Let’s go surfing now ~ everybody’s learning how….(surfing the trauma waves)

Yes, the therapist would say, “You have to learn to ride the waves, Grace.” I surfed once, in College, on Spring Break ~ Daytona Beach…it didn’t work out so well. Turns out I wasn’t able to ‘ride the waves’. Ride the waves…study the tides, Grace.

I sometimes feel trapped inside my head – worry that I've made no progress in therapy since it comes back time after time after time. And each time I get up on that surfboard, the cresting waves slam me into the beach of hell. But I keep trying. 

I remember the pain of that child, and I remember it in vivid detail. I can’t forget them. She won’t let me…and if I dare try to forget she reminds me – not so gently. And the therapist can say it a million more times, “Grace, you are not a child. You are not a child.” And yet the thoughts and memories still play out as though I am a child; the nightly attacks that leave me struggling to find some battle armor and I don’t mean a scented candle and a peppermint tucked away in a pink basket. I mean Maximus Decimus Meridius armor…and his gladiator fighting skills would be handy to have too…you know, in a pinch.

But I’ve promised myself I’ll fight through it this time. Try to learn and someday be able to predict the ‘tides’. I write that, but inside there are 5 voices screaming, “We can’t do it! You are a liar!” I have so many different color marks in my calendar –Last day for SI (11 days), bleeding AGAIN!, alcohol, ativan, bad night, crazybrain freak out, lost time, and now even the therapist's Feb hospital schedule!  …- I now need a key to keep track of all of the different things I’m trying to keep track of.  It reminds me of when my son was an infant and we had this feeding/changing schedule posted on the fridge...yeah, after about 2 weeks of that, I was smart enough to realize he had his own agenda and didn't care what the fridge calendar said.  Um...3 years later, I still carry around a pink daytimer and a selection of colored shapries for the "Grace" calendar... When will I learn???!!!!....

I need a new brain ~ my mother was right, clearly mine was wired wrong. My mother always said to me, “Grace, when God was passing out brains, you thought they said trains, and you ran away.” I think I know what she meant now when she said that to me as a child. Too bad I didn’t run away when God was passing out parents!