Tag Archives: understanding

Because Humans Represent The Possibility Of Loss

When I was a little girl of one and two years old, I existed inside of a perspective attached to my sister’s hip. She is four years older than me. It seems I was always either hiding behind her hip or holding onto a part of her belt loop or dress so I could feel safety. Staying beside her, I had a constant guide who would always know what to do next. My father was gone a lot because he worked as a military contractor. My mother was busy giving over her time being slowly love bombed into a destructive cult.

So, my older sister was my anchor, and my older brother was our body guard. My sister took on a mothering role, and my brother, a protector role, available to whip some ass if any other kids in the poorer neighborhood we moved into, messed with us.

Then, in the blink of an eye, our lives were turned upside down, and we were all ripped from each other when my mother decided to take us to one of the most brutal of all the compounds owned by Sam Fife’s Move of God cult. As a three year old child, I went from the safety of my sister’s love and my brother’s protection to never seeing my brother, and not being allowed to speak to my sister or my mother. Overnight I went from safety, to terror. abuse, isolation and fear.

I could only catch sight of my sister when we were out working in the fields. Or when we were in the dining room, we could have telepathic conversations through sneaking eye contact with each other. She holds the memories of my screams when I was beaten. She saved my life once, putting herself in danger to stop a beating where I had passed out and dissociated when I was somewhere around five years old. My sister and I have a connective strand of trauma survival that is unique only to us. There is a deep wound of abandonment and isolation that these experiences created inside of me.

They had a deeper effect on me because I could not process what was happening to me. I was only three, and at seven and nine, my sister and brother could only see me being abused, see each other being abused and helplessly stand by. It would remain this way for years.

When my family’s love is ripped from me on any level, I am deeply triggered to the emotions of that childhood trauma. When I am left by the way side by a family member, not spoken to or responded to, I feel disregarded and reduced to ashes. I am three again, feeling confused, terrified and abandoned, ripped from the only love I truly trust. I am left inside of the unknown. I trust too little or I trust too much. This creates an end result of me not trusting at all.

When these types of situations arise, it does assist me in moving through them when I am able to connect the emotion I am experiencing to the trauma that the situation is triggering. When I can understand that I’m weeping uncontrollably because I feel the pain of the disregard, in the least I can bring about resolve for myself.

I feel the strong emotional trigger of the isolation and abandonment. The tears I flow are no different than a wound which must seep in order to heal. It’s squeezing the infection out. It is me learning to deal with loss, the exhaustion of it repeating itself and somehow figuring out how to maintain acceptance of it.

Recognizing my triggers can be difficult. I have to piece these fragments together, sift through these thoughts and open my mind to understanding their impact on me. I am fragile, yet I have to continue living in spite of the loss. It takes time to figure this out.

Every time I experience it, I ask myself if I have the strength to deal with loss anymore. Each time I am unsure. I don’t know if I can. Each time, I do regain my strength, yet I feel just a bit more tired inside.

Life moves on and each time I am used or feel abandoned, it leaves pieces of my love ripped from me. It changes me. It molds me differently. I become more silent inside of myself, where acceptance leaves me in a state of constant observation and a feeling of not really wanting to connect with most things human, outside of children who havent learned to be cruel yet.

It makes me feel distant and shut down into myself, to continue accepting this solitary path, away from the victim blaming and the sick minds who can attack us with our own traumas, to be the silent writer in the attic, seen occasionally carrying groceries; isolated from the rest of humanity because humans represent the possibility of loss, and loss has stripped me to bone.

She Left the Planet

She jumped off a bridge into the middle of traffic in North Seattle this morning. She has lingered in my heart all day. I don’t know her name, what she looked like, if she had children or a husband, family, had ever felt love or had someone hug her.

And that makes me sad.

I see people in stores, brows furrowed in seeming anger, faces down trodden. I smile at strangers. Occasionally its reciprocated. Most times it’s met with a look of confusion.

We’re so disconnected our eyes no longer meet. We don’t share smiles.

I wonder how many people passed her today. I wonder if anyone smiled at her or met her eyes. I wonder if one person had, if she still would have walked to that bridge.

To the woman who left the planet today. I feel your human suffering. I know you’re being loved now.

Why the Switch Sometimes Can’t Be Flipped.

Imagine that you’re in an empty room. The room has become completely dark. You need to get up and get out of the room, but in order to do that, you have to be able to see so you can find the door.

All that is visible is a glow in the dark light switch on the opposite wall from where you’re standing. Now all you have to do is just stroll on over there and flip it up. Walla! Light to see the door! Up and outa here! Yeah!

Sounds easy, right?

There’s just one problem. You can’t get your legs to move. Your mind recalls Kill Bill, and you’re saying “Wiggle your big toe.” over and over.

But unlike Uma Thurman, your toes do nothing. You cannot move a thing. Your mind is screaming at your legs to go. You stand there, unable to take even one step.

You don’t understand why. You are so frustrated and pissed off at your bullshit legs that won’t move. You try and reason with them. You try and figure out when and why, exactly, your legs have stopped working.

You are exhausting yourself with the fight to try and get your legs to move. You try over and over and over and over.

Minutes turn into hours that turn into days and months and even years.

You cry out for someone to help you, but no one is around to assist you in training your legs to move. No one is there to encourage you to believe in the ability of your muscles.

Or maybe they’re on the other side of the wall hollering, “Just flip the switch on, and you’ll see the door!”

Even though you’ve repeatedly called out to them that your legs won’t move.

You are stuck in your spot staring at that switch. You are hearing their voices bellowing solutions at you. Yet all you know is that your legs refuse to comply, and you are near the end of your rope.

“Why don’t they just open the door and come help me?” You think.

You don’t understand, and you fill to the brim with helplessness and hurt. Why won’t they realize that you can’t move your damn legs? How many different ways do you have to explain it? What is wrong with them? Are they not fucking LISTENING?

Eventually, spent and exasperated you close your eyes and the illuminated light switch disappears. You give up. What’s the point of continuing to gaze at that beautiful light switch, so close in your reach, if you can’t even get to it?

This is what depression and anxiety feel like. Frozen emotion. Cracked will. Defeat. Drowning in an ocean as people scream at you from the shore to “swim!”, and no one thinks to jump in and guide you to safety.

See, people can’t see these emotional disabilities with their eyes. Depression, C-PTSD and Anxiety don’t sit in a wheelchair or end up hooked to an I.V.

Because people can only view these types of disabilities with their hearts, and all the while people are screaming their opinions, solutions and judgment at you, they too, are just as stuck.

Because they can’t figure out how to reach the switch in their own room; the one that turns on their compassion.

The Voices

What do you allow your inner voices to say to you?  They sound a bit like this, yes?  Are they telling you positive things?  They should be!  If not, you have the control to listen only to the loving voices.