Exposure
It's been a while since I've been really vulnerable, really visible about what's going on in my life. For all my passion for openness and vulnerability about our struggles, I'm scared of sharing. I'm scared of people using them against me. I'm scared.
It's fear that keeps me prisoner.
Fear that becomes fact, but that's not the point.
I don't make a difference if I hide in my fears; it's what so many others do and it's never going to break the mould if I carry on doing it. It doesn't encourage others to break their mould and find freedom in being their ugly, beautiful, broken, imperfectly perfect selves. It doesn't leave a place where they know they can be imperfect and free, broken and not judged; it doesn't leave a place where people can be loved like Jesus loves them.
I know people hate "Love the sinner, hate the sin," but it's true.
Jesus said, "Go and sin no more" to the adulteress, to Mary wiping his feet with her hair, to many others. But He let them come, just as they were, loved them, just as they were, and healed them, just as they were.
To be broken is to be visible.
To be visible is to be seen.
To be seen is to be known.
To be known is to be vulnerable.
To be vulnerable is to be loved.
Just as you are.
But unless you want to be the victim, you don't get to stay that way. You become the victor by being imperfectly visible, brokenly beautiful, searching for healing.
Searching for the Love that is there.
Finding Jesus.
********
January 13th, 2019
It’s an ongoing process, this search for healing. It’s been eight years come March that our lives were ripped apart, and I’m still learning.
2015 was the year I had the appointments with the counselor. It didn’t work out but she taught me good things, like when I’m stressing into a panic attack, to close my eyes and go to my ‘safe place’, or go in my mind to a meadow by some running water and there’s no pressure to come back (except sometimes there is, but that’s okay, it’s still my choice). Also the infinity sign to reconnect both sides of my brain to each other to run in tune so the emotional side doesn’t overload.
The year before, 2017, was a big year with going onto anti-depressants. I start to break down a lot at work and one day after finishing a late shift I walked halfway across Birmingham for a hug off my husband and proceeded to cry all over him, non-stop crying for an hour and a half. He made me go to the doctors and go on the meds because there was no way I could carry on my job. Then we moved house. Then I left my job and took myself off the meds.
People are always saying I’m strong. Like, I don’t FEEL strong. I also don’t recommend coming off meds cold turkey, and stopping self-harming cold turkey is also risky if you don’t have other stuff in place.
Last year, 2018: there was the Youth Conference at church and I felt so empty, and then I went down the front one day because I couldn’t cope with all the guilt and shame. And then I prayed, and the pastor prayed with me, and it was like God lifted my fears. I didn’t have to live in the shame and guilt and fear of my past any more. And then I was like life is slipping away and I’m grabbing on, cramming in because hey, I can do big things!
My past isn’t going to stop me. I’m going to finish my degree. Run two businesses. Send a message to Prince Harry and Meghan and actually get From Self-Harm to Victory off the ground as a charity. Be involved in my community. Be politically active.
Except it is. I wanted to go into politics and suddenly, all my past came up again, drowning me in memories and the thoughts of what the media could do with me if who I was came out.
The daughter of a paedophile. Too many scars. And I’m still healing. I can’t risk exposure right now. So I backed off and now I’m back in my cave. The ghosts have subsided and my fear has quieted but it’s still there. Holding me back. Those invisible, ghostly chains of fear. (Don’t mention the anxiety. I don’t know if it’s part of the fear or separate.
So I’m moving into arts instead. Crafting. Creating. Like the candle sitting inside the black tangled up circle but still burning. And I want to sing. So badly. Passionately. It burns me inside but I’m scared there too. Scared I’m not good enough. Scared I won’t live enough. Make enough. Be enough.
And the tears. They flow some days for no reason. Some days I just sit and shout out a prayer in anguish because I don’t know why I’m still hurting. Some days it’s triggered by a happy ending. A father-daughter scene. A father-child scene. Something, deep down, is triggered by the emotion of seeing something I never had and I never will. Something missing. Something lost.
By the way, I’m so grateful for my wonderful husband. He’s got so much crap in his own life and he doesn’t know anything about mine but he holds me, and holds my hand, and walks through it with me. Sometimes I think it scares him too, but he just holds on tighter. God knows how much I needed that. And I still believe he was the answer to my prayer that summer when I told God I can’t hold on; please, please send someone to help me.
Oh, and random – to the person who told me I was still a child and they wouldn’t believe I’d grown up until I stopped using the emojis and asterisks language (like *hugs*), I’m never gonna grow up because I’ve accepted that I’m an emotive person and it’s part of me. So you can get lost in my bad memories and never come back. You scarred me enough in other ways.
It took going back through a video of 2018 to trip out of my numbness and fear and realize, hey we did some pretty cool things. Cool events. We travelled. Made new friends. People do like us. I got involved with politics – a bit. Started my degree.
But now I’m wondering what I’ve lost. In all the rush to get stuff done because life is so tiny and fragile and so much to do, I’ve lost hold of the one thing that matters. The one thing that doesn’t just hold weight in this world, but is basically the next. I’ve lost hold of Jesus. My prayers are scattered. My Bible readings are few. And I know that my salvation doesn’t depend on it, I know God can reach me anyway, but what good is a relationship where there’s only One side making an effort?
Yesterday was new. It was a random conversation with one of my close friends (K) who’s recently been battering at my walls to come back in (she’s never accepted walls, anyway – I’ve always loved that about her. She goes in fearlessly and loves you unconditionally.)
Backing up a bit, I have a large problem with my memory. I first started knowingly blocking memories to be able to survive the trauma we went through back in 2011. Ever since I’ve been with Atul, I’ve been struggling with accepting the fact that my brain now blocks things without me trying. I forget easily. Arguments that I have or upsets with people, I block. About ten minutes after, I have trouble remembering what happened or why I’m really upset.
Recently two memories returned from my childhood while investigating stuff connected to fibromyalgia and PMS. I am deeply ashamed of those memories (which I’m not going to share) and hold them in some horror, because I was convinced they were because I was an evil person.
I don’t know why, but in the conversation with K, I brought up those memories because I needed to know what she thought. Someone I trusted. Was it because I was evil, or because I was holding repressed memories?
It snapped something inside me as she reassured me it wasn’t because I was evil that I did those things. I was a child, and I didn’t know any better. I was simply repeating a cycle I had witnessed or experienced because for me, then, it was normal, and that I held it in such horror now was because I knew it wasn’t normal. I was making choices and I was healing. It’s okay. It’s not me, and it’s not my fault.
It was releasing to hear that. To know that someone else was in that dark space of my head and, seeing the whole picture instead of my cooped up fear, could tell me that it was okay. That I will be okay. That – she’s being honest – that I’ve still got a way to go. That I’ll be dealing with this all my life, but that I will not be the same woman in 10 years that I am today, and that I am not the same person today that I was ten years ago.
Today I’m still crying. Still realising, accepting, understanding. It’s another step forward, out of the darkness and into the light.
I am so grateful for the tenderness of God, the Father I never had, the Lover Who knows every part of my soul and every memory I’ve ever forgotten, Who can see all the moments of my life in one time and knows, as I know, that I need to heal. That I won’t be staying a victim, because I won’t let it define me. That I won’t become the abuser, because inflicting pain on others is horrific and does nothing but place my torment on others and force them into the same dark place (and seriously, what sicko would ever want to do that?) That I am not my father, and that – even ten years ago, before I knew what he was – I realised that he was a lost little boy and in some strange way, that I was more mature than him. That I’m still struggling but that He will guide me through. Broken so that He can fix me with gold. Remove the dross. Get rid of the bubble.
And yes, it’s been hard. But He’s been so gentle in the same way.
And I was so scared this past year because, being away and being human and being me, I thought – yet again – that He’d done with me. My prayers weren’t being answered, really. Not the fixing the family and the saving of souls ones, anyway – not the really important ones. (I guess a job isn’t important, or getting me to work on time in the mornings so I don’t get fired, or a manager sympathetic to my disability…*facepalm*) I figured He’d got tired and moved on.
I didn’t (still don’t, haha) fit in at church. But there was the lesson He’d taught a long time ago. That when all of it is dark, and my brain is so fogged that I can’t think straight, whether it feels right or not, that doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that Jesus died for my sins, and my faith is in Him alone for salvation. Nothing else can save me. Rights and wrongs and whatevers, sometimes it’s only faith like a child.
And my disbelief keeps getting stuck in the way. It’s such a constant battle. And partly because I don’t know where to make the time, but I need to.
It’s hard because I don’t know where the space is. What I need to let go to bring that space back to spend time with Him.
But the last few days have made something perfectly clear, as I work on this.
I may have lost hold of Jesus, but He hasn’t lost hold of me.
It's fear that keeps me prisoner.
Fear that becomes fact, but that's not the point.
I don't make a difference if I hide in my fears; it's what so many others do and it's never going to break the mould if I carry on doing it. It doesn't encourage others to break their mould and find freedom in being their ugly, beautiful, broken, imperfectly perfect selves. It doesn't leave a place where they know they can be imperfect and free, broken and not judged; it doesn't leave a place where people can be loved like Jesus loves them.
I know people hate "Love the sinner, hate the sin," but it's true.
Jesus said, "Go and sin no more" to the adulteress, to Mary wiping his feet with her hair, to many others. But He let them come, just as they were, loved them, just as they were, and healed them, just as they were.
To be broken is to be visible.
To be visible is to be seen.
To be seen is to be known.
To be known is to be vulnerable.
To be vulnerable is to be loved.
Just as you are.
But unless you want to be the victim, you don't get to stay that way. You become the victor by being imperfectly visible, brokenly beautiful, searching for healing.
Searching for the Love that is there.
Finding Jesus.
********
January 13th, 2019
It’s an ongoing process, this search for healing. It’s been eight years come March that our lives were ripped apart, and I’m still learning.
2015 was the year I had the appointments with the counselor. It didn’t work out but she taught me good things, like when I’m stressing into a panic attack, to close my eyes and go to my ‘safe place’, or go in my mind to a meadow by some running water and there’s no pressure to come back (except sometimes there is, but that’s okay, it’s still my choice). Also the infinity sign to reconnect both sides of my brain to each other to run in tune so the emotional side doesn’t overload.
The year before, 2017, was a big year with going onto anti-depressants. I start to break down a lot at work and one day after finishing a late shift I walked halfway across Birmingham for a hug off my husband and proceeded to cry all over him, non-stop crying for an hour and a half. He made me go to the doctors and go on the meds because there was no way I could carry on my job. Then we moved house. Then I left my job and took myself off the meds.
People are always saying I’m strong. Like, I don’t FEEL strong. I also don’t recommend coming off meds cold turkey, and stopping self-harming cold turkey is also risky if you don’t have other stuff in place.
Last year, 2018: there was the Youth Conference at church and I felt so empty, and then I went down the front one day because I couldn’t cope with all the guilt and shame. And then I prayed, and the pastor prayed with me, and it was like God lifted my fears. I didn’t have to live in the shame and guilt and fear of my past any more. And then I was like life is slipping away and I’m grabbing on, cramming in because hey, I can do big things!
My past isn’t going to stop me. I’m going to finish my degree. Run two businesses. Send a message to Prince Harry and Meghan and actually get From Self-Harm to Victory off the ground as a charity. Be involved in my community. Be politically active.
Except it is. I wanted to go into politics and suddenly, all my past came up again, drowning me in memories and the thoughts of what the media could do with me if who I was came out.
The daughter of a paedophile. Too many scars. And I’m still healing. I can’t risk exposure right now. So I backed off and now I’m back in my cave. The ghosts have subsided and my fear has quieted but it’s still there. Holding me back. Those invisible, ghostly chains of fear. (Don’t mention the anxiety. I don’t know if it’s part of the fear or separate.
So I’m moving into arts instead. Crafting. Creating. Like the candle sitting inside the black tangled up circle but still burning. And I want to sing. So badly. Passionately. It burns me inside but I’m scared there too. Scared I’m not good enough. Scared I won’t live enough. Make enough. Be enough.
And the tears. They flow some days for no reason. Some days I just sit and shout out a prayer in anguish because I don’t know why I’m still hurting. Some days it’s triggered by a happy ending. A father-daughter scene. A father-child scene. Something, deep down, is triggered by the emotion of seeing something I never had and I never will. Something missing. Something lost.
By the way, I’m so grateful for my wonderful husband. He’s got so much crap in his own life and he doesn’t know anything about mine but he holds me, and holds my hand, and walks through it with me. Sometimes I think it scares him too, but he just holds on tighter. God knows how much I needed that. And I still believe he was the answer to my prayer that summer when I told God I can’t hold on; please, please send someone to help me.
Oh, and random – to the person who told me I was still a child and they wouldn’t believe I’d grown up until I stopped using the emojis and asterisks language (like *hugs*), I’m never gonna grow up because I’ve accepted that I’m an emotive person and it’s part of me. So you can get lost in my bad memories and never come back. You scarred me enough in other ways.
It took going back through a video of 2018 to trip out of my numbness and fear and realize, hey we did some pretty cool things. Cool events. We travelled. Made new friends. People do like us. I got involved with politics – a bit. Started my degree.
But now I’m wondering what I’ve lost. In all the rush to get stuff done because life is so tiny and fragile and so much to do, I’ve lost hold of the one thing that matters. The one thing that doesn’t just hold weight in this world, but is basically the next. I’ve lost hold of Jesus. My prayers are scattered. My Bible readings are few. And I know that my salvation doesn’t depend on it, I know God can reach me anyway, but what good is a relationship where there’s only One side making an effort?
Yesterday was new. It was a random conversation with one of my close friends (K) who’s recently been battering at my walls to come back in (she’s never accepted walls, anyway – I’ve always loved that about her. She goes in fearlessly and loves you unconditionally.)
Backing up a bit, I have a large problem with my memory. I first started knowingly blocking memories to be able to survive the trauma we went through back in 2011. Ever since I’ve been with Atul, I’ve been struggling with accepting the fact that my brain now blocks things without me trying. I forget easily. Arguments that I have or upsets with people, I block. About ten minutes after, I have trouble remembering what happened or why I’m really upset.
Recently two memories returned from my childhood while investigating stuff connected to fibromyalgia and PMS. I am deeply ashamed of those memories (which I’m not going to share) and hold them in some horror, because I was convinced they were because I was an evil person.
I don’t know why, but in the conversation with K, I brought up those memories because I needed to know what she thought. Someone I trusted. Was it because I was evil, or because I was holding repressed memories?
It snapped something inside me as she reassured me it wasn’t because I was evil that I did those things. I was a child, and I didn’t know any better. I was simply repeating a cycle I had witnessed or experienced because for me, then, it was normal, and that I held it in such horror now was because I knew it wasn’t normal. I was making choices and I was healing. It’s okay. It’s not me, and it’s not my fault.
It was releasing to hear that. To know that someone else was in that dark space of my head and, seeing the whole picture instead of my cooped up fear, could tell me that it was okay. That I will be okay. That – she’s being honest – that I’ve still got a way to go. That I’ll be dealing with this all my life, but that I will not be the same woman in 10 years that I am today, and that I am not the same person today that I was ten years ago.
Today I’m still crying. Still realising, accepting, understanding. It’s another step forward, out of the darkness and into the light.
I am so grateful for the tenderness of God, the Father I never had, the Lover Who knows every part of my soul and every memory I’ve ever forgotten, Who can see all the moments of my life in one time and knows, as I know, that I need to heal. That I won’t be staying a victim, because I won’t let it define me. That I won’t become the abuser, because inflicting pain on others is horrific and does nothing but place my torment on others and force them into the same dark place (and seriously, what sicko would ever want to do that?) That I am not my father, and that – even ten years ago, before I knew what he was – I realised that he was a lost little boy and in some strange way, that I was more mature than him. That I’m still struggling but that He will guide me through. Broken so that He can fix me with gold. Remove the dross. Get rid of the bubble.
And yes, it’s been hard. But He’s been so gentle in the same way.
And I was so scared this past year because, being away and being human and being me, I thought – yet again – that He’d done with me. My prayers weren’t being answered, really. Not the fixing the family and the saving of souls ones, anyway – not the really important ones. (I guess a job isn’t important, or getting me to work on time in the mornings so I don’t get fired, or a manager sympathetic to my disability…*facepalm*) I figured He’d got tired and moved on.
I didn’t (still don’t, haha) fit in at church. But there was the lesson He’d taught a long time ago. That when all of it is dark, and my brain is so fogged that I can’t think straight, whether it feels right or not, that doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that Jesus died for my sins, and my faith is in Him alone for salvation. Nothing else can save me. Rights and wrongs and whatevers, sometimes it’s only faith like a child.
And my disbelief keeps getting stuck in the way. It’s such a constant battle. And partly because I don’t know where to make the time, but I need to.
It’s hard because I don’t know where the space is. What I need to let go to bring that space back to spend time with Him.
But the last few days have made something perfectly clear, as I work on this.
I may have lost hold of Jesus, but He hasn’t lost hold of me.
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts. :)