Chapter Seven...Letting go...

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” Lao Tzu

 

You wonder if you will ever feel normal again. You want to go back to being the person you were before the trauma took place. You seek ways to forget that the experience ever happened and look for substances to help you forget. Sometimes you attempt to create a life for yourself in which you try to avoid the memories. It becomes a purposeful attempt to forget. I don't know what kind of person I was before, or how I can define normal to today's standards. I made a mistake not talking to someone about what happened to me, and the life that followed was half-lived. I have so thoroughly avoided dealing with that part of my past, and let it affect me in serious and substantial ways, that I've never experienced my true self or a real life to its fullest. When I hurt the most I have a tendency to think family contributed to the cauldron of my growing-up years, all the emotional hurts, lack of emotional support, rivalries, and misunderstandings had a way of casting a long shadow of mistrust on my adult years. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn't. Maybe it was just me. It's taken an enormous kind of courage for me to step beyond the normal roles and expectations for my past behavior and share. I want to fulfill that normal role, find that normal place and relax in the idea of it. To find serenity within and accept that it did happen to me rather than work so hard to deny it ever happened or believe that I'm somehow dirtied and damaged from it.

 

How does one find happy? How does one let go once and for all? Some days any strength I try to produce seems to be missing from me. The damage turned into an infected wound. It takes some time for a scab to form, and even more time for it to fully heal. Do you remember that movie with Jodie Foster? She was gang raped in a public place and others watched for fun. She was portrayed as someone who asked for it because she drank alcohol and seemed promiscuous. I hate it. I will never understand the logic that someone could ask for something like that to happen to her. Only people who have not been raped could believe that someone asked for it. The classic abuser mentality, “I wouldn't have hurt you if you didn't make me.”

Most decisions start with a goal in mind. At the end of this new life adventure, where do I want to end up? I don't know. I certainly don't want to walk around talking about what happened to me when I was a little more than a child to people who only pretend to be supportive. I don't see myself becoming a public advocate on the rights of women and children, I tried it recently and it was another set-back. I don't see myself cutting up a cardboard box to make a sign with red paint that reads, “Stop Violence Against Children,” or worse, “I was raped in a cabin by three older teens and no one cared.” Where the hell would I even picket? It's hard to even imagine picketing when I can't picture the who, the what, the where and the why's or the action. Lastly, I don't want to write a depressing blog forever.

 

I am new to my recovery. I have good days and I have bad days. I am learning to use imagery to wipe the filth and grime out of my mind. It happened to me, and yes, occasionally it will get me down. Instead of letting the dirt seep in, I am learning to clean it off. Breathe it out. I'm learning to tweak my perceptions. I viewed the experience as something that dirtied and scarred me. Something that anyone could see if they just looked at me. In reality, no one ever guessed what happened to me that fall evening before my fifteenth birthday. I give power to the hurt by keeping it close to my heart and soul. I don't want that hurt as part of my heart and soul anymore. Instead, I want happiness, forgiveness, acceptance and hope for a better tomorrow.

 

Tonight, my thoughts are scrambled as I reevaluate my life. If my thoughts intermingled with other thoughts and left you scratching your head wondering what I said...sorry, I'm working on that too.