Okay first attempt at a blog, which I’m trying to view as a longer yet more personal version of a twitter post. I want to talk a bit about what we, well, what I was discussing with our therapist today and how it was one of those ‘revelation’ moment type of sessions. For those of you whom like us, have had the privilege of being able to access a good therapist, you know exactly what I mean by one of those moments; for those who haven’t however, allow me to explain.
You’re talking about an issue with your therapist which may perhaps be surface level of an iceberg or what you think is the main focus, then as you begin to bounce back talking points with your therapist, you finally realise what the main issue was all along and the feelings that come along with it. That is probably a super simplified version of what happens, and I’m hoping it kind of makes sense to begin with, though I’d invite you to keep reading so I can explain further my personal experience from today.
Typically it is myself, Moxie, that goes to therapy, though our therapist always invites everyone to join, which for the most part, quite a few of the others are in passive at least. Today it was mainly myself, B, Jett, Charles, Elijah, and Felix, though I’d also assume Ether was around as she often helps me out during therapy sessions to calm my anxieties and assist me in verbalizing my emotions/thoughts. Anyhow, when our therapist asked what we would like to focus on today, after scraping though my mental notes that I swore to myself this time I would write on a piece of paper as to not forget yet still didn’t do, I remembered that it had something to do with speaking to mum again the other day. We hadn’t spoken to her since perhaps mid-September, which for us is a somewhat long time.
Once we moved to Sydney in 2018, I no longer ‘had’ to see our family, daily messages became weekly messages which in turn became “oh sorry I haven’t messaged in a month, things have been crazy busy”. Then our nan passed away mid-year unexpectedly and I still don’t think we have gotten over that. She was the first person in our family to pass away (at an age where we could comprehend it), she was the person that our positive childhood memories are linked to the most. It was such a crushing phone call to get from mum as we were getting ready for work, but of course we carried about our day at the call centre, and others were none the wiser. We had dissociated past it. Even on the day of her funeral, we shed a few tears before emotionally disconnecting. Many of our child parts are still stuck in the memories of when she was alive, unable to quite distinguish that many years have since past.
When does a blog post become an autobiography?
Nans favourite flower was a lily, and two days ago, we decided to get a tattoo in her memory. After we got it done, I remember the first thing I wanted to do was to send mum a picture to ask what she thought of it. When I opened my messenger app, I had a small chuckle to myself that the last conversation we had was on the 16th of September. Note: this is mostly my fault. She used to message me more frequently, but I just gradually stopped responding. Every now and then we have conversation over a day or so, and then no messages for another few weeks. Not to mention, I don’t actually think I have spoken to her on the phone for about a year now ? I know I haven’t been back home to visit family since my birthday in July 2018 I believe. I now rely though on mum to fill me in on the latest details in the rest of my immediate family’s life, perhaps I am too anxious to ask them myself, especially when I have probably left them on read for a year or so. I miss them immensely, but am so afraid to rekindle the relationship for a number of reasons
For too long we have been stuck in a purgatory of distancing from family so we don’t have to tell them about the trauma. How hurt they would be about what happened, how hurt they would be for us to accuse someone of that if they refuse to believe it, how that could impact our mental health, how in turn that could further distance our relationships with them. But we are now at a point where we have nothing to lose there. As I was explaining that to our therapist today, I don’t mean that in a literal sense, as the implications are quite large to come out about that, instead, what I mean is that we don’t talk to many of them anyway, so the outcome of losing contact with some of them is really no different to how it is now. It just feels like we are carrying this huge secret and we are scared to tell them. There is much more to the process of being open with them about how our disorder eventuated, but I think gradually as a collective we are coming to the point where we need to tell them in some manner in order to be able to move forward into other aspects of our healing.
We still have such a long way to go, in terms of actually helping the parts most affected by that main abuser, and others that occurred throughout childhood…
Am I scared? Yes, I’m absolutely shit scared for all involved and where this road will lead, but we have been stuck at these crossroads for far too long, which in itself has been damaging to our wellbeing. So where to from here? Our therapist says our choice to do this needs to be done as a slow process, of which I agree, and I’m sure Charles also sees it that way also. From here, I decided to reach out to one of our older cousins, as she also has struggled with her fair share of mental health issues/ breakdowns over the years. I’m finally going to take her up on the dinner offer she gave to me many months ago. This is not to say that I will jump straight into “this happened to me you have to believe me please” right away, more so that I want to take the steps to undistance myself, then to work out the best way to talk about my struggles and why I have shut everyone out since I moved out in 2018.
And that’s where we are at as of now. Our ‘homework’ for the fortnight (our therapist is away next week) is to discuss this together, finding out how each part of the system feels about the idea of reconnecting with family / discussing with family why we have been isolating
Axolotl Archives 