No big revelations this week. In fact, I’m a little swamped with catching up after taking some impromptu chill out days. So just some banter and musings to share with you, my dear readers. In true me-fashion, I’ll sneak in some self-deprecating criticism in hopes that tomorrow I wake up a slightly different person.

Let’s start with the three to four days that I literally couldn’t stay awake. It started on a Thursday. I decided to just lie down and rest for a bit. I lay their like a sack of potatoes all night until the next morning. This happened 3 days in a row (at least). I just lay in bed scrolling on my phone or re-watching Lie To Me on Hulu. I’m still so mad they cancelled it before resolving the story-line. There should be a contract with all TV Series to, if all else fails, write in a spontaneous natural disaster that kills all the characters. Just put me and these characters I’ve grown to love, out of our misery.

This old wound leads me to consider the projects that I haven’t finished yet–the injustice of them all.

It should be said, I’m not talking about the projects I’m actively working on, but instead the projects that have been completed in varying degrees and left on shelves. They were vomit drafts, and second drafts and third drafts and I guess they got too difficult for me to finesse or make right? They still have my heart in their clutches but are so easily put off over and over again for something new and shiny–something lacking the pressure of writing in an avalanche to put everyone out of their misery.

What is it about not finishing something? Why is that we can’t call it quits and let ourselves move on? Why do we keep things in a box in the corner? Do we actually get pleasure from this? Is it just the avoidance of pain? Is this pain the letting go or the fixing?

There are boxes in my office that have never been unpacked. There are maybe three total. They are filled with things that just don’t have a home. They aren’t things I will use regularly, but they also aren’t things that look pretty on a shelf or have a foreseeable use in the future. They’re just somewhat messily piled in the furthest corner of my office, outside of my peripheral. I’m torn between not even looking at them before dropping them off at the donation center, and devoting an afternoon to sorting through the boxes and making the hard decisions to part with or find a home for the items.

You already know how this party ends. I’ll try to pick them up to donate them, get tempted by on thing peaking out at me. So, I’ll sift through the items, get over-whelmed, and then pile everything back into the boxes. Then the boxes are piled back into the corner of the room, out of my peripheral. It’s Lie To Me over and over and over again. I could lie, say I like it like that.

Maybe good things never really end. I could see how something that strikes a deeper chord inside us, could be granted permission to ring and ring and ring–echoes traveling through the void of space, sometimes bouncing off celestial bodies and redirected to some new corner of the universe in our minds. Like, tinnitus. Is it the silence we’re scared of?

And. Maybe bad things never really end. If we know we need to right some wrong, but we can’t make it right, so we keep it there in a pile, in a box, in a corner, as if one day the answer will come to us. Finally we’ll solve the problem. We’ll heal from the pain. One day. (Trauma, am I right?)

I’m currently reading “What My Bones Know”. There is a trigger warning in the Author’s note at the beginning. She warms me that the first part will be hard to get through. (Shit was she right.) Stephanie Foo is a childhood abuse victim who grew up to become an award winning journalist for NPR. I really appreciate her in-depth investigation in not only Complex PTSD but her almost laughable criticism of herself, her own memories, and her own reliability. There is nothing I relate to more than someone who, in the process of healing from trauma, must first prove to their self they had in fact experienced trauma.

It is true, that I have never used the word trauma for myself. However, since beginning Foo’s book and hearing how she has gaslighted herself with dissociative habits, there are little alarm bells going off in my body and mind. Have I dissociated from my past? Am I hiding from myself? What lies am I believing?

I remember getting spanked with switches and objects when I was child. I brought it up to my parents once and they both looked at me with their heads cocked to one side and said, and I quote, “We never spanked you.” I was thrown off balance, of course. Excuse me? How is that possible? Why do I remember standing by a sliding glass door, looking at our back yard at night time, being told to go pick out my own switch? Why I remember my father in only his underwear wearing me out with a belt. Here’s a popular thanksgiving story that my parents loved to tell: I used to regularly hide from my parents “FOR NO REASON AT ALL”. I would play hide and seek in the house or at the Walmart or a clothing store and just not tell anyone. Mom would have to have the whole crew of employees hunting for me. Isn’t that just a funny thing for a kid to do? Ha, Ha, Ha, care for some corn with bacon?

Now keep in mind, my parents raised us in a time when “beating your child” was kind of a trending topic. The world was becoming privy to the ill-effects of physical abuse. Teachers were paying attention and reporting to officials, Parents were getting arrested left and right, and kids were getting taken away. The parents who were left were terrified of losing their children or going to jail, but they were also like, “I was beat, and look at me! I turned out fine!”

So Foo confirms that her parents denied beating her, and Foo’s teachers denied their kids were beaten at home, and even Foo herself denies that she has dissociated from her trauma. Mind you, I’m just working at my part time job (detailing Frito Lay chips in Kroger & Walmart), with Foo’s memoir in my earbuds, thinking shit, shit, shit, of course, my parents wouldn’t admit to beating me. Of course, they’d lie and say they don’t remember that. Shit, maybe they really don’t remember it. Maybe they can’t live with remembering something like that. Just like Foo couldn’t–just like I can’t.

Am I just out here carrying on with my life thinking I made up a bunch of bad memories? Am I wrestling with anxiety and possibly ADHD under the false pretense that I’m just broken, or bad at adult-ing? Am I actually just living with triggers from my childhood trauma (and my first failed marriage) and writing them off as nonsensical quirks?

Exhibit A: I can’t go to gas stations on the left side of the road because it takes too much time and we don’t have time to waste! Silly me. Exhibit B: I can’t text a friend and spontaneously invite them to hang out because it’s been too long since I checked up on them, ergo: I’m a terrible friend, I don’t deserve their company! Silly me. Exhibit C: I can’t be touched sometimes or I feel like I’m being cornered like a wild animal! Aha, ha ha… silly me…

Damn. I’ve gone from “just a little bit of banter for you this week” to “don’t quote me on this but, I think I might have been abused as a child?” So I guess I’m just gonna write in a natural disaster and put this blog post out of it’s misery.

And all the boxes in the corner of her office where ripped from the window and scattered at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. What could deteriorate, did. What could not, was used in beaver dams and a beautiful little ecosystem was built where the deer and foxes drank, the frogs regained their hold (outside of extinction) and birds bathed in the afternoon sun and talked about the weather.