As I am sitting here, I am unable to shake this feeling that I am going to start openly sobbing for no apparent reason. I am struggling to process trauma memories that have bubbled up along with random 'ok' memories from my childhood. It's like there is no bottom to this well of sorrow. Because remembering trauma that is 'new' brings up the memories of other trauma that are more familiar (but no less harrowing). I am so tired of trauma work. I have been doing trauma work since I was eighteen.
I've been dealing with some form of trauma all my life. First there was the part where I lived through it. That sucked. I compartmentalized and pushed that into a closet to be able to pass as a 'normal' kid. It didn't work. So, on top of the business of being traumatized at home, I got traumatized at school by bullies. There were few safe havens and those places I could go, I couldn't stay there for too long before my parents were looking for me.
When I finally went off to college, I was in the weird state of limbo. I lived a double life. At college, I could freely express myself. At my parents' house, I had to do my best to live the role they expected of me as the dutiful daughter and emotional punching bag for just about everybody in the house. It was exhausting. As I was at college, I started therapy because my room mate insisted on it. Theresa, if you're reading this, thank you.
It was still a weird limbo on the psychological front because I was working on healing the trauma of the abusive relationship I was in during high school as I was living in the traumatic environment of my parents' house. When I was out with Beloved, I had some flashbacks and panic attacks. Fortunately, we were off on our own at a park when I had the screaming fit and I started clawing/hitting myself. I had these sort of incidents a few times. It almost broke our relationship. My parents had no idea because I never had that happen in front of them.
Flash-forward about a decade and my mother makes a comment that rips through my mental barriers. I didn't have a screaming fit, but I devolved into incoherent babbling and sobbing as I curled into a fetal position and sat rocking on a step. Mom called Beloved. When he showed up, I was still a wreck. In less than five minutes, he had me calm. The next day, we got married. I dissociated through most of that day. Memories of my wedding day come back to me in flashes. It wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the fact that it was my wedding and it was a comment from my wonderful mother that set me off.
I don't know why but I find myself feeling like I'm on the edge of a cliff and someone's about to push me off. It's not a 'jump from the fiery airplane as it is crashing' or a 'you're going to fly now' kind of feeling. It's more like I'm standing at the edge of the abyss and I have some malevolent force at my back trying to force me over the edge. It is something I've had nightmares of. Many nightmares of being forced over the edge of a precipitous drop to fall to my death. Those started after my mother dangled me over a three story drop with the threat to let go if I didn't obey her whims. I was four. I had stopped my brother (who was old enough to crawl but not yet pull up and walk) from going over the edge.
I pulled him back when Mom stormed into the room and started screaming at me for being in my parents' room (which had a smaller room off to the side and a drop down to the basement where a flight of stairs was supposed to be, those steps did eventually get built about a decade later). She just about kicked my brother aside and gripped me by my shirt. She held me in such a manner that the majority of my body weight was upheld by her grasp on my shirt despite the fact my feet were on the floor as I was levered out over the drop to the basement. She held me there for probably a few minutes but it felt like forever. She shook me like a rag doll and I was convinced I was going to die. Then I was half thrown into the main portion of her room towards the direction of the room that was eventually to be my bedroom. I don't clearly remember what she said. I just remember the sensations and the murderous look in her eye.
It is memories like that which have been coming up. It wasn't the only time she did that, by the way. It happened again when my other brother was approximately the same age and about to do the same thing as his older brother (tip a laundry basket over the drop and fall with it). In both cases, I grabbed my brother (who was holding on to the laundry basket like it was for his life) and I dragged him back into the room. The second time, Mom first shoved my face into the bookshelf next to the doorway into that room. The only reason why I didn't get a face full of books and a black eye was because I dodged and caught the door frame with the side of my head. No black eye but a bit of a bump on the head. But she dragged me over to the same spot that she did the first time. This time she held me by the back of my shirt. But the process was the same, hold me at a 45 degree angle over that drop down to the basement and scream at me about how I was bad and attempting to harm my brother.
It is oddly ironic that the time Mom nearly kicked my youngest brother out a window, I was the one who grabbed him and pulled him back as the screen got knocked out the window. That time, Mom didn't scream at me. She was confused and partially awake, wondering why my toddler brother was shrieking and where the screen had went. It is bitterly ironic that the same brothers that I had saved from death multiple times turned out to hate me because of the mind-fuckery of my mother.
I don't regret saving my brothers from our mother's insanity. I know I did the right thing. Even if they are of the opinion that the wouldn't piss on me to put me out if I had caught fire. (Yep, one of them actually said that to me as the other laughed and agreed.) I feel like I'm going crazy. Loki says that I'm going sane and that the two feel about the same. It is awful. I feel like I'm falling apart. Beloved tells me that this is happening because I finally feel safe enough to remember these things. I know he's right, but it is awful.
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