The Scars On My Heart

In life I have come across many people. In life I have endured more then most people will ever understand. In life, there are some deep scars that occupy my heart. They can't be seen from the outside, but inside, the scars are deep. 

There was the man who I thought I loved, and he broke my young heart. He taught me a lot about perception, and people who are two faced. I thought I knew him, but man was I wrong. I was young, naive, and clueless. When your fresh out of high school you think you know it all, you think you are invincible. He taught me a lot, I was living outside of the safety bubble, I was fresh and new into the world. He was an eye opener, I don't think I actually loved him, I was still in love with the idea of the fairy tale. 

Then there was the stranger who took something from me I can never get back. I wasn't prepared, nor ready. I was still naive, and young, he left a scar deep in my heart. It left me shattered and confused. I didn't speak about it for a while. I was the victim, but what he gave me was the gift of self hate and doubt. I carried that gift for years. Only recently did I visit this scar and realize, I was still carrying his gift around. I left his gift, 15+ years later. The scars will be there, but I don't have to carry the weight of the gift anymore, and I can fill that spot with good memories. 

Next, next, is hard to explain. You would think the stranger would be the hardest one to forget. It turns out that once physical wounds heal, they leave emotional ones too. These scars, these are ones are hard to talk about, emotional, physical, and other violations. I still can't stand to have my neck touched. I still sometimes doubt it when people tell me they love me. I still doubt people's intentions, because emotional wounds take longer to heal then physical. You remember the touch long after you can feel the touch. You get used to waiting for the storm to come followed by the sun, only to have to go through it all again. 

From here, well I really honestly lived in fight or flight. There is good that happens, there is bad, but I never really healed. Every trauma after that ex, was reliving every moment I had with him. There was more bad then good in that relationship. For a few years I felt like I was living in some version of groundhog day. I didn't know it then, but this was PTSD. This was my trauma response. This was me cutting everyone out, this was me not being able to hold relationships, this was me falling to pieces time and time again. 

It's funny how this all came to light too. I had a bad experience with police, really bad experience, I was hauled out of my house with a rifle pointed at the kill shot. I still can remember the red beam. This even was immediately following a dispute with someone else who came out me with a knife. You wanna talk about being triggered? I can remember everything about that night in vivid detail from the moment I was in jeopardy, not so much about before, the trauma response is really interesting. I can still remember what I was wearing. I still remember the badge number. 

In this moment, the police officer was every other man here. He was every trauma coming through in my life. Sometimes, fucked up things happen for a reason. This last one, did have a reason. At the core of every trauma, is a male figure taking power from me. The trauma response for me is triggered by feeling helpless or powerless. Wherever I am in life, I go back to the spot that I was in before, and I relive every other moment. 

It took me a solid year to get that point where the connections to make sense. It took (almost) two years, for me to gather up all these "gifts" and put them in one box. The box is heavy. The box brings out the worst. I can leave the box where it needs to be left, I can leave it open. I don't have to carry it's weight around, but inside, even though the gifts suck, there is wisdom, there is life in the pieces I picked up when the gifts shattered me. 

I have picked up the pieces. I put me back together with glitter and glue. This women, this women has been through it. This women, has some pretty interesting quirks. This women found her power by letting go of the gifts that she didn't need to carry. On a shelf, in a closet of my heart, there is the box. The lid is open, so I never forget that I have the power now. I have control. I have the power.