5. Grief

Grief is scary to me. I’m afraid when I feel it. Grief may be just another word for loss. Yesterday it was too much. In the first post I said that I had grieved losing things like innocent sex. I do, for sure. And when I acknowledged that to myself it was hard, and I felt a lot of shame and embarrassment. And now I don’t, really. After I acknowledged it, somehow it became much less charged.

Man, I am hoping it works the same with this scary grief-monster that I can see is coming next. This one is named “lost time.”

I went to tractor pulls as a kid. They’d harness a heavy sled to tractors, and see which one could pull it the farthest. It feels as if I’ve had a sled like that harnessed to me for most of my life. This is another place I’m aware is victimy-sounding, but that’s how it felt. Years in therapy, and still it just seemed like everything was way way harder than it was supposed to be. It feels like some kind of healing to be at least partly free of it. But whenever I think of that, I think of years and years dragging that sled. And then come other thoughts of what might-have-been. Oh I know we all have this grief. There’s nothing special about it. There doesn’t have to be. It sucks hard enough just plain and regular.

Who in their late 40’s doesn’t think about this? Of course. But that doesn’t make my grief any easier. Or yours, survivor or not. If you’re reading this and you have some experience to share abut grief, please write in so I can share your experience here.

I don’t know why or how it works like this, but survivors of all kinds of sex abuse seem to have a similar experience. Until I acknowledged the truth to myself, I just wasn’t ever going to be trying to heal the right wound, but just treating symptoms of it. And until I started being willing to do that, the people who were trying to help me had their hands tied. Maybe they’d all been able to see that something else was wrong, but they couldn’ read my mind. Neither could I, really, I guess.

Have some peace today. You’re not alone.