Webs

Trying to appear normal while walking straight into a spiderweb of depression is tricky. 

The web, invisible to the average bystander, is sticky as it swirls and wraps around my mind.

I wave my hands furiously around my head trying to clear away the residue. 

Perhaps some around me watch and wonder what hidden foe I'm fighting as they clearly cannot see any physical source of my feverish panic. 

If those closest to me would stop and look; they would see what I'm fighting.  But instead they are holding their own hands in front of their faces. Trying not to see what is really going on.

The stringy web is there as no amount of fighting can remove the remaining shreds.  They surround me.  I struggle my best to remove them.  But even I cannot see the full scope of damage as darkness begins to fall.

And then I'm ensnared.

Skeletons

Two steps forward.  One step back.  Slam the door on the weeping skeleton.

My last post was horrible to write.  I still cringe when I attempt to read it.  I have wanted to delete it but I know that wouldn't do much good.  It still happened.  It still hurts.  I am still deeply ashamed.

Shame is a funny thing.  Sometimes I can push it to a corner of my mind.  Other times I cannot even wrap my mind around it to find a place for it to rest.

Sometimes I wonder if processing and grappling with every memory is meant to be.  What would be the harm of burying the horror if a larger amount has been handled?

Everyone has skeletons.  So what if mine are a little more fucked than usual.

Forbidden

There are things I shouldn't talk about.  Because most love animals with whole hearts.

There are things I shouldn't tell.  Because dirty can be silently detected.

There are things I should never do.  Because in doing I am searing a piece of soul.

A single quiver of fear escapes through my fingers.  I pet the dog in front of me and he licks my trembling fear away.  Such a reassuring wiggle as his tail paints the air with a smile.  I find a tiny smile of my own to give in exchange for hope.

A cold fist pushes me on my back and my pink shame is exposed.  I reach for my new found comfort but then he pulls him back.  I cry for his wagging smile.  Instead a furry paw is placed in my tiny hand. 

Move your hand... he growls as his rigid fingers are tightly curled around my wrist.  Forward and backward.  He moves my hand to pet the paw.  I open my my smashed shut eyes to see the dog standing nearly next to me. 

One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  I am not petting a paw at all.

There are things I shouldn't write about.  Because this pain is more than forbidden.

Shame

I take it all back.  The part about not being bad.  The part about not being dirty.  The part about them being bad.

It's all me.

I wanted to believe that I'm none of the horrible things they said I was but the actions do not lie.  I can normally write about what hurts but I'm too ashamed to even do that.  When it appears in black and white it is real and ripe to be judged.

If I lock it in my head then it happened to the others.  Not me.

I used to believe that anger was the worst emotion.  I was wrong about that too. 

It's shame.  And it makes you feel less than human.

Chaos

Growing up in a never ending cycle of chaos, I came to expect it.  Of course there was always the calm before the storm but the more pronounced, the more prolonged the calm; the worse the storm was.

I think my father had his ways to keep us guessing.  Everything was fine and then someone would commit an offense that had always provoked him in the past.  But this time he wouldn't explode.  No fists.  No belts.  No starry shakes of my head.  No angry touching.

The artificial calm was almost more than I could take.  Predictable chaos is better than uncertain explosions.

It was then my mission to make him angry.  I was in control if I could chose the moment of his anger and the consequences.  I continued this behavior into my dating and first marriage.  We lived the comfort of the vicious cycle.  I didn't believe that I deserved to live in anything but an abusive home so that is what I accepted.

In my re-marriage, there have still been times that I have tried to invoke the chaos.  Problem is, my husband never bites.  He doesn't hit.  He doesn't break things.  He doesn't do horribly passive/aggressive things either.  It doesn't push him away.  He never even leaves.

Sometime I wonder what it must feel like to be my daughter.  To come home to a clean and peaceful home.  To never have to clean up broken glass.  To never know the sound of leather hitting skin.  To have parents who can disagree and work it out without violence.  It must be wonderful.

I am far from the perfect mother.  I have issues.  And God know that I have hang ups. 

But I hope that I will never teach her chaos.  I hope instead that I teach her that peaceful is good.

And unlike chaos, there is no need to control peace.

Why

Like many who have survived abuse, I struggle with God.  To compound that, I grew up in a Christian home with well respected parents.  That is both good and bad.

Good because I truly believe that I would have died had I not been able to draw on my beliefs that there was God and He was bigger, stronger, and somehow in the midst of my mess of a home.

Bad because there were elements of abuse that twisted those same beliefs into everything that they were not.  The result left me unable to get past the why of what was happening to me.

My conclusion: that I was bad.  Otherwise, I would have been saved.  And because of my badness, I became so focused on the why. 

Why did God allow this?

Why was I so bad?

Why wouldn't He help me be good?

Why did they hurt me?

It must be because I was bad; why else?

I have struggled in a figure eight pattern for years.  It's entirely predictable.  The circular logic of the why... a possible answer of why... no, that's not the answer and then I'm headed into another pointless loop of questioning.  A vicious cycle.

Somehow I have kept my belief in God intact.  It hasn't been and probably won't ever be pretty.  But it's there.  We attend church weekly; a miracle to explain on a different day.  This past weekend someone spoke about asking what instead of why.  What has many more answers than why.

What happened?  I can answer that if I tell the truth of what they did.

What was wrong with them?  They were mean people.

What could I have done differently?  Not a lot.  I was a kid.

What do I feel about what happened?  I can name the feelings if I think hard enough.

What did God do back then?  He created a way for a child's mind to cope.  He kept me alive.

What is different now?  Everything.

What can I learn about myself?  I'm stronger than they thought.  I'm stronger than I thought. 

What can I learn from my childhood?  This one is harder to answer but I have some theories...

Questions are good.  But answers are almost always better.

Birthday

My birthday is this week.

I was looking through some old posts here and noticed a pattern.  For the past two years, I have never posted in the month of September.  Until now.

I don't know exactly what that means.  I want it to mean that I'm stronger.  I want it to mean that I'm healing.

I despise my birthday.  It celebrates the cruelest of jokes.  The day I was born into that family.  If you can call them that.

But as my daughter has grown, one of her very favorite things is to celebrate a birthday.  I have had to grit my teeth and smile because it's certainly not her fault that I don't enjoy marking the day I was born.

And then there's my husband.  Sans one year that he forgot; he likes to be extravagant.  I don't care for extravagant anything.

This year feels different.  I still don't want the fanfare or gifts but I'm at some sort of peace with the day.  My memories of years before are still hell but I'm not drowning in their depressing sorrow either.

Am I happy?  Not really.  I feel grief well up from my hurting heart. 

I am also alive and that was no small feat.  Dead before 30.  A "doctor" spoke it.  And I believed it.  But somewhere along the way I learned to fight. 

It hasn't been easy.  It's still not easy.  But I also have a sense of pride to have fought and won.

I can't say that I'm always glad to be alive.  But I survived and that has to count for something.

This year I choose to celebrate survival.

Afraid

My husband recently referred to me as a neurotic freak who is afraid of everything.

He is a good man and infinitely patient but this was probably not his shining moment of spousal support or encouragement.  But I took from it what I needed.

The truth hurts.  I can either be upset and bitter at his words or I can work things out.  Because he's right.

I am afraid of nearly everything.  When you grow up in a house like I did, nearly everything becomes an instrument of torment.  I started making a mental list and now that I really can't sleep, I thought that I would continue here. 

Just the things or situations... the reasons aren't as important anymore.

Clothes hangers

Hair brush

Curling iron

House slippers

Milk

Pudding

Cats

Closets

Deep-freeze freezer

The dark

Whole bananas

The dentist

Needles

Liquid medications

Most colognes

Old Spice aftershave

Ants

Spiders

Rope

Loud noises

Screaming and yelling

Slamming doors

Glass breaking

Popping balloons

Scaring me

Mirrors

Electrical cords

Belts

Men crossing their legs

Touching me

Pillows

Vaseline

Baby dolls

Tight spaces

Smell of latex

Knives

Bathtubs

Water

Masks

Duct tape

Bright lights

Using the restroom

Hands

Garden hoses

Cemeteries

Smell of gasoline

Boiling water

Bouquets of flowers

Like I said, nearly everything.

I could go on but I'll save myself the smallest amount of dignity.

As I read through the list some are rational.  Some make sense to me.  Some are irrational.  Some you could figure out with a bit of imagination but I really don't recommend that.

I'll own up to the afraid part.  I'll even own the neurotic part.  I don't care much for the freak part.  They were the freaks.  Not me.  I'm just the unfortunate byproduct.

Another fear; passing my fears on to my daughter.  She doesn't deserve to live in my fearful shadow.  There is no such thing as a fear-free life but I don't want her be afraid of bananas just because her mom wilts at the sight of one.  I want her to be a kid, have her own experiences and even develop a few fear of her own.

I'm not sure what I will do with this list.  Maybe I'll work through it one by one.  Maybe I'll ignore it all together.  Maybe I'll print it and give it to my husband; tangible proof that I'm not afraid of everything.

I'm not afraid of apples.

Circles

Hula hoops.  Basketballs.  Baseballs.  Bubbles of gum.  My favorite kinds of circles. 

Symmetry in raw form.  A perfect circle can be nothing but a symmetrical shape of beautiful numbers.

Rings.  Dog collars.  Breaking plates.  Imperfect soap bubbles that never scrub enough.  These are the circles that I hate. 

I make myself small.  Into a brave ball of tortoise shell.  I am tough.  I am rugged.  I am slower than them.  But I have an impossible field of strength around me.  An impenetrable bubble.  The ultimate circle. 

Don't look.  Not even peek.  If I don't see them they don't see me.  A wingtip shoe cracks into my side.  I was wrong.  They do see me.

It's just a crack.  My shell is still intact.  I am safe.  Don't look.  Don't look. 

Another shoe.  It cracks my lip.  Again and my chin is split.  The pain draws my head out of my shell and I look.  It's the worst kind of circle.

Man-like pride has swelled.  So big.  So ugly.  Arrows growing that will pierce my childish shell.  Their feet.  Their shoes.  They crowd around me. 

Still the crudest circle. 

And the cruelest.

The groans.  The sighs.  The arrows being drawn with fast moving hands.  Angry, selfish hands of pleasure.  Arrows dipped in milky poison; I watch a precious, rancid drop drip into a circle. 

The arrows begin to fall.  My shell is there.  I am safe.  And then it begins to melt.  Childish strength is no match for poisoned shame. 

The groans turn into laughs.  Their poison erodes me in a flash.  I am nothing but a lustful target.  Warm embarrassment runs down my face.  My missing tears are a magic bandage but I have no more to spare. 

I accept my silent place within their circle until it is soft and they turn away.  My stupid shell is in the corner.  Cast away with a laugh. 

Next time I will have a perfect circle.  A better bubble so I can float away. 

Different

I am different.  I always have been.

A little girl is crying in the corner.  Her tears are on the inside.  Long, tired streaks down the dirty windows of her soul.  Her soul is old.  Her soul is different.

Shame.  Her t-shirt is never quite enough.  It stretches over her knees just short to cover her shame.  Exposed.  Her shame; it burns.  Her shame is different. 

Her hair.  Long and twisted; a curtain to hide the pain behind.  His scent lingers as it curls her hair into knots of hate.  Her hair; it would be beautiful.  Instead her hair is different.

A little girl.  She is still to let the corner hug her.  A plaster embrace will have to do.  A wall that hugs; it's not so bad.  This corner is safe.  Her hug is different.

A grown up girl stands in another corner.  Afraid to touch the pain across the room.  The tears are gone.  Clothes are hers.  Her hair is short.  That different corner still remains.

Go to her.

Clean her up.

Dress her shame.

Give her human comfort. 

Any other girl.  But this one is different. 

She is me.  And I am different.

Undeserving.  And indifferent.

Letdown

You know.  It's the feeling that you get right after Christmas.  All that work and then it's all over in a matter of hours and you wonder why the hell you worked so hard in the first place.

I spent the long weekend with overwhelming times of letdown.  Not all the time because that's dumb.  But some of the time when I had a moment to think and reflect; my letdown was laughing at me. 

I've worked really hard in the past month or so.  I've cleaned out mental closets.  I've faced some huge fears.  I've unpacked long overdue boxes.  I have said some very difficult goodbyes.  I have even been good, for the most part, about taking my meds.

After all that I thought I would feel better.  Even happy.  I looked forward to this long weekend.  I kept telling myself keep going, it will be so nice to have a happy and peaceful weekend.

It wasn't a terrible time.  I had the tiniest moments of happiness.  But it certainly was not what I expected.  What a letdown.  That's when disappointment set in like a black cloud.

That black cloud?  A close neighbor to my standard issued rain cloud of depression.  Mix in some thundering anxiety and some lightening strikes of pain and I have the perfect storm of mental illness once again.

I waffle between stupidity and embarassment.  How stupid of me to expect happiness.  Embarassment over that expectation of more than a passing relief.

It's hard to not be disappointed.  Why the fuck would I work so hard while expecting some relief?  I have very little to show for that work and that borders on pathetic.  I guess it's time to lower my expectations before I get hurt again.

Doors

I am a slow learner when it comes to the basic human emotions. 

Cause and effect I get. 

He hurt me.  I am sad.

She hit me.  I am mad.

Lots of causes. Lots of pain.

Day after day. Blow after blow I was placed squarely in their perpetual state of hate.  Confusion.  Sadness. Loneliness.  I never had a chance to fully recover from the act before.  Unless I chose numbness.

These past several months I have been drowning in the darkness of depression.  And just when I was strong enough to come up for air; the stifling fist of anxiety pressed against my chest until it hurt.  And again I fell into the darkness.

It is an awful existence.  There have been days.  There have been nights.  An end was a welcome thought.  The ideation itself was soothing; strange as that might sound.  But that is as close as I will ever venture to the edge.  I know what happens beyond that cliff and it is not the glorified means to an end.

Enough of that though.  This is more about what I have learned. 

I do not have to stay in a state of constant pain.  As a child I did. 

As an adult I am free to move around.  I am free to chart my own emotional course.  It might be a physical movement.  From the bed to the treadmill to the shower.  Or it might be the emotional act of rearranging furniture and piles of luggage in my head.  The best part though; the world will not end.  Even if I shut the door on a room in disarray. 

There is no open door policy.  The requirement that gives no privacy for pain.  No revolving doors.  Those are the worst kind of doors with no beginning or an end. 

I will open those unfinished doors again because I want a healthy mind.  One room at a time.  Maybe two if really needed; a guest suite of sorts.

Closed doors were not allowed as a child.  I should have known that the exact opposite was true in my mental landscape.  Open.  Shut.  Cracked.  Locked.  The simple fact of choice is a powerful one.  And a key I hope to never forget.

Choices

I didn't have a lot of choices growing up.  Not unless you count the way I wanted him. 

Painful or excruciating.

I didn't have much power either.  No amount of prayers, wishing, hoping, begging would change their minds. 

Not to say that I didn't try though.

I have a difficult time conveying just how strong my memories and flashbacks are.  I appear calm and collected to the passerby.  I have to.  But peer into my soul and you will see the claw marks of my pain. Scraping their way down into a collective pool of boundless grief and torment log jammed by the planks of fear and shame.

I long to turn myself inside out and bare my rotting scars.  To have someone besides myself witness what bubbles to the surface just long enough to be squelched again.  Power and a choice.  That is what I beg to find within those murky waters.

A choice to change.  A choice to pull the planks and let the stagnent flow.

The power to perservere.  The power to put them in their rightful place.  Forever.

just

just in your mind
just how i show my love
just an innocent kiss
just the way he is
just a childhood
just can't help it
just a stupid kid
just a dream
just a dog
just a touch
just one more time

just a memory

justifying doesn't make it better

signed,
just somebody

Prolonging

I need a break.  A respite from my feelings.  I know that must sound strange assuming that most like to feel; it's how they know that they are alive.  Me, my feelings taunt me and remind me that I'm not dead.  Flashback after flashback invade my frazzled mind and body until my pounding heart is breaking in the wake of no relief.

How long have you felt depressed?

I don't remember not feeling depressed...

When was the last time you felt happy?

I have fleeting moments of happiness...

When did the abuse begin?

I don't remember not being abused...

I started seeing a new shrink and those were some of her questions and then some of my answers.  There was a rhythm to my replies which involved prolonged misery. 

I want to feel better so I go to a shrink.  I take medication.  I see my therapist.  I feel and it hurts like hell but I think that I am working hard and at some point it will pay off.  But then there is a lingering suspicion he knew that even after he was gone his evil would still haunt and hurt me.

What kind of person brings a child into this world and shapes her childish life to know nothing but confusion, pain and sadness?  Terror that she longs to stop even after you are gone.  I bet he's laughing now knowing that I'm still pleading with the hurt to end.

Feelings

I have been doing a lot of work with my feelings lately.  I have avoided them for most of my life because, well the bad ones outweigh the good ones. 

The rest of them were fucked or beaten out of me.

I have always believed that my feelings only led to trouble and pain.  A simple feeling stated as a child sent me tumbling down a rabbit hole of horrific pain.  An innocent smile was interpreted to be nothing but filthy desire.  A frown was nothing but blatant rebellion that had to be dealt with.

My thinking is extremely black and white.  Good or bad.  Right or wrong.  But what I'm learning is that feelings don't fall easily into any of those categories.  The classifications that I have used to reason my life into some semblance of order do not work for feelings.

So walking in this grey area is very difficult for me.  I cannot make much sense of what I allow myself to feel and if I do, I get stuck.  The detachment I have felt to my memories is slowly being bridged by the missing feelings.  And that is terrifying.

I have always been able to share, matter of factly, the details I have chosen to disclose.  And I'm very afraid that those details were the easy ones; the ones I could disconnect from and push the feelings onto someone else.

Remember those rabbit holes?  When I find the feelings associated with that pain it's like falling down that hole bound, gagged, and blindfolded.  My logic was my only means of control and I've lost it amongst the feelings.  The only way to climb out of that hole? 

Literally feel my way out.

Celebrate

Today is the fourth.  Every fourth of June we used to celebrate my sister's birthday.  But now the fourth is filled is guilt.  Hurt.  Anger.  Sadness.  Anything but celebration.

She would want you to celebrate her life...

This is the type of phrase often turned by the grieving left behind.  I don't believe that this is true about her and I don't believe she would have ever desired such a celebration.  I cannot celebrate a life so shattered, so damaged, so wilted that it funneled down to one eventual option of death. 

Our lives closely resembled one another until she shot a hole in that toxic fork in the road.  How do you celebrate a life gone by when you can't even celebrate your own?   She's dead.  I'm alive.  I consider myself lucky and nothing more.  Not exactly reasons to reflect, release some balloons or even visit the final marking of her earthly existence.

And then the selfish side... I don't want to fucking celebrate a person who placed so much responsibility, need, and cries for soothing squarely upon my shoulders.  I gave so much but in the end perhaps I gave too much.  When she left she took a piece of me that I cannot recover.  Now I'm left with the scar of death barely stitched together with the thread of hope that I truly did all that I could do.

How do I celebrate a life passed too early?  How do I remember her with anything but painful regret?

Fingers

My mother has the prettiest hands.  When she isn't hurting me with them.

Long and slender with perfectly manicured nails.  Her fingers always seem so skilled to cook, sew, and play the piano.  Those are the things she does when she isn't so crazy and angry.

Today I'm a dirty girl.  He has left his stinging warmth behind and it must be washed away.  Shame has a color and it's red.  I try to hide it but she sees.  I can't pretend that she doesn't already know but it's the game I have to play. 

Look at you... what a dirty girl... you are getting blood on my bath mat... you disgusting whore.

Her words sting just as bad as he does.  I wish her hands would help me.  Comfort me.  Love me.  I stand in the tub of water waiting for her to tell me when it's time to sit.  Her calloused hands touch my shoulders as she forces me backwards onto the tiny corner of a ledge where the tub meets the wall.  My head hits the tiles and my eyes burn with tears.

I am sitting on that little ledge as her beautiful hands force my legs apart at the knees.  Her slender fingers no longer feel so slender.  Her manicure is razor sharp as she plunges into my shame.  I shift my eyes and work to melt into the calm, white tiles around me.

Look at me...  watch what you make me do.

Her manicure is red as she writes my words on the tiles.

dirty...

whore...

I tear my eyes away and feel flush with those tiles.  I sink even further as those cold, white tiles become my greatest comfort.  I feel her hand but only as a glancing touch.  I hear her screams but only as a whisper.  I watch that little girl so far away and I am numb to her hate.

I wish that I could stay this way forever.

Breath

I have never paid much attention to breathing.  It is just something that happens without thought, without reason.  This air is hardly important until it ceases.  Because then we are dead.

I talk very little about my sister.  And even less about those moments prior to her death.  I am still racked with grief and guilt if I allow myself the time to submerge my heart beneath the surface of the day-to-day fine.

She used a gun I owned.  A gun my sister offered to keep because I was too nervous to have a weapon in my own home with a baby.  That perpetual chain of events still takes my own breath away and leaves a putrid grief filled vacuum behind.  Guilt laced air is what I breathe now.

In her final day or so she was not much to look at.  A piece of her skull removed for swelling left her tragic head misshapen and uninhabitable.  It was an unnatural symmetry to watch her chest rise and fall in rhythm with machines.  I knew she was gone yet there she was lying in a shallow and selfish grave. 

I go back to that moment often.  For some strange reason I grasp at the fading memory trying to recall if she ever exhaled the final breath she drew.  I do not know why this is important.  And never mind that it is certainly of no consequence to the circumstances I find myself within today.  But still I wonder.

Did she give something back or did she steal that tiny piece of air never to reciprocate again?

Thinking precisely back to nights in that big, white, and wooden bed I can hear her breathing.  Nearly nose to nose I match my breath with hers and we share.  We share the space and we share our secret burdens.  And we never say a word.

Growing siblings often fight as they learn to share.  But we were forced to share and we did so brilliantly.  We never fought over who was fucking us.  We never fought over who betrayed us.  I held her collective breath and she held mine.  But in the end we did not share survival and I will always wonder why.

We both grew up and with her final stolen breath our secrets died with her.  Every minute of every day I breathe and if I'm mindful I can feel the pangs of the memories lost with her.  She should be turning a year older soon but she never recovered from that last breath of toxic shame she took.

Ummm...

So, I'll just start out by saying that I'm not a very good blogger.  I get busy.  I get tired.  I get overwhelmed.  Or in this case I just do my best to ignore it hoping that it will just go away.

But it doesn't go away. 

What started as ignoring turned into not giving a fuck.  And then not giving a fuck turned into the worst depression I have wandered into in more than 7 years.  And then that turned into some tears followed by a near trip to the hospital.

In all my mess I've had one absolute no and that is a no to ever going inpatient.  I don't like hospitals; especially the kind that my mother spent time in.  But last week I was one car ride away from crossing that last no off my list.  It's like a genetic bucket list for me.  Crazy... check  Medication... check  Self harm... check... Breakdown... check  Hospital... check.

Why am I here now?  Honestly I'm not really sure.  I still feel awful but I feel better than I did.  Because I finally got some help.  You see, I skipped out on therapy for nearly a month.  All my fault.

I'm the master of shutting people out.  I turn inward and if given enough time I can easily get lost in my weird little world.  But in shutting caring people out I also keep secrets.  To me that is no big deal considering how I grew up.  But now the secrets are hurting me.

Probably my biggest secret; I went off my meds.  All of them.  We have had some financial struggles as of late and I determined I was not worth the cost of the Dr. appointments or the medications themselves.  The money could be spent for better things that did not include myself.  I told no one of my decision and I told everyone inside of me to shut up.

Are you amazed at my stupidity?  I certainly am. 

But amazed isn't really the correct word.  I'm ashamed.  I'm embarrassed.  I'm angry at myself.  I'm frustrated because I can't just be better.  I'm scared to ask for the help I need when I need it.  And then I'm back to being ashamed because I had to ask for help.

I have taken some steps in the right direction.  I went to therapy and I'll go again this week.  I  said no to something that wanted to conflict with this week's appointment... I feel guilty about that.  I called to make an appointment to see a shrink.  I've stopped keeping recent secrets.

Small steps but steps nonetheless.  So read while you can; it's not often that you get a glimpse of me un-medicated.

Lump

I find myself tangled in the lump of my throat.  Trapped somewhere between my mind of logic and my twisted and aching heart I am dizzy with conflict.  I am worth something.  I am worth nothing.  I am worth more than words can offer.

That familiar lump squeezes and twists my weary emotions as I grasp for a momentary breath of logic.  A thought that reassures what kindness says; an understanding that I am so much more than what they said.  But in that moment their words, their actions; they come crashing down on me as the lump threatens to engulf me.

Pain and bitter bile wash over me and the choices seem so non-existent.  Why else would their hatred spiral?  Why else would a child so young bear such deep and burdened scars?

It must be because I am worth so little.

The secrets that we shared.  The secrets that I keep.  These are the fuel to ignite a burning lump of torture.  I struggle to move on and I struggle to let go while the lump clutches its tiny treasure.  How do I feel my worth when all I feel is the pain wiping away even the smallest doubt that they might have been wrong?

I want to breathe.  I want to feel the full capacity of worth expand until that lump of disbelief is pushed aside for good.  I want to exhale until I know that they were wrong.