Sleep Eludes Me

Thus I write.
Up, out of bed, lest the memories engulf me. The past is a voracious beast when left unattended or properly cared for.
Realizing the magnitude of what I've lived through...and the hurts I care inside which seem to be leaking to the surface and are becoming more impossible to contain.
I think most people carry stuff inside, mostly parental approval or disapproval, like naked trees in spring. You know, childhood events, our parents hate, love or neglect...their not loving us enough, getting their approval, all the times they hit us calling it discipline, when in reality it hurt and humiliated, all that stuff dwells inside.
Emotions, those retched things we really don't want to deal, hmm, they exist whether we believe it or not.
A spanking was a hit of disapproval and bullying. Those kids that were hit, grew up to hit their kids thinking they lived through it, why shouldn't their kids?
People, parents like to express their pain, kinda to try and neutralize it, by doing it to their kids. In a sense, hitters are saying, "well, I lived through that humiliation and degradation and my parents were never wrong, so here kid, I'll wallop you and make my parents actions okay in my head."
You know, if your face is pushed against a wall it's a seriously narrow view.
Introspection is only for the brave and utilized by very few.
How do I feel? Lately, like I'm tied up, naked on a mattress waiting for the next....
Yeah, so it can summerize my early years but I'm not gonna hide it. I don't deceive myself by painting a pretty picture when all I had to work with was grey and black.
I no longer pretend to be without emotions. Sure, most of the ones I feel suck but I think, in working through my shit, that I will find some light and bright.
I've stopped lying to myself. I get where I am coming from. So, yeah, it's a putrid sewer but it ain't going to get any better unless I admit it's there.
People lie to themselves...and die never knowing who they are.
I don't want to be like them...I refuse to keep my eyes shut and drown in the black sea of repressed emotions and discarded truths.
I know so much about what happened to me...and yeah, it's keepin me up nights.