When a Few Months Have Passed

Hi everyone, I wanted to come back to you with my heart since I haven't poured that out in a while!

This was for a couple reasons - I had a school assignment where I needed to write posts about nutrition, and I was in no shape or place to be sharing where I was.

Fun fact: It has been a terrible year. Quite possibly the darkest year of my life. I'm not recovered from it, but I can speak from where I am now.

Since this year brought me fresh trauma and heartbreak, this post is for broken hearts of all kinds. 

Specifically, those of you whose hearts were broken a few months ago.  

Those of you who experienced significant traumatic events long enough ago that even if anyone knew about it, it's no longer on their radar. 

The shame, the trauma, the loneliness, the rage inside that comes with it - is all so powerful.

You were alone in your body when it happened. The one space you live in that you can't escape, was shaken. One minute before you were safe, at home inside of yourself; one minute after, you became a stranger to the home your body once was. 

 You live alone in your body, in your mind. You share room and board with the loud voices, the loud fears. Your childhood home became a haunted house.

After that day, no one can truly console you, because no one can keep you safe from yourself. The danger is no longer outside of you, it's inside of you now. 

You can't let go. Your body doesn't just "let go" from trauma. The body keeps the score. I wrote a whole separate blog post on that! 

For a while, if you have support in your life, you'll have loved ones checking up on you, they know you're going through a dark time. 

After a few months have passed, people start to forget. It's off the radar. But your body's radar is as strong as it ever was. 

The randomest triggers, in the randomest settings, make my body shake and produce tears. I am rarely aware of it before it happens. I could be thinking about nothing related to the event, and my body responds without my mind even knowing it. I'm not purposely crying or intentionally shaking, it's just a trauma response. 

It's one thing if you're alone in your car. It's another thing if you're at work - with a patient, a customer, in a place you "can't" just break down. 

Sometimes a good crying session is calming. 

Other times, it all just gets out of control. It could be a song, it could be the color of someone's hair, it could be the layout of a room. One small trigger, and you become completely dysregulated. 

After that day, anything and everything can send you to that place in your body when your life changed forever.

Sometimes a day or so passes, and it doesn't weigh as heavy, it might not even be on your mind as much. You think you've finally gotten somewhere, and then out of nowhere it hits you again. You had a semblance of peace that just slips away like sand through the spaces between your fingers. 

You can't help it. You still dream about it. Life doesn't just move on for you the way it does for everyone else. The worst is how it just moves on for the people who wronged you, and you have to live with the lifelong consequences of their actions. 

It can feel like it's been both years since it happened, and like it was yesterday. It all feels so real, the moment you get triggered, like you're reliving it all over again and you can't get it out of your head. You'll do absolutely anything to make it stop but you're stuck, and you're alone. And you're afraid to talk about it, because you think everyone is tired of hearing about it. You don't want to keep bothering the same people about the same trauma. 

It all comes with so much shame. Why did this happen to me? Did I let it happen? Every single day, you're living in a different stage of grief. 

Some days, it's the anger and hatred at the cruelty of whoever was involved. 

Sometimes you love them, and you feel even more shame for all the hatred you have. Or you have extra shame that you've internalized from believing that you caused someone you loved with everything inside of you to treat you the way they did.

There's shame for the thoughts you might have about those people, to want them to feel the horrible, heinous pain they caused you, which makes you feel evil. 

When I was in Switzerland, I talked to a man who changed my life. He sat down with me and shared the darker parts of his story, in a way that I could hear my own story inside of it. He told me about the decades it took to even begin to recover, and how his trauma still impacts him.

He made none of the well meaning comments about how it's going to get better, and how at least I have what I have, how far I’ve come, how strong I am -  when that's just not it. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. Maybe some if it is okay to hear from time to time. But that's not what I want to hear. I want to be seen. I want the truth. 

I can't be alone in that. 

The truth is it might not get better.  My body remembers trauma. Everyone's does. 

We actually talked about how I can't heal, because healing means I can be the person I was before this happened. And I will never, ever be that person. That person has changed, she's been stolen from me, and she's also grown. I'm not sure if I have a harder heart or a softer heart quite yet. Maybe a bit of both. For a while I wasn't sure if I had a heart left at all. I can recover - I can learn to accept and live with what happened, and build a life around it. But I'll never be the same. 

This year has been terrifying. I had never felt so devastated. In my worst moments, I always felt God, and this was the first time I felt completely abandoned. 

I don't want to be seen as strong. I don't want to be seen as resilient. I want to be seen and loved so that I never have to be those things again. I want to not be afraid of myself and everything around me. I want to trust myself and everything around me. 

Yesterday at work one of my newer coworkers told me that his first impression of me was that I hate people. Which was hilarious to hear… and also, really sad. 

Not long ago, I would have given off the complete opposite first impression. I used to see the best in everyone when I looked at them; now when I see people, my mind goes straight to screening them for how they could hurt me and people like me. I immediately look at what characteristics they share with those who have done me wrong, and hate them for it, before I even give them a chance. Writing this brings tears to my eyes, because that is not the Kyra I used to know, or want to be. I want to see the best in people.

I asked him if he still felt the same way after knowing me, and he said "No, I think you just care too much about people." And hey, maybe it's both. Maybe I hate the potential everyone has to hurt, and that intensity comes from how much I care about the people I love not getting hurt.

I read a quote a few days ago that said:
"You don't hate people. That's your pain talking. 

You love people.

You hate the fact that the genuine strength of your love has been manipulated, mishandled, or misunderstood in the past which makes you fearful to love and trust to that extent now." 

And that was it. That made sense. 

At the same time, I really do have hatred inside of me. Months have passed, and my heart has changed for the worse. 

Sometimes the weight of it all is just so heavy I feel like I can't carry it. Physically, my body changes. My legs feel like lead, I can barely keep my eyes open during the day, my head is heavy, there's pressure against my forehead, and my brain is racing with loud voices. It catches me in the back of my throat, my chest flares up with a hot tightness, and I don't feel like my body and mind can carry on like that. 

There are so many factors that go into trauma. I think the hatred and anger I carry with me exacerbates all of it. 

I look at the Bible, how Jesus commands his disciples to forgive as many times as another person sins against them.

And I sit with myself, my head in my hands, wondering how in the world I can forgive someone who took my life away from me like that. And the shame thickens. It sinks deeper and deeper. And the bitterness grows, like a thorny vine in my body, eating me away, poking at whatever functional parts I have left. 

Of course it's normal to have so much inner conflict after life altering experiences. 

I think validating ourselves and taking away as much shame as possible is the most important step. 

While I don't have much insight to offer, I wanted to say that I see whoever is in this place right now.

Months, years after their lives changed. I see you. I see your pain. I know it's not gone. Mine isn't either. I don't know if it will go away. I just know that it's there, and that it's real. 

I don't have answers about how to get through it, I just know that you're doing it, and there is no right way to do it. While you might not be proud of some of the ways you choose to cope, be gentle with yourself, knowing that you are surviving. It's okay if the thing that happened months ago, years ago, still renders you paralyzed, without an idea of how to respond to the simplest triggers.

The greatest insights I've learned from the wisest people are the most basic, difficult truths: 

We have to acknowledge what we went through as being real, the pain as being valid, and forgiving ourselves with grace and gentleness for how we've responded. Telling ourselves, "of course I reacted this way," "it makes sense why I feel that." Shame is the greatest enemy to recovery and freedom. That's why the words "me too" are so powerful. 

So I'm here to say: 

You went through hell this year and you're still reacting to it? Well, me too. And it sure does make a lot of sense why we are.