My family's house was a deathtrap. If those walls could talk....I'm astounding anyone can walk into that place without having to cover their ears for the cries and screams of the hungry, beaten, raped children that lived there.
Those walls always felt impenetrable, thick, like razor wire wound so tight that even air could not escape out. Windows were my only refuge. Looking out made me forget, took me away for moments, hours at a stretch from the unbarable stench that I had to call my everyday waking life.
There was never a break. If I wasn't hungry I was trying to stay out of dad's grasp and away from mom's hurling, spewing, cutting words. Daytime meant fighting for clean clothes, food, milk and attention. Nighttime meant dealing with dad's needs, fighting over blankets and bed space with my two sisters and frustratingly, incessant, cold sweat insomnia.
Nightmares were day and night.
I continue to race with anxiety just thinking about what a single day was like back then.
Yeah, my childhood haunts me. Seems like I'm allowed only brief respites here and there where I'm not jostling the baggage of my youth.
I want to cry. I want to scream. I want a break. It all feels like to much...bitterness like acid rain knowing I've been singled out, someway, somehow, into dealing with the tragic trauma called my life. Really.
I look at all I've exposed and revealed in therapy....and I'm astounded. How could anyone live through that without an army of dedicated soldiers of the highest caliber?
And then, I get glimpses of the swampy quagmires, the thickened brambles that I still have to slog through. It'd be so easy to throw up my hands and call me beaten, give it all up. But, that's not for me.
I know...how hard..this next segment of therapy may very well be. Sure, part of me wants to pull the plug and stop it all right here but...the system, my intuitive path propels me forward much to my distress.
I stand alond. I walk alone. This is my battle. Oh, I'll allow therapist along for the ride. The journey wouldn't be doable without her.
