I have been really quiet lately. It's not that nothing has happened. That is so far from the truth. It's just that so much has happened. I've been overwhelmed, caught off guard, at a loss for words. I really hate being at a loss for words. Much of what has been going on I still don't have words for, but I have words for something else. So I'm back at my computer using words, and that's a wonderful place to be.
I guess one might be able to argue that healing begins once abuse stops. There is something to be said for still living and looking normal enough and functional enough after such awful experiences. However, I don't consider myself to have began my journey to healing until about 2 years ago. It's an interesting story really. I did not know when I hit send on that email that my journey was beginning, but it was. That email led to phone calls, more emails, questions, fears, curiosity I couldn't ignore, and help, real help, being held out to me for the first time ever.
I wasn't looking for help, and I didn't think I needed it. The person I had emailed could see right through it though. Conversations happened. Someone cared. Someone could help. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I have this need to check things out, and somewhere deep down, I knew I needed help. So I agreed to find out what helped look like, but there were some very specific places in my world that were strictly off limits. I'm not resolute about much, but that, those places, I was set and adamant were not going to be dealt with. As far as I was concerned, there was no help for those places because I was not willing to enter them...help or not.
I had these ideas in my head, expectations I guess you could call them, of what help was supposed to look like. I thought it would be pretty quick. I would sit down, tell someone the nitty gritty of what happened, and that person would tell me all the things I was wrong about and how to make the past go away.
For months and months, I kept waiting to be asked "so what exactly happened?" But time and time again the question wasn't asked. I would prepare myself and try to figure out when I was supposed to sit down and grit through it. That is what everyone had always wanted before telling me it wasn't real or I was to blame. Surely help meant I had to shut down my insides, so I could endure speaking that again to someone who would turn around and set me straight. The time never came though, and I started to settle a tiny bit.
My journey was well under way. It took a long time for me to realize I had gotten anywhere at all. I always felt like I was in the same place, perpetually stuck. But I can tell you, I am not in the same place. I am not the same person now as I was then, 2 years ago when I inadvertently began moving and working towards healing. I have come a long way to get to where I am now. There have been some ups, a lot of downs, slips and free falls, getting up and sitting down, getting stuck and moving forward. There have been too many times of wanting to walk away, yet there has been abundant grace to keep me going. Praise God for the grace!
I have learned a bit about what this journey is like, and my initial expectations are now being met with reality. It isn't quick. I've certainly come a long way, but there is so much road left to travel. The expectation of quick has been met with the reality of time, and I am learning to be okay with however long it takes. I'm not trying to find short cuts anymore or trying to estimate how soon I can be healed and "over it." It takes time to heal, and I'm getting comfortable with that.
I expected I would be required to just spill the darkest parts of my life to someone and wait for them to set me straight. That expectation is being met constantly with compassion and patience and love and care. That sounds like an easy reality to adjust to, but it's not. I have lived for decades on guard, fighting to protect myself from others whether they mean harm or threat or not. I struggle to differentiate between friend and foe. I have not always been easy to care for and be patient with. I treat compassion and love with fear and doubt which I'm certain makes it hard for others to continue to show me compassion and love. I am working on accepting such kindnesses without questions of what they are trying to get from me or assuming ulterior motives must be the driving force. I'm learning that some people really do care simply because I am a human being, and that somehow makes me worthy of being cared for in their eyes.
I have always had the expectation that healing would mean my past goes away. I have held on to that for so so long. When I used to pray for God to help, the only prayers I could form in my mind were "God please help make it all go away." I couldn't fathom any other way to be okay. If the past wasn't gone, I wasn't sure how it could be lived with. But the expectation of a past disappearing is being met, at times really harshly, with the reality that the past cannot disappear or be undone. At times, that reality has seemed nothing short of hopeless. Yet there is hope. Redemption is real. The truth of the matter is that I cannot outrun the past. It will always be my past. I will never live a life that does not include abuse. That does not mean I will never live a full, healthy, happy, rich life. Help is real, but help doesn't mean taking the past away. Help is facing the past and the wounds it has left, healing so all that is left are scars, and learning to live again. Help is redemption, and redemption is hope.
Lastly, I fully expected to be able to walk through healing while walking around a few places. I have held tightly to the locks on those walls. There have been times I got too close and would simply shut down. Once again, expectation meets reality as I stand before the places I have long refused to go knowing the only way to healing is through them rather than around. It has taken almost 2 years to accept this reality and let go of this expectation. Here I am though. I know the road ahead goes straight through the places I expected to avoid at all costs, but reality has informed my expectation that avoiding these places will cost me much more than finding my way through the darkness they hold.
Expectation and reality can meet in a backwards way too. I always expected to hold this part of me always on my own. If help was coming, it was going to be something I did alone. I could not let others know about this part of me. Here, once again, expectation has met reality as I face these places I was certain I would avoid, and I am not facing them alone. As I look at the road to come, knowing I am going to walk into some very scary, dark, hard places, I can look and see that I am not alone. There is someone else with me, and God is with us both, leading us and lighting our way.
