I’ve been unable to write for over a week. And I’ve been reading too many novels.
My creativity has felt crooked and crumpled down within me, concertinaed like a less-than-pretty origami shape that I didn’t know how to undo; I’ve been feeling like a tangled mess (like my split ends all mangled together) and I spiralled and crashed. And I know it’s the result of the aftermath of holding it together for nearly 3 months in the ugly legal battle I was forced into (that I have mentioned probably too many times by now!!) living on my nerves again, the last thing I needed. The tension has mostly gone following a hearing a few weeks ago (with a few strayed ends poking at my anxiety), but I collapsed from within, like letting go of an over-stretched elastic band. I’ve been in a war: legal battles are two dimensional warfare – it’s a battlefield of acidic, pacified vitriol hurled as fire balls in a game of tit-for-tat tact and strategy, which always ends ugly for someone. Lucky for me that I wasn’t the ugly ‘loser’ (it was a narcy, power and control hungry pensioner in fact) but emotionally and spiritually, I have paid the price, feeling battered and torn from within. I absolutely despised the process although I am good with ‘swords’ when you grow up fighting for yoru own survival, you naturally become good at it; but I knew it was curtailing my healing journey like someone beating my nerves with a baseball bat – how can you fight and heal simultaneously? They are diametric opposites and fighting is the complete antithesis to healing.
Consequently, I was flooded with my wounds as they floated up one by one and have been bobbing on the surface of my conciousness like mines, ready to explode (which they were last weekend and the days that followed). My unhealed trauma had risen to the surface and it wanted attention. I’ve realised when I’m triggered, it’s trauma screaming from a wound that’s still bleeding. My trauma has screamed a lot over the last week. My pain is the cry from the shadow-wound that wants me to pay attention to it, to allay its fears, to give it comfort. I’m wondering if that’s what a breakdown is? When you let go of tension that takes up space in the body, you crack a little, and let the wound come up for air?
As soon as put my ‘word sword’ down, I spiralled into a heap of depression, withdrawn and wanting to retreat into a cocoon, lacking motivation, a socially-awkward, anti-social and irritable sad sack, compulsively eating, over-thinking and permeated with an emotional fragility as thin as a new sheet of ice – any innocuous comment or minor and mundane situation left my trauma screaming, bringing me immediately and disproportionately to tears (like a child). For instance, feeling ‘left out’ by a clique at a fitness class who gossip amongst themselves and leave me out of the conversation completely triggered the victimised, lonely school girl who desperately wanted a friendship group but found herself gossiped about and ostracised; a friend ‘putting me off’ for a day out triggered feelings of worthlessness being pushed aside and discarded, questioning his ‘excuse’ with a deep distrust that he just didn’t have the time for me, (only to realise afterward that his ‘excuse’ wasn’t an excuse after all but the truth); these feelings of worthlessness were echoed and exacerbated by another friend a few days later who I thought was trying to ‘fit me into’ her weekday schedule when I suggested a weekend meet up, again feelings of worthlessness, being pushed aside and ‘not good enough’ reverberated through me. Then there’s my mum. She spilled sugar all over my kitchen floor and I flew into a tantrum-like rage, telling her how stupid she is and wanting to pour the whole jar of sugar over her head and scream at her clumsiness. The hen-pecked teenage girl was triggered when nothing she did was right and the tiniest mistake was blown up out all of proportion (whilst mother could make the same mistakes but it didn’t matter – she was allowed to). But it wasn’t just that which had thrown me into a rage…
A painful repressed memory had floated up last Saturday night which I’d forgotten about but clearly needed to be witnessed again. It was about my mother trying to discipline me to stop biting my nails as a girl. No it wasn’t just a verbal scolding. She used to make me hold my hands out, palms facing down, and rap me across my fingers with a ruler two or three times. I remembered the fear of holding my trembling hand out, knowing what was coming, the pain and misery of not having a choice, having nowhere to hide, no one to help me, nowhere to runaway to – knowing that sharp, stinging pain will follow that will reverberate for several minutes rendering my fingers unusable and uable to bend with the pain. That was my punishment for biting my nails and trying to make me stop the habit. That’s what was in store. She also used to beat me on occasion, for no reason, over the tiniest, most trivial thing. Akin to biting nails I suppose major punishment for minor child misdemeanours. This was a projection of her pain but I hated her for it – and the hate and pain of that child comes flooding back. I remember her launching at me, and me curled up on the sofa not knowing where to hide or run to, her face crumpled up and scowling coming towards me, her fists pounding down on me with blows as she screamed at me. It’s like someone flipped a switch and she’d suddenly turn into a monster. Pain that comes from the hands that are supposed to love you is a paradox for a child I’m sure but what do we grow into when pain is associated with love? That love = abuse? I can’t recall what I felt in those moments – fear, pain, disassociation and probably anger too. We have spoken about it in the past, she said she’s sorry and that she didn’t know better – that her mother had beaten her too so she beat me. Oh, and that it’s the past; that I should move forward now. She thought it was the “right thing to do” as beatings from her mother disciplined her into towing the line. It just doesn’t compute. How could that be true? Surely it’s obvious to any mother that inflicting pain on her child is gravest, most despicable thing to do. That’s why I hated her when she spilled the sugar. It was the pain from a long time ago, regurgitated and awakened by those awful memories, clearly unhealed.
However I’m learning to soothe the wound, just as you would if you fell over and scraped your knee or twisted your ankle. You’d treat an external wound with care until it heals and starts feeling better. And that’s how the internal wound needs to be treated. So I asked the pain “when did you first feel like that?” and sit with it. It needs attention and validation. I’m learning that it’s about building a relationship with the pain, not pushing it and stuffing it away. When I’m triggered I’m starting to ask the wound “what hurts the most about this situation?”. “What does it remind me of?” “When did it first happen?” It’s okay that sometimes I don’t know; building a bridge with the shadow is the most important thing.
I’ve been speaking to my pain body regularly this week: “I know, I know. I know it wasn’t ok and I know you hurt. I know it wasn’t your fault. It’s not your fault. You shouIdn’t have had to go through that. I see you. I hear you. I feel you. Until you dissolve and then become a part of me again. It’s okay. You hurt and you were alone. There was no one there for you. I’m here for you now.” That’s what the cry for help needed when no one was there. I’m learning that trauma isn’t about the severity of what happened, but what it did to me, how it fragmented me, how it tore my soul apart. Everyone’s trauma affects them differently.
I don’t believe what some famous self-help people say (they only want your money) that when you recall the memory and feel the emotion that you’re reliving the pain. When you validate the pain you’re not reliving it. Reliving is being the victim when you painfully wonder “why me?”. But validation isn’t reliving it. Validation is giving the wound what it needed but didn’t get in it’s cry for help.
It’s dawned on me lately that the longer you leave the healing, the deeper it becomes rooted. If I could picture my trauma it would be a big, old oak tree, with thick, knarly roots reaching down into me twisting up my insides. I actually do have digestive issues and have done for most of my adult life. Is that undigested pain? I often wish that I’d gottent the support with my healing 20 or 30 years ago. But there’s no use in thinking like that. Here I am, right here, right now.
I also wonder quite often – what is wholeness? What does it look like? What does it feel like? How do I know when the pain has dissolved, when the shadow has merged, when the child is unfrozen from that space in time and allowed to move into a different place?
Right at this moment, I’m not feeling as creatively crumpled as I was at the start of the week, perhaps still a bit tetchy and tender, maybe a bit fragile, but I’m making strides in learning to build a bond with my wounded parts.
It’s not what happens but how you grow back. Just like the goat willow in my neighbours garden that was savagely cut down into four, blunt, sawn off, thick branches, sticking up like four fingers with no thumb, leafless and lifeless. But it’s started growing back and each time I see it, what started off with a thin branch with a few leaves in is now a festoon of more bushy branches with green leaves and the grow seems exponential. It just shows: when you’re hacked down, you can still grow….
If baring my soul to you (and the world) has moved or touched a part of you in any way, then your support would be very welcome. To help me on this healing journey, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee (although mines a tea) via the link below:
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