A tunnel

Where am I ? 

I ask myself, slouching on the couch, in the living room of my home.

I ask myself on a bright, peaceful, contemplative morning in Ramadhan. 

Reading on in Judith Herman’s book on the stages of recovery

I wonder where I have reached. 

Questions raised by words like “identity” and “re-integration” and “reconnecting” are stirring my mind. 

I guess I took a break 

But not actually

I took a swerve 

Into the tunnel

It’s like how dr. Sulhi had said to me

It’s a bridge;

Marriage 

You go all the way

Cant u-turn in the middle

The treatment is the crossing 

The treatment is the healthy relationship

Healing is the relationship

That is for people like me with complex PTSD. 

This was back in the days before my wedding, when the fact of committing almost drove me to lose my mind. 

I remember i would cry so hard that little capillaries would burst around my eyes and i walked around with little red dots around them for some time. 

We’ve been married for almost 4 months now

The third month was the hardest

Now i feel more above things

My shame, now acknowledged and seen for what it is

Shame is the disease survivors live with 

Shame of being helpless 

Of never, ever being enough

My compulsion to repeat, as the reason behind my overwhelming sense of paralysis, also seen and named

The nervous system chose to freeze in response to the trauma 

Even when it didn’t get me to safety, it still chooses it to this very day 

Achievements like cooking a meal can be very challenging

My transference (just learned this one right now) and how it’s causing my angry, lashing out reactions with my husband

I expect the worst because of what my past abusive relationships have taught me, and i respond accordingly, regardless of what he actually says or means. 

I become blind with fear. 

And i become blind with anger and self-protectiveness. 

A lot makes more sense

A lot has emerged in a small amount of time 

A lot of growing up to be done in a short time 

It feels now like i am finally seeing some light 

After a prolonged period of darkness 

Darkness and the lack of awareness that you are in the darkness..compounds that sense of helplessness and lost-ness 

It was an insanely difficult month

Alhamdulillah

I write because i forget

When i dont write, it feels like I lose sense of orientation

And I forget why I am the way I am

I forget and thus I dont appreciate how far i’ve come 

I forget how hard it is

To me, forgetting very much means losing sense of my internal, emotional world.

And suddenly i feel like i’m exaggerating 

But then i do art and ha!..i’m faced with what is really going on..

Trauma does this..can we call it dissociation ? 

Maybe

It’s just the difficulty of feeling your feelings

The difficulty of believing that you ARE facing difficulty

As i’ve described before, and as Judith described it, too

Healing is like a spiral

A lot of the times you feel as if you’re back to square one

But it’s always about revisiting what you’ve processed before..with new levels of awareness and with so much better integration 

Today I have these resolutions set

One. To try and find better ways to respond when people shame me or try to “fix” me when they notice that the healing is not “done” and i’m not “forgetting it” or “letting it go”. 

Two. Prolonged childhood trauma deforms and reforms personality. Questions of identity and purpose take time to answer. I will try to be forgiving and gentle with myself for still not setting certain paths in life. 

Three. 

To own my story. To share more. People need to be aware of how long and how complex and how difficult this really is. 

I once asked my therapist..how long will this take 

When will this stop

Am i exaggerating ? 

She gave me a simple answer that i fail yet to comprehend.

She said you’re describing your feelings. No exaggeration fits here. Exaggerations are for external stuff. 

That’s all.