PAUSE

The past month and a half became incessant noise for me. High-speed. I saw myself slowing to a halt while everything around me sped by. I couldn't keep up. I didn't want to. I needed to exist for a time without researching and tweeting and discussing and analyzing. Get away from all the buzz and buzzwords of my situation. I wanted to live in the simplest way, and live in silence.

I'd just left my abuser.  I was an ugly mess of emotions and thoughts. But just as I'd once been engulfed by him, I found I was becoming engulfed by somthing new: learning about what had happened to me, and in trying to find ways to cope with living without him. It was too much, of everything, from every direction. Information, advice, diagnoses, techniques. I needed to pause.

Without social media and being online til early hours of the morning, I was left to give attention to my thoughts and feelings. I journalled often. I was alone with myself. At times, there was absolute silence. Other times, mind and heart raced, raged. Some days I felt as if I was accepting the end of the abuse and the relationship. Other days, I'd be in angry tears again over the injustice of it all.

I don't have a handle on it yet. I don't have a handle on myself. Not as well as I'd like to, anyway. I would rather not feel pain, the relentless and raw ache. I would love to just move past it and not care, continue on with life and be ok. Feeling so much for someone who was calculating and vicious, abusive, is frustrating and angering. I would love for that part of me to not exist.

I don't want to face those dark places, my feelings. I've wanted to bury them deep and ignore them. Hoping that they'd eventually die. This is easiest to do, but I know this would hurt me on the long run, and lead to me hurting others, as well. I don't want either of those to happen.

I've read that letting yourself feel, and acknowledging what you feel, is a part of healing. I find I'm allowing myself to do so, bit by bit. This is frustrating and angering at times, as well, but I'm allowing it.

The quiet helps. The time alone reveals. It won't always be this way, but right now, I welcome it.