Dear Silence

I am struggling.

I read recently that significant life events can cause people like myself (made vulnerable by chronic childhood traumas) to have psychological breakdowns such as severe depression, anxiety, or psychosis. Moving countries, getting married, buying a house, changing jobs, having a family, infertility, chronic illness, starting a masters, marriage separation... these are all of the significant life events I am currently trying to manage.

Thanks to my education (private and self), I have a lot of helpful knowledge about myself. I know, for example, that sometimes I experience unreasonable paranoia about others. It's unreasonable because the people in question will not actually hurt me. But it feels like they will. It feels like they will because I was systematically neglected and abused by other people, including my parents. I was a child and my brain grew in that environment. My sense of identity is torn between that reality and this new reality.

Sometimes I am dissociated from these memories. Sometimes I remember. And because I had no words for my pain as a child, I have no words for the pain today.

Remembering floods my brain, my new connections, and, because I didn't know what else to do, I let it. I let the despair, the fear, the nameless dread, soak into my new memories, my new relationships, until I fled them, like I fled myself.

This is my life. My mission, one I rarely want to sit with, accept, muchless observe. But the latter are my greatest weapons, and now I have one more: submission.

I submit.

I cannot cope with all of these significant life events. So I will simplify. Put on hold the things I can (school, marriage, having a family, changing jobs) and learn to cope with the responsibilities that I can't (owning a house, moving countries, chronic illness). I will say no to any further changes, unless they support me in this process.

I will take all the time I need to build my foundations. I will do this for me.