complex_trauma flowerock We called it growing_up_normal But I'm finding that it should not be considered normal and that it has stuck stronger, longer, and deeper than I thought. It wasn't just growing up, it was also my first experience living outside of "home" in a relationship that seemed ok at first and just got darker and more suffocating over the months and years. Leaving home didn't heal the wounds from my mother. Marriage didn't stop the daily cycle of pain and avoidance and loss of self in the relationship. Divorce didn't erase the scars, emotional abuse, fear of intimacy, and spiritual burden I gathered while sharing time and space with a damaged and sick soul. The new love I found, that found me, that I now have, didn't work magic on all of it all at once and spring me back up to life. Was I ever really awake to living? I am grateful thougj, every day, for this healing love and beautiful life I have been blessed with. I still have work to do inside of myself and I think I might be the only one who can untangle me. How do I ask anyone for this kind of help? Who do I ask? How do I allow myself to be vulnerable to someone as I would have to be for them to see the knots I have that have just tightened over time? Should I be untangling or just weaving over the knots? I am just re realizing how deeply I am bruised and how I've ignored how it add feces me and those who love me. I felt a spark ofagic just now as I passed a bush outside. The bush is beautiful and I felt it breathing and thriving. I want to be like that bush. 151217 ... flowerock Maybe complex trauma isn't the right word, I don't like diagnoses to be honest and I certainly don't want to burden myself with one. I was just reading about it and felt I related to the experiences and effects... verbal, physical, emotional, sexual abuse, feeling trapped and helpless for so long. The night I left my mom's house was one of the best nights of my life, I felt so good walking out of there. I didn't tell her, didn't leave a note, I did leave my house key. I just left. Leaving my ex was the same. I felt so doomed and trapped and worthless. I visited another ex boyfriend and we talked about the past and about trees and how we cared. I tried to leave that time b6 hiding in his bathroom when my ex cam looking for me. It was funny because the other exes current or recent girlfriend had the same name as me, so he acted confused, "which one are looking for?". I made the mistake of agreeing to talk because he refused to leave, then as we argued about me wanting to break up in an ally, a couple came out and invited us in and told us beautiful stories about love their journey and how it was worth persevering, so I stayed and went back to tell my friend (the other ex), with a sense of failure and deep dread. He hugged me and shared some Oatmeal with me he had made excitedly after we woke (we slept in the same bed but a foot apart). Months later I left again and went on an adventure with the same ex and several friends who were thrilled to have me back out to the desert to a boulder pyramid. We played wi th our third eyes and held eachother on the pyramid until sunrise. We witnessed so many things, felt so deeply, separately mostly. As the sky began to light hawks circled above and screeched. We climbed down to meet everyone else and ate cactus fruit together in the sand as the sun rose. We showered awkwardly together and then napped on a couch after grabbing breakfast from the coop when we got back to town. I felt like an escaped convict avoiding my ex until we got to a friends home. I ended up staying with another of our friends, who is now my wonderfuloving partner. We kind of floundered all together about our feelings and I was torn between the two... but time revealed that I was in love with the friend and not going anywhere, I found my heartmate. I still feel sad having hurt the other ex but I think we're all ok now. I guess that's been the process of me becoming free and finally feeling alive and loved, I can breathe and I'm not afraid to come home or be alone with my partner. I am happy to go places with him and feel supported and protected and nourished. Now I have the space and love to heal, I am healing and it feels good, but I have more to grow, I have more to clear up, I have opening up and letting go and understanding and outgrowing and crying and laughing to do. That's what I need to learn to do and do it every day. 151217 ... flowerock I just wish that the shadow of my past didn't fall across the present as mu ch. 151217 what's it to you? who go blather from