adult self:* *"Yeah,  I just wish I would have done something to stop everything from happening."
child self: "What do you mean?"
adult self: "Well, you know. The stuff with Father. I wish I would have done something to keep that from happening."
child self: "Like what?"
adult self: "I don’t know." I thought for a minute. "I just took it. I wish I would have stopped it all. I could have said something, told someone earlier. You know."
child self: "But how?"
adult self: "I don’t know! I’m not angry at you," I said quickly. *"I wish I’d have been stronger. I wish someone would have walked in on Father and me. Someone. I wish someone would have been there. Some kind of adult, someone who would have stopped it, or at least said to me, "It’s all right. It’s not your fault."

I thought about calling someone, anyone
I thought it would help to talk
But what do you say
When all the pain has this way
Of shutting you up
In your own personal Hell.
The silence grows, ringing in my ears
But I like it that way.
It is so much easier to hide
When the pain stays inside.
I do not want to talk to someone that does not know
Someone that has never tasted the wound.
I do not want their pity
Or their, "It'll get better."
I do not cry and that is not a lie
I break and scream
And try to remain unseen.
Do you really want to know?
Do you really want to feel it?
Let it burn you
Let it cut into you.
Do not ask me if I am okay
When you already know the answer.
Let me sleep without the agony
Of your worry.
God, let me sleep
Let me wake and deal with another day
In just the same way.
Biting and breaking the surface
Of each second reminding me I never really change.
I just rearrange things until they seem right.
Oh, God, let me sleep
And dream of better things.

This is just a terrible time and we just have to get through it. But how?

My life here is not a secret. The NitaAnn expressed here is a lot more of me than I would ever reveal in my real life. Writing what I write here, expressing what and how I feel, is far beyond what I would ever reveal in real life ~ even to my close friends. I cannot remember the last time I let anyone see me cry or let them see the pain I go through (exception being the therapist). But here I am, typing away, open and raw. The painful truth that is me...and that truth is that I am in pain. I pray to just sleep now so I can get relief from the pain. I pray for answers and solutions because I know that long-term sleeping isn’t the answer and I really want to feel better but in my present moment I am settling for any relief I can find. I’m grateful to have this outlet, a way to express what I cannot say aloud, or show to anyone in my real life. It is difficult for me to allow people to see this side of me, to be vulnerable, even on-line. It is certainly not something I can do in real life.

Right now I feel like I am standing above a tornado, watching it wreck mayhem on the girl who was me. But I am beyond expecting anything right now. With every step there is a twist, every fork in the road feels like a dead end. I am ready to fight. I am ready to get past this. It all still mystifies me; how this happens. Just I begin to feel better, things are going well, I can control my thoughts and maintain control over the crazies who dwell within ~ then suddenly it’s like a hammer crashes into my head and a g-force of reality rains down. I had myself convinced that I was better. The hardest part was finally over and the next part will be a breeze! Then it all catches up with me again...I cannot outrun it.

I thought that maybe taking time off from school/work would be a good idea. But I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that it might do more harm than good. Each night I just feel empty and drawn...haven’t I felt enough already? Is there anything left to feel? I feel desperate for relief. It is so hard to find hope and promise when you can’t seem to see past the thick fog of the pain.  And it still amazes me how crazyhead can manifest itself inside me causing not just mental anguish but also physical torment. And the queasiness and headache will not go away.  The blood pressure remains in the danger zone even with all the meds.

And it's overwhelming, you know? It's just too much.  All of it running through my head ~ horrible things that I cannot even write here.  And I want to talk to the therapist about it - I do - because I know I need his help.  But when I picture myself sitting there, on his couch, actually speaking aloud the horrible disgusting things from my past and my present - I imagine him sitting there, disgusted with me...he wouldn't be able to handle it.  He wouldn't.  And I cannot fathom how I would feel to see a look of disgust on his face.  To have him see me, NitaAnn, as I truly am...so I am stuck in this terrible paradox ~ needing his help but not being able to express to him what I need help with.  

I am trying to see past this time of pain and once again find hope, find joy in life and let other people in the real world help me when I am lost. There must be a solution...so what is it? Maybe I’ll go lie down and explore answers to that question. I had better find something quick ~ because I don’t know how much more of this crap I can handle physically or mentally.

I hang on because I know I am not alone.
I know I have people who care about me.
People who listen, care, and give a **** about me;
Not the fake me, but the REAL me.
Accept me and love me despite all of my flaws and shortcomings.
You believe in me and send me love every day.

One moment at a time...
I can keep trying.
I can keep hoping.
I will do this.
I can do this.
I am doing this.

Thank you for believing in me.

I cried all the way home tonight. I kept repeating to myself, “It’s going to be okay…it’s going to be okay…you’re going to be okay…” But is it? Is everything going to be “okay”? I no longer hear that voice inside of me telling me I can do this~ that I have to keep fighting because I am worth it. I don’t know where she went but I have not been able to find her.

I am so tired of feeling this disconnected from, well, everything. Everything…it’s lonely…it’s scary how alone one can feel in a room full of people. It’s chilling how I can watch myself from outside my body as someone else ‘lives’ inside of it. Someone I am not connected too, someone I don’t know.

Tonight, as I was brushing my teeth, I looked at my face in the mirror. I leaned forward, as if to touch the reflection there ~ and I looked deeply into her eyes and I felt nothing. I was not connected to those eyes, or to that face…those eyes were empty and hollow. I did not feel empathy or compassion for her, that face, those eyes in the mirror…I felt anger and hate for her failure to feel alive, for her incapability to feel any kind of connection to anyone or anything.

I spit toothpaste right in her face! That daft woman in the mirror! I hate her right now! For everything she has been through, for all the pain she has made me feel. I am not her! Not right now.

I rarely inhibit her body now. I can’t. I am doing the best I can… I am doing the best I can right now. I do not have to be here right now. I can’t. Not now…not right now.  

I don't remember the last time I have felt this disconnected from everything.  
I am struggling.  I am afraid. I am lost.

I desperately need help right now but I am afraid to ask for help, or even accept help if it is offered...I don't know how.  I can't reach out because...yeah, all I hear: in those moments of tempting the face of expected rejection/abandonment...make a different choice.....I can't face anymore rejection or abandonment ~ not right now.  

I want to crawl inside of myself and just feel nothing.  
And I am sorry ~ I am so sorry.....

I am so afraid. The path I have traveled over the past 30+ years has led me on all sorts of twists and turns, stops and starts, climbs and falls and I have ended up here. At the edge of a place I never thought I'd be, a place I never really planned on being, but yet my steps have lead me here.

I feel so alone. I'm on the edge of a confrontation that breaks all my rules. You can't possibly love and be faithful to God and have such anger towards Him. Or even if you do, you don't dare admit it. You become the fake person who pretends that everything is OK, but live in constant fear that your secret will be revealed.

Every ounce of me is trying to pull myself from the edge.

It just seems too dangerous.

Today as I spend time in my head and I am considering the "how" of things. How I want a fresh start...a better year....better relationships.

A fresh start... a better year... putting to bed a bad year... this year will be better.

I have never had a "better" anything. Maybe that is being too harsh. I don't see things as better or fresh...at least not where or when I an concerned.

A fresh start is a foreign body to me.  To do that would be to erase the memories, the scars, the voices in my head, the shadow people in the corners of nearly every room I enter.  All are impossible.  Especially when there are many, many memories below the frozen surface of my mind.  Frozen in time; so cold that it hurts.  

A perpetual brain freeze.  I wish for just one day without this pain.

No fresh start for me.  What I can do though, is obsess over the how of my life.  I have pretty much given up on the why.  There is just no good answer there; at least not at this point.

How doesn't have to do with other people.  It has to do with me.  How the **** did I survive?

There are a lot of awful childhood verses sung; a dysfunctional family, a leering dad, secrets and more secrets, an angry mother.  Each verse different yet fraught with painful similarities and fragile coping.  

And then there is me.  And others like myself.  I am shattered and still standing yet I have no idea how I got here or how I figured out that this was a life worth surviving.  

How did I not give up?

How did I put one aching foot in front of the other, day after day?  Night after night?  

How did I barely sit down at breakfast each morning believing that our dance in the dark was a household brand?

How did he know just how far to go?  Close enough to fearful pleasure.  Far enough from impersonal death.  

It is a precarious how.

My heart aches and my mind burns, but I am not going to break. You will not win. You will no longer control me. My body is numb and my soul is empty, but I will be ok. You haven't damaged me forever. You are a poison, slowly taking the beauty and life from whoever you wish- but not me, not anymore. I am standing up, putting back what pieces I can, healing the searing pain you caused. I am still afraid- to trust, to ask for help, to sleep, to be less than perfect. But I'm learning not to be so scared. It's going to take a long time to undo what you did...but I will do it.

I'm giving up.

I hate the constant body aches! The headache in my left temple radiates down the back of my neck. It never goes away, not even with medication. It's this dull ache that is irritating and nauseating. My hip joint make it difficult to walk or sit with the burning pain. I feel like my entire pelvis is is bruised and aching.

I feel overwhelmed tonight. I can't leave my house because of the constant aches and nausea. The voice beckons me to grab my razor blade and make it stop. That voice will not stop until he gets his way.

It's too much now. All of it. The voices, the pain, the memories, the flashbacks. I have never said this out loud before, but it's almost enough for me to check myself into the hospital. And if it weren't for my own fears of lack of control and inability to trust, I may be there right now.

I feel hopeless and unheard now. I tried so hard to communicate this weekend. I can't make it stop, but no one hears me. So, instead, I write into cyberspace, hoping someone will hear me and tell me they've been here before, over and over again, and it get's better. God! I don't know what I need, or even what to ask.

I'm not even sure it matters anyway...not anymore.

I feel the smallest of small right now. I don't know how I even got to be an adult.

When I'm able to believe again,
I'll walk determined down this path again
And you'll look at a smile again
And you'll see that I'm free.

Gonna hear the voice of reason,
Gonna hear the words of God
Won't be loud, won't be loud,
'Til I open my heart to Him.

When I'm able to believe again
Gonna feel this shame diminish,
Gonna pray for God's grace to fall on me,
One sweet day, one sweet day
I will deserve it,
When I'm able to believe again.

So DT posed that somewhat obvious question for me to work on this week. What do I want to/need to believe? This afternoon it was as if God delivered the answer to me as I was driving, because out of nowhere I stopped singing to the radio and it was just there.

I need to believe that someone can love me, as damaged as I am. Somewhere in the back of my mind I've decided that I am not worthy of anyone's love because of how I feel inside. I know my family loves me, but they "have" to.

*But deep down I know that I won't let anyone love me until I can figure out how to love myself.

Somehow that seems like the much harder thing to do.

Still in shock
Odds of beating
Irony
Not ready yet

The little girl inside
Still cries for protection.
But there is no one is sight.
Dark and quiet is the room
Then a creaking of the door
And with the noise, an evil looms.
I am not safe anymore
Or any less than before.
And in my heart, years later,
I still, sometimes, do not feel any safer.

This morning had a session with DT. Focus was on 3 questions that I knew I needed to answer. I made an agreement with myself that I was going to get it together and do what needed to be done... even though it scared the crap out of me.

These questions represented what I needed to be asked in order to feel ready to say what needed to be said. To say what has kept the "inner me" silenced so much lately.

The panic that rushed through my body when he asked me the first question was something I had almost forgot. It numbs your arms and your legs, but pools all of your blood in your heart causing it to beat wildly in your chest. Your breathing gets so fast it feels like you won't have enough air to continue breathing. It took me a while just to compose myself. I asked him to ask me again. Another wave of panic, but this time a little shorter. I asked him to ask me again. I sat there and thought... I stared... I closed my eyes. I told him I thought I could answer these questions if I kept my eyes closed. He asked me again:

Why are you afraid to give up control and let God take over?

(through streaming tears) He had control. He chose this for my life. He put me in that bedroom alone with him night after night. How am I supposed to let Him have control when something like that could happen again?

Why don't you trust Him?

(through sobs and tears) Because He left me. He left me in that bedroom alone. I had no one. I needed Him there and he wasn't there.

Why is it easier for you to believe there is no God than to be so hurt by this one?

Believing there is no God is so much easier. It's so much harder to think that there is a God, that He wasn't there for you when you needed Him and that you are so hurt by that.

Just like your family?

(nod)


It took me an hour to answer those 3 questions.

How do you tell your heart to beat again, when it’s been numb and broken for so long? How do you start living life when all you have done for so many years is go through the motions and try to survive? How do you tell people around you that think you’re doing wonderful, that inside your hurting and not sure how to find God in the midst of the pain?

I have been sort of numb to life the last few months...because the emotions became too much to bear it was easier to pretend and try to forget if only for a few moments....

But deep down inside, I really want to live this abundant life that Jesus bought for me, when He paid the price on the Cross. I really want to walk with my God through the journey of healing, so that I can become the person, He has seen me as, since before I was born. I want to believe I am worthy of love, and that I am beautiful and breathe taking to my Creator.

I know one day I will get to that place and when I do it will be so amazing and this journey I am on will have been well worth it.....

Although right now there are a lot of questions, and a lot of doubts, and many sleepless nights, and tears cried.

For right now I remember the story in Matthew, where it talks about a man who asked Jesus to heal his son, And he told Jesus, “Lord, I believe, help me in my unbelief"...

So today I am choosing to say "Lord, I believe in You and I trust that you are holding me in this and that You will continue to walk with me through all of this, but I ask that you help me in my areas of unbelief and doubts...in Jesus Name...Amen"

Why can I think logically about correctly placing blame where it lies, but yet my heart tells me otherwise?

Why is it so hard for me to let go of the guilt and allow myself to really feel what is beneath it?

Why does the prospect of just touching a toe into the metaphorical pool of my pain make me feel as though I am going to fall in and drown?

Why can I not feel the anger I think I should for the man who abused me?

Why is it I can envision forgiving myself for the hurts I have caused others, but not for the hurts I have caused myself?

Why was this the life I was supposed to lead?

Why was I chosen to bear this pain?

Why am I alone and hurting?

Why does nobody see me or hear me?

Why??