Re-claiming

It's taken me three long, desert-like years to discover that violence can be purely emotional.

Yes, I've read all the stories about emotional abuse. I've watched Law and Order: SVU. I've seen first hand the results of brain-washing. But never once did I think it could happen to me. Perhaps this is a resulting fallacy of my mid-Western American upbringing. Relatively safe. Relatively happy. Relatively sheltered. Being aware of what is happening in other parts of the world does not give the same understanding as actually experiencing those things. Anyone who has been to a third world country and witnessed real poverty can attest to this.

I am no different. I had no idea what real emotional trauma could do to a person. In fact, because I mostly blamed myself for the trauma in my life, it never occurred to me that it was abuse. But it was. And I was a victim.

Ugh. I hate that word. There is such a loss of control there. Something I hate with so much passion, I can't even describe it in words. I don't like loss... in any form.

But loss is what I experienced. Not just any loss, but a violent, tragic, heart-rending loss. The kind that broke me.

I'm not talking about the kind of broken that makes a person suicidal. I am aware that people have it much worse than me, and there are kinds of emotional trauma that some people never recover from. It is my prayer that I am not one of those people. I am determined to recover, and this... this is my therapy.

My loss was my cathartic, creative writing outlet. My stories were stolen from me, literally taken and violated. A kind of emotional rape that I am positive few people are really going to understand. I won't take it personally if you scoff at this. The analogy probably sounds ridiculous to anyone who has been physically raped. And from that perspective, it is. But the trauma was the same. My creativity was broken. My inspiration suppressed. The loss was so deep, I sank gratefully into denial.

Today I was shaken from that comforting, self-effacing place. Today the band-aid was ripped right off, and not by more hurt... but by kindness and a genuine need to help heal a wound that was obvious to anyone who knew me four (or more) years ago. This emptiness that filled my once literary, word-filled world was bigger than I expected.

Now, I am angry. How dare anyone take that from me? It was mine. It IS mine. And while the physical, readable evidence of those days no longer exists (except perhaps on some back-up server that no one can access without special privileges that I wouldn't even know how to begin to request) the creativity, the passion, and the drive that formed passages, paired words, lengthened narrative... those still exist. They are buried under hurt and anger and abject terror, but they are there.

Today I make it my mission to pull myself out from under those layers. I make it my mission to find myself again. Today I told someone I was content with who I am, but a few short hours later I discovered a part of myself is missing. Perhaps I am still content, but I am driven to find the rest of me. No... it's deeper than drive, deeper than ambition. I need to find it. It is an integral part of me. The outpouring of my soul. And I will reclaim it.