Disconnected

Photo by Angelina Williams

We think we have moved on. We think we are strong. We think being strong means that we are not affected, we are not hurt, we are not damaged. We think surviving means never looking back… never hurting for the past… never crying over spilled milk that is 20 years old.

I spent much of my late teens and early twenties thinking I was amazing because I had survived and had done so while remaining strong and positive and… unaffected. I could not think about it. I could separate myself from it until thinking or talking about the events of my life felt like a surreal story of some stranger and not myself. I still feel that way sometimes, but I have come to this point where things are starting to feel real, and mine. I am still strong, but I cry out of nowhere just driving down the road or thinking about what I want for breakfast. I don’t have breakdowns over driving or avocados, but little bits of ownership sneak up and kick me in the heart for not acknowledging them and dealing with them before. It’s like the memory that I have had a million times all of the sudden comes with an emotional companion other than anger or self deprecation. 

I have talked about my story, but I always feel like I am talking about someone else. I can't look people in the eye when I talk about it because I feel like I am lying.  I shake. I shake so hard I can’t make myself stop. And it doesn’t stop for hours. But it still doesn’t feel emotional. I don’t feel like crying or in pain, there is just that physical reaction as evidence that it is in fact my story.  Talking about someone else’s abuse does not make your body shake violently. It doesn’t. There are times when I question whether I am pretending it was bad when it really wasn’t and that shaking is my only conformation to myself that it was real, and it was not ‘not that bad’. I still feel disconnected; a coping mechanism I am sure saved me from some serious problems more immediately during and after my younger years, but more and more every day I am realizing that I didn’t make anything go away, I didn’t forget anything, and I did not get out unaffected. I am starting to connect dots and accepting that that voice screaming in my head has all rights to do so. I know I am at the doorstep of what can only be a lot of pain and hard work for the rest of my life, but I am clearly not sitting with my back to the door anymore. And that isn’t to say that disconnecting that way was all bad. I am not sure how I would have dealt with things had I not been able to smile and compartmentalize and cut connections. But it can’t last forever… not if I want to be any different than the people who put that pain there to begin with. That voice has a right to be screaming, but if I keep not listening to it then there is no telling how mad and unhappy it will make every other part of my soul.

In a way, I have felt so disconnected that I felt like a fraud if I acted hurt or talked about it as if it was horrible. How do you talk about something you know people will tell you is terrible and NOT feel like a fraud if you don’t feel the pain you should if it was really that terrible? How do you feel like your story is worth anything, believable, or profound if you can’t put the emotion with the story that you think should be associated with it? You can’t. But I am starting to make associations that show me that I am not a fraud and that pain is there… and that story is real. Because I dream of not being able to move. I nearly lose it in my foster parenting class. And because I cry driving down the road.