Sometimes I gaze into the mirror, at the top of my head, and think, "It's all in there. What's stopping me from getting to it?" My mind is very clever, apparently, as is the mind of every child who went through trauma. It gets forgotten, repressed, skewed, blurred, dismissed, diminished, swept under the rug and kept there until the time comes when you can pull it out, old and dirty and ugly, and look it in the face. That time might come, it might not. And you might need help.

I've felt like seeking help often, only I couldn't quite understand why nor did I remember. It started ringing loudly in my head when I was a 15 or so, and as I was too scared and too embarrassed and too unsure of what it was I really needed, I turned to writing poetry, and then a diary. I felt like something happened to me, something dark was sitting inside me, but I didn't know for sure. Then in my 30s the need for help came again. This time I could afford therapy, and now I knew that something did happen, and I finally knew who did it and why I forgot, but the actual memories apart from some blurry images were still out of my grasp. I turned to writing. Writing helped.  

And now it's not enough. I'm starting to feel the need again, in the eve of turning 40. No matter where I turn, it's staring me in the face, that old dirty ugly thing, and there is no rug anymore to put it under.  

I'm scared. I'm very very scared. But I want to remember. When I can afford it, I want to do therapy again, and I want to dive deep. I brush with this ugly thing in my writing and reading every day. I want to see it clearly very much, but every time I get close I recoil and flee in fright. It's an impossible relationship, really. I'm both attracted to it and repelled by it, and so I hover and dance around and don't get any closer, and this frustrates me to no end.  

The things I THINK I remember are just so altogether impossible and inconceivable that I don't want to believe my own mind that indeed they are sitting there. I push them down and try to forget. Old habit. It seems to be dying off, and so are my defenses. The terror is real, though, that is the only thing I know for sure. And that tells me that I've been taught to discount my feelings and emotions and I have grown to dismiss them as unimportant just as the adults in my life dismissed them. I had no self-worth. I still don't have much.  

It's like walking on the edge of a black oily pool, the substance of which you can't quite categorize as liquid. It seems you have to step into it, but you don't know if it will let you go once you do, and you might sink and there will be nothing to breathe and to hear and to see, or you could slip and fall into it, but you're so mesmerized by the oily blackness, you can't take your eyes off it and so you keep walking along the very edge. That's how I feel, and I wonder who will make the first move.  

For now all I have is books. Writing books and reading books. It's what I've been holding onto when I was little, and it's what I'm still holding onto now. The need is so strong, though, that I don't know how long I will hold. I'll try to spill as much repressed anger and madness and fury in Janna, see if that helps.  

It really is tiring. I inwardly laugh at people who ask me why I keep digging and not just think happy thoughts and stop dwelling on all that shit. It's really funny.  

I WISH I COULD.  

I don't know how. That's why I feel the need again, but it might take me years to get to that point. So back to writing I go. Actually, writing this out right now in his post has helped. I'll keep doing it then. Thank you for reading my darkness. 

Onward.