Letting the Scales Fall From My Eyes

After experiencing multiple life-threatening complications as a child and teenager from the hereditary colon cancer syndrome—Familial Adenomatous Polyposis—and developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result, healing has become a lifelong quest for over 20 years now. However, the urgency for healing has increased over the last couple years leading me to intense trauma work. It is through this endeavor that I’m peeling back the protective layers that medical trauma created and discovering new truths about myself as I heal myself bit by bit. Below I share new shocking truths about myself and my struggle to accept such truths.

I see her there; small, shrouded in the darkness, her legs pulled into her chest with a grip as strong as death. She sits there, head burrowed into her knees, terrified and alone. Her tears stream down her young, innocent cheeks. At times I can hear the drip drop of her tears hitting the cold, hard stone ground below her where she sits. Did I build this place or was it naturally there? I cannot tell, for it has existed in my mind for so long—a lifetime and counting. The entire tomb feels and looks damp; was it already this way or have her years of tears led to a perpetual air of dankness? There are no chains keeping her now, perhaps there were before but I broke those free through intense trauma work. There’s more work to be done, however. She still isn’t free; she’s held captive there in that crypt where she remains hauntingly so.

She’s just a child. She has a will to live, so much so that she’s kept me alive. She must have a strength within her that keeps me going. So I’m told anyway. I haven’t seen it though. Instead, the anger she kept alive within me toward those who hurt us along the way: I direct it at her now. How dare she betray me; how dare she keep me alive against my wishes of peace forevermore. For a time, I locked her into that old cedar chest where I house what I don’t want to deal with until later. My safe place, though it’s not her safe place as she became confined to it as I moved her from the dungeon to that chest, an even more restricting place. She kept trying to escape, to follow me, to stay near me. “Leave me be!” I scream, filled with rage and desire to punish her for her cruel, heartless betrayal. At least when she’s in the tomb, she doesn’t fight her sentence there. She’s resigned to reside there, forever in the dark, wet, cold.

I’m consumed with guilt. How can I treat her this way? She’s a mere child, simply trying to survive. I need to protect her, shield her from continued pain. With ongoing trauma work, I let her out of that locked chest and return her to the dungeon, where she remains to this day. I’m trying so hard to set her free from the dark place, into the light, into the fields of nature where she can play carefree and feel the wind wrapping around her, the flowers and grass tickling her, the scents of nature teasing her. I believe she will reside there one day if I keep working through the trauma. I’m full of determination to do so now, no longer running, hiding, avoiding the pain that holds her captive—that’s held me captive all this time.

Determination, strength, courage? Could it be that this mere, hopeless child who I look down upon as requiring complete and utter protection, that it’s from her I draw this perseverance? A perseverance that has led me to unimaginable feats that none thought possible? Perhaps she no longer requires protection as her strength is immeasurable. Has the darkness hidden what she’s capable of, what she’s done? Is it I that keeps her hostage in that eternal dungeon, not the repeated trauma inflicted upon her body and mind at such a tender age? Did I hold her there, against her will, because I confused her for me? Projecting my need for protection onto her, ignoring her strength and transferring it upon me instead? Maybe she never was the one who needed protection. It was her protecting me, not the other way around. She does not haunt me, no, she is saving me from myself and from the hurt of the world—bit by bit, moment by moment. She’s never given up, faithful in her prodding, in her hope, in her survival. It is I who had given up and blamed her for struggling with life’s trauma instead. It is I who have kept her in that vestige of a little girl so bound by terror and trauma that she’s incapacitated. But really, it was I who was bounded so. As I loosen the chains upon myself, I see now that I must release her from the cold, dark dungeon that I’ve stored her in under the guise of protecting her. For it is exactly that dungeon, that ghost I’ve created of her that I flee to and embody whenever I am scared.

Alas, she is my safe place! Frozen in terror, fearful of any pain, it is to her I flee—to her embrace—where I feel safest. Let me embody you, I tell her, to get me through the moments of sheer terror that send me straight back there without contest. I see it now; it is she who will set me free. All this time I thought she was the one in distress needing rescued, needing protection by big ‘ol tough me who fought all these years so valiantly against all odds, including my own, to a ripe age, years well past hers and what she could have ever imagined, to a life so grand and full of love and joy that she could not have even envisioned.

But that would mean that I am that ghostly being, not her. The remnants of trauma haunt me so much so that I’ve allowed them to transfigure her into an image my mind can understand, my ego can accept. It’s all wrong, it’s all been an error. If it is I who is the strong one now, I am the hero who got us to this moment in time and all that we’ve accomplished and survived. No, in her infinite wisdom and eternal strength, she allowed such a feat of transfiguration so that I may live. It is by her will that we have done so much, lived so much. It is by her will that freedom is nearing, the chains broken, fallen to the ground, extinguishing into nothingness so that they may never shackle another.

I see the light now, faint as it may be, shattering the perfect darkness. Piercing through the cave’s entrance, highlighting the jaggedness of its walls, and glistening off the damp. This is a new light, a never-before-seen light. Its friendliness dances upon the shadows. It will guide her out into a vast forest of wonder, a crown of flowers dawned upon her in all her innocence and glory.

Will she leave me there though, in her stead, as she begins her walk about this earth freely? Surely, she has every right to do so for the torture I led her to in my efforts to save myself. For abandoning her, blaming her, punishing her…for discrediting her. I took her place in this life; I extracted it from her and claimed it as my own, pushing her down, keeping her down in that crevasse underneath the ground never to see the light of hope or joy again. And yet, her power, so strong she was able to keep me alive from her prison, all while not breaking the fragile illusion I had created of myself as the hero in this story. No, she is everything I am not, everything I aim to be. She is love, forgiveness, joy, and hope. She invites me to join her in her exploration of this rich forest and flower swept field. In disbelief, I reach to meet her outstretched hand, allowing a slight smile to be born as she looks patiently upon me with glowing love. It is in this moment, in this clasped hand, that she and I meld into one. She is I and I am her. No longer separated by trauma but made fully whole. Together, we dance, twirl, skip and laugh along the trails we create through this vibrant forestation.