Therapy hit me hard, today. This anger I’ve been holding onto has left a metallic taste in my mouth — almost like when you touch your tongue to a 9 volt battery. Just full of the feeling of how incensed adult me is at these people who did so much damage to me — and the audacity of them to do it over and over again on purpose. My coach warned me about this, and I told her no, we’re not going to stop, we’re going to brute force it — head first — right down the middle. Show me how to get this out of my system.
It’s this single thing that’s kept me seated – fear of causing others to do this to me, fear of those who are still alive who did what they did finding out that I’m talking about it freely (not my responsibility to cover for folks who screwed me up), and just generally being afraid and frozen. Thinking about what I’ve done to harm myself in ways that I thought were helping me cope. Practically begging others for help or company because I felt so worthless that I had to literally beg folks.
Not anymore. I wanted it out of my system. I wanted it out of my skin. Out of my heart, out of my soul, out of my pores. There wasn’t a Bioré big enough to stick to my body and rip this stuff out of it. But I wanted it gone.
So we went through the process of finding the source of one specific line of thought, and that led to everyone who did things.
I must sidestep here, even though this next bit isn’t the topic:
Note that I used the word source. That was just my flow of thought, but it’s a bit more significant than it may seem. The source of that line of thought.
When that source is gone, and you are dependent on that source for that line of thought, you have to go to another source to support maintaining that line of thought. As a child, it’s not about liking how that line of thought feels, it’s about supporting what you are raised to understand as reality.
Oh.
So spending life as a young adult seeking sources for that line of thought bring out people who are 100% not about that line of thought, and you get angry because *breaks keyboard* they aren’t like you. They’re normal.
I think the over-arching element in this is that I’m in the process of willingly detaching myself from these negative sources that raised me, and am seeking new sources…or in a more personal term…a single new source. Not like that — look up, my source ain’t on earth. But in order to fully separate, I have to understand the nature of the relationships I had with these people, the nature of what they did to me, why my present life is screwed up from their actions, and obviously work through these intense negative emotions. Then I walk out the door of forgiveness with my bag, toss the bag of emotions and their whole bodies out the airlock permanently, and walk back inside. (not literally on the bodies — of the 28 people who abused me, 4 are still alive, and they’re at arm’s length if not further away).
It’s learning to seek a source that isn’t teaching me how to be fearful of others, that isn’t teaching me that I must perform or act out or hide or be fearful…and that when I do get all of this negative out of me, I will be able to step out and into a place where I am capable of acting without those learned behaviors and trauma responses It’s stepping into a place where I am no longer affected by the trauma of the past. And those sources…look I am not a violent person. I’m not an angry person. I’m not vengeful. But let’s just say I know where they’re buried. I might make a point to dance on some graves in the future.
Back to the topic. All of the work of releasing the grip and letting myself be angry, letting myself build new boundaries for myself that do not include people who provoke this line of behavior, etc…I’ve been thinking about jumping ship permanently lately. It’s the space where I’m letting my present have all of me and my past have none of me. “My past” includes folks in the present who have the same motives that people form my actual past had. And I learned painfully that these people do exist about a year ago. And the act of releasing them through the airlock actually makes me want to run and hide — not because I’m fearful of what they could do, but because them being gone makes me feel like I will be completely alone, as if everyone around me has the same ulterior motives.
It’s not that I actively *want* to jump ship and be gone. It’s the process of learning to lean away from old habits like alcohol or pain implementation to forget about the emotional pain, but sitting with the pain and letting it run its course. It’s learning to escape without doing harmful things. And so…the thought of just axing myself becomes a “what if” and nothing more. I will say it feels so much more artistic to dream about death than to waste my night drinking and drowning myself in alcohol or doing something that requires 300+ stitches. Because I’ve done both several times. And I am finally feeling worthy enough to not do either.
And for what it’s worth, I have 176 days of sobriety, today.