Addiction

I started really digging through some of the first journals I ever wrote. Jeez, talk about darkness. There is an abundance of pages. Page after page of anger and sorrow...pleading for release from whatever was wrong with me. I decided to go back to the beginning in case there was one soul out there who would see this blog. One person who still thinks no one could ever feel as bad as they do.

I actually have forgotten a lot of what I went through. Dirty diapers and 3 am feedings will do that to a woman! I tried to remember what brought me through childhood, especially, my teen years, without some kind of addiction. I mean, people with daily horror need some kind of outlet or they will explode. I couldn't remember what mine was. I know in adulthood I was addicted to being a victim and to being angry all the time. Those addictions ruin you from the inside out. Had I never had a more physical way of rebelling against my situation?

"The abused man or woman often handles the confusion of the soul by drowning his or her wounds in addictive activities. Addictive behavior is the use of any object or repetitive mode of functioning to handle stress, struggle, or sorrow that both impairs personal functioning and relationships and cannot be stopped without extensive outside intervention" (The Wounded Heart Workbook, page 27). Underneath, the author asks if I had any addictions or compulsions. Among the ones mentioned above, I wrote that I wanted to hurt myself. It all came flooding back. Taking the blade of a knife and pulling it across my skin and tearing my flesh. I remember the flood of release as the blood ran down my arm. Control! I had control of who hurt my body! I had control...for that instant...I had control. It was almost like having a good cry. My stress would evaporate and I could usually sleep soundly. My body was my own for a little while. It gave me proof. A reason to be sad or upset...I had a physical and visual wound to mourn over. It never hurt. I could feel it but it never hurt. I liked pain. I liked cuts and bruises...if I gave them to myself. They made me feel strong and in control. Maybe like I had beat my mother to the "punch". If I was already bruised than she couldn't make her mark. I hid them well. In the summer, I cut my legs and feet...no one looked there. In the winter, my wrists and my arms. I even used to bite the skin off my lips until they bled. I can actually recall a few times when I would pull my own hair. Do it to myself and it won't hurt so much when she did it to me. I fought back...unfortunately, I only hurt myself. I'd fight against this deep into my marriage. About seven months into my first group I had the second of two miscarriages. I think that was the absolute lowest I had ever been with God. I let go of all restraints when I found out we were finally having a baby. We'd lost one seven months before but I had been only 3 weeks along. This was different. Being a mother was so...warm. I gave up feeling my body was my own. I stopped punishing my body for what other people had done to me. I was a mother. I even felt different. I could feel the glow everyone else could see. Right before the ens of the first trimester we found out I had never been pregnant with an actual baby. The sac developed and the baby didn't. The world fell from under me. God had slapped me in the face. There was no one else to blame for that than Him. How could he? I hated myself for believing! I felt like such a fool. I had felt things and embraced life only to find out it was all a joke. I went back to punishing my body for the pain inside of me. I starved myself for months. Why nourish a barren body? The only thing I wouldn't do was devour the pain of miscarriage. The doctor told me I could wait to let things "end" naturally or I could have a short surgery and then it would be over. I wanted the pain. I wanted the labor. I couldn't do it. I had perverted everything else in my life but I could not let motherhood be tainted that way. I opted for the surgery. I was in love with a baby that never was...I just couldn't ruin it. That was the closest I ever got to becoming dependant on pain killers. The days that followed are a haze of percocet and sleep. I was in complete sorrow and I had to dull the pain in my heart. My husband watched over me and we cried together. He seemed the only one who could even get close to knowing how I felt. My mother-in-law responded to my decision to have the surgery in a numb way. She had had that same type of procedure before and said, "It isn't that bad". That added to my feeling defeated...like a fool.

I would lose 30 pounds in the next 8 months. I struggles with food...food would keep me alive and keep my heart beating. It all felt so hopeless. Slowly, the wound healed. I got pregnant again in less than 10 months. I was never again able to embrace pregnancy. I never trusted my body to do what it was meant to do. My body and I have never been on good terms. I often sit and realize that I am walking around in the same skin that my mother abused. I am in the same body that my father left behind. I am living inside the same body that other men have touched and I sometimes feel like their finger prints are all over me.

The pain and the memories don't have their hold on me so much anymore. But that is my reality. I will always be the Ashley who was abused by myself and others. The scars are still here and will be proof FOREVER. I can't change them. But how many years are ahead of me? I have a lifetime to make more, BIGGER memories with my kids, my husband, and my grandchildren. How many scars are from good things? Kind of like the wrinkles we get from smiling so much. Like my c-section scars...proof my babies are part of me. I still long for my body in heaven though. What a relief that will be. Nothing will sag or be disproportionate...scars are gone.