I’ve always been a writer. Even going as far back as elementary school, I’ve always gravitated towards writing to communicate my feelings. I had…a rather intense childhood, and it’s not something I like to think about or relive.
Since we’re going to be starting EMDR in therapy soon…I’m kind of going to be forced to think about all of that stuff anyway. I try really hard to just ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist, but I guess that doesn’t always work. Clearly.
I’ve always kept all of my old journals. Even the ones I did while in school. Yesterday, for some reason, it seemed like a good idea to look for them. So I spent a while looking through old boxes trying to find things that the younger version if me has written. I ended up finding like 3 huge boxes filled with stuff.
I guess I’m just trying to connect with myself again. I’ve been shoving it back for so long that I’ve completely dissociated from any past version of myself. And its creating too much of a divide within myself in the present. It’s like I’ve forgotten that that person, me, was a child. And I was dealing with some pretty heavy shit.
My current self is not….the most functional? I mean, I am, but let’s be real. I could do better.
Having kids changes you. It changes your identity, a lot of people question who they are, if who they were before kids exists anymore, if they’ll ever find themselves again…. It happens with…probably everyone at some point.
But when you have trauma on top of that…the disconnect with yourself can become extreme.
I think that’s what happened with me. I was already trying SO hard to escape myself, escape my life and my memories and my fears. And then I had kids, and it became easy to lose sight of myself and who I already was. So much so that I forgot how to give myself any grace or love or forgiveness.
I didn’t have to go through many pages in my old journals to find something that broke my heart for the child that wrote it. It was an assignment for school. I had just started 8th grade, and this was on the very first page.
“Traumatic memories from childhood
What scared me when I was younger?
My sister is the only thing that scared me when I was younger, other than natural disasters. She would always yell and scream at me for no reason at all. She’s 9 years older than me. She always ran away and broke things and yelled at me about everything and nothing. I’m still scared of her today.”
And a few pages after that:
“If I even tried to describe my family’s personality, I couldn’t. We could go from fun, loving, happy or calm to loud, rowdy, angry, overdramatic and obnoxious within 5 seconds flat. But it’s only one person alone that changes the mood. My Sister.”
I just….I want to hug the kid that wrote that. That was feeling all of that. Hating life and wanting to die so early on….
I don’t know why I ever expected to be anything less than fucked up. But I think I have to find a way to connect with myself again if I ever want to begin to heal.