It was 4 months and 4 days after “The Event” that I started blogging.  I’m pretty sure I started doing it, because I thought that by sharing, other parents going through the same thing might have a little head start on what they were going to experience.  When I wrote my very first small blurb, I was pretty nervous, but it came out fairly quick and easy as it didn’t really have much meat in it.  It wasn’t until I actually started writing the beginning of the the events that I really started to feel what was happening.

As I started writing that first piece, I started to cry.  At points, I was crying so hard, I was typing by memory because I couldn’t see the screen.  I felt almost feverish as I typed, banging out the words as I relived the terror, grief and fear of the different things I had experienced.  Before I posted, I read the blog through, making sure I had not disclosed names, or anything else I thought might reveal sensitive identities or issues.  I wanted to really make sure I was ok with what would be in print.  I remember one day, reading my words back to myself, curled up in my bed, as the tears poured down my face for 2 straight hours.  I was exhausted, weak, and felt broken, but what happened next was pretty surprising, and quite unexpected.  I wasn’t upset anymore.  I was done.  No feeling, no more tears, no extreme fear – I was done.  By being open with myself, and perhaps others I dealt with the trauma and it was gone.

About a month ago, my daughter and I decided to have a girls night.  We made popcorn, got our favorite beverage ready along with some fresh fruit, and picked a movie to watch on tv.  We usually pick our favorite essential oil to diffuse to add a beautiful atmosphere, and that night was no different.  About 20 minutes in, both of us fell asleep.  One and a half hours later, I woke up, and realizing what had happened, got her to bed and then followed suit quite quickly.  The next morning, she came upstairs and asked how I slept.  “Not well, I had really bad dreams.”  “Me too.  What were your dreams about?”  “I dreamed about one of the escalations that happened at the hospital.”  “No way!!!  No way!!! Really?  I did too, just my dream was my side of it.”  We both dreamed about the same event, through the entire night.  The amazing thing?  Since then, that night is no longer frightening and I have a hard time even thinking about it.  It’s gone.  Done. Over.  It’s no longer part of my life – just part of the story.

Over the last month, as my daughter has been digging deeper in to the issues that hurt and continue to haunt her, my own truths have been rising to the surface.  Perhaps the topics and feelings are too reminiscent of my own, or perhaps its being in so many different counseling sessions, but I’m being forced to think about pieces of my past that I’m not comfortable re-living.  I have learned that through merely writing my words in a blog, I can speak the past, and the pain disappears, but when faced with dealing with my own demons, I become weak, scared, and the anxiety overwhelms me.  I’m a thankful person, and know I’m blessed in many ways, but there are also things I can’t ignore.

I was molested by a neighborhood girl when I was in elementary school.  I was tormented as I grew up about my body by people I should have been able to trust, and I struggle every day with feelings of inadequacy – that my value as a person is based on what my body looks like.  When I see these people as an adult, I’m still paralyzed as I was when I was a child.  I was verbally abused by a teacher at school, and mentally over and over again in a bad relationship until all I could think of was letting go of the steering wheel and having it all be over.  I don’t want to hear about laying it at God’s feet and He’ll just take it away.  I don’t believe that – and I’ve never seen evidence of it.  I don’t want to go to more counselors, because they just want to talk about my daughter.  Talking to sympathetic people means hearing how I should just get over it, and empathetic people want to sit and feel bad together, which I’m not in to either.  I don’t want to feel sorry for myself, and I certainly don’t want others to feel sorry for me either.  How can I feel so strong most days, and still be struggling with the same things?  I would really love, to JUST….BE….OVER IT.  Absolutely….. all of it.

You can walk on splinters and get where you’re going, but you’re feet will still be infected.  I’m strong, and I know I’ll get where I’m going, no matter what,  but the splinters are festering, and the blisters are rising to the surface.  I’m just not quite sure what it will take for me to heal.