Ok... so I'm trying to come out of denial about the abuses I have experienced. It's hard. A lot of things that happened have hurt me, both at the time and now. But it's all just 'kinda' abuse... like I think what happened wasn't really that bad, or I kinda understand why the abuser did what they did, and I feel like I shouldn't be this traumatized. But the fact is, I am traumatized. I'm getting to the age now where I feel more maternal, and I'm developing more empathy towards my inner child - because if these things happened to a real child - I would be very upset as a parent, and react... ugh... I don't even think I'm making sense at this point.

I guess I'm just carrying around a very hurt 4 or 5 year old inner child and I don't know how to comfort her, because she is me. And I'm really confused, and I'm really scared and I don't know what to do. And it's all so locked up that I haven't even been able to talk to my therapist about it. I mean, she knows - she's figured it out, I just can't talk about it.

And if it were just what had happened when I was little... I think I could figure out how to be normal 'that was then, this is now' ... but the patterns of abuse have repeated in my life, (still, just "kinda" nothing so horrible that I or anyone else could point to it and say "that's abuse", but bad enough to make me pull away and not trust anyone, and to keep my guard up, and to push people away.

Part of me just wants to let it all out and get rid of all this crap I carry around with me, but part of me just can't because I don't even want to think about it, let alone try to express it.

I don't know what I"m trying to say... I'm just glad there's a place like this where I can try to say it, and hopefully people know what I mean.