Strange, Healing Dreams

    Last night before finally falling asleep, I was struggling to rein in the thoughts running through my mind. I would get caught up in all of the negative "what if's" of my new living arrangement. A part of me feels like I made a mistake in saying yes to this place; that I said yes so that I could stop looking, not so much because I loved the place. In order to interrupt this, I would return to my "what would it feel like to be free" exercise and would allow all those thoughts to drop away. It's a good practice, but I had to keep returning to it. When I did get to sleep, I had really weird dreams. Not in a bad way, just weird. In one of them, my sister (who was an EMT at one point) was driving an ambulance to see me...she was both the driver and the paramedic, and I hadn't even called 911 or anything. She comes into whatever strange place I'm staying in and starts checking my vitals and things in front of other people that I don't even know. It seems my angels and guides were administering to me last night. 

A Day of Good News

    Today turned into a pretty good day. I was tired and broody this morning...somewhat inevitable since I awoke around 4 again. I had a can of unsweetened Matcha tea with breakfast before my early morning dog walk. After spending some quality time with a canine, I did a brief shop and then headed home. Despite having the caffeinated beverage and despite my body's resistance to sleep, I was actually tired enough to choose to attempt a nap and actually caught some z's. Hooray! Also, it looks like my boss was kind enough to give me a three day weekend which will be perfect. And to top off the good news with more good news, I finally got my federal tax return and it will cover the security deposit and the first month's rent at my new place...the only time when being "poor" pays off is with the tax returns.

Housing Update

    I finally heard back about the room in a house-share I applied for and I'm in! I'm going to need to get some help moving all my things when the time comes, but I've got a place at long last. There will be 4 other people there with me and as far as I know it'll have a communal vibe. I do have to get my bed from someone's basement since I let them keep it for me while I continued to move around since it was too much trouble to worry about at the time. No pets are allowed sadly, but the person who showed me around seemed like a potential good friend. The room is small, but I think I'll still be able to get my things out of storage. Hopefully the move will be more effortless than it appears to be at the moment...we shall see.

A Prayer to Restore Self-Love

My biological father successfully convinced me that I am unlovable.
He successfully convinced me that there is nothing good about me.
His actions successfully convinced me that the world was made up of monsters
and that I was one of them.
He made me angrier at myself than I was at him.
He made me hate myself more than I could hate him.

I don't know how I let him get away with this for so long.
The amount of energy I have put into my self-hatred,
into suppressing all that needs to be expressed...
How did I let him so thoroughly ruin my relationship with myself?
And how can I begin to rectify it?

Dear Mother, Father, God, Great Spirit, Our Creator...
Angels, guides, and ancestors,
please pour Your healing light, Your healing grace into my crown. 
Dear Mother, Father, God, Great Spirit, Our Creator...
Angels, guides, and ancestors,
please dissolve all of the shame, guilt, and self-contempt
that still thrives in my consciousness.
Dear Mother, Father, God, Great Spirit, Our Creator...
Angels, guides, and ancestors,
please mend the fissures in my mind that allowed me to believe
that I was unlovable, that I was despicable, that I was the monster.
Please mend the fissures in my heart that ruptured my self-love,
and those that kept it ignorant
of God's unending, unconditional love for me.
Thank You, God. Thank You, God. Thank You, God.
Let this be so. And so it is.
Amen

Another Layer Brought to Light

    This afternoon I have begun to ponder the root cause of the hair pulling habit. It was our point of focus during my half hour therapy session today and I used the BLS (Bilateral Stimulation) while working on healing this issue. The first conclusion I came to is that this self-soothing habit is something I do in order to keep an extraordinary amount of suppressed rage bottled up. Specifically, all the rage aimed at my biological father that I continually fail to acknowledge. No matter how wild my discoveries are in terms of what he has done to me, the only anger and rage I ever acknowledge is directed toward all of the other adults who were around me at the time who failed to advocate for me and who failed to protect my siblings and me from our biological parents. Three of them knew what had happened to me and yet DSS would continue to send us back into the war-zone.

    The question that followed this conclusion was "what belief or aspect of my consciousness has been the stronghold against this impotent rage?" The answer that came to the fore there is my belief that I deserved everything he did to me and the part of me that still carries a great deal of self-loathing. I have directed a great deal of anger towards myself and towards the people who failed to help me, but not towards the abuser. And yet I know there's a huge well of rage reserved just for him that I have failed to acknowledge and express. As twisted as this discovery sounds, it's a good step forward because I know where to go from here; I know what needs to be healed.

What Freedom Feels Like

    This evening I have been asking myself what my life would look like and what it would feel like if I were free. Free from the past, free from the intrusive thoughts, free from the effects of the trauma, free from it all. What would that look and feel like? I'd be free of self-judgment. I'd be free of self-contempt. I would be free of the painful cycles. I would be free to fall asleep with ease. I would be free of my fear of falling in love. (I don't fear a broken heart so much as falling for someone who is charming at first, then turns into a monster.) I would feel alive again. I would feel as though anything is possible. I would feel as though nothing could stop me. If I hadn't gone through trauma, this is what I imagine my life could have felt like. And it still can if I can just maintain faith in myself and in the transformation that could be possible if I were to allow it. As I wrote a couple years ago, I have the key to my own cell. Yes, my biological father built it an threw me in, but I always had the key to my own freedom. I don't have to be trapped in the cell anymore.

What would it feel like to be free?
I'd have no worries. I'd have no guilt.

What would it feel like to be free?
I'd have no fears. I'd have no doubts.

What would it be like to be free?
I'd feel loved. I'd feel safe.

What would it be like to be free?
I'd remember to feel the warmth of the sun
and trust the falling rain.

A Not So Merry Merry-Go-Round

    I thought it would be easier to write during therapy, but it hasn't been. All the things that I am trying to overcome are coming to the surface to deal with and I haven't yet been able to get into a meditative state that would ease the tension in my mind. It's been a never ending merry-go-round of depressive, intrusive thoughts surrounding my early childhood experiences. As I read in an article recently, what's going on in therapy at that moment is that I 'm "actively opening up old wounds in an effort to reframe my experiences." Now that my work load has lessened, I find myself going back to binge-watching shows and trying to pull all my hair out again. (Still not sure what part of my history caused the hair pulling habit, but I might be able to find out through the EMDR.) I guess I just don't know what else to do to escape my mind. Other people use a drug addiction to escape and I seem to choose a screen addiction. Don't get me wrong, I'm still going on walks outside everyday, with and without the pets I walk, but I spend the whole walk thinking in circles. There hasn't been any real relaxing going on when I try to relax.