Tues. 6/22/21
I am not a mental health professional. This blog is my story and actions and I am not implying what works for me will work for you. Please seek mental or medical treatment if you have concerns about your own health. You’re worthy of doing that for you!
(This post may contain triggers for some people.)
(For an explanation of who the ‘Grace’ & ‘L.P.’ portions of my psyche and ‘Great Guy’ are please use the ‘Cast of Characters’ tab on the home page.)
Good day beautiful you! What gave you a reason to smile recently?
If you are a father, or a mother who does dad duty too, I hope you had a good Father’s Day if it’s celebrated in your realm. I hope you’ll honor yourself anyway if it’s not.
Father’s Day can be a bit of a trigger for me. On the positive side, (yay!) I was able to listen to people speak highly of their own family patriarchs without denying (in my mind) the possibility of genuinely caring masculine role models. Could be because I’m finally able to acknowledge there are men in my own life who I think would make or are good fathers. It kinda lightens the heart to finally believe in the decency of most men. Also, to have an ever-deepening faith that my Heavenly Father does love me and is truly working on my behalf. (“Though my father and mother abandon me, the Lord will hold me close” – Psalm 27, verse 10, The Bible. You’ll get why this verse was referenced further along in the post.)
After the incident with Great Guy that was written about in last Tuesday’s post I thought it was time to add another tactic in healing the deepest heart and mind wounds that keep me from showing the care I have for good men, especially those I’m attracted to. I KNOW God is capable of fixing this and am trying to figure out how to let Him, and what I have to do differently to assist or allow Him to do it solo. So I started my own version of fasting a few days ago to discern that as well as to give the ‘Grace’ part of my psyche a better opportunity to be heard. She’s been trying to tell some of her most painful secrets for a while now and I’d really like to hear, heal and integrate her. I have no doubt these two goals are intertwined in many ways. In order to quit burying both of the goals with food or by being distracted by a lot of media I’ve limited my food intake to two high-quality prepackaged protein drinks and a fruit or veggie per day and cut way back on time spent on media. Also doing more journaling, praying, and Bible reading hoping to tune in more to what my inner self, and perhaps God, are trying to tell me.
I’m thanking myself for utilizing healthier ways of handling the emotional rollercoaster that comes with merging parts of the psyche. Really need this growing self-respect in order to handle all that Grace had to repress for so long. Instead of self-harming I called the RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network at (800) 656-4673) crisis line a couple of days ago. They’re here for us whether we’re in immediate physical danger or if we need to talk to someone who understands – a great resource. The lady that answered was such a blessing. She guided me to focus on something besides the anger that’s emerging and helped me to remember my recovery tools. (In the midst of the darkest moments it’s hard to recall what those are.)
Grace had to deny everything she/I felt in order to survive, and I‘m remembering so vividly what had to be done and how difficult it was to suppress all the damn anger. No matter what the ring leader and his cohorts did to me I’d have to face him (and them) again soon after and act like I, too, thought they were God’s gifts to the world, like everyone else believed. I just now remembered the day when, as a pre- or young teen I was face to face with the guy who led the brigade of boys who were gang molesting/raping me at other times. (He’d also do it on his own.) I was yelling at him how much I hated him, and my mother came into the room to intervene on his behalf.
This is the same mother who never once defended me against any attack, whether verbal or sexual and in fact, told me when I was just a small child that in no uncertain terms I had to keep my mouth shut about what was happening and therefore allow all the abuses to continue. (Written about in the post “Mom, Little Pearl’s Years”, dated 10/19/20) This time she reprimanded ME for saying I hated him, one of the worst abusers, because he was my relative, and so I had to love him.
Wow. With that memory slithering up, so is more of the damned awful pain and anger caused by the repeated abandonment by her (and the rest of the family (including extended), and all their cronies, teachers, and eventually myself, etc.). Helplessness, hopelessness and devastation are barreling through, too. And a sense of, I have to accept that I am NOT a worthwhile being. On some level I desperately wanted to deny that but couldn’t because I had to believe their assessment of me in order to not explode. If I allowed myself to believe I had any value I would’ve felt the full anger and had to have hurt somebody to retaliate. By hating self instead of them, that anger was turned towards me, imploding, and I could control that with some self-harm, deep fantasizing and suicidal thoughts with incompleted attempts. (God this hurts so deeply to acknowledge now. I always deserved so much better, especially from me.) This is helping to better understand how deeply ingrained the self-annihilation-and-sabotage go. So very grateful to finally have broken the self abuse habits. Now it’s time for the sabotaging to go, too. Hope to get this healed quickly. (Kinda losing patience with this whole healing process!)
Once again, as new memories emerge I get to re-forgive ‘them’ for several reasons. First, for these new offenses that I’m now aware of and re-experiencing the pain and anger of. Secondly, there’s always a new revelation of a different aspect of how what they did broke my ability to trust and love so I’ve emotionally wounded (and still do) good, decent people because healing from what the abusers did is ‘a process’ and I can’t do it fast enough. I frequently pray that God heals those I’ve hurt, and if possible can cause them to forgive when my sincere words and/or actions of amends don’t.
Another ‘big’ reason to have to ‘re-forgive’ them is I’m reminded in a more profound way of how much I’ve missed in life to this point and how much time, money and effort has been spent in order to be free of what they did so I can live a full life.
After writing about all the forgiving I get to do my appreciation towards self and life actually deepens for repeatedly making the choice to do all I have and will continue to do to forgive and change instead of choosing to remain the powerless, angry, voiceless victim I would have been.
What I choose to remember here and now as an adult who has come so far on the healing journey is, I am learning how to love myself well and to act out my love for friends in a positive, genuine way. I’m also delving deeper towards the crux of why I’ve pushed genuinely good men away, and that’ll aid in changing the conflicting behaviors, thank God!.
It takes so much more time and effort to write coherently while processing a new revelation about the past. My heart and mind are pinging back and forth between the past and present and won’t stay focused long enough to follow sentences let alone paragraphs. I hope this post is understandable.
Today’s song is another that I loved so much but then forgot about. So grateful to have found it rattling around my psyche recently. “Last Chance” by Shooting Star is about not wasting our precious life with negativity. So often I regret how long it took me to realize my life and attitude had to change, and how many years this healing journey has gone on. I am learning to counterbalance that by remembering the choice was made to change and that I’ve never given up. Every step of this trek has been worth it and I’m so very thankful to be seeing the love and beauty all around and within, in exponentially ever-increasing measures. I hope you know you’re worthy of doing whatever it takes to heal if you think your life isn’t all it can be. You deserve to claim and live in all your love and beauty, too.
Looking forward to meeting with you here on Friday!
