How do I know what normal is?
What I have just realise after years of childhood trauma I have no idea what it is like to feel normal. I don’t know what a normal up or down is. And it is kinda scary. I’m scared because when I melt down I know its because I’m in recovery from years of emotional abuse. But I’m not sure if I know what to aim for. How does one feel after years of trauma? How should one feel? Most importantly how do I want to feel.
Sometimes a fear is that I will overromanticize my expectations for a normal life. I may hope to feel ecstatic and fulfilled all the time. Is that normal? Or not? And how long after leaving abuse am I expected to feel normal. These are questions I don’t know the answer to.
How I want to learn to be present
A – starting therapy. I am about to start therapy which feels really daunting. I am afraid of what will come up. I feel like I will sabotage it. After waiting so long for a highly qualified therapist whose modalities align with me, I feel so scared. Of judgement. Of her not knowing about normal reactions after what I’ve been through. The unknown.
Maybe I’m scared of healing from my trauma. Sometimes, I feel like that’s the majority of me, that’s the majority of my adolescence. Once it is gone, is there someone there? Do I need to build another human? Spend months uncovering and learning about this new person?
I feel like I am on the way there but it is hard. I guess there’s a lot about me I don’t know. I may drastically change. And that is okay I say to myself but it daunts me. It haunts me. It is weird and all these far off ideas of connecting to my true self soon will precipitate. How scary and weird.
Sometimes I am afraid that letting go of my maladaptive habits is letting go of the evidence of what happened to me. It is scrubbing the blood off of my wound, before it has been photographed and recorded, verified. It feels like I will lose a part of me and that no one will believe me, and that in a sense what happened to me won’t be so real anymore. If I don’t feel it, it won’t be so real. It makes me feel like the justice will never come. But maybe that is what I need – for it to not feel real, or not my reality. Because I don’t have those people in my life anymore. I’ve been in control of some things and not in others and I think I have to accept that choosing the positive way may have consequences I never intended. Therapy might change me. I guess some of the things I’ve attached to ‘me’ are just responses to bullying. I’m not introverted or socially anxious, as I have recently found out, and some people find me funny. All of these things that I used to presume were concrete are fluid and might shift. I hope I can manage the shift.
B – I am going to travel. Some studies have shown that travel can cause as much change as therapy. I think it removes you from an environment and shows you you can be whoever you want. It stops the past in its tracks.
C – I need to start meditating. I believe attention is the most valuable thing in this world. It is what drives marketing, and most monetised things depend on education. As I live in a loud city and I am drawn to social media and dopamine hits from my phone, forcing myself to sit with myself is a new challenge. To sit silent, remaining focused on one thing rather than so many buzzling thoughts sounds like a dream as well as intimidating. I have a hard time being in the present moment, dealing with the unknown and the known I’d rather forget.