The world has simultaneously flown apart into microscopic pieces and stayed the exact same. A slow-motion scene of a revelation both startling and long-awaited. That point at which pieces fall into place and the observer, who has agonized for so long over the meaning of the individual pieces, begins to see the form they all create together.
My past.
The fight/flight/freeze response is automatic. There's no way to decide which one you're going to have, your body just reacts instantly with whichever one is both the most easily available and the one that it has had as the most available in the past. Neuropathways are widened with each fight/flight/freeze response, predisposing a person to react that same way in the future when the nervous system is overwhelmed.
Making sense of it all...
I spent years being physically trapped in my room on a regular basis by my screaming mother blocking the doorway. My nervous system was instantly overwhelmed by her stomping up to the door, bursting through, and violently, inconsolably rage-yelling at me about everything she could think of that was wrong with me. I would fight back by trying to beg, ignore, scream back, communicate calmly, anything I could possibly think of to get her to stop, and she was just more enraged by every attempt. It only stopped when my father came and told me to shut up, and her to leave me alone (sometimes he had to push her away from my doorway), which invalidated every injustice I felt in the moment but at least ended the abuse for a little while. Sometimes only as little as 10 minutes.
Expressing my own emotions was used against me, usually as ammunition during screaming rages. Fighting back escalated things exponentially. I often did flee, but she followed me throughout the house screaming that I couldn't hide from the truth, or that I was just crying because I wanted attention. So, the freeze response was crucial. Life-saving. I froze, often just staring at my bed (I was not allowed most pass-times of today's standard teenager, so I spent the vast majority of time in my room reading or journaling). The emotional numbing was the only option to stay sane. And it was automatically used countless times over many years.
Then
he
came along..........
Darkness now obscures the wake; brackish, opaque, mercurial. No map, no compass, no lantern. Stripped of eloquence, symbols, thought, defenses.... what now is left?
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