2008-10-22 - 6:14 p.m.
Jack Is Still Fighting His Antagonist
* * *Please read the two entries before this one first. Thanks. * * *
Continued...
But the part that eyes other people suspicously, can keep right on being vigilent.
Unfortunately that happens to be the part she is the most concerned about.
She tries to gently tell me that I need to let it go. Let the violence go. You did what you had to do, to survive, back then. But you do not need it anymore.
I told her I feel like she is asking me to take off all my clothes and go out into the wilderness, naked, with nothing. No water. No knife. No shoes. Nothing.
She said that in a way, I already am in the wilderness or at least out in the world naked. My parents did not give me what I needed mentally. Then the Antagonist suddenly and abruptly threw me out into the world face first.
He spent his whole life putting me in my place
He left me feeling like I have no place.
My place is below everyone and everything else.
Part of my survival was having to accept that.
As long as I can remember I have had to push it all back. Hold it all down. Hold it all back.
The older I got, the harder I had to swallow it all back down. Deeper and deeper. How many times can you swallow your own stomach acid? As many times as needed. Hide it behind that expressionless smile and the more than occasional flinch.
Is it any wonder I am so full of rage?
I learned passive aggression. I learned self depreciation.
Most of all I learned self destruction.
I could not physically fight him. I could not physically run away.
There is another part of the Fight/Flight reaction that is often left out.
Freeze.
Fight/Flight/Freeze
Freeze was the first of the three that I learned. A powerless surrender.
A retreat into yourself.
I don't even have to feel threatened to do it.
That is where I learned to surrender and give up. That is where I learned to shut up and shut down. This where I learned to hide and hate myself.
More life lessons taken into the real world with me.
Thank you Antagonist Inferior, you taught me so well.
A year later, my therapist still has not untaught me.
I keep telling her, I can just unlearn almost an entire life time, over night.
Especially when I still convinced that these are things I need to survive.
Even when I can see, I still can not let go.
I am still afraid. I am still your bitch.
I am still tearing myself apart, trying to get at you. Trying to claw you out of my head, then sticking my fingers into the wound and trying to push you back in.
I am still punishing myself for something you did.
It sounds stupid but sometimes I feel like childhood was a harrowing experience. Childhood through young adulthood.
Sometimes I feel lucky that I survived. Even if that was just by not killing myself.
I think about everything I went through. Then find myself suddenly in this moment. Right here. I could have ended up anywhere. But I am here. Right now. Alive.
But somehow I do not feel safe.
Somehow I am still running.
But I can never get far enough away.
I have an unexplainable fear that somehow my past is always too close behind me. Breathing down the back of my neck. If I ever stop running, somehow it could catch up with me and drag me back in time with it. Kidnap me. Physically reclaim this mental hostage.
I can not afford get too comfortable.
There is nowhere on this earth that will ever feel far enough away.
No physical place can save you from something in your head.
And somewhere deep in my mind, I am still living at home.
I am still fighting a war that ended years ago.
I am still living that war.
And I am still afraid of being killed in it.
Jack's Christmas That Wasn't - 2008-12-24
Jack's Christmas Eve Alone - 2008-12-24
Jack's Christmas Letter To His Asshole Uncle - 2008-12-08
Jack Is Still Fighting His Antagonist (2) - 2008-10-22
