I don’t believe in new beginnings.

We can strive to put the past behind us and move forward one step at a time.  We can try to put distance between those moments of trauma and try to live again but… pain doesn’t die.

Have you ever been told that you need to just get over it?  As if time is evidence of healing. As if healing implies you should be pain free.

As if…

As if…

As if…

NO.

Pain doesn’t die.  It is never-ending with no expiration date.

Those who suffer trauma work really hard to heal their hearts, their bodies, and their minds.  They don’t need someone telling them to just get over it.  They don’t need someone telling them to stop complaining or whining.  They don’t need YOU to be an expert on healing remedies.  They simply need to be able to cry, to speak, to feel and to not be ashamed with how their body chooses to heal.

Next time you ask someone if they are alright be prepared to hear the truth and if they are brave enough to answer “I AM NOT OKAY RIGHT NOW” then be courageous enough to listen to them heal their way.

I want to thank Lindsay from Not Quite Alice for telling her story today.  I hope it helps her heal a bit more… I hope it helps someone else heal a bit more…

 

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THE DAY I DIED by Lindsay

There I lay
Twisted and limp
Broken and neglected
A toy left for Imps

Life was never perfect, it’s not meant to be, but it seemed to just not go right for me. I was more of an outcast, am observer of life than a participator. It has always been that way. I barely held on to life, to reality, to hope. Meeting people was hard, relating to people was even harder. I tended to push people away more than bringing them towards me. Meeting guys was hard. If they knew who my father was, they stayed away. If they grew up with me, I was just thought of either as a sister or another one of the guys. It was rare to meet someone that was interested in me, as a girl, as potential relationship material. It just didn’t happen. Only one guy had braved that, and he was someone that I was unable to trust after finding out he had broken up with someone else for me. It didn’t feel right.

Then I met him.

We worked together. It wasn’t hard to hang out after shifts were done to unwind. There were a few of us that would hang out after work and have a few drinks. Yes, I wasn’t old enough, by a few months, but I was still able to. This happened for a few months. I’d go hang out back at his place a few times. I was accepted. I trusted. It was a new feeling. A good feeling. Someone liked me. I was finally able to feel like I belonged, and that this could go somewhere. This might be real. Could it be?

Demons swirling
Inside my head
Taunting me
Better off dead

Then around my birthday, he invited me to hang out at his place. I couldn’t refuse. It was a sign to me. This was going to work. This was becoming more and more real. I said yes. We had been drinking before hand at the bar by our work. It was still early, and we didn’t want to part ways yet. We went back to his place. This is the night that everything would change.

Everything did change.

My memory isn’t great. I have flashes, blurry images, a lot of nothing. Drinking and kissing. Choking. Dark. Clothes gone. Stop, No, don’t. Please stop. Things being shoved in me. Crying. Pain. Nothing. Vomiting. More crying. Feeling dead. I was dead. My virginity was just stolen, my innocence gone, destroyed.

Numb to the core
Don’t feel alive
Can I escape?
Perhaps survive?

Life changed. That moment changed everything. I was no longer me. I had died. I was an empty shell. Nothing was left. I just had been robbed. Someone I trusted took everything from me. Life, trust, faith, hope, love, and left me with nothing. I shut down from that moment forward. I didn’t tell anyone. I cried that night, and then moved on. I had to go on. No one was to know. Ever. I could do this. I could go on like nothing happened.

It’s a little harder than one would think. I was starting to become emotional. I would cry. I would get angry. I would cry some more. I’d take breaks at work to just try and compose myself so no one would know. I took a lot of showers. I constantly felt dirty. I felt like nothing. No, I was nothing. He proved to me I was nothing. I was used. I was abused. I was discarded. Emotions started coming too fast. This had to stop. I shut them off. Emotions were gone. I become a hard ass person. If you saw me, you knew nothing of what had happened, would never guess.

My depression that I had before grew tenfold. Then a thousand fold. Finally it grew so much it was all there was. Blackness, shadows, misery swirled and consumed me. This was the worst I felt I would ever get. It had to be. Nothing could come close to this type of agony. This type of betrayal. This level of disregard for human life.

Why has this happened?
How can this be?
Must I endure this
For all eternity?

I started to feel sick. I had to use the bathroom more. I was always hungry. My breasts hurt. I was sleeping a lot. I chalked it up to the depression. It happens. Then I missed my period. No. Oh God no, this cannot be happening. This is a joke right? Just stress. This is just a result of stress.

I was pregnant. I was pregnant with my rapist’s baby. The world couldn’t have played a crueler joke on me. I can’t have his baby. I cannot have a constant reminder of what had happened. No, just no. How am I to possibly raise a child with love when it was conceived in hatred, rage, horror? It took a few weeks, however I accepted it. I had to. It was happening. I was going to be a mom. It wasn’t the baby’s fault. It was my fault for trusting and believing in a lie. A child shouldn’t pay for the sins of its mother. That’s not fair. Ok. I’m going to keep this baby.

I had a miscarriage a few days later.

From this torture
I wish to emerge
Wishing our worlds
Had never converged

What little bit of life I had left in me died with that miscarriage. That was my chance to try and make something from this horror. Yes, it might have been a blessing in disguise to lose that baby, but to have just accepted that I was going to be a mom and love this child that was starting to grow in me, was another blow in a series of punches that I just wasn’t going to recover from. This was it. This was going to be life isn’t it?

I gave up. I no longer cared. I no longer had emotions. I no longer lived. I went about life perfunctory, completing everything that was expected of me, and nothing more. I started to keep alcohol in my bedroom. Drinking a bit here and there to cause a bit of a numbness, causing a nice fuzzy edge to existence. Then it became a little more and a little more. Eventually I was drinking at work and at home. I was slowly becoming dependent on alcohol, and yet no one realized it. This is how I got through my days. I felt nothing and kept myself blurred around the edges.

My innocence
Stolen in lust
Taken with it
All of my trust

It slowly became too much. I wasn’t feeling, and I needed to feel. Hurting was too much though. Once I start, I know I’m not going to be able to stop. This thinking lead to me harming myself. I had occasionally when I was younger, punch myself a few times, run into a wall, pull hair, but nothing like I was about to embark upon. I started to cut myself and burn myself. I started a course that at the time was the best treatment for me.

I could feel, and I could control what I felt and when I felt. I had control. I needed that control. I was the one that would make myself feel better, or the one that would make my body have a release. I was able to feel and on my own terms. Depending on how poorly I was, determined how much and what I did. I bear the scars of my relief to this day.

I’m still on my own. No one knows what has been going on. I would brush off marks people would see as to work injuries, or my own klutzy self. I was very much a klutz growing up and still am. It was very believable. No one questioned it. No one asked me if I was ok. No one saw through my facade of living. I was great at pretending.

So weak I lay
Tears stain my face
For the girl that I was
Now soiled with disgrace

I lived a pattern now. Alcohol, self-harming, working, lying. I believed myself. I was fine. Nothing was going to bother me. I am great. I don’t need to feel anything unless I want to. I earn a living and pay my bills. I converse with people. I take care of pets. I pay bills. I was functioning. I needed nothing else.

Disgust consumes me
Abhorrent craze
Scalding hot water
From shower head sprays

My life was a lie. I was lying to myself. The darkness that the alcohol and harming kept away, lifted off of me, became too heavy to bear. Nothing has ever gone right for me. I had no hope. I had no trust in anyone, not even able to trust myself. I lied to myself constantly to make myself feel better, to get through the day. Each day was a repeat of the last. Tomorrow only held the same home as today. Nothing. Emptiness. Shadows, darkness, pain, hopelessness. It was time for me to be on my way. My story doesn’t seem to have a happy ending coming my way, I should just declare this my ending as closing my eyes is not allowing this to just pass by.

And I did.

Emotions are gone
Alive no more
Scarred and marked
Feel like a whore

Like everything else in my life. I failed. The darkness had consumed me, and I sought a way out. This wasn’t to be either. I was going to have to deal with this apparently. I wasn’t going to be able to out run this. I need to fight this. I’m going to need to figure out how to live. I need to live. I seem to have a second chance, but do I want it?

Heart now vacant
Bitter and cold
Zero vitality
Left to behold

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BIO:
Lindsay is a rather artsy, easy going, weird, and eccentric Geek girl who loves animals and is the mommy to 4 of them (2 rabbits, cat, and ferret). She considers herself a connoisseur of whiskey drinking and video game playing. Most days she is bumbling around with software and hardware, whilst at night she is a ninja munching on gummi bears and dancing to music. She enjoys blogging as a way of dealing with the aftermath of rape, ptsd, miscarriage, abuse and depression; as well as sharing successes and failures with others.
https://notquitealiceteaparty.wordpress.com/