Trauma....extreme horror happening in your own home can kill you but you keep living your life.
You look around and wonder why no one notices that you aren't breathing. They are looking right at you so you think they must be able to see you so you smirk a tiny smile and they start talking about the weather, their job, the latest gossip or vacation and you think, "Wow...can they see ghosts or am I actually still alive?"
And then time ticks on.
You slowly...ever so slowly come back from the land of the dead.
And when I say slowly? I don't think most will actually understand or fully know ....really know...how slowly time can tick by.
Watch a sink drip for a week... slowly.
Watch the clouds float by for a year.... slowly.
Watch yourself grow old while your friends grow young...slowly.
I died the day my first husband shot himself.
He took the bullet and I died.
I buried him and I wasn't breathing.
I picked out his headstone and yet I was also gone from this earth. A shell of the girl I once was. Becuase the moment that I learned that he was dead and it was by his own hand? It killed so many cells inside of me that make me....me. The girl that believed that marriage meant forever. The girl that loved to dance to a country song and sing with her friends. The girl who didn't ever think of worst case scenarios let alone think of them with each move she makes...every single day.
Sometimes I get a glimpse of her.
It's been almost 9 years since she stepped out of my body like a ghost and walked down the street while the shell of me sat with the medical examimer on my back porch while he handed me my husbands wallet. She didn't want to stay. The pain was too extreme so she escaped and I had to stay.
Stay for my children.
Stay because there was still laundry in the washing machine, and the dog needed to be taken for a walk.
Stay because there were bills to pay, people to console, a yard to be mowed.
No more dancing to country music in the moonlight. No more chasing dreams with a big gypsy heart. No more crossing the street and not picturing my own funeral if I got hit by a truck.
Sometimes I get a glimpse of her.
And it's like a shock to my heart.
A shock becuase often I go months...years and I forget that I was ever her. She takes my breath away. I wish I could be as carefree as she looks. But there are children to protect so I watch her dance with tears in my eyes.
Yes....over 9 years I've done some healing and by some I mean buckets. Oodles. Lifetimes. I've done more healing in 9 years than most people will ever have to do in one lifetime and I'm still not finished but...I've done the hard work and gotten to a place where I can feel safe and content within the new life I've designed. Safe inside of a mind that plays worst case scenarios. I can feel joy again. Happiness even....again.
And then I catch of glimpse of her.
She's dancing to a country tune. Barefoot. Laughing until she can't breathe.
And I try to reach out and grab her.....or at least graze her arm with my fingertips. But she's running....wild and free. I can't catch her. She's a ghost. A ghost of the old me. Even if I could catch her....I can't place her back inside of me. It doesn't work that way because the me that stayed all these years while she was off dancing? This me is different and as much as I hate my tragedy...the horror that lives just under my skin? I can't hate it fully even though it took her...that dancing girl from me. It gave me this me that I am now. Even with all her worst case scenarioes and "I'm too afraid to do that" thoughts. She's so loving and has empathy like a warrior. Because she stayed and toughed out the dark? She can reach her hand into others darkess. That dancing girl? I'm not so sure she would have sat under the tornado of other people's pain and tried to release her words to help. She might have kept dancing, walking down the street....looking the other way. So as much as I miss her? As much as I hope she comes back one day? I'm grateful for the me that stayed even if she's different.
And I now...at almost 45 years old with almost 9 years of pain under my belt? I don't believe that you fully become human until you go through something that steals yourself from you. And you fight like hell to get yourself or any new you....back. And this isn't about grief. This is about what trauma of this extreme level really does to an adult person. I thank the stars in the sky....every single day.....that my children were so young when he died so with as much as they lost and they lost they did...they were protected by youth and their mama from losing themselves inside of the trauma. They were age 4 and 23 months when he died and they know the truth of our story but have no memories of it or what it did to us/them in the days, weeks, years after. I am the keeper of the story and that is a curse and a blessing all rolled into one heavy load on my shoulders.
Sometimes I catch a glimpse of her.
A song will play and I'll stop breathing.....seeing her dancing in the rain.
I wonder if she ever catches a glimpse of me.
Me in my cardigan sweater typing away to reach broken hearts around the world.
Sometimes I catch a glimpse of her and I still think......how unfair. How unlucky. Why her? Why all this pain in her life? And then I remember that I am her and why not me? Why not? Bad things happen thousands of times a day. And so I keep picking up the shattered pieces and grinding them down into ink to make words hoping that they reach you. You out there who understands.
Life is brutal and unfair and so we must take that brutal and make something beautiful.
I make words.
Thanks for reading.
Love always, Nik
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