I originally started this post on Sunday; it’s now Friday. In fact, I wrote it and published it in one fell swoop on Sunday night. But after I published there was a distinct uncomfortable feeling within me, a disjointedness, an awkwardness, a strange feeling of deep shame surrounding what I’d written. I don’t know why I felt this way, everything I’d said was true, but I followed the intuition. So, I did something I’ve never done since I started this blog: I unpublished the post the following evening. And I’ve been unable to write since, feeling contorted and twisted about the emotions that the post evoked: a very, very, very deeply rooted wound that is gaping open, and needless to say, quite raw. I realised that the pain of the past is alive and kicking and by writing the post I originally published on Sunday, it exhumed the pain which is literally buried alive. The thing is I’ve not written in detail about this knarled root of my childhood trauma fully at all, anywhere within the last 50 posts or so. I’d tried previously, but for some reason I’d stall. But on Sunday, it all came out and although it did, for some reason, it didn’t sit well with me. I do believe this is toxic shame at play.
Anyway, I’m not going to edit or be self-effacing in any way, shape or form about what I’d written but the opposite: add to it and express myself fully and completely about the root of my childhood trauma and the inner torture that comes with it which had risen and boiled over during the 72 hours following the post; I’ve been feeling flat, depressed and dejected this week, teetering on the edge and unable to cope. Having settled a little over the last 24 hours, I can, with grace and rawness, coherently say what I wanted to say.
Here’s what happened last weekend which made me realise the extent of my undigested pain.
On Sunday, my abdomen was huge and rotund, painfully bloated like I’d swallowed a balloon which had magically blown up in my small intestines and lodged there, uncomfortably. I could, in fact, pass as a pregnant woman, 4-5 months gone when I’m that bloated (plus I was also ‘backed up’ for more than 24 hours). Too much information, I know. It always gets like that if I: a) get up too early and my body clock gets messed up, b) when I eat out, and c) when I eat a heavier portion than normal meal. I was a combination of a, b and c. Unfortunately this is a common infliction I’ve endured for many, many years in my 20′ and 30’s (not just because I’m menopausal); even when I make a nice home cooked meal and my body clock is working fine my stomach regularly balloons out enormously and my food literally sits in my stomach, undigested for hours, disgustingly repeating on me, leaving me reaching for the probiotics, acidophilus and on occasion, a DIY colonic. But nothing alleviates it. It’s actually gotten worse as I’ve aged. (don’t worry you’re in the right place and this isn’t some ‘wellness’ blog).
However this latest bout of she-looks-pregnant-bloated-with-food-not-digesting-and-backed-up-with-shit got me thinking that I must have a lot of undigested pain; no it’s not about eating a tank load of kimchi or drinking a bucket full of kefir (although that might cure it temporarily).
The lack of digestion = lack of digested trauma. Backed up with shit = stored ‘shit’ from trauma that I haven’t let go.
I know I need to heal the pain internally. Until the trauma wound has healed, the symptom will remain. This is my body thinking that I’m still in danger, eternally ticking over on survival mode, unable to feel truly at peace and safe, at war with itself, and therefore unable to digest. It’s my body talking to me. And it’s true. Here’s the official sciency come psysho-somatic view: “childhood trauma can have a profound and lasting impact on digestion and gut health, largely due to how early stress reshapes the gut-brain axis — the communication network between the central nervous system and the gastrointestinal tract.”
I know exactly what this undigested pain that continues to burn within me, unreconciled.
You see, I’ve been stewing over it for the past week or so that it’s my bitch of an aunt’s special birthday in a few days, (who incidentally, unbeknownst to her, was my favourite aunt as child and who probably played an instrumental role in conspiring to abandon me and my mum in the hell hole where we lived). I recall when my mum moved out of the first family home (or aksed to leave should I say which I’m not going ot write about right now where we all lived with my grandad). This particular aunt had lent me her jumper or cardigan that day I can’t recall exactly. But I remember when mum and I reached our new home, smelling the jumper with her scent, and missing her, feeling sad and bereft, knowing at 8 years old for the first time what it feels like to miss someone.
Anyway, it’s her big six o birthday. And I had wicked and childish thoughts on how to ruin it. Rather than her having a sixtieth I thought I’d make it a shittieth. Literally. Looking at my cat’s poop in the litter tray got me thinking that it would make a nice surprise, beautifully packaged up in a gift box and left on her doorstep. “Have a crappy birthday!”. A real party pooper eh? Or perhaps a vitriolic and acidic letter giving her a piece of my mind telling her what a turd of a being she actually is. Although the latter poopy pressie would be anon, the letter wouldn’t be. Would it be classed as harrassment speaking your mind? That might be classed as a criminal offence in this politically correct age and I’m hardly going to compromise myself although the thought of doing either is deliciously amusing and cathartic. Some people might tell me just let it go and that I’m holding onto the past. But I’m not holding onto the past. I want return my pain back to her. I want her to feel what I felt. Do you think she’d feel my pain receiving an ugly message in a box? The poopy pressie is a personification of what I want her to feel but she wouldn’t feel anything close to how I have. She might feel her heart drop out of her arsehole paranoid and deeply affronted for a while but that’s it.
Thoughts like a cat poop pressie arise from the wounded child who wants to hand her pain back to those who were responsible. The wounded child within me still struggles to grasp just how vile, depraved and heartless she and her other two siblings truly are. That wounded child ‘part’ of me hasn’t fully processed the pain or come to terms with the sheer moral depravity of “cat poop aunt” (we’ll call her that) and the two cuntish aunts who conspired together with her—in fact, lets just call them the unholy trinity – those who once claimed to love and care for the child me, yet betrayed us without warning, feeding my mother and me to the wolves, abandoning us without a single word. Literally.
Anything, absolutely anything could have happened to us when we were left to fend for ourselves in a neighbourhood where we had already suffered 5 years of hideous racial harassment (as the unholy trinity lived with us for those 5 years so they knew). They were there when the firework came through the letterbox with a piercing, deafening din, when the eggs were thrown at the walls and windows of our home, when we woke up to smashed windows of the family car (a regular occurrence), when we’d find our bins were emptied out in our front garden on numerous occasions, mud was slinged at washing pegged on the clothes lines, when racial diatribes were hurled at us in the street as they walked by or infront of our home if we were out at the front. Just to name a few. The list isn’t definitive. We were sitting ducks waiting for the next round of harassment and verbal abuse. Would it be worse than last time? Would they have mercy and leave us alone? The unholy trinity who abandoned us in that hell hole knew about the day me and another now AWOL aunt were attacked in the street walking home with a few groceries one Saturday morning – a loaf of cheap white bread and a pint of milk. I think I was 8 years old. She was in her teens. I knew instinctively even at that age that something untoward was going to happen as I saw three white boys approach us from the opposite direction. My whole body was bracing itself. They weren’t much older than me, say 10 or 11, maybe early teens? As they walked past us they hit us with their carrier bags, spat at us and called us “fucking paki” – or something like that; their choice of vocabulary was limited as probably was the grey matter between their ears. I can’t remember how I felt; did I cry? Luckily we weren’t injured, just shock and trauma embodied in that moment. I still brace myself to this day when I expect abuse from someone walking past me that never transpires. Isn’t that CPTSD?
to be continued in part 2…
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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