Giving This Diary Thing a Shot

I’ll give this diary thing a shot, at least tonight. It helps that it’s anonymous. Not just written in my journal but out there for someone to see, but with no way to know who sees it or for anyone to know who I am.

TW for abuse, violence, trauma, mental health, the worlds

I’m free now. After so many years of abuse by my bio father, and having that abuse justified and enabled — often in the name of God — by my mother, I’m so glad to be free. I have a chosen family. I love them more than life itself and they love me. I am loved and supported and cherished in a way I never have been before. But the body remembers. My mind remembers.

and it’s weird, but I’m grieving.

grieving the life I didn’t have

grieving the love I didn’t have

grieving the abuse

grieving the trauma

I am starting to think that healing from grief has very little to do with making the pain go away, and perhaps it’s not even about lessening it. I’m starting to think that maybe I will carry grief with me my whole life, and it’s really about learning to carry what can’t be fixed. The wounds stay, they may scar over but they don’t go away or get smaller, we just grow around them, like a tree that’s been wounded. The tree bears the wound, but as the tree grows, the wound takes up less of the tree.

so I’m trying to learn to carry what can’t be fixed.

but I slept so much today (I was off work today). The memories are so strong and I’m in mental agony. Some days are like this. But I’m trying so hard to break the cycle.

today I didn’t want to be alone. But I wanted to be alone more than anything. My life is a paradox right now. And that has to be okay.