Me

12/12/15

My thought is to write something from my perspective that one day might be of help to someone else who is going through similar things as I. Do I claim to have the “corner on the market” on this and similar challenges like this? No way. There are people out there that have suffered horrific things much worse than I, and yet it can be so hard to open your eyes and open your mouth to speak out and admit the truth of what is going on inside your body and your mind. It is so hard to rise and speak aloud concerning what I and others can go through in daily life; to allow someone else to try to know of the overwhelming pain, agony, debilitating confusion, and what reoccurring sudden terrorizing fear can be like. There is so much that can be experienced in and through various types and depths of trauma related life. At the same time, the desire is occasionally there for someone that can be trusted to be available to help. The question is who is out there? How do I find them? How can I trust them?

You see there is so much fear of others finding out the secret I have fought all my life and have been trained to keep hidden, that it is truly hard to type the words here on this document knowing that one day someone, multiple amounts of people may be reading this. How would I be able to keep them from finding out who I am? You see I don’t want to have to face, hear or experience their negative reactions in any way. Why? I don’t want their pity, their belittling my life experience, disrespecting my intelligence, their trying to shame me, accusing me, their making light of my difficulties regularly experienced and they experience worse. There is the to do list like read this book, I haven’t truly forgiven people, need to truly repent more, who else to ask forgiveness, telling me to stop focusing on me, to just get out there and forget my problems. Hopefully, you have the picture. I don’t want someone finding out who I am someday, and it become public knowledge when I’ve fought so hard all these years to hide my struggle and appear to be just like anyone else. The cost just seems too high to risk more hurt and pain. `

Me Today
3/5/21 Friday

Despite all my efforts and fears to keep people from knowing my hidden truth, there have been some people through the years that came to a point in our relationship that wanted, even needed to know what it was that they were noticing about me. I had to risk letting them know what I am healing from. I have learned over time to be careful of:
• how much truth they need to know
• how much I can offer them at a time
• how much they want to know

I have had experiences with people knowing even the surface of what I deal with. People can be so heartless and cruel in their words and actions. It so hurts to feel the fresh added pain that often mixes, grows deeper, and eventually starts working to erode aspects of the personality and identity. There are people to often that don’t know or that forget, the effect of their words and actions which have the ability to encourage and heal, as well as to injure and tear down a person. Thankfully, there are people that are more kind and caring of others and life seems more positive after spending some time with them.

Now interspersed through the more recent years I have been blessed with about five people that I can believe that they see me as a person and care about me personally. No matter what depth of my journey they have come to know about, or how my struggle in the moment has shown through they have accepted me in the moment with kindness, patience, and encouragement. Even in times when it has been hard for them, these few have held on for me. That is huge. Now the closest lives about three and a half hours away from me and I am still thankful to have them in my life.

It seems I saw a wall hanging at one point that included the words, “God loves me as I am, but sees me as I shall be.” This handful of people have their own individual levels of knowledge and understanding of my challenges that I have experienced in my journey. Each of them have sacrificed for me to some degree or another, and have supported me in prayer countless times. They choose not to focus on the negative of my challenges but to be patient and to see the positive about me. They have even shared with me at times how I have helped them in areas of their lives. That is so helpful and encouraging to me to know that out of all that has been endured daily to keep going, that I can have some positive, encouraging effect on someone else to help them. Wow!!! I am so thankful for that. It encourages me to keep going. I am so thankful for and to this handful of precious, caring, and trustworthy people in my life. To me they are a God send.