Live with Purpose

Four weeks ago, I almost died.

I went to the ER thinking I was having a heart attack.  It turned out that I had a perforated ulcer on my intestine the size of a quarter.  It was leaking air into my abdominal cavity.  The doctor kept asking how long I'd been having symptoms, amazed that I'd felt nothing until that day. He said most of this type of perforation are the size of a dime, and patients are in excruciating pain.  Why didn't I feel it?   I was in emergency surgery within 2 hours of leaving work that day.  Had I waited one more day, the results would have been very different.

I have a freakishly high pain tolerance.
I've trained my body to not feel any thing.  Emotionally or physically.
Call it a coping mechanism.

I have complex PTSD.  To deal with all that "stuff", I learned how to just shut down.  That means blocking pain and emotion, good and bad.  As a kid, I actually forced myself to not be ticklish in order to avoid attention. I learned to deadpan, to not allow my face to show emotion.
Just absorb it.  Just get through.
Just don't feel pain until it almost kills you.

I spent a week in the hospital.
I have an incision from my sternum to belly button that needed 25 staples to close.
I've been home, recuperating, for 3 weeks and I still feel like a bus ran me over.
Sleep is my only escape, but that's becoming harder to do.
I'm malnourished and dehydrated.  All my plumbing has been re-routed and it's not happy about it.

Up til now I've been too busy trying to heal to even begin to deal with how close I came to dying. This week, feeling a little better, has given me more time for reflection.  I've come to believe that the excruciating pain I felt that night, the pain I could not ignore, was the finger of God.  Stay with me.  I know not everyone believes this way, but I do.  He could have let me just continue to ignore whatever was going on inside and die.  Or, as he did, put me in so much pain that I had to pay attention.

There has been many tearful moments this week, realizing how close I came to not being here.  I guess I've been kept here for a purpose.  Strangely, that brings a lot of pressure.  It also brings clarity.
No more just coasting through life, hiding from the hard things, believing the lies people told me just to hurt me, neglecting the gifts I have been given.  It's time to live with purpose.

It's time to feel again.

Make a choice already

I've spent the majority of my life deciding what I didn't want to be.

I didn't want to be a victim.
A victim like my mother, brutalized by someone she loved.  A victim like my grandmother who fought the demons but lost.  A victim like that lost little girl that men touched and kissed and based her worth on her looks.

I didn't want to be dependent on a man for... anything.
I didn't want a man to tell me if I could spend money or not.  Not like my mom.
I didn't want to need a man to fix things, open things, protect me from things.

I didn't want to be different.
Not the shy girl who couldn't meet your gaze.  Not the adopted girl who didn't look like the rest of the family..  Not the girl who scratched rashes or had non-stop cold sores. Not the girl with the past so scary that she couldn't talk about it.

I didn't want to be used.
Not by any one.  Least of all by a father who treated me like a possession. Or an uncle with disgusting motives. Or any one of the boys who tried to lure me away into dark rooms and wooded trails.

I didn't want to be afraid.
Afraid of an abusive father with a quick temper.  Afraid of turning out like my mother.  Afraid of being less than.  Afraid of not being able to protect myself and the ones I loved. Afraid of the dark.  Afraid of the silence.  Afraid of closed doors and unknown places.  Afraid of people and afraid of myself.  Afraid of making the wrong choice.  Afraid of losing everything... again.

I didn't want to be alone.

The problem is that while I was so focused on not being something, I didn't choose what I did want to be.  I just let my life morph me into someone hard, jaded, solitary, non-trusting, fierce, abrasive and wildly independent.    I built walls greater than the ones Trump has planned.  I learned to disconnect from my body, to not respond to touch.  I learned to free myself from external emotion, to pace my breathing and maintain control.  I learned to hide all emotion and project a blank canvas that didn't belie the turmoil just below the surface.

They say if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger.  I'm not sure that's the case.  I think it makes you harder.  People stop trying to get in, stop trying to penetrate the fortress that's been reinforced with fat and sarcasm on the outside, hurt and loneliness on the inside.  People pull away-- or are driven away-- and every fear about people is realized.

People suck.  People leave.  People hurt.  People disappoint.  People are... people.  And supposedly I need them.  Well, that's what I'm told.  I don't totally buy into that.  I'm skeptical.  But maybe I don't want to be.

The new normal

The problem with having an "invisible" disease is that no one knows you're "sick".  I am in pain every single day; just some days are less pain-filled than others.  It's a big adjustment for me.  I went from being a healthy, active person to one who can barely get out of bed some days.

There's a lot of things I can't do anymore, like open jars, work out every day, put in a full day's work or have sex as often as I'd like.  But I do what I can, when I can, hoping things don't pile up too much when I can't.  In my attempts to feel normal, I sometimes overdo it.  That's my fault.  But it doesn't mean you shouldn't let me try to do it again the next time.

This is my new normal.  I'm tired of being in pain and feeling bad.  I'm tired of feeling bad because people think I should be who I used to be and do everything I used to be able to do.  This is not about you.  It's about me.  I did not choose this, but I have to live with it.  And live I will.