Depression has crept up on me. It was coming on for a while, but I missed the signs this time. Life has thrown other shit at me recently, so I just kept going. At the end of October I was ambushed by it. I knew these emotions were there. They always are, but I manage them really well. It’s all part of the package of Complex PTSD , it’s part of recovering from abuse and living with the physical damage I have that interferes with my life. It’s depression made up of grief, sadness and realisations I already knew, but which this pandemic has pushed me to accept. Or that’s the way I’m going, acceptance. I’m not there yet, that’s why the depression has arrived. It always does before I accept something big about my past, or embrace an old part of me that needs to transform through being given love by me, so internal work. It never ceases to amaze me the many levels there are to Complex PTSD and how they reveal themselves to you, when the time is right. Sadness and grief are fluid within Complex PTSD. They are emotions with such depth which rise up and call for my attention, but due to a number of circumstances, mostly related to the pandemic, I did not or could not pay enough attention and I became overwhelmed. When I finished 7 years of EMDR therapy in December last year I knew there would be grief. I mean it’s obvious. My psychologist told me this. Yes the grief. Just don’t let anyone tell you can simply let this go. That’s bullshit. You live with it forever, you manage it. You feel it, move with it, live alongside it. Sometimes life gives you situations which trigger your sadness, then another wave comes up and you have to learn to swim with it or drown. So I was triggered and it opened the flood gates.
I was forced because of this pandemic to accept an obvious fact about my parents. It’s an acceptance at gut level and in many ways because of the depth of it, feels beyond words. My parents are my abusers, along with other family members and the wider group they were involved with. I obviously do not have anything to do with any of them. I mean I escaped from them, such was the hold they had over me. That was difficult, for all sorts of reasons, but one of the main reasons that made it so difficult was because I was attached to them. I loved them and it’s the ultimate wound they inflicted on me. I needed to love them as a small child, I needed to attach to survive. I needed to embrace all the stuff they gave me, believe the lies they told me about how they loved me. I needed to pretend , forget and dissociate the truth. Despite all the outward appearances of love and nurture they were brutally abusing me.There was no love, only one that was based on lies, but my love was real. It was a love that waited for the pain to stop, but it never did. Abusive parents know this, at least mine did. They cultivate the attachment, because it gives them an almost unbreakable power over their kids. They think you will never leave , you will never get away, you will never speak out. I proved them wrong. I did get away from them, but the bond remains inside and have I had to work on that ! That twisted bond which causes so much distress and grief. My parents are still alive. I knew I would never see them again, that they were dead to me, but then at the start of the pandemic, in their narcissistic denial my parents contacted me. The fact they think they can do this, after all they put me through is a testament to the power of their denial. It’s a pathology. It only matters how I respond. I do not want anything to do with them, so it only confirmed what I already knew, but it was the beginning of the pandemic and I felt vulnerable, part of me wavered because of my attachment. Then I doubled down and that’s when I hit on another deeper level of acceptance that has brought on this depression. I really will never see them again. There will be no resolution, no moment for the child I was where they say sorry and admit what they did. They will never give me that. Do I need that from them ? No. But acceptance over these issues comes bit by bit, saving your mind from exploding. Survivors who were abused by their family will understand what I am talking about, because it’s complex, very complex to be abused by your own parents, the grief runs so very deep. Then after this trigger my beautiful rabbit Joey died. Two months ago now. My heart broke, is still broken. His death shattered me, he was adorable. I could no longer manage my sadness, it overwhelmed me. I needed to give in to it though, real acceptance only ever came to me by submitting to the pain of loss. Now I’m in the middle of it and I’ve had to start anti depressants, which I haven’t needed for ages. I was only functioning because I have to for my daughter. I laugh a lot about all of this. That may sound strange. To laugh at being in pain, but it’s because I know it, it’s how I deal with it, especially when I give in to it when accepting a deep truth. It’s ok, it’s feeling , it’s mine, it will all pass and once again I will have evolved. When I surrender to the process I feel a love inside of me that is a calling home, then I know it’s going to be ok no matter what I have to feel or face.