Yay

Today has been peppered with flashbacks of sexual trauma. Not full on, all out. More twinges of things fleeting through my brain, and then an emotional wave will hit me for a few minutes, and then I feel really exhausted.

I will have an appointment with a new therapist in a couple weeks (agencies should let me know sometime next week about their availability) and went to see one coordinator last week. I don't think I can go straight into talking about this with a new person. Or at least, I know I can. I can sit there and talk about it factually, even describe what emotions I experience during the flashbacks, and feel not quite real. It feels like I'm a writer talking about a character I have written. It doesn't feel connected to me in an actual sense. Even as I spoke to the coordinator I had this sensation, that I was an author being interviewed about a new book. I felt like I was doing a disservice to myself, and this frustrates me because I don't know why. I'm not telling lies, I'm not holding back information, but I can't feel emotions about it with a stranger.

I need my old therapist except I don't. I need her as a human being, drinking Chablis and smoking cigarettes at my kitchen table with me, talking into the night - not 'doing therapy', but just talking about human experience in the world like two people having real contact.

And I'm fed up of my trauma. I want to shove it all away and tell myself I'm making it up. But somehow, that feels even worse, because a kernal at the very core of me knows instinctively that it's real. Even as I type that, the cognitive part of me is scoffing, thinking I don't really know.

How do you manage to not let trauma bleed into every part of your life? How can you stop it holding you back?