Emotions

The name peeling back the layers came to me as I was thinking about what this whole process of trying to heal from what they did is actually like for me. It is a constant peeling back of the layers to reveal another surprise - I wish it was like the childhood game of pass the parcel, but when I think of the analogy, I'm afraid I envision an onion. It hurts.

One of the first layers that I peeled back revealed to me my first real taste of the fact that what happened so very many years ago, DID impact on who I am - this fact has smashed me over and over as layers are peeled back. That first layer revealed to me that I struggled to understand and recognise my own emotions. For instance, I knew that I was angry, really angry, waves of wanting to scream and throw things, smash them type angry. Now, these waves of anger have been there before, but the intensity of it this time round terrified me - it felt so out of control. About 4 months into the therapy, I finally realised that the actual emotion under the rage was sadness, gut wrenching sadness - not sadness that anyone else would recognise because the tears have only just started to come more recently and I have been seeing Susan nearly every week now for 14 months. I struggle with understanding how I buried everything.

The emotion that sits with me again now is loneliness. This one is ever present. The fear of being rejected, pushed away, abandoned - being lonely - the fear of these things cripples and taints so many of my decisions. And then when I decide to do something I fret and worry over the decision - I constantly worry what others will think about me.

I wish I was normal - what I think normal would be like. Normal would be not feeling sad for no reason, normal would be going to bed at a time that allowed my body to rest enough. Normal would be liking and respecting myself enough to care for myself, not punishing myself for being me by staying up till the early hours of the morning, by shovelling food into my mouth to try to take away the aching hole that sits in my stomach constantly.

Normal would be not getting overcome by fear/anxiety/anger/sadness/obsessive thoughts. Normal would be not burning my arms, blackening the skin with the flame as punishment for being so fucked up, burning to try to stop the racing self hating thoughts that swirl and bombard me.

Normal would be not having the memory of late at night, waking as soon as the door started to open, pretending to be asleep in the stupidly vain hope he would go away. Normal would be not remembering his fingers inside of me. Normal would be not knowing any of this stuff because I would be normal, it would never have happened.

But it did.  he betrayed me, he took away what should never have been his. It should have been my choice. I'm not normal, I will never be normal. This is a lonely, empty place to be in.