My Unraveling
** SA trigger warning **
I’ve felt called for a while now to write my story. In many ways to write it for myself, to get it out of my body to help with my healing. But also to share with others who have experienced similar situations to know they are not alone. To share my deepest, darkest times and how I found my way out of them again. I’ve sat down now and started a book about my life twice and each time found myself completely overwhelmed by the process which in turn takes the creativity right out of me. My solution to that is this blog. Whether it reaches 1 person, 10 people or thousands of people- I know that it will go where it is meant to and help those I am meant to help along the way. I trust the process and in that let go of my idea of what it means to be a writer and instead I will just write…
It’s hard at times to know where to begin. It all seems important, it all seems like the catalyst, it all seems like the ‘worst part’ at times. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, not even about myself. There are moments where I have been so hard on myself for how I behaved in certain situations, not realizing at the time why I was triggered as deeply as I was. There are more days than I care to count where I didn’t want to be here, where I wished for my life to end, where I fantasied about my life ending…
So we will start the story here, at what I call ‘MY Unraveling’ or ‘tower card’ moment where everything around me started to fall. It was 2016… I had found out that my husband and I had unexplained infertility and would not be able to have biological children, I had been sexually harassed at work by a superior and hated my job, and then there was the election…
The morning I found out that ‘he who shall not be named’ was elected as president in 2016 my mouth hung open, my vision went blurry and then the tears came and they came and they came. I sobbed uncontrollably for what felt like eternity. My partner, Coleman, holding me as I wept- my whole body convulsing as I tried to escape it- I was no longer safe in this country- a predator was in charge. I was heartbroken that people I loved and who I thought loved me- and terrified truly that anyone- could vote for someone who openly admitted to watching teenage girls in the dressing rooms, someone whom was accused of rape, someone who said his daughter was “hot,” someone who said “just grab her by the p****.” How could they overlook these things for policy? For their own personal financial interests? For their own ‘party’? Because they hated Hillary? How could any of that matter over someone who says things like that which were only the TIP of the mother f’ing iceberg? Because they were just like him?
After what felt like eternity the tears finally stopped. I remember feeling such shame that I cried as hard as I had cried. I had been raped in high school by my boyfriend, but as far as rapes go it was not the most traumatic. I knew many women with SA stories much more scary than mine had been. And then there was that time that my friends brother had tried to rape me one night at her house- she pulled him off of me just in time as he was screaming “I’m going to take it from you like you give it to everyone else.” In the end nothing happened other than her parents not allowing me back to her house because you know rich, white boys and accountability… Why did that hit me so hard? (*flag for later my brain said*)
It’s those flags and the continued unraveling that led me to where I am today- 8 years later. To where I know who I am and what my full story is. How I was able to finally pull off the mask of perfectionism and people pleasing. How I was finally able to feel safe in my body again. My blog posts will continue to show my unraveling, the flags and clues I picked up along the way, and the songs, poems and spells that helped me get to a place of safety inside my body- finally after 37 years.
“I think certainly you were made unique for a reason.
It was not to waste it away
or lose your identity in a group
and become ordinary like everybody else,
to be you!
It was to find out your uniqueness,
to develop it and share it.
Without it, the world will always be
less than what it could have been.”
- Leo F. Buscaglia
