Healing Is Layers. Healing Is Time. Healing Is Excruciating. Once You Think Its Done, Its Not.

“Healing is layers. Healing is time. Healing is excruciating. Once you think it’s done, it’s not.”

— Mary DeMuth (via i-am-strong-all-on-my-own)

I was off for a few months owing to covid. It was the first time I have taken an extended breath since I was a teenager.

It gave the trauma time to catch up to me. I feel it all. I am so damn tired.

I've started a new job teaching English to new Canadians. It is the first time in my life I am actually making Good Money and feeling like I am doing something worthwhile.

It's also a problematic job for me. As my mother ( a highschool teacher) says about being a teacher : congratulations, you've won an excellent job that will make you insecure in your abilities and your effectiveness every day forever.

What have i done?

This is what day one feels like, btw.

Because traumatized people often have trouble sensing what is going on in their bodies, they lack a nuanced response to frustration. They either react to stress by becoming “spaced out” or with excessive anger. Whatever their response, they often can’t tell what is upsetting them. This failure to be in touch with their bodies contributes to their well-documented lack of self-protection and high rates of revictimization and also to their remarkable difficulties feeling pleasure, sensuality, and having a sense of meaning.

“The Body Keeps The Score” by Bessel van der Kolk

I wonder how I would handle the normal day to day stress of life he hadn't been manipulating me to distrust and hate myself in the formative years of my early adulthood.

Most people learn coping skills during those years; they figure out how to 'get on with it' in the face of challenges.

I don't have coping skills except for avoidance. Distraction. Or I sweat and visualize all the ways I'm going to screw this up or not have the skills to be successful.

I am defeated before I begin.

Was I always like this?