perrumpere noctis…

what are all of the adjectives for grief? my entire body feels numb today. The only area I am really feeling is my finger that I’ve definitely strained. But I am only feeling that because it twinges with pain whenever I reach to grab something or I tap the sore part against something else. lying in bed last night, I was trying to run through my body and was overwhelmed and saddened by how much of my body I can’t feel. from about my shoulders to my ankles, my body feels numb and nonexistent. I am so dissociated and so numb I have no drive to get back into my body. dissociating means I don’t feel the grief and pain as much and it feels a little less overwhelming. It is still there, the grief is still swirling through every part of my heart and mind.

Watching my youngest scream and cry as I walked away from his classroom this morning really hurt. but also, I am so numb I am only vaguely aware of how little I am connecting to him right now. I am only aware enough to berate myself and shame myself for not being a good securely attached mother right now. I am only aware enough to feel whispers of that shame and guilt. like I know it’s there, but I am so detached that i can’t actually feel it.

I know I’m dissociated, I know I’m not present. i know, and yet I can’t find enough energy to care and do something about it. I want to crawl into bed and never get up again. I want to cry myself to sleep and my body just give out because of exhaustion. I don’t want to keep lying there, tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable in a body I can’t actually feel but I know hurts and aches, for hours on end. I want to feel, but I know if I come back into my body it’s going to hurt even more than it does being this separated.

I don’t like this. I don’t like how I feel in my own skin, I don’t like the panic that keeps spiraling up my chest and into my throat. I don’t like feeling choked by the grief and agony in my heart. It is easier to feel cold than to feel warm, the cold helps numb and ease some of the heartache. I had to exist in my own body yesterday for chiropractics. And that’s probably why everything hit me so hard last night.

I know my nesting partner is worried about me, but I don’t know what to tell him. I don’t really feel like I can be worried about myself, but I know how I’m existing right now is not good. I feel punished and judged and tossed aside. I do not feel that I can give myself compassion or understanding. I am certainly seeing my partner through the lens of what others have done to me. And it is easier said than done to remove that lens, especially since their actions over the past two weeks have confused me so much.

what does it even mean to be dissociated? I can read all of the logical and analytical knowledge about dissociation. I can read through the body keeps the score and I understand it. But how does that then translate to my own body and mind. I know that dissociation is how my brain protects me. Especially since I know how scary and destabilizing the memories of my dad are right now. Especially with how painful the head tics are as I try to get rid of the ghosts of his hands on my neck. And I’m feeling this so significantly even with being this dissociated. so how bad and heavy are things really behind the dissociation? I can appreciate and respect my brain trying to protect me. but will I even be able to come back from this? I can’t get to the point right now, and nor am I able to hope, but do I even want to get out of this space?

The sadness and grief feel so so heavy in my body. I know from experience that even when I’m dissociated, I can still feel those things. Maybe not to the extent of how deep the grief and sadness truly is. People keep asking me how they can support me and I honestly have no response for them. I don’t know how I need support. I don’t know even what can be done for how numb and checked out i feel. I’m not existing in my own skin, my brain is splintered and shattered and unstable, my heart just hurts and feels trapped in a box two sizes too small for it.

My brain keeps shattering into tiny pieces, each one a trauma memory that is wrecking havoc right now. Then my logic and analytical brain tries to come to the surface, and it’s pretty swiftly pushed back under. I feel like I’m drowning under the trauma and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I feel utterly helpless, apathetic, numb, detached, and I feel like there is a part of me that is standing there anxiously wringing their hands completely lost.

The narratives my brain is choosing to grip tightly to are as follows.

• I am worthless for how badly trauma has fucked up my brain. This includes how emotional and spun out I’ve been, and I think there is a part of my brain that is trying to punish me for feeling the things I am. And for how deeply I’m feeling everything.

• I am not a strong person, I am weak and no one wants to be around me. “Trauma is catching.”

• I am a disgrace and their people are disgusted with me. my partner is disgusted and annoyed with me, and blames me for how badly everything has gone over the past two weeks.

• I can’t accept what anyone has said that I’m a good partner for how deeply I’m caring about them. that feels like a lie and I feel like I’m a horrible partner and not one anyone would want to have.

• I am not a good partner because of how badly my disorganized attachment type is so triggered right now. Because I have had to earn a secure attachment, that makes me less of a reliable and desired person than those who had and still have a secure attachment type from childhood.

I feel like I can’t get around how fucked up I feel my brain is. I think that is the thing I continue to circle back to. I continue to get stuck with feeling like a failure and worthless and that everyone feels my trauma is too much and too heavy for them to even know about. Maybe this is linked to how abandoned I’ve felt and that trauma being spiraled up? I don’t and cannot see my own worth. All I can see is the bloody visceral mess that I’m holding and that is covering me from head to toe.

I’m stuck in my own head, and keep coming face to face with my dad. I keep seeing his eyes, his mouth, feeling his hands on me and hurting me. I keep feeling the intense betrayal of trusting my dad to protect me and then finding out that he not only drugged me but abused the shit out of me. I feel my younger selves struggling to feel safe and also feeling their instability and fear. If i wasn’t so numb and shut down, I would be stunned at how wildly triggered my childhood sexual abuse trauma is still. I keep feeling like my brain is slipping back into the constantly triggered and fearful state I experienced daily as a child. The instability and fear of never knowing what my parents were going to do to me. The anxiousness of never feeling safe. The sadness of knowing things as I know it are not how they’re supposed to be. The grief of never having a mother, of knowing I couldn’t trust and didn’t feel safe with my dad, knowing I was all alone. I was all alone, no one to protect me, no one to take care of me, no one to love me and tell me I belonged. this is the place my brain keeps getting pulled back to. And I can’t get out.

If I wasn’t so checked out and detached, I would probably feel some sort of shock over how I’m in the mental space I am. I don’t know what I’m doing. I have almost no access to any tools or coping mechanisms I know, I think?, I have used in the past. My brain is not letting me access a lot of things that I think are still there. My logic brain is locked away somewhere and I don’t have the key.

It feels like the best thing for me to do, for my sake, and everyone’s sake, is to hide, pull back from everyone, and just try to make it through this.