It is mine and mine alone...to fight~talk~cry~scream~hate~hold...and hopefully someday face and accept. How could I have possibly believed that someone else could understand...

I feel like I am so many different people disconnected from each other wrapped tightly inside this lost little body with no escape.

I am a mother
I am a wife
I am a friend
I am a professional
I am so much more…
I am an incest survivor…she is the part that is wholly separate from the rest of ‘Grace’.

I have never faced her, accepted her or anything that happened to her, she was not me…now she has grown into this big all-consuming monster growing inside of me. And the bigger she gets, the louder she is, the faster I have tried to bury her and push her away. But she is now way too big and I am way too old to bury her anymore. And I have to figure out a way to be okay with her being a part of me.

Why do I continue to run and fight who I used to be and who I am? Why am I so scared and so ashamed? Why do I continue to live in doubt and hopelessness? Why can’t I trust anyone? Why can I not understand and accept her? If this is what I so desperately wish for, what I have worked so hard for the past 3 years, why can I not just DO it? Why? Why can’t I be okay with ALL of me?

I am rambling tonight because I do not feel well and I am afraid to keep all of this inside of my head for fear that tonight could end with the unaccepted being punished. And there is no ‘support system’ in place right now to help me with that. There is just ‘me’, logical adult Grace, trying desperately to remain in charge. I catch myself not breathing, and it feels like I have to talk myself through a few breaths before it becomes subconscious again. And yet even when I concentrate on my breathing, I cannot breathe deeply, I cannot let all the air out of my lungs. Why? Is that because I am afraid and untrusting that air will fill my lungs in the next breath? Not only can I not trust another human being, I cannot trust my own body to breathe? 

I am not crazy. I am not weak. I am alive and I am lucky. I am alive…so now what? Is this where I say, “Yes, I am an incest survivor~ time to move on.” And then I walk away? I keep trying that. I am an incest survivor. I am an incest survivor. (I suppose that is a step forward, I still can’t say the words out loud, but I can write them now.)

I SURVIVED THE ABUSE ~ IT IS TIME TO MOVE ON…

But I need help with the second part. I mean, I have moved on, I am an adult, I am not helpless. I can function in society, and the majority of the people in my life probably think I am a product of the Cleaver’s. But it has affected so many parts of me, parts of me I am possibly not even aware of yet. That is the only way to explain the nightmares and the triggers and the strange reactions to what most people consider normal situations. I try to keep track of these moments, events, feelings, and I think I am doing better, right now…and yet I also feel like I am waiting for Shaquille O’Neal’s size 23 shoe to stomp on me and squash me like an ant. 

I wish I could talk to people in my real life and trust that they won’t look at me in shame, embarrassment, or worse, pity…but I cannot. Nope – my past is mine…and I am left here alone now – to fight with it, talk to it, hate it, deal with it, cry with it – and maybe someday accept it.

And I will do it alone because it is my past…no one else’s.

How I could I have possibly thought that someone else could understand.