I haven’t written anything in a few months. Today I felt like writing something again.

The past few weeks I have made major leaps forward. My battle with dissociation and the other parts of C-PTSD is not over, but I’m moving forward. I felt a shift happening. Moving from stage 1 to stage 2 of recovery. Memories are coming up. Feelings are coming up. Flashbacks. Triggers. Re-experiencing. It’s scary, most of all because I still don’t know where it will stop. I don’t know all of it—what I went through. I blocked so much, and I don’t know what else will come up from the dark parts of my being. I have to keep opening the doors to these dark parts, to the caves where all the monsters are. Sometimes it feels like there’s no ending, like it’s just a bottomless pit of demons that I have to revisit. But I have to let them out, or they will haunt me forever.

I used to be so scared of these caves. I would lay in bed at night feeling like the demons would eat me alive. I would force myself to go to my fantasy world, running from the monsters in those caves. It was my biggest fear to be alone without distraction—to be alone with the monsters. That was scarier to me than dying. Those monsters were scarier than death.

I would lay in bed at night telling myself over and over again that if I couldn’t take it anymore I could always jump out the window. I could always kill myself. That calmed me down enough so that I could sleep. I think I was about 10 years old.

I would live in two worlds, like I had two parts. One part that was functioning and one part that was the dark, ‘bad’ part. That part would come up with images and feelings that I couldn’t understand. I would always just push them away as hard as I could and blame myself. I was bad and dirty and disgusting for having those images and feelings. I hated myself. I looked at myself with disgust. But there was also a part of me that thought I was irresistible. Because how irresistible must you be when even your own dad can’t resist you? So those things were connected in my mind. Disgusting and irresistible. That was my twisted reality. The feelings and images felt like something from another world. Supernatural. Not human. So I kept forcing them out of my mind, over and over again.

The running from those monsters didn’t stop until about a year and a half ago. The tension in my body, the anxiety and the dissociation were tearing me down. I had started to seek help for a few months. I remember going to a massage therapist who would ask me to feel my body. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. But I was too embarrassed to tell her, so I quit. I would try to meditate everyday and dive into the world of spirituality. But I only got more disconnected and scared. I would ‘float away.’  One time it was so bad that I thought I was going crazy. I thought that I had gone too far and that I couldn’t come back. That anxiety lasted for months and I was too scared to do meditation or yoga again. I just didn’t understand why. I didn’t understand that I had so much anxiety pushed away into the deepest parts of my being. So many dark memories and feelings. That in moments like that something would peek through and it would totally overwhelm me. It would be months until I could fit all the pieces together and understand why I was leaving my body so often.

I was traveling with my boyfriend at the time. We were backpacking through Costa Rica. The moment we arrived there it felt like home to me. I was finally away from ‘home.’ Pretty much as far away as possible. With the only person I really trusted in this world. While we were there I remember making a decision in my head. I was sitting on the bed. I can still see the room. I remember telling myself that if I really wanted to heal myself I had to tell my boyfriend about these memories. If I really wanted to get better I had to take these images and feelings seriously. It had to come out. First I had to write it in my journal. I almost didn’t, because I was so ashamed. But I forced myself. I wrote:

“There is something that I almost can’t write down. It’s that dad used to do things to me that I didn’t want to. ‘Of course’ he would always slap me on my butt and compliment my body, telling me I was hot. But there’s more. Once I came home from sleeping over at dad’s house (my parents were separated) and I told my mom before I even came through the door that he had done something bad to me. She looked at me with disbelief and that’s all I remember. But there always was this feeling. That something was there but I just couldn’t face it.”

After writing this down I told my boyfriend. I was shaking. He was shocked. He told me to tell a therapist. I said I would, but it would be months before I dared to. This was the beginning of the whole journey. It would take me a long time to get where I am today. A few days ago I looked at myself in the mirror and for the first time I didn’t feel disgusted. I felt something new. I saw something new. An innocent girl.