Stolen

“They have stolen the heart from inside you, but this does not define you.”

I just begin to think I know who I am and then something as simple as lyrics from a children’s movie punch me right in the gut of my soul. A literal hit might be easier to swallow, I am used to those. Digging in to the crevices of my spirit with a string of words is something I am uncomfortable with. I cannot tolerate the idea of having to expose what I’ve kept safe for so very long.

My tactics are well-kept trade secrets, patented in the name of a little girl who worked hard to build the blueprints. To enact such methods in to existence. She, we, come from what our therapist likes to tack the diagnosis of trauma to. Is it really trauma? How can trauma be something one considers a normal upbringing? Oh how naïve, our reality is a twisted one. One that when even briefly explained earns mortified glances from strangers. And, of course, a mouthful of pity follows those expressions.

My inner child is still very much part of me, she speaks through my lips when things get hard in life. She spills out our memories with ease; I guess she wants the attention it brings to us. I wish I could shut her down, hit a switch that puts her back in her place. She was the one tormented so why must I suffer? Because she is me and I love placing blame on anything but my own adult shoulders.

Our heart was mercilessly cut out with a serrated knife by The Queen who regularly shape shifted in to The Witch. She carved at my chest and ripped it still beating from my chest, puppets didn’t need such a thing. I stopped growing then. I stopped everything in order to devise a plan. I pulled out my best secondhand notebook and began the preliminary drawings. My own creations of safety would come to life.

In those tediously built methods were a toxic mix of disassociation and idle daydreams of death by my own hands. Both brought a different kind of comfort that frightens people of an average upbringing. Opening your mouth and explaining the lunacy of mentally checking out and/or always keeping that bottle of sleeping pills close; it leaves the ordinary folk in ribbons. This wasn’t ever about emotion, it was about survival.

In those plans weren’t a future but an escape plan to flee as far as possible from her. The organ I needed most was in a waste bin. The piece of myself that I would continue to journey without for too many years, I was scared to go back for it. So I lived in my realm of normal until the foundation was crumbling at the seams. We can’t continue to live like this. In fear. In forced solitude.

I keep stepping up to the edge of the only home I ever knew. I try to hide my quaking boots and pray for my soul to make it through. I have to say goodbye and recover my heart. That part is hard and still ongoing; it is a battle that I face every single Thursday in therapy. I have to figure out what truly defines me; not the little girl in me, not the me I become when I lose touch, not the medicated me, not any one of the faces I put forth to make others happy.

I am on a voyage to find who I am without my heart, as recovering it will be no easy task. What defines me? Who am I meant to be? As I listen to more songs and see more of life will I continue being slapped in the face with the reality? I am in no way sure but I do hope one day as I close out my final chapter I can leave a normal, happy ending behind.

“This is not who you are, you know who you are.”

Before it rained