Dissociation

And in the end I guess I had to fall.
Always find my place among the ashes.

I can’t hold on to me,
wonder what’s wrong with me.

-Evanescence, Lithium

I was going to do the Weekly Writing Challenge this week and post my story today. I was going to write it yesterday, actually. Or, failing that, early this morning when I got up.

I didn’t, because yesterday I suffered a trauma and have been spending most of the time since in a dissociative state. This is sort of half on purpose; dissociating to a certain extent can help me keep the pain at bay until I can deal with it, in small pieces.

I thought I’d write a story about what happened to me, and post it as part of the Challenge, but I couldn’t seem to make it happen. Sometimes writing a story helps. Not yesterday; I was in a bad state.

Perhaps not today either. I want to talk about it when it’s not so fresh, and today is still too soon. I slept terribly anyway; woke up late. Will barely have the time to finish my work before leaving for the weekend.

Being in a body that’s suffered trauma is never an easy thing to live with. For myself I don’t know if I’ll ever fully heal; I often picture my being as a shattered mug that’s been glued together so many times it’s now more glue than mug, and it functions, which is a kind word to describe its existence. But the scars never really go away.

I have to remind myself that I’m human, and that I regrow my skin. Emotional scars might not fade, but the physical ones do. I can get to a place where physical trauma is, at least, a distant memory; not a noxious cloud that occludes my vision and breathing, that reminds me everyday that I’m broken.

I often read and reread this poem by Brett Elizabeth Jenkins like a mantra:

I don’t even know the title of the poem, but it’s one I keep on my tumblr, scheduled to post in 2017.

Now I suppose I can schedule one for 2020, as well.

 

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And in the end I ended up completing the requirements for the Weekly Writing Challenge anyway, so this post is tagged accordingly.

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