Tell your story

You own everything that happened to you.  Tell your stories.  If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.  

I wrote part of my story that I self published.  The link is below.  I left out many things, since I focused on the life changing event of integrating from 5 personalities to one.  In this blog I continue to share my story and I still leave out a lot.  I figure no one is interested in the fact that I like playing simple computer games.  I particularly like the word games since I am working at seeing what is not immediately noticeable.   Recently, I started a self defense class.  I started with tutoring about a month ago to make sure there were no major triggers that would be caused by taking the class.  The idea came from Battle Buddies.  One of the articles they shared took a systematic approach to eliminating triggers and symptoms.  It did not say it would be easy but approached PTSD from a more clinical view, taking out the emotion.  I already can do this but I hadn't considered that I could use removing emotions temporarily much like putting a burn victim in a coma while they heal.  No emotions all the time is not healthy, I recognize it and so did this article.  (Unfortunately, I did not book mark the article.)  Emotions are essential to living.  However, it doesn't hurt to set them aside for a short time.  I am learning to promise myself to process the emotion at a later time.  The struggle comes when I am tempted to ignore later, too.  I am working at following through on promises to myself.  So back to the self defense class.  I signed up with the city parks and recreation.  I attended my first class and discovered another woman around my age was also going.  All my fears about being old and odd to be a woman there melted away.  Now, I am working on the moves.  My entire body is in total rebellion.  My body hurts every where.  I have bruises and sore muscles and no one has touched me.  I am practicing in the air.  I expected my mind and my emotions to put up a resistance.  I didn't expect my body to rebel so completely.  Today, in my exercises I went back to the most basic routine.  I used the lightest weights and gave myself permission to take a day off from practicing Karate.  Tomorrow I will practice again.  Part of my story is overcoming my past.  I was criticized when I was very young for telling someone that my older brothers would hurt me.  I was silenced and told not to "air the dirty laundry in public."  Now, I recognize that abuse thrives in an environment of secrecy.  I was hit, pushed, poked on a regular basis.  If I reported behavior, I was told I was a tattle-tale and no one would like me.  It was a crazy and destructive way to live.  My brothers also fought each other daily.  I attended the self-defense class on Saturday.  They had a demonstration before class.  I could see the sparring going on through the window.  I actually turned around and started heading for my car.  I felt the same nausea starting like when I would watch my brothers fight.  I then turned back, set my emotion aside and went back into the room where they were continuing to try different techniques.  Confronting my past head on by taking a karate class is just as hard as I thought it would be.  I am allowing myself to process the feelings of distress afterwards.  I am looking forward to going back with the idea that each time I face the terror of watching brutal fist fights as a child I remind myself, every person there is paying to be there and respect each other.  I may never feel comfortable with fighting but I will get to the point where I don't totally glaze over and freeze.  I cannot change what my brothers did in the past, I can own how I feel about it.  I can decide how I am going to respond.  I am taking responsibility for me and my reaction.

Tired of running away.