Healing Has No Timeline

So, where do I begin? I don’t really know. I’ve thought about what I wanted to write. A poem, a letter to my father, a big dramatic story about my life. But I want to keep it as real as possible. To show you what my life looks like. For now.Let me begin in the present. I’m 22 years old and I live in Amsterdam with my mother. I work two days a week and I have therapy 2-3 times a week. This has been my life for a few months now.I wake up groggy from my sleeping medication. I can sleep for 12 hours and still be exhausted. So much has happened in my dreams that I first have to write everything down before I can get out of bed. Then I have to remember what my life looks like right now. The dissociation can be so strong that I feel like I don’t really remember what is happening to me right now. It can feel like the last few months never happened. It can feel like I’m in big, thick clouds and I have no idea what is happening. So I have to remind myself what happened the day before and what I have to do today. I write in my journal. I do breathing exercises to release the tension and the cramps in my muscles. Then I get out of bed and I set a timer. The timer goes of every hour to remind me to be present, to remember what is going on. Otherwise I will get so lost in dissociation that I start to forget things again. This goes on throughout the day. Sometimes I work, sometimes I have therapy, and sometimes I’m alone. Being alone usually is the toughest part, because there’s no one to talk to. I have a lot of friends who say I can always call or text them when I’m having a hard time, but I never do. I never trust anybody. This can make me so lonely and isolated, but it’s my own fault right?Friends see me at a party sometimes, acting all happy and fine. They don’t understand, they think I must be doing better. I get how confusing that can be. But what they don’t know is that I have started shutting out my body and my mind the moment my father touched me. I blocked out everything, from emotions to memories to body sensations. I describe it as a hand around my throat, trying to choke me. That hand has been there for more than 12 years. It has taken my breath away, my body, my feelings, my emotions, my life. And because I grew up with this I always thought it was normal. I thought everyone was paralyzed from the neck down and that everyone was in that much pain. But I also thought fathers wanted to have sex with their children. This was my way to survive.So what my friends don’t see is that I escape. I escape in dissociation. I shut out everything and that’s how I can act okay. But the moment I get home from a night out or a day at work my body shows me how hard it has been working to keep reality away from me. My ears are ringing like crazy, my body cramps up, my jaw and teeth hurt and I feel nothing. No, I don’t even feel tired. I feel nothing at all.Feelings are a gift to me. Because I’ve been dissociation for so long, I grew into feeling nothing. My body was always numb. It was not my body. I could only feel my head and that hand around my throat. Right now, writing this, I’m trying really hard to feel tired. I have to keep my focus on it constantly, otherwise I cramp up and dissociate again. Then the hand wins. Twisted right? Trying hard to feel tired or sad or angry. But yes, that is my life now. I’m fighting my ass of to become human. To experience life. To feel everything. That is my biggest dream—to be able to live without someone choking me. I will not give up. I will get there. And then my life will be mine forever.