Friday, December 31, 2010

Goodbye to the 2010 me; hello to the 2011 me...

I have turned a corner and there's no going back now.
2010 has been a miserable but important year for me. It's like a culmination, no, it's more like a cataclysm of life events that have led to this last day of 2010.
I spent the first 24 years of my life in complete denial of any childhood abuse whatsoever. The signs were all there, but I never even saw it coming.
First there was the shock and upheaval of discovering even the possibility that I had been sexually abused as a child.  Then there was the subconscious decision to bury it again in order to carry on with the business of raising a family and attempting to live my life. I spent the next 22 years in limbo, in the fog of dissociation, gaining more and more weight every year. Recently, there has been a resurgence of the chaos of the aftereffects of incest. 
It was 5 years ago that I had weight loss surgery and lost more than half of my former self- 180 pounds. Suddenly, there I was, small and exposed. I could no longer hide inside of my fat cocoon. Food didn't make me numb and sleepy as it had always done in the past. I felt like my nerve endings were raw and it hurt just to be in my own skin.
I liked feeling as if I had permission to walk among the "normal" people now that I looked like them. 
I liked fitting into restaurant seats and being able to buy clothes, but I always knew it wouldn't last. I knew I was doomed to live in the shadows as an outcast, filthy and ashamed. It was just a matter of time. For the past 2 years, with both my parents now dead and the sexual abuse stuff rearing it's ugly head, it has all begun to unravel. I can't work, I am gaining weight and my life has become unmanageable. I need to get out of my own way and allow God to work in my life.
Now, here I am. I can't go back and I'm terrified to go forward, but I have finally decided that the pain and suffering of pretending and trying to numb myself is worse than the terror of the unknown I'm facing on this healing journey.
In my head at least, I know that the worst of it is over. The abuse is in the past. But down deep inside where my little self lives, I am still terrified. I am still Gaye, the shy little fat girl.
I have done everything I could to avoid admitting that my father, whom I loved and longed for had used and discarded me like yesterday's newspaper. Like trash. That my own mother didn't love me enough to protect me or even to believe me when I finally told her 5 years after my father died. 
I could not face the pain of admitting that the life I thought I had was a lie.
Instead, I have opted for believing that I am bad, broken and defective, just as I was trained to believe.
Living a facade of a life in dissociation, isolation and despair has taken it's toll on me. It has taken a toll on my marriage.
The price is too high for avoiding the pain. I simply cannot go on living the way that I have for the past 46 years. I'd rather die than have to do that, but I am choosing to live instead.
It's by the grace of God that I am able to say goodbye to the me that I have always known and take a step towards the REAL me. The me that I was born to be before they nearly destroyed me .