Something is happening inside me I don’t understand. It is an occurring of a way to be that is coming around, after all denial is gone. Lost forever. I feel love for the denial I once had. It was monumental, it saved my life as a child, it held me from a tidal wave of pain as an adult, but it could not last forever, it simply wasn’t a match for the truth. Denial and the truth battled it out on the plane of addiction, and the truth won. All the years denial held me close have now been matched by the same amount of time truth has had my attention. Thirty years each. Each period of time feels like a different life, because to break up with denial and start living with the truth meant I had to evolve and change, so I am not the same person. It has taken so much time for the full truth to be unravelled. I think it has been as gentle with me, as denial was in protecting me. Slowly weaving its way out and up into my consciousness. Very, very slowly. But now it’s done this work, denial really has gone forever. All has been seen, all faced. I wished for the end, but now it is here I am sick with a grief I have not known before. There are no words, I cannot talk. There has been a nausea in my stomach that speaks to me. If I listen it tells me it is made up of tears. They simply stun me. I have been stunned by the closing of the gate.
Denial shapes you to be who you are, truth breaks that all down. Then you are left with who ? Just when you get to who you think you might be comfortable with, another layer of truth arises and you change again, but when it finally becomes still, then what ? Odd. Unusual. Not known, occurring becoming. I feel more animal than human, all the pretence stripped away, all the parts of me together humming in one place. I built the people I had to love into mountains. They were the huge rocks I tried to climb. Trying to conquer the pinnacle. Their love. But it was an endless climb, an exhaustion. I never reached the top did I, because it never existed. There was no love, no summit to plant my flag in, to say, look I’ve arrived. They care. It has all crumbled to dust. There was nothing. I climbed alone fooling myself that all this effort would reward my spirit. Denial kept me going, I was savage for it, their love. Truth waited patiently all these years though and over the course of only a few weeks, it took the last veil of denial away recently. Like the falling of a house of cards, the very last one is down. In a gentle breath on its own. I didn’t even have to try. All that had come before seems like it was waiting for this short period of time, when the final piece of truth was given to me. And of course it’s all so obvious once denial is gone. We know and we know and we know. We always knew. But we couldn’t you see, we couldn’t survive that. It was too huge, too sad, too much. There is so much comfort in the falling tears, the warmth of them, the calling of the soul telling us, I’m here you can still love, you love. You love. So I really have no idea, this is where I am now. Denial is a beautiful thing, was a beautiful thing. It kept me safe for a long time. Words are such small things to try to use to describe the process of recovering from Complex PTSD, where we travel through complete denial to truth. They don’t fail me altogether, but I don’t know if they are enough. Enough to explain the enormity of facing truths which your mind buried as deep as it did, because feeling and knowing those truths would have killed you as a child. It is too huge, yet still I try to find words for it, because it seems so incredibly beautiful, natural and so full of love to want, to need to come up for air and breathe what is real ! To say to others who have tried to do this too, this is what it feels like !
I feel very small. I feel old. I feel young. I feel loved. I feel sad. All together, with no control at all. Cut loose from all those old notions, programmes and false ideas of love. It’s frightening how fragile we are when we see, but even more frightening to not see. I always return to that one place we can be. The forest, in the centre with the trees and the birds. Tiny, safe. This is what all that work was for. It isn’t always what you thought it would look or feel like when you arrive, but it’s what you need, because it was facing reality that brought you here. The internal exploration of falling through denials into the arms of truth. These changes had to happen, I have to steady myself and keep my feet on the ground too. The more powerful the truth, the more longing I have to keep grounded. Within myself, within my window of tolerance. I guess so much of what healing from Complex PTSD is about is return. To your body, to your self, to your soul, to the truth , all via the truth. It’s a lot of work to reach this stillness. I have to get used to it now.
