I feel like I have one foot in heaven and one foot in hell.
I have a phenomenal life. A steady job that makes me proud. A teenage son – while albeit a teenager – a wonderful, kind, witty young man who brings joy to many. A proud mom, I am. With all the worry and guilt, I rest easy on other’s reports of his manners, kindness, intellect, sense of humor, creativity, and developing wisdom. A beautiful, kind, warm, hardworking, non-judgemental, compassionate, passionate woman who - for reasons beyond my comprehension – thinks she doesn’t deserve me. A woman who thinks the sun and moon of me. An incredible circle of friends – many of which have become chosen family. Friends that treat me like family. Friends who encourage me, support me, love me. Friends that love me enough to tell me the truth. Friends who hold me up and bring me back down to earth.
I suppose I am doing well enough to handle hell, again. Horrific nightmares. Decades old grief breaking through the ice of well-developed survival skills. Days spent visibly shaken from the repeated attacks my psyche is attempting to come to terms with. The nights filled with dreams that echo in the backdrop all the next day. Echos of footsteps on stairs. Echos of the pale moonlight coming through a dirty window. Echos. Hell. And while I know I will survive this hell – as I did before – the yin yang of this balancing act tends to leave this warrior weary.
Unfair! How unfair to have to relive hell. I grow bored with myself; talking about it, carrying it around on my sleeve, finding myself echoing the culture’s status quo of “get over it,” “pull yourself up.” The wiser, more compassionate part of me embraces the bloody, beaten, raped little girl – teenager – young woman – and loves her with patience. But this wise, compassionate part of me is not the part that gets up at six o’clock in the morning to make sure her son is up for school; makes sure they live in a clean, safe home; makes sure her son’s needs are met; makes sure her friends and chosen family – these precious relationships – are well-tended to like the beautiful garden that has grown; that makes sure the wonderful woman who stands beside her feels cherished; that goes to work; that does her very best to be productive, pleasant, helpful, patient, smiling at work – that tends to things that need to be tended to. Oh no – that takes the part of me that is the to-do list oriented administrator.
Oh to reconcile the two. I am banking on the certainty that one day I will and hell will subside, even if it’s just for a little while.
Posted in madness, recovery/surviving, survivor
