Periodically, I receive what I call new memories. They aren’t new but repressed memories that my brain decided to hold back from me until I was able to handle them. How it decides that I am able to handle more memories of abuse is a bit lost on me but whatever, here I am. Over time and with practice in being self aware I can usually spot the changes in myself to indicate a new memory.
Warning signs include insomnia, sadness with no discernable source, feeling off with my skin crawling, and disassociating more than normal. My brain decides I’m ready for some more memories but also tries it’s go to response and tries to also escape. Profound sadness can start to overwhelm me. I get agitated and confused. Then there it is, a piece of the puzzle comes forward and locks into place. Sometimes a little movie seems to play in my head of the memory, almost like it’s a movie of someone else and not me. Other times it slams into my brain like some massive information downloading in the Matrix and I want to curl into a ball on the floor from the pain.
My brain releasing these repressed memories has become more frequent since I have moved in with family and no longer living alone. I’m safer now so the flood gates are starting to open. I’m getting a fuller picture of myself. I don’t know if this is going to make much sense but most of the time I’m usually operating on bits and pieces of memory of myself and my life. The bigger picture of me and my life as an abuse survivor makes me very angry and consider several lives of crime. There is so much and it can be overwhelming, hence the dissociation. I’ve been working on not escaping into dissociation. I’m trying to stay with the memory and let the realizations click into place. It’s very difficult and exhausting. The urge to run from the memories and push them down as far as I can is a lot like fighting addiction to me. Good thing for me I can work to deploy my skillset in fighting addiction to fighting the urge to run and hide inside my head from the thoughts and memories. It sucks all the cactus but it’s a useful skillset.
Facing the memories and accepting what happened creates a lot of sadness. It’s a depression that I have fought my whole life. I think about my suicide options but I don’t make plans or take myself up on that very obvious option. Anger steps in a lot to be my bodyguard from sadness but the anger I almost as difficult to deal with. I breath a lot as my mind races. Self awareness is strange to me. Instead of being reactive, my mind races through the options and runs around screaming in my head while the other part of me sits and breaths and talks myself through it. This is difficult now but I can get through this. I got through the abuse, I can get through the recovery. This really happened. That’s why I feel this way about this. Than I’m flooded with all the different perspectives in my head that want to all talk at once and the images and simultaneous thoughts culminate into a headache.
I breath a lot through my mind doing what it does. Rest is essential so I can keep on track with taking good care of myself through all of this. There’s a lot I don’t feel comfortable with talking about or expressing to friends and family yet or at all. None of it is comfortable really. When I feel comfortable I get scared. Peace scares me. I feel dread of impending doom. The calm before the abuse started up again in it’s vicious cycle that was a meat grinder that chewed through my sanity. Sometimes, my mind will instantly try to disassociate during peaceful times and it feels like falling back into my head. The edges are black in my vision and I’m just falling fast. I catch it and physically jump, at times causing an anxiety attack.
Lately, I’ve been drawing and painting more. I detest a lot of what I’m creating. I find it ugly and misshapen. The eyes are all wild with crazy, drowning sadness, or rage. I can’t seem to draw happy eyes. No wonder I didn’t pursue drawing at an earlier age. I had myself convinced that I couldn’t do it. Really, I can, I just was avoid it due to memories and feelings like I avoided music. Expression can really hurt sometimes when you create something and are faced in the physical realm with the pain that you can’t avoid seeing in your piece. I drag myself about it because there are the old nasty self worth feelings I’ve been working to correct.
Writing things out helps even though there is still that fear that I’m just insane. It’s a kinder fantasy that I am just crazy than all these awful things happened to that little girl that I was. Then I think: Damn, what a badass to have made it through all of that. Not like I’m thinking I am a badass but SHE is/was a badass. She is still in there, in my head, and she keeps me from executing the suicidal ideation. It feels like she is stronger than me even though she is me. I am her. I hope one day I can feel more whole. I will press on.
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