Therapeutic Journaling ...

I seem to find my way to this little corner of the web whenever things are getting loud inside my head. Not really a bad thing, to be honest, if it's helping me think my way through the mental baggage I need to shed. If nothing else, it's provided me with the ability to review previous entries with a view to trying to unpack said baggage. Shadow work is never pleasant but if I want to reconnect with the person I began as, before I shattered, I absolutely have to be candid and honest in that work. There's no way healing is possible if I try to avoid the unpleasant emotions that inevitably arise. Eh?

Had a bit of an understanding breakthrough a few days back and have been ruminating on it since. 

It was shortly after I posted to Facebook about wanting to "reclaim my voice"... Try to undo the trauma from what had been, for me, that final straw and undo also the damage I did to myself as a result of it. To undo the mental gag order and sing... Out loud... After 41 years of being silenced. 

Still not at all sure what I'm to do with it now that I've had it. Been turning it around and around in my head, very carefully in case it's really a grenade with the pin long gone and just waiting for me to disturb it to unleash all hell. 

Simply put : After I was publicly branded a liar to protect his academic reputation, my father made absolutely certain that I knew, to the very core of my being  - I'd never be believed again. 

Yeah, there's one hell of a story behind that statement and standing in the way of that story is the Cardinal Rule of the Elephant in the Room. 

The Rule I broke because I was a 13 year old child who just couldn't cope with the constant bullying she experienced at school, in the neighborhood, and at home in addition to the stress and trauma the Elephant brought to daily life. 

The Rule I never meant to break... 

At a breaking point psychologically, I simply answered truthfully the question "what's wrong?" after I was fished, dirty and tear stained, from under the staircase at school where I'd taken refuge after a particularly bad go round with those who hunted me on the schoolyard. 

It all bubbled out of me uncontrollably and with it, any chance I may have had for salvation. 

As you can see, I'm still dancing around that Rule because it is so very well burned into my soul. 

He did his work so well, that the knife in my back is still venomous and potent even though both my parents have passed on and my sister and I have broken ties and gone our own ways precisely as I knew we would. 

And I am beginning to try to grope around the landscape of my mind to see if I can get the thing out so healing can finally begin. Since I've never done this before, I'm expecting a fair bit of trial and error while I figure out what coping strategies will lead to closure and I'd be lying if I said that I relished knowing that I'm going to have to wade, ears deep, into the buried trauma to figure it out. 

Yeah... Shadow work blows...