I feel better than I have in years.
I feel worse than I have in years.
Its rock bottom: knowing at least it’s not going to get any worse. I’ve been hurting and suffering and fighting things for so long now that there is some relief in knowing this is a bad as it gets. Maybe because I’m still alive, maybe because I have faith that God will pull me through: that which does not kill us makes us stronger. Well, crap! Then I’m a freaking super-heavy-weight champ of something… The point is it has not killed me; therefore it will not kill me. Since this is as bad as it gets I must be able to handle it…
Handling it? I’m not sure that describes what I’m doing at the moment though. It’s after midnight; I’m lying in bed in a hotel room on vacation with my family and I’m typing, holding back tears, unraveling inside, coming apart at the seams, and trying to figure how in the hell I am supposed to get up at 7 a.m. and take care of 3 kids all day. I’m trying to figure out how to make it through about 10 homework assignments, 2 videos, 1 paper, 2 classes, 9 appointments, and a D&C in the next 7 days while my head spins and my heart races and my palms sweat and the tears flood my eyes, threatening to break away and stream down my face thus destroying any semblance of composure I’ve convinced myself I’m maintaining. Is that handling it?
Flashbacks started almost two weeks ago…Sunday in a dorm room in Napa feeling unsafe and vulnerable. They continue tonight as the base booms 3 floors above me and my safety is threatened again by things that occurred years ago, things I never even associated with the original trauma until now. I feel like I’m actually feeling it all for the first time, as though what happened 10 ½ years ago has just now sunk in and everything that has happened as a result clicks into place.
And then my youngest stirs and cries from his bed. I’m torn away from my grief and pain momentarily, autopilot kicks in automatically pushing everything back down where it bubbled up from while I tend to him. Is this why I haven’t really dealt with it? Burying it for years to take care of everyone else? I’ve been told several times over the past 7 years that I neglect myself to care for others. I guess I see that now,
So here and now, I make a vow (rhyme unintentional) to care for myself first so that I am better able to care for those who need me. I need me too. I need help, of the professional sort, preferably not the prescription sort. I will get that help as soon as I get home. I will ask for it and I will accept it. No more Super Woman. And I will not allow myself to push it all back down when the sun rises.
Thus begins my blog, my online journal of accountability. Here I will keep myself honest and trudge through the mess that is my psyche until all that has been tangled and twisted and spun has been unraveled, so that I may pick up the end of that tattered and scrawny yarn and knit my life back together…or make a helluva sweater! We’ll see…
