I *actually* finished reading one of the books I mentioned, Healing from Trauma, a Survivors Guide (I’ve mentioned it before) can’t remember which post, sorry. I started it a few months ago, got part way through, then got distracted so put it down and started looking at something else trauma related, maybe YT videos. I was trying to get through the book, not from the book. Finish it as quick as I can was my thinking, to see what answers it had for me so I could quickly heal and get on with my life. That’s the bloody story of my life. It was only last week that I thought to myself, “let me start reading it again, from the top”, as I’d forgotten a lot of what she’d said and it was bothering me that I hadn’t completed it yet. You lose the flow of a non-fiction book if you leave it too long. I do anyway. Anyway, I have a sense of accomplishment that I’ve actually finished the book. Metaphorically perhaps that is closure? I can close the book and move onto another read. Maybe not completing books or anything I’ve started lately for that matter is a manifestation of not getting closure with trauma or things that have happened in my life? I’ve always tried to get through life itself, rather than getting ‘from’. There’s a huge difference. Getting through the days. Getting through books. Just getting through.
Leading up to and during my last breakdown (about 8 years ago), which ensued from being pushed out of my well-paid career, I was drawn to reading a lot. I recall starting AND finishing quite a lot of books back then; it was nourishing for my soul. I was drawn to reading about the goddess and women’s spirituality which spoke to a deep part of me. The thing is somewhere down the line, I can’t pin point exactly when, (I’m guessing maybe within the last decade or so) but moreso these last 12 months, I’ve become very unfinished and scatty – starting something and not finishing it, saying I’m going to do something and not getting around to it, starting a project and not putting my all into it leaving it hanging over my head. It’s as though as I get older, I’m rushing around trying to find my pieces and putting them back in place. In fact, splashing around in unknown waters trying to cling onto things to keep me in one place looks more like it. I haven’t started a business yet or made time for art and I really want to settle down into a creative mode that pays me as well as I’m not making a proper ‘living’ at the moment. But when you feel as fragmented as I do right now, it’s really difficult to get into that focused head space.
The other trouble is I’ve never quite known what truly want from life and it doesn’t seem fair that experiencing trauma robbed me of having a sense of purpose or direction or future (which it can for some people). Perhaps I’ve always been like that but not realised it? Wishy washy and scatty? I can certainly say looking back that I’ve never had any vision, and the future has always seemed inaccessibly hazy. It was the moment that mattered but all I ever felt I did was to go through the motions and get through the days. Secretly I was looking for someone to take me away from my life and give me something different. Escapism. I didn’t want to do it on my own. I wanted someone to take the reigns of my life and whisk me away from it. That’s what the full-on narc did. We travelled a lot and I was barely home. He took me away from my life and that’s the part I loved.
However I do think what happened in February with being triggered completely unexpectedly like a runaway train by JKR (haven’t mentioned her for a few posts) and the break up with full-on narc (which was a traumatic narcissistic relationship) kind of broke me up again, this time into a few more pieces than last time although I’m coping much better than last time and not a complete sad sack (like I was back then). Evidently I do think it’s made me scattier and incomplete than ever and stuffed me more down in survival mode than ever before??? Hence not starting what I finish – half finished books, half finished sewing project from April, three Whatsapp groups I’ve started trying to create a business from but thrown it to the wayside, a writing business I was going to start but felt way too niche, another letter writing business but it’s too mentally draining so have kept it at an arms length – I just feel like I’m all over the friggin place. It’s not calm waters within. I never truly feel calm and relaxed. So maybe that’s me in survival mode, running on the sympathetic nervous system?
But hang on a minute. The distinction with my mini breakdown is that THIS TIME I instinctively knew that I have unhealed childhood trauma and it is this that I’m focussed on healing. Perhaps just recognising that and deciding to do something about it has made all the difference in dealing with it. I am sobbing whilst I write this by the way. It may look coherent but that’s my gift from god.
In fact looking back, I’ve never been able to set goals or see or have a sense of the future. It’s always been hazy. When other people be able to really get involved in life, I can’t seem to recall a time ever being able to. Just being whole and involved and knowing what I want, organising and getting involved in my own life was something I could never do. The sense of who I am on a deep level kind of evaporated into oblivion and there’s a certain sense of paralysis in doing things. Thoughts about doing things stay on the maybe later shelf getting dusty. I still have that to a degree and it’s something I really want to heal. And there’s a numb feeling of broken-ness, rather than happiness, which has been my norm. It’s not a conscious feeling of broken-ness, just a heaviness from within that always seems to be there. I don’t know what wholeness feels like. I don’t know what it is to thrive?
I became a bit of party girl in my 30s when I was successful and making money and back then this was my version of thriving. But it wasn’t. I was hanging out with a bunch of 30 something fairweather friends and I never felt like I really fitted in. It felt like I was going through the motions of perhaps what I missed out on in my 20s but I never felt Iike I fitted in with them. there was a disconnection with them, within myself or both. I’ve never ever felt like I fit in to be honest, and have constantly craved belonging. Plus, looking back, even when I thought I was thriving (financially), I was going through the motions. I was still in survival mode and did have a sense about the future at all. I was simply tick-box living.
Anyway I know I’m rambling. However, I’m not scatty with these writings, this outpouring and stream of my current reality and chronicles of healing. Perhaps that what I should have named this blog. But it’s too vague. This is all real, by the way, it’s not fiction. It’s my life in words. I used to journal avidly and have gorgeous, beautifully patterned, metallic journals in my loft, stuffed full of me and my life. But something told me to start a blog and chronicle this healing journey, from scatty to composed, maladjusted to well-adjusted, fragmented to focused, broken to whole.
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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