”
Spilling over with pain and aches
Then memories connect to the pain
Suddenly I am in the middle of a full-fledged flashback hell.
I can do everything in my “pink little self-soothing box”
But none of it will work.
And I hear you saying,
You need to be kind to your body,
Find a way to live in your body...
But right now that is not possible…
Because my body represents something bad and *****
I cannot be connected to that right now.
My body belonged to him,
I still associate it with him
We are not one.

And at night, when this happens,
I am freaked out
You are not there to help me through it
I cannot seem to do it alone
Then I want to hurt myself even more
Up, to, and including termination.
This is not about “SUICIDE”
But rather making the pain
**STOP!
NitaAnn Jul 2014
Today I feel defeated. I feel like a small fish in the big ocean. Everything I do fails and at the moment my head is going full speed with "pictures" from my past. I call them pictures because that is what it looks like in my head. Like a slideshow. I think these pictures are eating me alive. It feels like there's a hole where my heart is supposed to be.

When I close my eyes I see darkness. A dark room. In this room is a crib, and in that crib there I lay. The crib bars surround me. I am crying. I cry because I am hungry or because I'm wet or lonely or maybe because I want my mother. I cry for all of the millions of reasons that babies cry. Until my door opens and the sound of his boots walking closer and closer to my crib gives me something else to cry about.

When I was born darkness cast its shadows over me. The devil himself kissed me on the cheek. That devil was my father.

I do not know how old I was the night that my father left my room but I know I was younger then two. This is the first memory I have of my life. I also remember his smell and his hands and that when he left I felt broken, hurt,shattered, exposed and confused. I do not know what he did to me exactly. This I cannot see. Maybe I am not ready to see it. But I know this incident changed who I was supposed to become.

This makes me angry! That my father the one who was supposed to love and guide me through life is the one who could hurt me in this way. When I see other girls with their dads, girls who complain about how "daddy won't give me money" or "my dad is so annoying" It literally makes me sick to my stomach. They have no idea what they have. I grew up with a dad who had two faces. He was charming and handsome and loving and made me want to be his daughter. Then night came and he was evil. Thinking of nighttime daddy makes my skin crawl. He played his game well and everyone was fooled. I was just a tiny bug caught in his web of lies. Only now 40 years old can I start to realize that what he did was wrong and was not my fault.

How could he look at me a small child and see anything ******? Babies are warmness, smiles, laughs, and play. What kind of person would want to destroy that? I guess no one can ever answer these questions for me. I have to accept this. Anyways explanations will not solve or fix what has already been done. Nothing will. I am a victim of ******. THERE I SAID IT. Acknowledging it makes it real. But that does not heal me. I am a broken bird with tattered wings.

How do I fix my heart with these huge gaping holes in it? Do I pretend I am okay and patch them up with fake smiles and laughter? What if the patches fall off and I am left feeling defeated again? Do I spend thousands of dollars talking to therapists about all of my many problems hoping that 10 years later I will somehow be "normal" whatever that is? I will go with the first option for now. Pretending I'm fine and putting a smile on my face. If I smile I seem happy and then no one will know the pain inside me. Some know what happened but think I am "healed" so they do not ask questions and smiles do not lie right?

Sometimes I wish that someone would see past it and try to save me. Take me into their arms and let me cry and give me what I crave so much. Human contact. The right kind of contact that reassures and tells you your safe and loved. I feel alone and without purpose. What I know is today I feel defeated. Today I feel alone. Today I remember things that I did not remember yesterday. Today I have flashbacks where I feel like a little girl again. Where I feel like his hands are rolling over my body now. His eyes creeping up on me now. But it is not happening now. It is not real. This is what happens today. Tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow will be better.

I am trying to heal. I am trying to move on. This is a slow moving hard process.
NitaAnn Jul 2014
I do not know what is happening to me right now… I have been having perverse and warped physical reactions to the flashbacks that are spilling out of me.  I feel like I am suffocating…I cannot swallow… I cannot breathe - I am too drained to fight it.

Still convinced I have to do it on my own I stumbled around the house. I walked around the kitchen, talking myself through each step, picking things up and telling myself what I was holding and seeing…this is my house, this is my kitchen, this is my desk, this is an envelope with my name on it…my phone bill – I am an adult, I am a wife, a mother, a friend…How crazy does that sound? I had to talk out loud to keep him away from hurting me again.

I do not remember what happened after that – a couple of hours later I woke up on my bedroom floor. A complete mess.  
What am I so scared of? Why can I not snap out of it???

It is all so warped and cruel. Experiences like ****** abuse and **** do more than just bump into us in the night…they critically wound us, sometimes fatally. Every single ounce of our being is ripped to shreds, our souls shattered. And we are left to pick up the pieces of what never should have been ~ angry…hurt…sad…hopeless…traumatized…full of shame and unable to trust anyone enough to talk about it.

Does anyone who has not been there really understand how traumatic and painful it is to hold all of this inside because of the fear of being told to ‘get over it’, or ‘shut up and behave’ or ‘It wouldn’t be so traumatic if you stayed in the present moment and out of the past’….so many secrets…so many years…so much energy it takes to keep it all in and ‘act normal’.  Does anyone understand how much it hurts to be told 'oops - sorry, it's after 10 now - you will be abandoned so make a different choice.'  It’s exhausting…But exhaustion feels like the better choice...rather than being abandoned.  And that's why I no longer reach out for help.  That's why she once again hides.  Because she was hurt time and time again...and now she's too scared.  Now, like then, 'in the face of expected abandonment...she makes a different choice.'

Maybe I am just too traumatized to ever fully trust anyone.  What if that is really my 'truth'?  Please do not let it continue tonight.  I am too tired...I am so scared and tired.
NitaAnn Jul 2014
I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for all that you represented in my life over the last year. The first day I met you on campus I knew that you were a woman of stature and confidence. You were to be admired! You carried yourself with such grace and you radiated buoyancy that I admired. You have been there, cheering me on, encouraging me to get help and reminding me of my value to others. Thank you for your encouragement, I will not forget it.

You were always there for me with a kind word and an available ear. So many times your words made me smile, and I felt cared for by your friendship. And although you were encouraging and kind, you were also sincere. I appreciate that so much, your honesty, and my feelings were never upset by your words because you were always gentle in your communication. I was never angry or hurt by anything you said…I took it in the spirit you intended, and although sometimes it was not easy to hear, it was always an opportunity to look within myself for an opportunity to grow. Thank you for your sincerity.

When I had lost not only my way, but also my compass, in this world, you have encouraged me to find answers and deal with issues.  And you also knew that for most of my life, love, acceptance and self- worth were all based on my ‘performance’. “If I do this…my mother will love me, my friends will love me”…and on and on and on. And it was a daunting task, keeping everything together for everyone, trying so hard to keep that mask on so no one would know what I came from, how tainted my past was…and the facade of who I pretended to be consumed me by the time I hit the age of 30. Any negative swerves in the road, anything that happened that I could not control, was quickly swept under the rug so the outward appearance of super-Nita remained perfect. Not many people could see beneath that mask, not many were allowed to see. I did, however, trust you to see beneath the shroud I presented to most people. I allowed you to see the ‘real’ Nita because you were compassionate and honorable.

But I keep trudging through the mud and the muck, even though many days I feel as though I am stuck in quick-sand. It is not easy, and I still revert back to my most treasured tools of self-destruction….old habits are hard to break. Once I ‘fall off the wagon’ it is difficult to climb back on again. The key for me is to proactively identify the triggers that precede the behavior so I can head them off at the pass. Meaning – have a plan in place and implement that plan BEFORE I find myself on the bathroom floor with blood pooling on the tile from the wounds I inflict on myself in an effort to feel the internal pain in a physical way. Some days are better than others…as you know, it is “one day at a time”.

There are days when I am okay, and on those days, I feel a renewed sense of hope, but there are days when I am not okay, and I struggle to find the will and the strength to continue. Although the internal wounds are still raw and bleeding, the external ones, the wounds I have inflicted upon myself, are fading.

We all have different strengths and I am thankful to have you in my life.

I am thankful for the friends who have stuck by me during this tumultuous time, those who are here to help hold my head above water when I lack the strength, and those who encourage me to keep running to a better life, to a life worth living, to a place of peace. It takes endurance and an unwavering faith, and I am lucky to have them. I know that someday I will be okay.
NitaAnn Jul 2014
I am not weak...
I have lived through a pretty good amount of trauma and I keep going.

I am stronger than I think...
I always bounce back, even when I don't think I will.

I am a good friend...
I listen and care and try to help.

I am not what happened to me...
I am not a victim, I have survived and become my own person.

I am beautiful...
inside and out, I am not stained by what was done to me.
NitaAnn Jul 2014
I can’t change right now
because I don’t have any energy to focus on changing.

I am standing at the bottom of a deep trench. It is my trench because I dug this dark & dingy trough that I spend each night in. And I cannot focus on change right now because it takes every scrap of energy residing inside of me just to stay alive. And I am working so hard to shove the dirtiness and shame deep down inside of my blackened soul. DT is right (he usually is, even though angry girl has a hard time accepting what DT says as the truth…eventually it sinks in…when logical/rational Nita comes around and has a chance to absorb it.

After everything I’ve supposedly “survived” – its ****** me off that this part, this “healing & acceptance” of myself is by far the hardest part, by far. (I did NOT say forgiveness - that will never, ever happen – and DT supports my decision on this). Enduring my father’s abuse  when I was a child is not nearly as unbearable or traumatizing as reliving it is now. It scared me then, confused me, and hurt me…I didn’t like it. it hurt…but I didn’t comprehend what he was doing, I had no idea what I was losing…my innocence, my trust, all of the things that affect me now. I was a confused little girl who always wondered if this was normal behavior, if it happened in all families. I was an anxious teenager, struggling to be perfect, a chameleon, changing to fit the mold of what everyone else wanted from me.

Now I’m a grown woman who knows about the dangers of abusing alcohol and prescription anti-anxiety medications, I know the risks of the nightly rituals of SI that we engage in and yet I cannot stop myself from continuing to use these “maladaptive” methods to cope (and I use that term loosely). I want so badly to erase it all. I know my nightly behavior is harmful but I am not able to change that right now, I do not have the energy, every bit of it goes into just getting through the day…
minute by minute.

I tried so hard this past week – to let it all go, to push it down and act like a normal human being, but some nights I feel beaten down, crushed by the feelings and thoughts and memories that are running rampantly through my mind like a drove of cattle, crushing everything in their path. I cannot control them…as DT says, it’s like trying to herd cats.
I am not armed to face the girl I am supposed to accept.

And this stupid worthless body is aching and it won’t stop.
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