About Me

Nooksack, Washington, United States

Thursday, April 28, 2011

The pain is palpable

Today I am surrounded by my pain. It is crushing my chest into the size of a shriveled up raisin, but leaving a big, black gaping hole inside of my heart. It feel so big that I swear if I were to walk outside someone would say, "hey, Jill, what happened to you, did you get shot?" It is so intense it is causing my arms to feel like lead and my legs to spasm with their own rhythm. It hurts. That is an understatement. I want to scream and shout and cry and swear and hit and run, and writhe on the floor. But,I can't because I have a life to live here. I have children who need a mother when they get home, when all I really want to do is curl up in a ball and beat my head against the wall. I have a life to live. And I wonder is this healthy? Do I keep pushing this pain aside? I don't have time to give it full credence. It sucks because it's making my body hurt. ALOT. How do I let it out without freaking everybody in my world out? For if I could really express what I'm feeling it would be the ugliest, blackest, most disgusting thing you have ever laid eyes on. I literally want to throw up this pain and get it outside of me. I don't want to carry this any more. It is robbing me of my joy and my peace. I find myself in a position of complete helplessness. I don't know where to go, who to turn to, how to proceed. I have no words, and so I say to my Jesus, take this cup from me! I am finished now. I can't hold it any more. I know if you are reading this you are wondering what the hell I'm talking about. Why this abrupt disbursement of words regarding my intense emotional pain? I got a letter from my sister. You know, the mom of my beloved nieces. I don't know what to do now. I feel so incredibly stuck and frozen in time. With this letter a flood of memories opened up for me. And kudos to my sister for writing in such a way that I actually gave myself permission to be really pissed off for the first time. I mean, really pissed off. All the things I have been pushing down, hiding away, not saying since I was a child, as to protect her from being hurt, well, all those things came flooding back into my memory. OH, and it is so incredibly painful. There was more manipulation, denial, and jealousy towards me than I care to remember. We never had a normal relationship. I always felt responsible for her. I can remember laying on my bed and begging, begging, begging God to protect her. I knew, even at 7,8,9 years old that things were really bad. I knew something wasn't right. I was burdened with something I can't even describe in words. It was a defining moment in my life and I will never forget it. I made the decision that I must be a GOOD girl in order to save my family. What the??? It is what one does as a child who is trying to control an environment that is so incredibly chaotic they fear they are going to disappear. And this is when the pain comes. When I remember how I decided to just shut up. I shut myself up. I closed down. I became mute. I stopped using my voice and did everything in my own childish perspective of power to right things in this very wrong world I lived in. Maybe if I was quiet enough than things would get better??? I can remember sitting at the kitchen table and imagining myself standing on the chair and screaming at the top of my lungs, "something is terribly wrong!!!! I am being molested, my brothers and sister are getting into some serious trouble and I am scared out of my frickin' mind". The feeling of powerlessness is so destructive. Who took my voice anyway? When did I decide to stop talking? When did I decide to stop asserting myself? HOw did this ever happen to me??? And so today I weep for me. It feels so selfish, but I think I might be onto something here. I weep for the lost little girl who gave up her childhood to child molesters and fear and sadness and abandonment and neglect. I am choosing to honor her today and tell her that what happened to her was so very, very wrong. It was so incredibly wrong. And that's all I can say right now. I just realized I need to be o.k. with allowing me my own pain. Yep, lots of people hurt me because of their pain, and in my home growing up that's all that mattered. You cared about the person hurting you more than you cared for yourself. Guess what? That's not working for me!!!! So, here goes: for the next week I am going to care about me. I am going to recognize that I had a pretty shitty time of it growing up.
This should be interesting....

1 comment:

  1. Love you Jill (((((((((HUG FROM ME)))))))))))))
    You are so amazing with your words as i melt in your writing and in you pain and in such pain you are such a strong woman of God As one looking from the outside you really are an amazing woman. Even that said you need to have "Me" down time!!
    You have been the mom to those two girls when sister could not. They are doing so well BECAUSE OF YOU!!!
    Love ya Jill

    Shel

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