I wanna share a story that I have told very few people.
When I was 16, I was a mess on the inside. Rape and physical abuse had broken me into pieces, and it was only because I was so good at running on autopilot that nobody really knew how bad it was for me.
In my head, I felt like I had a hundred voices - it was so bad I tried to create a mental "parliament" just so there was some kind of order.
Then I went to see the movie "The Wall." And after I left the theater, it occurred to me that I had walls too, and I needed for them to come down before i got as bad as the main character in the film.
There was only one problem I hadn't considered. I didn't just have a wall between me and others, I had an internal wall where most of the memories of my rape were hidden behind.
And I was in no way ready to face that horror.
So I went a little crazy - or maybe just slightly more crazy than I had already been.
I spent a day or so wrestling with a dark side of myself I never even knew I had before that, and I somehow managed to get it back into behind a barrier again.
The strange thing is afterwards, I no longer felt like I had hundreds of voices in my head, but only two or three instead.
But it would be decades before I found the courage to try and face that darkness again, and when I did, I was smart enough to know I needed help from a therapist when exploring that part of me.
Make of this story what you will.
Comments
My Wall keeps me sane.
The bricks in my wall are of necessity immensely strong but seemingly made of glass. It's weird; I know the demons are there for I can see them but they cannot harm me. I built the wall myself because I trusted nobody else to do it and I chose the bricks. That way I feel in charge because I swore I would never let anybody hurt me again. If I am hurt these days it's nearly always by somebody who has let me down or disappointed me after I instigated the relationship.