Numb

You know how you have this mental image of yourself? Like you think you know what you look like- or at least what people see when they look at you. I have always felt full of excitement and curiosity. Sometimes I swear I might as well be glowing. Every one has always commented how I have such an expressive personality..... Is that code for me being loud and annoying? Because either way, I'll take it! ;D Some people just don't have a healthy sense of humor..... lol

For almost a year I was nothing but numb.
Numb.
Numb.
Numb.
Numb.
Numb.
Numb.
Numb.
Numb.
Numb.

When you see those anime cartoons and the character gets hypnotized- that's how I felt. It was as if all the light had drained out of me. My voice sounded different. There were people that began to think I was suffering severe mental health issues....

[Shaking My Head] Come on people....

A person that cries often after something bad happens to them or they lose something important to them.... They are MOURNING. That is a normal expression of human emotion. What is not normal is you acting like nothing happened.

With mourning, sometimes the crying just sneaks up on you. You catch yourself before you realize it. You try to redirect your focus on something happier, something you can control, but when your mind wanders, it always leads you back to that deep sense of loss.

I needed people. I needed activity. I needed to stay busy, but have the flexibility to work through the mourning. The last thing I wanted to do was go to work and start bawling. So I didn't work again until I was ready.

And my life as "an island" had to stop. Even though I had just moved to San Antonio, I had to move to be around a support network. There is no way I am going to let myself spiral out of control. That is just not me. What I needed was a "controlled burn" or a safe place to go and work it out. The reason I needed a support network was not someone to take care of me- I do that myself. It was so I could recover faster. So my son could get the one-on-one attention he needed when he was playing, or I was crying. He needed people, too.

My two best options were only 45 minutes North of where I was living at the time and the other was in Florida. My pretend family lived only 45 minutes away, but I always knew I wasn't really family with them.... I was the red headed stepchild. That feeling I was an outsider was always there. But we had history. My real family lived in Florida, but I had not seen them since I was a teenager. There is a reason. They had not believed at the time that I had been raped by my family member, so they had worked hard to get me to recant my story. Over the years, I had made a success of my life, and the perpetrator had continued his ways. Time had proved my side of the story. So I was kind of in a debacle choosing between two less than perfect situations. And either was an interesting situation if I chose to move to be with "family."

I tried to make it work first with my fake family, but a well-meaning aunt tried to talk me out of having my son or my dogs and actually tried to convince me to stay at a shelter. Believe me, I thought she had lost her mind. This is exactly the opposite of what a person recovering from trauma needs. Maybe in the initial shock stage- but those that return to the previous routine or "normal" as some would call it, were actually the quickest to heal. So in other words, I needed to move on with my life, not wallow in it. I was even planning on getting a part time job in order to ramp up into a high stress job. She was wanting to adopt and here was my cute son who bonded with her- it was obvious her intentions were well meaning, but she was being selfish. In two weeks of moving North, I had packed up and headed East to Florida.

It was time for me to face my demons. And win. But I will admit- I was terrified. I was weak, I was broken and I was vulnerable. And here I was moving to what could easily be a minefield. The whole move could have been a disaster.