A moment in time, a shovel of dirt

There are two trauma boxes hiding in the back of my closet.

Hidden beneath the need to function – I am now only just glimpsing blurry memories of the reasons they make me cry. I refuse to look in them…I’m not even sure what’s in there bursting to reveal incoherent tales of submerged details.

But before a career with racist sexist discriminatory colonizers faking development and claiming “aid”..Yes, before the World Bank, and the IDB, and the EU consortiums told me I’m worthless and discardable, society told me first.

I have repeated trauma, real deep and humiliating, from my childhood, from my work life, from my relationships.

It’s heartbreaking what I’ve internalized and also rejected – Thus splintering different parts of me and dissociating just to stay alive. Intellectually, I know that it’s not all just brain chemistry…I now just need to trust myself and believe my own recollection, because my body knows what I don’t know.

Until recently, I didn’t even recognize I had made my life act out my nightmares. I lacked the context to see. My mind found a way to reveal what I won’t let myself remember.

However painful, memories of dangerous experiences can help to protect you from future dangers. But this only works if you can trust yourself and listen to your own intuition. Failing this, the screams to find safety are lost in the depths of ones pain. We will not have the whole experience to rely on.

These boxes are cages holding terrible real torture.

…and also warnings.

There are only 2 boxes because I forgot about so much more. I would bury them if I wasn’t always running. Running from jobs, running from countries, running from abusers. I didn’t even know I was running until I woke up screaming against another abuser masquerading as a protector in my personal life. Hallucinations became real.

I see them now…

At least I’m no longer denying that they exist.

I’m becoming me again; slowly and achingly, wanting to be whole.

I’m desperate for moments of peace; without so much suffering, on repeat.

I’m hoping for the time; when just looking at them won’t cause so much grief, but

…today is still not that day.