Let go

This whole time I really thought that I had forgotten what it felt like to see her that night.

With her wrist the way it was, and that stupid song playing over and over again, “I need you, I need you, I need you now.”

I forget the message wasn’t for me and when I remember I feel like I didn’t really do any good for her at all.

I forget to look back at all the times she threw things at my head, it doesn’t mean anything anymore; even though the intent to hurt me was more painful than the actual doll or remote that hit my face.

As I was reduced to tears last night, recalling step by step, what the therapist told me to write to cope with the memory of that night, I realize that it still hurts.

It still makes me feel miserable and alone.

I had talked about it twice that day but I wouldn’t let myself cry that early in the morning.

Then the sun went down and the moon suggested it was time to left the weight off my chest.

I remember saying “I didn’t want her to feel alone like I did when I tried to kill myself. No one found me, I found myself. But I was relieved to have found her. I was horrified but relieved. I didn’t want her to think no one would try help her.”

I come from a long line of letting go.

But I have learned that letting go, isn’t forgiving, it’s not equivalent to rest or closure.

Letting go of pain that vast...

you have no idea how hard it hits you when it comes back.

The more I dwell on the pain the more I realize how badly it affected me.

How I brace myself for something terrible each day without even noticing.

How I sleep more because I am so exhausted from being so alert.

The threat levels are through the roof as my brain floods with that memory and the only thing I’ve ever done was let it go...

I can’t do that anymore.

I want peace, but I can’t let go.

I want to feel safe again, but I can’t let go.

I want to hold myself and believe that I am good like they say, but I can’t let go.

I want to feel the sun, I want to run through fields and feel joy, but I can’t let go.

It’s a festering wound.

It’s trauma, and trauma sticks to the bones and eats at the calcium, it gnaws at the strength of your body until it convinces you that you’re nothing without it.

I hope I could someday learn to nurture the trauma, soften the sharp edges, teach it civility so we can have an honest conversation about that memory.

Maybe it went dormant for a while; it took advantage of the month I spent with peace, where I didn’t have to hide, where I had forgotten the color of my bedroom walls.

Where I was able to sit with my mother worry-free.

It went dormant when I felt safe.

I don’t feel safe anymore, and now that feeling in my gut as sounded an alarm to the trauma.

“Something bad is going to happen! Brace yourself!”

If I truly brace myself, then I can’t let go.

I can’t let go.

I can’t let go.

I can’t let go.