Finding My Voice

I had therapy—EMDR—yesterday, and without going into too much detail, I will say I left feeling really icky. And it didn’t stop there.

Last night, I was woken up from a dream. There was a girl from my youth in it. She was friends with my cousin and lived in her neighborhood.

I always had suspicions that things weren’t okay at her home and that she had shared things with my cousin.

The first thing my therapist asked me yesterday was if I had any dreams from our last session. I didn’t.

But last night I did.

My cousin wasn’t actually part of the dream, but my husband was. In the dream, he told me that this girl had raped him while we were dating. I didn’t believe him. That was the dream.

I woke up like I always do when he cheats on me in my dreams—really upset with him. But then I started trying to process what I had just dreamed.

There was a neighbor my cousin used to go visit. I remember my aunt telling my grandmother, right in front of me, that she “thought something happened” to my cousin.

I was very young at the time.

People think kids don’t listen.

But we do.

I am slowly putting pieces together. And honestly, my brain still doesn’t want me to figure them out. It is still protecting me from things that happened very early in my childhood.

During therapy yesterday, I did remember something that happened when I was about four years old involving a closet. At the time, it didn’t seem like a big deal.

Now, looking at it through the eyes of an adult, it feels very different.

I honestly think there is so much wickedness in this world. I believe the devil is real.

And yesterday, I found myself wondering: Should I keep going? Or should I stop now that I’m beginning to know things I never knew before—and feeling things I don’t know how to carry?

I felt sick to my stomach for almost the entire session.

We talked about all sorts of things.

I have so much guilt weighing on me. So much shame.

I didn’t have a voice as a child.

I am fighting for my voice now.

For so much of my childhood, everything felt like it was my fault in everyone’s eyes—except my grandparents. Their love was unconditional… until I got pregnant.

Then I saw it.

I felt the shame.

And I have carried pieces of that shame for a very long time.

I’m still processing yesterday.

Did I kill my grandfather?

Could I have made his life better?

Did my life choices somehow contribute to an unbelievable amount of depression in his life?

These are heavy questions to carry.

And I don’t know all the answers.

Maybe I never will.

But I do know this:

I am going to keep fighting.

I am going to keep searching for my voice.

And I am going to keep trying to understand the little girl who survived all of this—even when understanding hurts.