Calling Out the Monsters

I'm struggling with shadow memories right now.

It's been five years since I made my Stand with the NFOO, and almost as long since I declared NC.  I've had two brief interactions in this time, once when NM was in ICU and once in a follow-up counseling appointment.  I left those interactions reaffirmed in my decision to sever all ties.  Any niggling doubt as to whether or not I would ever reestablish contact under any terms was blasted away by the revelations of ENF and NM's direct abuse of one of my DDs.  NSis and GCYB stand with them, just as they have from the beginning, and I'm not interested in knowing what they know or hearing their side of the story.  They were abused just as I was, they're aware of who and what they stand with.  They're adults and can make their own decisions about the degrees of evil they're willing to live with and absorb and further pass on.  Their silence and guilt by association leaves them in the same category of abusers that NM and ENF are in.  When you throw your lot with thieves, you're complicit.  Period.

I'm fucking done with these people.  Done.  Like wouldn't piss on them to put them out if they were on fire done.  If they call me, I won't answer and won't listen to the voicemail done.  Emails will be deleted unread done.  Letters will be returned unopened done.  If they show up on this blog they'll be deleted done.  If I see them anywhere, I'll walk the other way done.  We're talking a turning of the back without even a fart in their general direction done.  There is no conceivable circumstance that could occur in my life that will change this.  Done.


And I think that this absolute and crystal clear internal knowledge that I will never have a relationship with any of them has begun to open some previously locked (chained, deadbolted, barred and guarded,) door within me.  I've remembered a lot over the last few years, and I've been in the fortunate position to accept these memories and to see them clearly for what they are and to analyze how they've affected me.  This, more than anything, has been a key to my healing.

Clear, concrete memories are tangible.  I can wrap my hands and my heart and my head around them, and I can process them.  Ugly as they are at times, I can haul them out of the shadow world of doubt and insecurity and put them on the kitchen counter in the bright light of day and make them show themselves.  I can chop them up and slice them and dice them and dissect them and see them for what they truly are at their core.  Without that clarity, well, it's like fighting steam.

I have certain tangible memories that have surfaced over the last few years that are, simply put, horrors.  They're not repressed memories so much as things that I just had to put in a box and lock away in some part of my soul until I was ready to see it for what it was.  I always remembered them, but I didn't always have the strength to let them out of the box.  They're the stuff of nightmares, and they've come bubbling up at appropriate times, usually triggered by something that's happened in some other, safer area of my life.  I've done what we all have to do when the monster peeks out of the closet; I've made a decision to face the demon du jour.  The other option, of course, is to flee, but I've found that the fight response is more effective.  And I've become better each time I've battled it.

I can feel something bubbling up now, and I'm trying to be ready for it.  I just hate this part.  Hate it, hate it!
I'm stuck here in this limbo of restlessness; not sleeping very well, fighting off invisible monsters in a semi-conscious state, snapping at things that I'd normally take in stride, feeling sensitive for not a whole hell of a lot of reason, generally just weirding myself out for no obvious reason.

What I've learned in the last few years is two-fold, though.
First, it'll come.  I have to relax, do the day-to-day, keep myself in what we in AA recovery call 'a fit spiritual condition,' and it will come.  The locks will turn, the chains will fall off and the door will open.  The monster can't, won't or doesn't want to stay hidden away in the closet.  It'll peek out eventually, I know.  Although some part of me dreads its appearance, another - stronger - part of me knows that the confrontation will be anti-climactic - memories are only shadow monsters after all - and I will be better, feel better when it's done.
Second, I know that I'm going to be fine, no matter what comes out of that door.  I know because it's happened before and I've been fine, even better for dealing with it.  I know because you've done the same and look how well you are! :)  And I know, most importantly, that I'll be fine because the only possible monsters are memories and I'll only have to deal with what was done to me from behind the safe boundary that they can't ever do these things to me again.


Still, I wish it would just come out and let's kick some gravel, already.  I'm too busy doing things like living my happy and healthy life with people I love to sit on my ass waiting for the nasty to surface.

Patience may very well be a virtue, but I'm not sure it's one of mine!

So I'm doing what I know to do, which is something very, very odd that I think most normal, non-ACoN, non-abused people don't have to do; I'm seeking triggers.  And one that sort of wiggled in tonight came from the strangest place.  Ever seen the movie Kung Fu Panda 2?  (I cringe as I even type it; really?  I watched this movie? This is what I did with my evening?)  There's a scene where the baby panda's mother is essentially about to sacrifice herself to protect her child, and I started tearing up.  Visible/tangible evidence of a mother's protection of her child is a pretty obvious trigger, i.e., something that my farcically pathetic excuse for a madre didn't provide, but really?  An animated movie with kung fu and panda in the title.  Wow.  What's next?  Talking dog movies?  LOL.

Laugh or cry, we'll see what dreamland brings tonight.  Whatever it is, I'm ready.

Love,
Vanci