The ache of the darkness...

Every day you wake up and you feel it, there, within you, that implacable ache. How do you explain the pain? A shot or pill doesn't make it go away. You suffer it. It consumes you, the dark loneliness. You look in the mirror, run your hands over your body and are surprised to realize that you can't see or feel the hole you know is right there. All day long it dogs your steps, mocking you as you try to ignore it and move past it, or around it.

Not understanding how to battle it, controlled pain gives you a fleeting sensation of triumph. When you are dealing with the pain of an empty stomach, the burning in your throat from the purposeful vomiting, the pain of bruised and lacerated flesh, the dark ache is forced to the background. You have triumphed! You are tough!

You feel invincible as the shadow has been made small and been put in its place- all by you. You begin to feel that if you can sustain the pain, the silhouette will be forced to retreat forever. But like any drug, it begins to take more and more pain to win the battle.

You find yourself losing track. How long has it been since I last ate? Where did I put the razor? People talk to you and you don't really hear them, you’re so focused on your own internal battle. Everything starts to seem far away, as though it isn’t really happening to you, but a character on TV.

It has tricked you and all you are doing is nourishing it. Feeding, nurturing, encouraging it to grow. With each of your attempts to erase the darkness from your spirit, you are giving it the ultimate control. Each act of self-inflicted pain is fostering the next, weakening your spirit and allowing the darkness to fester. Your technique of starvation doesn't work any longer because you can't feel the pain, so you move to cutting, purging, thinking that it will bring back that sensation. The darkness cackles with amusement at your foolishness.

Each day, your body grows weaker, less able to sustain you. Your physical power is depleting along with the power of your spirit. The world is losing color and you begin to ignore it. The battle inside has become all consuming and nothing else exists. You feel sure that the next time you will defeat it. Everything around you is the darkness, the pain, the hole in your heart has engulfed your whole being and you need to fill it. Because of this, because of your knowledge of the battle, of the strength it requires, you stop listening to the weaker individuals around you. They have no idea and couldn't possibly understand what you are dealing with. They have no idea that you are failing! You are losing this battle and nothing else matters.

How could they like someone as incompetent as you, let alone love you? You can't even manage to handle something as simple as this little hole. Your spirit has weakened. What's left? You are physically and spiritually weak, possibly dying, and you still have yet to achieve your goal. The belief that sustained you, the belief that you could create enough pain to banish the shadow, is fading. Yet, you continue to hang on to it. You need to get to that place of perfection… If you can just get there, you think you will be whole again and you will finally be worthy of love, worthy of the admiration and respect you crave. You will wage the battle in silence, never letting anyone know, so the victory will be that much sweeter, the love and respect more worthwhile for the extra effort required to earn it.

You keep telling yourself that soon you will be able to walk in the light not realizing that your resources are depleting quickly. You have become trapped. You can't escape. The light is so small now. You know that the end is coming.

Do you wait for it? Do you let go and die? Do you do the unthinkable and ask for help? Both options are unpalatable, as they require an admission of failure, the admission that you could not conquer the darkness on your own. An admission of how weak you really are.

The first is the easier option. You let go and let the darkness wash you away. You never have to face the ones you have been fighting for. You never have to see their disappointment in you. It is the cowardly way. You have avoided your punishment for failure. It is the end, the ultimate surrender.

Or, you face them, the ones you have tried to impress, and admit to them that you lost. This is the true test of your determination, to admit your weakness and ask for help. This is a true sacrifice. To face them, knowing that they won't understand or they may not care. The pain of opening yourself up is more painful than any bruise, cut, or empty stomach. You have to face all that you fear. All that you have been fighting and more, you face the total destruction of your spirit, a total loss of who you are and the loss of the world as you know it.

Your first true combat with the darkness begins. You feel alone… you feel stripped and naked. You feel fear. You have bared your soul, you have admitted defeat.

The real battle has begun.

*SHAKING GRACE* WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM?

Pull up a chair and I'll tell you as best I can. I hope you have some time, though, because the story isn't short and sweet. I have always been a 10 words, or less, kinda gal, but life isn't really about 10 words or less, is it?

The demons inside my head continue to scream for release. Eventually, they will tear me to pieces~ there is nothing I, or anyone else, can do about that. The nightmares are horrendous, the shame unspeakable. My jaw aches, my head hurts, I am constantly screaming and slamming stuff around, cursing myself out...I'm surprised I haven't been carted off to the loony bin.

I'm really not well. The all-consuming parts of me have drown out the logical adult Grace and she is no where to be found. If I could only identify where they reside in my body, I could cut them out. I'm not afraid of the physical pain, physical pain is nothing compared to the pain inside of my head, inside of my mind & body.

Yesterday, I walked out of my T appointment 20 minutes early. I just got up and walked out. I sat in my car and pondered my next move, drove directly to the liquor store and bought a bottle of vodka, but I didn't drink it then. Not in the middle of the day, I went back to work instead...pretended like everything was great. Yes, folks, Grace is back in the building. "Living the Dream" as always.

You may be wondering why I walked out of DT's office 20 minutes early. I walked out because I'm so tired of struggling, in hell, every single night and she isn't here. Now, before you comment or roll your eyes, please understand that 'adult logical' Grace understands this is not a realistic expectation, and in fact, a quite selfish, and childish frame of thought. To put some color around these feelings, these selfish desires, these constant struggles....let me say this. For 2 years, DT sent me daily emails, checked on me when I was in "crisis", she was "THERE". No one had ever done that for me before. Why would they? I didn't matter - I was nothing. But she made me believe that I did matter.

But all that ended when she got a boyfriend and no longer had time to do it. Now, again, from an adult, logical, standpoint, I know this sounds absolutely insane (of course...I think I am insane...so....) but in 'our' minds, when we are in crisis, and feel unable to deal with it without hurting ourselves, or contemplating ending life...DT is suddenly the 'real' mother, the mother who never answered Grace's cries. The mother who was drunk and passed out while HER husband raped Grace night after night after night. The mother who was NEVER there - the mother who showed Grace that she was a bad, terrible little girl who did not deserve care or love. And Grace grew to accept that. OK - just a fact, file it away with every other 'fact'...Grace is 5'3", blond hair, blue eyes...all facts. And the fact is, that every single night, DT becomes that mother. Because he comes back at night, and Grace can feel him, and hear him, and smell him...and she calls out for DT and DT isn't there...so Grace pictures DT passed out drunk, not caring what happens to this frightened little girl. Why doesn't she care? Because Grace doesn't matter.

And this constant daily struggle has exhausted me! And I can't do it anymore! DT won't be there, she now has a life, she isn't available. And logically that makes sense, but from a child's perspective, it makes no sense at all. And this plays out every single night. I am so tired, I am so weary...and it just feels like she doesn't care. And I can't fight all of the little girls.

So, if I'm going to do it alone, I have to try to do it alone. If I make it, I make it - if I don't...then it will be no one's fault but mine. I'm done wasting DT's time. I'm finished with the constant struggle between her and I. I could see how tired she was yesterday...how weary from fighting with me, and I felt really bad. And the only thing I can do for her is to walk away. She has tried to help me, but I am a stubborn, bad, selfish little girl, and she can't help me. And she's really a good person, so it isn't fair for me to keep telling her that I hate her because she isn't there for me.

I have rope burns on my hands from trying to hang on. I don't know to stop it, I don't know how to live with it and I am WAY too tired to fight it right now....

So I will be *alone*. It's the only way I won't hurt anyone else. DT doesn't deserve my hate, she really is a good person. I am bad, I deserve the hate and the pain. Not her. Me.

I seem to have found myself in quite a pickle

I did something really stupid last night....but in my dissociative state it seemed a necessary thing - and something I couldn't stop.

I don't think I can stay safe unless I take some drastic measures - and I don't quite know what that needs to entail. I don't know what I need but I'm overwhelmed with everything right now - it's like I have no skin left...my sensory department is on high alert. My skin feels as though it's on fire. I'm unable to regulate my breathing...and it feels like no one cares.

And if no one cares, why should I? There's really no need, is there? What do I offer except the usual burdensome borderline CPTSD traits? Which seem to grate on everyone - even those trained and being paid to deal with.

I can't do this by myself. I can't. I tried and it leads only to more self-destruction. I don't know the answer and apparently DT seems to think her newly *stringent boundaries* are the answer...so that leaves me to have to find my own way. Which when those within take over...typically involves something self-destructive.... so I hold on for the ride - and just wait to see if the car jumps the track.

Around and around and around it goes...where it stops... I surely do not know!