I started this post like my last therapy session: avoidance first

I'm in a strange place this evening.  There's a lot that I want to write about but I don't want to get into it at all. Had I sat down and wrote before I went to work tonight, I might have been able to get it out then but right now I just don't want to deal with it.  Spring has officially arrived here in Massachusetts.  Today the air was warm and comforting providing a safe haven for rebirth.  The clear sky allowed the sun's light to illuminate the natural world around me. Times like this that I wish I lived in a more rural area; perhaps, I'll take a drive to Concord and enjoy the park.  Maybe I'll channel Emerson and Thoreau while I'm at it (it's where they used to write).   The weather is perfect for the beginnings of new life.  Some trees have already fully bloomed while others are just beginning.  Although you can still see through most of the trees, the branches now seemed sprinkled with green.  

Honestly, the world around me is completely gorgeous.  My wedding to a wonderful me is only five months away and life really couldn't be better.  I just wish I could fully enjoy it rather than just appreciate it with lots of gratitude.  Although I haven't really discussed God much here, I think he/she wouldn't want me to be grateful but rather embrace it all.  Take it all into my soul and nourish my spirit with it's beauty and happiness.  I just feel as if I'm in a bubble that allows me to see it all but not experience it.  My world feels weighted with emotional baggage.  It's not even memories anymore they pull me down but their subtle effects.  

Yesterday, when I met with my therapist, she asked me how I was doing and I spent the first ten minutes blabbering on about how wonderful things are going and how everything was just fine.  Even as I spoke the words I knew that the reality of what I was saying was vastly different.  Things aren't fine right now and they haven't been for over a week now at least.  Dave keeps asking what's the matter and every time I tell him that I'm fine.  Truth is, I'm not okay but I want to think that I am.  Luckily the incredibly wise woman that my therapist is knew how to ask the more probing questions and eventually it just became too difficult to pretend anymore.  Had I answered the deeper questions with a "yeah everything is going better" it would've been a downright lie.  

I mentioned that I had my tarot cards read this past Saturday.  The reading was accurate.  It's not like she could see my future in specific detail but the cards told the generalities that were enough for me to get that between the cards and my energy she had a relative sense of the going ons in my life.  Although, my end goal was a good one (my embarking on a new adventure I'm assuming is my marriage) she also saw a major hurdle.  She said that there was something from my past that I couldn't let go of, that I regret, and that's standing in my way.   I was told that it was no longer and that once I move past it and let it go I'm be much happier and ready to embrace that new beginning. 

With only five months until I'm a married woman and everyone and everything around me telling me I just have to let it go, I found myself doing the thing I do best.  I avoided it.  Sadly, I'm not a light switch that can be flipped and suddenly all my pain is gone.  Unlike a computer whose performance is hindered by a virus, I can't have my memory erase and the proper lessons and memories reinstalled.  Humans sadly aren't that easy.  I did make it my goal to be done with this whole trauma bullshit by the time I got married.  Now I think I'm beginning to see that with the five month mark looming over, I came to the conclusion that I must let it go.  That's not so easy.  Sure, the memories have lessened dramatically but now there's just me or what remains of me.  

Logically, I'm there.  I get it and I'm ready to move on.  Unfortunately my emotions don't feel it.  Now, instead of comforting the memories I feel like I'm comforting myself.  I discussed many of my feelings I wrote about in the post less than a week ago about how I don't feel like a victim because I chose to stay in the relationship.  She asked the obvious question, "Did you really choose to stay?"  I told her that I drove to his place almost every weekend and how I knew I was uncomfortable but yet I went anyway.  I insisted that no one was forcing my hand and I wasn't living with him.  I could've stayed where I was more than safe and been just fine.  She then asked me if I had read the chapter on Captivity in the she recommended for me called Trauma and Recovery and when I nodded she asked if I remember that just because one is not physically captive, they can still be psychologically captive.  

Here I found myself agreeing with her logically but at the same time it doesn't make me loathe myself any less.  We continued to discuss how psychologically I felt trapped and how in many ways, I felt that I had more control by going there knowing what would happen rather than stand against him.  We discussed what happened when I did stand against how much worse things seemed to get.  If I went willing, I had the control.  I said that I didn't really know what was happening and she explained that I needed to see what he did and that I'm being too hard on myself.   I also brought up the whole feeling that I deserve the happiness that I have right now.  Again, she asked the most reasonable question, "Why?"  It was there that I stumbled.  I don't know why I feel that way, I just do.  I believe it.  For me it's a belief, a truth.  I also said that I knew it had something to do with the whole internal victim debate.      She also made a point that being a victim is not a personality trait.  It's not who I am or who I'm not.  It was just a role that I played at that time in my life but it doesn't define me.  

Such incredibly wise words and I know that she's right.  She said a lot more that I didn't even take in.  Sometimes I wish I could record our sessions but only her side.  That way I could go back and just listen as if I was listening to someone talk on the phone.  I told her that I logically know that she's right but that I don't believe it or I don't feel it.  Somehow, deep within me it doesn't feel right.  To this she nodded and said that it was okay.  That in time, I would begin to feel it and it accept it.  Though she didn't say it, I know she would consider this one of the sessions that I need to sit and percolate on.  I will admit, as much as this healing thing sucks, it's very interesting.  Interesting how it happens.  It doesn't happen at once.  It's not a broken bone that is reposition and sealed in a cast until it fuses back together correctly.  Psychological healing requires many steps.  Just because you've moved past one doesn't mean it's over.  

I need to stop pressuring myself to "be over it already" and trust that this won't last forever.   I've been living with the remnants of trauma for almost ten years.  Changing the beliefs and processing the feelings take time.  Of course in the back of my head I hear myself saying, "sure take all the time that you need, just be done with it by the time your married."  I can't think like that.  My wedding won't be a cure all.  I will still be the same person.  That's the most difficult thing about traumatic experiences.  Letting the go is actually impossible.  They will never disappear.  You will never forget them.  It and everything that came with it will forever be a part of you.  The challenge isn't getting rid of it but accepting with without judgement.