Charlie the trauma psych tells me that a lot of psychology is about phrases and words. Things to we take to have meaning, sayings we internalise as our own.
Like 'post traumatic stress disorder', I guess. Like 'flashbacks'. Like 'widow'. (Flashbacks... I always thought that was just phraseology, another word for an intense memory. I was wrong. A flashback is a whole body experience... it's knowing where you are, but being unable to stop the movie reel that plays in your mind, that projects images you don't really want to see just a foot or two in front of your eyes. It's smell and touch and temperature... it's the feel of glycerin on your lips, the same greasy softness you felt months ago, left over from where you kissed the corners of his eyes, the glycerin they'd used to lubricate them... it's feeling that, as if it were real, as if you could touch it, taste it, and being unable to stop.)
There are new sayings I've picked up, from my trauma pysch, sayings that ring like clear dew on a fresh morning in my mind. Phrases such as "Authentic living." There'll be much more on that one later, I assure you...
Phrases like "post traumatic growth". because, according to Charlie, that is what I'm doing.
Is it possible, to grow from this? To experience a trauma like this, and have it leave you not a better person, or a happier one, but one that's more in touch with yourself, your core, your strength?
I think that's possible. i think it has to be. I look at myself... I look how far I've come. From the hysterical creature who roamed the halls of her Purple House, with sleeping tablets and trauma battling it out in the early hours of the morning. I look at he person who moved in here, to the cottage in Paradise, who sat outside every night and cried to the stars.... I'm so different now. I'm growing. I'm tortured and anxious and insecure, my self esteem has taken a beating... but I'm still here. I'm still standing.
And, ironically, I'm much less afraid now, of life, of the world, than I ever have been before. After what I've done, what I've had to do.. the rest is bullshit. Day to day life doesn't freak me out much anymore. I know that there are far worse things that can happen.
(But... and there's always a but... what if that's an illusion too? What if the hardest thing I've ever had to do pales in comparison to what the future holds...? I can't imagine worse, I don't want imagine worse... but, as they say, God punishes us for what we cannot imagine. What a terrifying fucking thought.)
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