Still in shock
Odds of beating
Irony
Not ready yet

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.

I feel like I don't belong on this planet.
Like I am an alien and every day I wake up and put this human suit on.
I zip it up, look in the mirror,
Adjust it, and go out and enter the world.

Desperately trying to blend with the other civilians.
I don't understand their language,
Or their struggles that seem so big to them,
Yet so small to me.
I don't get them.

They cannot see the little green alien monster that I am inside.
They see what I show them.
A regular girl that hides behind a smile.
I have them all fooled.
They think I am like them.
But I come from a different type of world.

A very dark and scary place.
A wasteland full of trash and rotting things.
Everyone is angry there and everyone is unkind.
There are other girls, aliens like me there
And they go by names like *****, Filthy, and Shame.
My name on that planet was Ugly because that what I felt inside.

That's what those unkind people told me I was.
I hated that horrible planet.
10 years of my life I wasted there.
But then I grew up and I moved far away.

The people here don't understand
What it's like to live in a world that could be filled with such hurt.
Or what it’s like to be named Ugly, Filthy, or *****.
We aliens work so hard to fit in,
Be like everyone, not stand out
Or be judged for what we suffered or from where we come from.

But...sometimes that mask we put up, our human suit slowly starts to slip off. Revealing parts of who we really are.
And sometimes when people see this,
People that do not understand, they get scared.
What we have gone through makes others uncomfortable.
Some choose to walk away from us, leaving us when we need them most.

When this happens I build my human suit tougher.
Shielding more of me and pretending to be this new person.
But if I need to pretend to keep these people in my life...
Do I even really want them there?
This suit I carry weighs me down.
I need people who don't care where I come from, or how different I am.
I need them to just care about me.
The real me. Not who I try to be for them.
I need people that will help take the weight of the world off my shoulders.

If I am different,
If I am a little green alien not like everyone else
Then I think it’s okay to be who I am.
It's okay to be different.

I will never return to that place I came from.
This is my home now and I don't want to blend anymore.
I want to stand out.
And I want to support all of the other people out there that don't fit in either.
By being different we form a solid union of uniquely similar people.
We are all different and that makes us all the same.
And we should all be able to live without judgments.
Not having to hide where we come from
Or be ashamed of a life we had no control over.

I'm tired of hiding me.
I am who I am.
I come from where I come from.
You either accept me or you don't.
You either love me or you don't.

Sitting on a small couch tonight, I feel as if I am sitting on the corner of some cosmic world.  Alone.  Completely alone.  And this particular world is not round; rather it it square.  Square because there is no circular justice.  Not unless you count being tortured and murdered as some sort of redemptive revenge.

And then I feel injustice pressing squarely behind my tired eyes.  What has happened is not just.  Nor is it fair because they have moved on and I am still here suffering.

Everyone is dead... that keeps ringing in my head.  I know that is not the precise case but in my own twisted world, everyone is, in fact, dead.

So now I sit week after week, even moment after moment, left to deal with their abuse, their hatred, their woundings, and their deaths.  Then there are my scars, my memories, my terrors, and all the collateral damage that comes with being a member of this family.  Theirs and Mine: two separate and fancy walk-in closets full of skeletons and ghosts tucked away in every nook and custom built drawer specifically designed for keeping the best and most wrenching secrets.  What an inheritance.

I feel that I am on the hook for the lion's share of the damage.  This hurts deeply; deeper than I ever imagined.  This surprises me.  What a dysfunctional mess...this family that is mine.

Alone. Completely Alone.

Why do I continue to try to fight a losing battle?

DT told me that he won’t ‘abandon’ me…he said that continuing therapy is my decision …but I often think that I’m way too demanding and unfair and I should ‘abandon’ him – so he can finally have relief from the border. He really is a nice caring person – I truly believe that – and he doesn’t deserve all the horrible **** I project onto him. He doesn’t. I do believe that he ******* up with the whole email/trust thing – but we all ***** up, right? Still, even with that, I’m like a walking time bomb and I have land mines hidden all over the place and he walks carefully because he never knows when he’s going to step on one.

I’m just so tired and frustrated. I feel like I’m in quicksand. My body aches so bad…my head always hurts, I constantly vacillate between sad/lonely girl, 5 year old, PAG…CONSTANTLY! I feel like I’m walking through a haunted house…I can turn a corner and something horrible can be there that will send me reeling – and then I’m terrified, curled up in a corner, wrapped in a blanket, trying to hide. And I can’t stop it. I can’t just throw it in a box and shut the lid. IT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY! I can’t ‘ignore’ my body when it hurts, I can’t ignore the voices, I can’t stop “feeling”…IT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!

But DT doesn’t deserve it…no one does. I am way more trouble than I’m worth. It’s taking too long. I’m so tired and such a burden to everyone. Nothing works – there’s no “self-soothing” machine anywhere hidden away behind my heart, or deep inside my ****** up brain.
This whole process ***** BIG TIME! AND I’M TIRED AND I DON’T WANT TO DO IT ANYMORE! And I am such a selfish unfair ***** to DT. He doesn’t deserve my ‘wrath’. But I still get so angry at him and I CAN’T DO IT!

I only see one way out of this. And I know that DT needs the ‘relief’ just as much as I do. The whiny 5 year old will continue to ‘demand’ DT’s help and comfort…and DT doesn’t have the time, or desire, to deal with her anymore. I don’t blame him, truly, 5 year old is unbearable. But the fact remains that there is only 1 way to get her to shut up…only 1 way to provide relief and peace to DT and to me.

I have found myself entangled in untold numbers of dysfunctional situations that, since I knew of no other choice, were by their merely being endured incorporated into my experience database, so to speak. Having not been given the opportunity to engage and integrate normal life-affirming morals and values from the very start I have come to believe that the extremely unconventional condition I find myself in may involve some of the following:

           - I was never introduced to the concepts of love or happiness except by way of a book and even then far too late to make any kind of psychologically important impression. The same could be said for the concepts of friendship, mother, father, other life affirming ideological constructs. It’s all so painful and all so true.

           - I was cruelly abused, physically, sexually, mentally and emotionally, in one way or another by my father, till I was around 10 years old when I thankful removed from his presence. There must have been exceptions but the impressions they have made have been forgotten and overwhelmed by the sheer volume and unrelenting nature of the abuse. And I am sure that since my experience was primarily as being abused, I would not have recognized kindness as such if it had been offered anyway.

Shame and humiliation was so early on directed at and heaped upon my brother and I that we seemed to have made the leap in logic that that was what life was supposed to be for us. Can you imagine a life where shame and humiliation are so prevalent and unremitting, that a child, at least on a conscious level, could not conceive of any other condition to apply to themselves? I am still wrestling with that ghost. The wheels of my mental machinery are still not able to come to comforting answers to questions I am hardly able to frame.

Years later I still struggle to admit to anyone what had happened to me. I lead a life of denial... not knowing any better... deflecting my denial, pain, and my perceived humiliation and shame. With a past full of unspeakable repressed nightmares and a future of more of the same awaiting, I am caught in a toxic existential conundrum of self-doubt, loneliness, self-hate, and hopelessness.
It’s like running from something in the dark that you can’t see. It’s like running from something that you can never admit to running from. I do believe that if I had stopped to look at and confront what was out there I would have been the worse off. Better to run and deny than stop and face a thing that I couldn't face, understand or defend against, without a psychotic break. That is not to say that I was unaffected by the unconscious knowledge of the truth of that denial and flight; it was always ******* my heels. I was reminded of and reinforced in understanding my position in society, day in and day out.

Survival, for me, meant the absolute denial of any other reality in the face of unflagging contempt. Always maintain plausible denial because the truth is a journey into madness.

Each night it takes a tremendous amount of effort not to completely lose it...or hurt myself. I want to be numb…I NEED to be numb in ways that I can’t explain. Sometimes I can catch it on the cusp but most nights it hits me out of nowhere and pummels me, pinning me to the ground and restricting my breathing. I become engulfed in a fury of emotion and I wonder if I am even real.

At night, when the trauma thinking takes over the 5 year old struggles so much...she panics and desperately wants to call anyone, someone to talk to and hear her voice…any connection so she will feel safe somehow. The world is too big…too frightening and she just wants to feel safe. I don’t know what to do with her. I don’t know how to help her so I just let her cry and struggle…there’s nothing strong enough inside of me to keep me from slipping away. All I feel is pain…no one else can feel it…no one else can see what I see…it isn’t real to anyone else. I’m not real to anyone else.  No one.

I am not real anymore.  And I’m scared because I don’t know what the next step is…and it is nearly impossible to navigate my way through this with a broken GPS system. I keep thinking about my relationships. Looking back I think that I was so selfish...but then again, how could I trust anyone with that part of me? And so I felt like I had no choice. Now because of all that has happened I find myself hiding from people because I am not sure where we are now..and because I no longer think they can tolerate any type of harm that I may (unintentionally) cause myself...and I fear that they will over react to what I think is a normal part of this process due to the overwhelming trauma voices that take over my brain and react in bizarre and maladaptive ways.

I have done better lately but I still don’t think I’m good enough to stay out of harm’s way 100% of the time. And what happens the next time I become unstable and lost my ability to maintain myself in a safe way? I need someone to respond to me, connect with me, but not over-react…but I’m walking on a thin black sheet of glass now because I don’t know if that’s possible. It’s troubling…because I think I’ve worked through all of this, tried it on every which way, examined it inside and out…but clearly not…because it continues to resurface again and again.

I don’t know what’s right or what’s wrong…Do I continue to hide?  Should I quit now– and spare them additional emotional trauma?

I don’t know – but I don’t feel well tonight…and I’m struggling with a lot right now. Confused and shattered…Should I stay here or run and hide? I think hiding is the best option right now. I don’t know who to trust now – or if anyone can even be trusted.

I see my face in the mirror now and I don’t recognize my own reflection. As crazy as it sounds I sometimes talk to the face staring back at me to see if her mouth moves in sync with mine. I look closely at her, check to see if her eyes are the same shade of blue as mine, I touch my face and watch to see if she touches hers too…and many times I feel nothing.

*Am I real?
Do I exist?
Am I her?
Is she me?  
I don't want to be real now.
I don't want to exist now.
I don't want to be her.
I don't want her to be me.

Right now I'd rather turn around and walk away forever…make that RUN. It's much easier than facing the truth. I will do virtually anything to keep from feeling the searing pain that has manifested itself in my soul in both my past and present moment...and it has made me so very tired. And frankly I don’t know how to survive right now. I have nothing left...I lack the energy to even make it through the days. So I have been taking advantage of the copious amount of anti-anxiety drugs that Dr so graciously prescribed for me during times like these (aka: “crazy nita” times).

Every hand is a winner and every hand’s a loser…and I have come to the decision that the winning hand for me is to stay asleep as much as possible. I haven’t been feeling well physically –And the fact is that I have been plagued by nightmares when awake and asleep. Sunday morning I opened my eyes for the first time at 11:30am and not even a strong cup of coffee could keep me awake and functioning, so I saw the light for only a short time. Why fight it… isn’t that what the therapist would say? “Nita, listen to your body and if you need to sleep 22 hours out of the day, then  be okay  with that."  So I have been listening to this sluggish, disgusting, hurting body telling me to just take the drugs and go to sleep. And take enough of them to ensure we all stay asleep.  

The drugs do not prevent the nightmares but somehow make them more bearable, if that makes any sense at all. I still feel fear, still wake up in a cold sweat with my heart pounding, but right now it is still more tolerable than being awake.

I don’t think I have been this numb to the reality of life in a long time. I have been present and in my body and aware of my surroundings for about 10 minutes the entire weekend. I'm okay with that because in this body is the last place I want to be right now. I cannot seem to rid my brain of the infinite dark cloudiness in my head long enough to even muster any type of  cognitive ability.
I am tired…drained…unwell.

I wish I could talk about what has happened but I cannot.  So please forgive me if I check out for a while...I did not plan this…but it is what it is and I cannot change it right this minute.  I am discouraged, angry, frustrated, fearful, confused...and I cannot face any of that right now.  

And so I have a bedside table with the necessities to make it through the rest of this period: bottles of lorazapam, xanax and a bottle of water to wash them down with...and a bottle of wine and some *****...if need be.  I just want to be totally and completely 100% numb for now.  
What? Nita, I thought you were past that? Yeah, me too…but I was wrong.

Now the best I can hope for is to turn toward the window and hope that somewhere in the darkness, I, like the gambler, will break even… because I'm currently out of aces...

The storm clouds have been hovering all day and now the darkness has closed in. The dark portentous clouds that have been looming ominously overhead have finally rolled in with the force of a category 4 hurricane. My body no longer feels like it belongs to me. Even little things are such an effort. I feel ravaged by the torrential rain and devastating winds of the hurricane.

The burly winds have destroyed lawn furniture and sent backyard grills reeling from decks and porches – they have scattered tumbleweeds across the plains…the ability to keep your eyes open in the midst of the flying dirt and dust has diminished. I am blowing in the wind…tossed like the tumbleweeds. I am constantly fighting the winds of depression, fear, sadness, hopelessness and tonight my overwhelming feelings are a force to be reckoned with!

Sleep fails to bring relief…the darkness invades my sleep, my dreams….I fight sleep – fear it, even. And when I do sleep, I talk and moan, thrash around and whimper frequently. I wake up multiple times a night from a nightmare only to find a broken compass and an inability to navigate myself from the past back to the present.

So much of it is irrational – and the small, logical voice inside of me tells me that – but the logical part of me cannot overpower, or balance, the other irrational, illogical voices of the terrified children trapped inside my mind and my body. I know I'm not in control. All the drive and spirit and determination that made me ME has been drained from me and most of the time I just feel like a rag doll….just do with me what you will…I'll just wait here.

And I have these horrible thoughts…what if I took a few extra sleeping pills, anxiety med…maybe chase them down with the ***** in the freezer…..

It's not about suicide….although I'll admit I have fleeting thoughts that death would be easier on everyone around me who suffer with me, despite my trying to keep it all inside of me. But it isn't about suicide – it's about making it stop! And I know that sounds sick…

I have always been strong, a fighter! Always! And certainly I've been through worse than this…… But I hate this! I hate the panicky feeling when I wake up from a nightmare and I'm in a state of half-consciousness. I hate the overwhelming feelings of rage that make me lash out at those undeserving and sometimes unsuspecting souls. I hate the external scars I've inflicted upon myself. I hate that I have these overwhelming urges to hurt myself and I sometimes act on those urges and then suffer the feelings of guilt and shame that come afterward. I hate that I've given them my joy and that means they win! I hate feeling and acting like a child! I hate the memories, and the crying and all of the feelings, feelings, feelings!!!!!!! I hate it! All of it!

I feel like I'm going crazy. I'm in such a state of darkness tonight and I need something to renew my courage, to get back my determination and drive. Now I feel like my body and mind have been taken over by a poltergeist! It’s all fear & darkness now.

There is thunder, and wind and lightening and hail raging in my head and I'm caught in this storm with no protection, no umbrella, no coat or boots.

As a child I would spend my nights in prayer. Praying to God to make it stop or **** me. Life went on then as it does now…slow and painful, with me begging for it to end. I still remember the prayer I would pray to God. A prayer that still gets prayed even today.

“Dear Mr. Jesus, if you can hear me please do not let him hurt me anymore, Mr. Jesus. Please come and take me away with you. I want to be an angel with soft fluffy white wings. Don’t you need an angel like me, Mr. Jesus? I’ll be good. I promise I’ll be a good angel.” Apparently, he didn’t. And it was because bad girls can’t be angels. Bad little girls have to stay with bad people and be punished for being bad.

She is still bad. Bad bad girl. That is why therapist doesn’t want to talk to her. Nobody cares that we are hurting.  All because she is a bad bad girl. Bad girls don’t get to be angels. Bad girls get punished.

I am stuck in this place of begging for someone to listen to me and denying my own desires to talk

It is still here – the longing to cry with someone – but it is impossible now. It’s been impossible for so long I don’t know why I even bother with any of it. I don’t know to help her…no one knows how to help her.

It doesn’t matter if you feel like a victim or a survivor, or at times, both…it still happened. It was me. It was me lying there – it was my body. I am no longer that little girl but it was undeniably me. I was hurt, I cried, I yielded all of my power to him. Me. It was me. No one helped me. I can’t make that any different. I can’t change that….not through my writing, not by speaking, not inside my mind. I can’t undo it.

I want to bury this hurt in an airtight coffin until it suffocates and can no longer damage me. I want to smash the pain with a boulder until it is crushed and no longer alive in me. I am stuck in this place of begging for someone to listen to me and denying my own desires to talk. It all comes back to the forbidden words of trust and need and I’m having a difficult time trying to shift and re-position myself in a positive, healing way.

It’s difficult to get the words out without the tears and emotions. And I won’t cry in front of anyone. There are times when I am aching with the desire to talk about difficult things and I hold back. Why? Multifaceted…complicated question and an equally complicated answer. First, there is a part of me that does not trust anyone, or even want to trust anyone. A part of me is embarrassed at the Nita that will be seen when the tears start. It is not the me that everyone knows…it’s the miserable, self-indulgent, childish, hopeless me. And I cannot risk being seen like that. And there’s a third reason…it feels incredibly undignified to cry in front of someone when they just sit there…silent and unmoving.  Late at night, when it is overwhelming and relentless, I ache for someone to talk to about this pain, someone who loves me, not someone who is paid to listen.

I sense that this compulsion to validate feelings will soon result in some ****** collision.

My fists are tightening and I begin dig my nails into the soft flesh of my palms. I feel desperate for instruction tonight and my brain is sending signals to my fingers to form the words to send to DT for help. SOS! Danger! But it will not be allowed. I am frightened and afraid I will hurt myself, I want to reach out but I do not know how. So there is no reason to reach out, express my fear of SI tonight. I am not angry. I feel only fear and despair of being uneducated in the ability to handle the screaming and anguish from the parts inside of me. But there is no choice but to do this alone. At this point in the evening, I am unable to say what the signed treaty will be in the end. I do know the deadly arsenal to be used in this fight, this internal war, tonight.

I have no reason to stay here and endure the endless pain that exists each night. DT says, “Nita, stay in your body.” Um, why? That’s the LAST place I want to be! That’s where the HELL is, does not he get that? Geez – this “body” is possessed, and since he would not agree to an exorcism – I am moving out each night when the ghosts from the past come calling. And if the place does not burn down or bleed out, I will return in the daylight.

I would much like to find the “Nita of old” ~ but the tide has swept her out to sea, leaving me, the new Nita, covered in seaweed. The fundamental stress is still here but now an ache edges into the limits of my consciousness. I do not feel armed to face the girl I am supposed to meet and accept.

I feel past my prime. My subconscious pulls at my arms, whispers in my ear memories…bits and pieces of that young girl who was also named Nita. I try to look away but I see her and I hear her. She tells me that she is too sick to be healed. She is emaciated, listless, naked and cold. Her eyes are glassy, she is bleeding and she speaks of vanishing. You cannot save her and I do not want too.

This is what I am reduced to each night. Screaming, fighting girls inside of me who are all vying for control. I do not care which one wins, I am not sticking around tonight to find out.

Sometimes I am scared of how much I do not want to be here.

So many years ago, I packed away my childhood, each year was placed neatly in a box, labeled and sealed shut with packing tape. And I took those boxes full of memories; memories full of pain, fear, sadness, abuse…and I placed them in the far back corner of the attic of my mind. I made the boxes diminutive and negligible, they were nothing special and I tried to forget they were there. I did this so I could get through each day without the painful reminder of who I used to be, what I used to be, what he did to me. I did this so I could live.

I knew the boxes were there, and I would go into the attic and check on the boxes…just to make sure the packing tape that held all the contents, all the filth and the same, was still secure, that nothing I was unable to face could escape. At times the tape would peal back, allowing the contents of the boxes to peak through the cracks, and I could see things so horrible I would be physically sick. The contents in the boxes would taunt me, beg me to look inside, to admit that they existed, and I would have to hurry and close the door to resist them. I resisted the temptation so I could live. So I could protect myself, and those I loved, from who I used to be, what I used to be, what he did to me.

I knew that eventually I would have to unpack those boxes, and put them away, where they belonged. And at times I tried to do it – but the contents were so rotten, so ***** and shameful, I couldn’t put them out for anyone to see. And I denied that they belonged to me. I denied them so I could live. So I could protect myself, and those I loved, from who I used to be, what I used to be, what he did to me.

Panic grew inside of me as the pain leaked out of the aged boxes, pain that was always there, but like the sound of my own heart beating, I no longer noticed it. It just was. And then the pain became overwhelming, loud and intrusive, I could hear screaming and crying, and noises that did not sound human , an animal in pain, I thought. I closed my eyes and put my hands over my ears but the screaming didn’t stop. It would not stop. I could no longer deny them. I could no longer protect myself. I could no longer deny who I used to be, what I used to be, what he did to me.

Now, today, all these years later…these boxes that represent ME. And as I look around me, at the pain, and the shame, and the sadness, I not only see what these boxes held, I feel it…I hear it…I taste it…I breathe it. My vision is blurred from my tears…spilling over, some streaming down cheeks; others poised on the edges of my eyelashes, awaiting their turn to fall...right into the content of those boxes filled with my pain. Her pain. The pain of a little girl, abused and broken, unloved and unheard…

I can hear her screaming and crying. I can feel her pain…it is real. And I can feel it, and I can hear it, and I can taste it…I breathe it.

And I can no longer deny who I used to be, what I used to be, what he did to me.

Break. Brake. Stop. I need a break; need to apply the emergency brake. I need to stop. I would not say that I am a person easily overwhelmed because I can truly say that I juggle many items/issues/people/jobs everyday. But sometimes I do get overwhelmed and it is ugly when that happens. It is something of a breakdown; or brakedown. Either way, life comes to a screeching halt.

I always resurface but I cannot really say that I am refreshed. I ran hard in the other direction but here I am, in the same place, still being forced to face all the voices that tell me that I am not good enough, undeserving, ill-fitting...

I struggle with wanting to fix what is broken and cleaning up messes that I have no business even touching. In this process, I lose myself. I do not take care of myself and then, before I know it, the brake is being pulled and I am caught in some sort of mental purgatory. It is a tough place to be but it does motivate me to press forward because I sure as hell know that stopped is not where I want to be.

So, I am back. I cannot say that I am new and improved but I am more determined to heal and become a version of myself that I can be proud of.

I feel like my insides have been completely ravaged and wasted of any good feelings and the desire to just give up and never come out of hiding again is strong. I am not in a good place right now. I am too tired to battle the demons in my head. I am broken! Broken! And broken NitaAnn cannot deal with the constant headaches and nausea. She cannot handle the chronic pain with no relief.

                                                     **She is broken.
                                                       Shattered.

I don't know why I do this, well I don't know why I do a lot of things but that's not the point. I don't know why I look at this as something I'll "get over" or something that will go away eventually like a cold or the flu. I find myself wondering when I can go on with life, not have to deal with _ or think about _ or experience this or that. I'm waiting for some magical day when I wake up and it's all over, it's all gone and is only a piece of my history. How silly of me to hope and dream that I can live a normal life free of worries, haunting dreams, shaking, and doubts. How foolish of me to forget that this doesn't go away. I have to live with this forever.
*"The familiar sting wells in my eyes and my heart sinks deep in my chest. Darkness takes over and I imagine my good-byes. Nothing can stop it; tonight there will be no rest. Images flash, too gruesome to share...such a heavy burden to bear."

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.

I didn't have a lot of choices growing up.
Not unless you count the way I wanted him.  

Painful or excruciating.

I didn't have much power either.  
No amount of prayers, wishing, hoping, begging would change his mind.  

Not to say that I didn't try though.

I have a difficult time conveying just how strong my memories and flashbacks are.  I appear calm and collected to the passerby.  I have to.  But peer into my soul and you will see the claw marks of my pain. Scraping their way down into a collective pool of boundless grief and torment log jammed by the planks of fear and shame.

I long to turn myself inside out and bare my rotting scars.  To have someone besides myself witness what bubbles to the surface just long enough to be squelched again.  Power and a choice.  That is what I beg to find within those murky waters.

A choice to change.  
A choice to pull the planks and let the stagnant flow.

The power to persevere.  
The power to put them in their rightful place.  
Forever.

Come and walk with me!
I take your hand and allow you to push open the heavy, creaking door to my thoughts.
Together we pause at the vast emptiness before us, creaking dreams beneath our feet, memories and beliefs casting shadows on the vast walls.

We move cautiously inside the entrance, tread carefully on my forgotten memories and dreams, their hold on me lost through time.
Please ignore the twitching corpses and further explore darkened, hidden, cobwebbed corners.

Gliding through the room, I pull you down, ducking as another thought flies through the air hitting the opposite wall with a loud splat then landing in the pile of screaming thoughts below, where they stay, awaiting the inevitable time when they will either be dismissed or built upon.

Allow me to guide you through the room, dodging the memories best forgotten, notice the shame and fear apparent on my face as we view them together.

Take a moment to scan the dark room, breathe in the fresh hopes and dreams; their bright bodies hung carefully on the sun drenched walls, waiting for the eventual time when they will be realized or floored.

Their hopes shimmer in vivid brilliance to the limited few who are trusted enough to view them. Laugh as you catch glimpses of the insane images before you, cry at those of more morbid times. Feel yourself being dragged into the moment, your sleeve being tugged at by a crying child.
And in the blink of an eye that same child scrambles over to you.
Pull yourself back into the present, realizing the child before you is me.

Explore the room further, try to avoid the tear filled pool, where all tears are recorded and verified at being shed…wept through time.

Stop and hover at the shrine of the memories of my life.

Images and clips are projected throughout me and are now available for your viewing.
Notice how the salty pool of tears deepens while you witness me recounting the losses, the pain.

As we walk further into the room, journeying through time, moving closer and closer to the present…remember to observe the moments and memories of time, suspended in mid-air, burning in a golden light.

Now witness the smugness…the only part of my mind visible now, its golden beauty being cast throughout my body, washing me in an aura-like glow.

The warmth of the complacency keeps me sane, urging thoughts to be formed, its magnetism pulling words from the neglected pile and painting them into pictures, parading them in the room until they are given attention and brought to life.

As we move toward the door, look over your shoulder at what you have witnessed the room now a hub of excitement, never before viewed by anyone.

The air thick with scents of raw emotion, its nakedness daunting and yet liberating.
Its shadow and mediocre existence no longer locked away but instead camouflaged in an attitude and personality of an unexpected level.

Pursued by many, their relentless banging, wasted energy, their persistence jamming the door further, while the rusted lock twists tighter and tighter, until the eventual breaking of the lock, shattering all ties with the pursuer.

We step over the threshold, out of the house and into the sun.

I close the heavy doors to my thoughts, and replace the rusted lock on my soul.
I glance over at you and you catch my gaze.
You nod your head at me and reach out your hand.

I am unable to reach for you… I don't believe in myself, I don't love myself.

But I hope that eventually I will find peace from the inner turmoil that has me vice grip, tightening with each passing day.

I look at you with desperation in my eyes, longing to believe the wisdom you speak is "truth".