It’s Complicated

“Children learn about the unseen by the way of the seen; they learn about the invisible by the way of the visible.” On the Threshold of Hope, Diane Mandt Langberg, PhD, page 132.

When you’re a child, you have no prior information to judge what is right and what is wrong. Sure, we don’t like abuse when we are experiencing it, but we aren’t certain that it’s necessarily wrong.

What measure would we use for that?

When we grow into adults we are full of dissociation, isolation and conflict. We either have a straight jacket on when it comes to sexuality and allow no touch or we fully offer and give ourselves to anybody.

Prostitutes were smarter than I was because at least they asked for something in return for their sexual labor.

It’s complicated to sort out the rubbish and find the good when all of your internal mechanisms have been altered from their original state.

I’m still confused sometimes. Am I giving too much in my relationships now, having no boundaries? Or am I stifling my relationships with my controlling fear and using boundaries as a means to now isolate?

I can really do both.

I look back at my life and it has been a series of mistakes: relearning; trying to figure out what normal people would do.

I am not a normal person.

If only 1 out of 3 woman have experienced sexual abuse (I’m not debating the accuracy of that number now), then clearly more woman have an experience that does not look like mine. I am the minority in society.

And, that sucks!

Finding my clan is certainly helping me out of this dark mire of confusion.

Have I been a slut or was I working out my abuse? Am I an alcoholic or did I use alcohol to come out of dissociative behaviors?

It’s complicated!

Does God love me? If He does, why did He stand by and allow the abuse? How can He be good and loving and do nothing when this abuse was happening?

To trust God now, how do I see him when as a child all authority represented strangling (and I do mean literally) abuse?

How can I have been a good mother when my mother was so wretched against me? Did I love my children with good intentions and break down my own walls of abusive instruction?

The questions will most likely continue as I journey in life here on earth. Every day I unlearn something I was taught. Every day I try to speak a different reality then the one I saw every day of my childhood.

And, it’s complicated. I’m not going to lie. I struggle being still. I struggle with this new love I’m finding. I struggle feeling my worth grow stronger day by day.

Metamorphosis is the process of growing from a caterpillar into a butterfly. In simple words, metamorphosis means transformation or change in shape. I think that is exactly what my life is.

The cool thing about that — I’ll soon be flying!

Originally published at http://prisonerbynocrimeofmyown.com on February 1, 2022.