Yes Virginia, there IS time travel. Yes, there is.

It exists in the form of reverse engineering. If I look back, I see that I was well off (comparatively speaking) in the spring of 2006. Yeah, I still had problems, but I also had comfort and did not feel prohibited from working to heal myself. Sometimes I was scared, but I was not without hope because I was scared of different things than what I am scared of now. Fewer fears, different fears... it was better than now. Healthier. If I can just try to recreate what I had then... Of course, I can't do that perfectly, but maybe I can get back on the right track if I can come close.

How were things different then?

1. I was reconnecting with my writing and was able to use it to some extent to gain access into my own internal experience to help put something to rest.

2. I felt like I had a safe support (Old Guy).

3. Things were a bit more organized here in the house.

4. I didn't drink.

5. I took much better care of myself than I do now.



How did I get from there to here?

1. I was horribly betrayed by Old Guy a few months later and it started something in motion that I can't seem to make stop. His betrayal implanted a part of him in the Peanut Gallery (inner critic).

2. I couldn't even think about writing at first after that because the whole thing fucked me up so bad that it blew everything else right off the map. I tried to write later on only to find that I had a harder time of it than ever before. The Peanut Gallery had long held a prohibition against writing fiction and that had often created A LOT of fear for me. I didn't need anybody to feed those fuckers some steroids, but that's what happened and it made my job much harder. I guess it made it just hard enough that I eventually gave up.

3. I got A LOT more scared in general after the betrayal because the lid had been lifted from Pandora's Box and I lost my safe support in the bargain (even though I didn't know it consciously because of the dissociation). I guess I basically lost it after that. Cue constant panic attacks, worsened nightmares and sleeping hours, cutting, burning, LOTS of dissociation and a big, protracted slide into loonyville.

4. It's hard to take care of one's self and home with all that going on. Things basically went to shit.

5. I held out all alone as long as I could, but when I couldn't take it anymore, I reconnected with my old buddy (alcohol) because I was so desperately in need of comfort and I had nowhere else left to go.



Common sense would say to do things backward starting with dumping the booze and then concentrating on taking the organization of my home to a higher level, and then just making myself write. Well, it ain't that easy. I know because I've tried this in varied combinations - rigid, flexible and everything that lies between. I'm starting to think I have been overlooking the obvious and that I need to start at the top. Maybe I need to get rid of the therapists first. I know this doesn't sound quite right, but if they are feeding the Peanut Gallery, then they need to go because that is what has caused all of this to begin with. Maybe keeping them would be like trying to treat a cancer while living in a nuclear waste dump. That might be how it is because I feel prohibited by them. I'm tired of fighting the happy police to get to my stuff.

I'm thinking step one might be moving out of the nuclear waste dump. I need to figure out how to do that. It's what I need. Of course, having a safe support would be good, but I don't think there IS one. I'm thinking the goal of therapists is to make people pretend, no matter what it causes. Then, when the client collapses and/ or dies, they can always blame something else such as genetics or the coping mechanisms that originated from the trauma that the client was never allowed to process.

I might have to skip finding a safe source of support because I'm not convinced that there is such a thing and it sets me back too much when I feel like someone is telling me to get over it, stop thinking about it, shut up and act normal, etc., because I did those things for as long as I could. "It wasn't that bad, you're making too much of this, you can forgive, you have to be strong..." That shit retraumatizes me. I have read over and over that people cannot heal from trauma while they are living in situations that continue to traumatize them. Just as a woman who was abused as a girl cannot heal her childhood trauma while living with an abusive husband, I cannot heal the trauma of being constantly 'corrected' and cautioned away from the truth if I have therapists hanging around who will do the same things that my mother did when I needed it to be okay to tell the truth. The truth is frightening and VERY painful. I am retraumatized when I have someone who is supposed to help me get through things but I can't have comfort and safe support with them, I can't have someone listen to me without them telling me to be quite, distract myself, pretend, think happy thoughts or stop thinking all together. I am not yet entirely certain if this REALLY includes New Guy, but there are red flags here and I'm not a happy camper. I think I need to get the hell out of Dodge. I lived through detaching from my mother. I was six. I think I can find a way to go it alone.