Hope and the Chair

When do you want to work on the traumas? “traumas?” I question. Trauma seemed so dramatic. We had a discussion about traumas exactly four weeks ago. He knows to provide logic for the methods he uses. I need to logic things out. Traumas. Negative events in your life that impact the way you view the world. Rather than becoming a memory they still are very accessible, mentally, physically, emotionally. They become stuck. He references Vietnam Vets. I hardly feel I can compare. “there are obviously varying degrees.” he argues. “ I am just trying to give you an example. So you understand what I mean about experiencing the event rather than thinking about it.”

 I think about how my heart races and I become tense when somebody is standing too close. How I hate feeling trapped. I get it. Traumas. I will give him them... i guess.

 Molestations Rape
 Abusive men, physically, sexually, emotionally
 deaths
 A year and a half ago... . I viewed these things different
 a slight instance or so
 I guess you would consider it
 they weren’t the nicest
 everyone dies

Never allowing myself to experience because there are so many out there with worse problems than mine. I never let myself off the hook. I have made progress. Monumental progress internally. Not many can tell.

A year and a half ago we were working on basic things. Things I was very unaware of, a joke and a smile when I was upset. The dancing about of words for hours with no straight answer to a question. Talking about things in my life with in an eery detached manner, listing painful experiences in a manner one would recite a grocery list. The inability to experience emotion. Anger, sadness, hurt, fear, trust.

We are still working on trust. Don’t know if I will ever be capable of figuring that one out. My counselor. For six months I hated that man. I wanted to quit. Since age 12 I have bounced from one counselor to another. A few discussions, an attempt to get me to open up, and I was out. This time was different. I continued to show up. Much like deciding to commit to becoming physically fit, its all about showing up. No matter what excuses you may want to use to avoid. Show up. That’s how one becomes stronger, you push through it. Do the action, the rest will fall into place. I made a decision that it was time to get better. I was becoming dead and I didn’t want to die. I need to change the pattern. And I couldn’t do it on my own. Not because I am weak, or that I have failed. More so because there are some people in this world that dedicate their lives to teaching us how to become better. To move forward. To progress. If we are willing to show up, listen, and do the work. It certainly takes an incredibly patient person to get through to an individual like me. To those that can, I am forever grateful.

 Back to the trauma.

 “Where do you want to begin?” He asks me, I do not know. For four weeks I have been dreading this moment. For 31 years, I have been avoiding this moment. I shift, I open and close the hinge of the arm on my sunglasses, I tap my foot, I tense up. I am scared but I know I will talk. Somehow along the way, by some miracle, I had made a decision. To quiet their voices, to find my own. To no longer live as a scared child. I don’t want to be small anymore. I think back to a poem I began last weekend.

 “Once she faces the monster she will no longer be tiny.”

 I pick something and begin. He asks for a first name. By instinct I say, “do I have to? why do you need that?” he lets me think through this statement. Why do I feel the need to protect those that hurt me? It occurs to me how unimportant I have made myself throughout the years. I should be protecting me. Not them. Fuck them. I give him a name. I discuss and describe without any hedging or justifications. I try not to logic out emotions with “things could always be worse.” He gives me a list of statements, I am to remember a picture of the past trauma and choose how I feel when i see it. I choose:

 “I have no control.” He asks to think of the picture again.

Choose how I want to feel about it. I worry I am doing all this incorrectly. Not following what ever crazy psycho babble bullshit method I am supposed to be doing. Logic tells me I should say the opposite statement of what I have said before. Easy. I can’t say the opposite because it doesn’t make sense. I can’t control others. I can only control myself. I am over thinking. As a child, you have no control when someone is bigger than you. Logically, it doesn’t make sense for me to say the opposite because I didn’t have control over anything that happened. I realize I often feel a lack of control. A sense of being overwhelmed. Trapped. No way to stop what is happening. Weak, helpless. How I feel in that picture. Trauma.

 I want to do things that right way so I tell him “I have control”.

I know that is what I am supposed to say yet I don’t believe it. My counselor gets a sense he is pushing me too far and suggests we stop for today. We discuss other things. I leave, surprising less raw than usual. Something has happened.

 The evening rolls on. I have dinner with my family. My three boys, my husband. My dog follows me around. I decide to work out. Something has happened. I am hitting the heavy bag....over and over again. I think about the holidays. I think about those men. It occurs to me in a flash.... I can take it back. I land a punch.... I am coming back. I experience a weird sensation of being able to arrive. I’m stronger. Not the angry protective kind of strong I am use to. Not the anger similar to a teenage child that pushes everyone away when they only want someone to care so deeply. This is different. I allow myself to say “I have control.” Control of a moment in time, of powerlessness. A moment that was stuck. I have control over what I let define me. I think about the picture again. The picture in my head of the first trauma. I allow myself to look at the scene in a different way. I think about those I have lost over the years as well as those I am losing. To suicide and addictions. I think about those that are hurting, or angry, or lack any self worth or confidence. I think of those of us who are lost when it comes to the basics like relationships, trust and love. I imagine facing that individual that I was scared to name and calling them on their shit. I picture this as I hit. I don’t picture a moment of revenge but more so a moment in time where I can stand up, head high, and walk away. Rewrite the story. Change the ending. I have choice. And I know, I am supposed to write. This girl who is scared to death to share with anyone a thing. Because someone out there is dying, and there is hope.