the overwhelm

Last year, September 3 came and I didn't really give it much thought. I was celebrating finally being able to set clear and defined boundaries. There was an overwhelming sense of good after everything that had happened in 2016. Year two always proves to be a little heavier. Your resilience is tested. You walk around like a zombie and think, "How did I get here? And where am I going?"

This year, I am surrounded by overwhelming darkness. Numb, but not quite. Strong enough to know when I am weathering the tornado that always threatens to take everything down with it, but too weak to do anything or save anyone that's already in its path.

I'm mixing my metaphors. When I fall asleep at night, it feels like I am drowning but I'm not wet. Surrounded by water all around me, all I can see is darkness and my feet can't quite reach the bottom without taking me fully under. It reminds me of treading water in the deep end at swimming lessons. It had never occurred to me to be afraid of water until they taught us how to save ourselves. The goal was always to become a lifeguard, spend summers sitting in the chair, getting tan and getting paid to do it. Fear jumped in the driver's seat and said, "Let's take a different exit instead."

The darkness just takes me to flashbacks of nights I'd rather forget, on repeat in my head over and over and over again. Flashes of white-hot pain and back to black. The coolness of the glossy paperback textbooks again bare skin. The tickle of his old leather belt before it licked my body with pain. His whispers. "Are you little yet?" "Have you had enough?" "You can take a little more." I think I've forgotten my screaming, crying and pleading. Begging him to stop. It was always, "You can take a little more. Be a good girl."

Until it wasn't. Then it was, "Tell me you love me" followed by a punch to my left shoulder blade. The submissive in me knew that if I said it, told him what he wanted to hear regardless of how I actually felt, he would stop. The whipping still continued, but the only time he touched me above the belt after that was to pull my hair during sex.

I'm piecing everything together through the snippets my brain is giving me and the here-and-there details I actually do remember about that night. Was it punishment? Failure to perform after a Cody flashback that almost gutted me after six years. I backed away, curled up and rocking in a corner, made him promise he wouldn't touch me. I guess six years is my magic number. It's been six years since that night in April, and now I am brave enough to face the flashbacks and piece it together so that I can put in the work to move past it.

But the darkness is so overwhelming in the form of depression "naps" that last 12+ hours and watching Private Practice on a loop. The nightmares, the tossing and turning and lack of anything resembling peaceful sleep. I am tired of remembering, but I am also tired of trying to forget. Always bordering on the verge of exhaustion or meltdown, I don't know which side I'm going to sway toward. Will this tornado and all of its reckless energy come sweeping through here and knock me down with it? Or will I finally sleep without nightmares? This year all I have is more questions and no answers.