I haven’t been here.

I am still not here.

I think I go away a little each time I am put under for a surgery and the person who comes back is the one I am supposed to rediscover and heal. I get stronger and I am positive about this!

So, because I tend to disassociate anyway, I haven’t been here since November 22, 2022 when my joint repairs started. Since then I have had 6 surgeries. So you do the math at how long I have been absent. Friday I had another surgery to remove a bunch of scar tissue. I love the term “scar tissue” almost as much as I love the song “Scar Tissue” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Life is all about scar tissue. Wouldn’t it be nice if ALL of it could be removed, even the stuff that was never caused by a surgeons hands? Sidenote: It is early November and I am just able to revisit these original thoughts. Before we go any further in this, I will tell you that the Doctor who did this surgery, this “easy in and out” almost killed me. I am not exaggerating, nor am I joking. I will happily share her name and the details with anyone privately who would like to know who NOT to have work on them locally. Sepsis is real. It can be prevented and healthcare is an oxymoron when it comes to this surgeon. Since then, I have heard many stories from people who have encountered this woman and I tell a cautionary tale of her for your own safety. All of my readers know that surgery, in my life is like going to the grocery store, this….was not that way and it was preventable, inexcusable and will happen to the next person she treats. Buyer beware. Now…on with the original tale!!

Actually, in my mind I am still not here. The old me, never will be. The healed me is and she isn’t the one some might remember. She is worth a bit more!

Writing usually brings me peace and joy, and I thoroughly enjoyed sharing bits and bobs about life and how things seemed from my perspective, but for some time that hasn’t seemed to light the fire. Writing brought me joy in truth. There is still joy in my truth, but the story that needs telling is so macabre that I can’t tell it. That kind of truth is never welcome! Have you ever noticed that people don’t really want the truth if isn’t filled with happy endings because it generally makes them uncomfortable? Now, that, is the truth! Have you noticed how uncomfortable it makes you when someone gets personal? I better explain first about trauma survivors, they feel like they have to tell you their entire life story, all of it, so it’s out there and there are no surprises, “Here ya go, here it is, I am what I am, but I am a loyal friend…. ta da!!!” and then they overthink absolutely everything until they sort of trust you, but mostly, they never will. That being said, most people are unable to just sit with them while they tell their truth, they find the need to judge, judge, judge. If you are listening to someone and you hear your inner voice saying “I wonder what she did to deserve that?” or “I know there are always two sides to a story”; (I especially love that one!! Especially when someone tells that they have been abused!) then check yourself. Maybe you hear the voice in your head say, “Well that would never happen to me, because I wouldn’t let it happen!”, fucking check yourself! God knows there are a myriad of “isms” that your voices will say as you listen to the person, but I guarantee that if you are uncomfortable, then you are NOT listening with openness, compassion and the willingness to see that person for the survivor they are. You are listening with judgement or to get the dirt to tell your friends. Guaranteed. I have not only seen it a million times, I have lived it. Let me tell you a story.

When I moved to Salina, I left the safety of our little community and the dearest friends ever. Friends who had seen me at my best, my worst, and who just got me. I didn’t have to be anything or anyone else, just me. I had spent the best 15 years of my life there and was traumatized when we moved to this town. I was lonely, sad, depressed, overwhelmed and broken. I tried to find a niche, a place to fit but it was impossible. I tried to fit with my daughters peer Moms only to be shut out because I couldn’t make a whole sentence without explaining and oversharing. I was too loud, too obnoxious, too opinionated, too fat, too extreme, I didn’t like the system, I didn’t agree with the dick measuring of the coaches who wrecked the girls self esteem, I didn’t keep quiet, I didn’t play by the rules, you name it, I was too much too, too, too everything. I know this! They came and swam, they grabbed their towels and all but ran out and I never heard from them again, or was invited once, didn’t perform too well in the large group and dropped like a hot potato. But I always loved hearing, “But her husband, he’s so nice! I don’t know how he lives with her!” Believe me, I heard it!! I often wonder what one friend, one real friend could have done to help? Being a trauma survivor, I was damaged and broken and could do nothing except be more of whatever to try to hide. It didn’t hold up for long because my old body gave out and I am thankful it did. Sobriety is my friend!! It took me a long time to get through the pieces of healing and accepting unpacking my own suitcase, the sexual abuse, addiction, alcoholism and my own journey, but you know what I never was? Unkind. I never didn’t listen. I will say in the past 20 years since that initial meeting and trying to fit in, my story has taken even more twists and turns that are just plain hard to believe. When I found out that love isn’t always what you dream it will be and people aren’t who you think they are, no matter how long you have known them, I found that to be a cut like no other. Let me make it very clear that I am loved deeply by my husband and children and truly that is all that matters, but I have found that my “truth” in my experiences and in my feelings have been so battered by betrayal, lies, greed, anger, hate, narcissism and destruction that I am not sure that feelings particularly matter anymore. Everything that I used to believe to be the truth has been tortuously unraveled and I have to look at my entire life differently, be it in church or the secular world. Awakening to the idea that just because you are honest, doesn’t mean others are, is rough, even if I have seen the worst of people, the part of me that wants to see the good is often clubbed over the head by the realistic one in my head yelling “don’t do it dumbass!!! You know how this turns out!!” lol!! Regardless, the softness and the love in me is incapable of recognizing that. I am incapable of changing that part of me; and the people who let me down, hurt me deeply and walked away, my own family and lifelong friends, it is their loss. My health and healing is a reflection of what is still unrecognizably sick within them. The new healthy me is too much. The sick me was easily manipulated and brushed aside for others. I am no longer accepting being seconds for anyone! That position is vacated.

If you encounter a person who seems to tell you their entire life story, who feels the need to explain “why they are they way they are” type of conversation, then you are looking directly into a trauma victim. They aren’t weird, they aren’t a pain in the ass, they aren’t stupid, they are trying to survive, to feel normal, they are looking for acceptance, for anyone to see them, they are exhausted, they are scared to even talk to anyone, they are barely hanging on. If you are hearing the rhetoric in your head that I have described, admit it— then feel free to see your way out because you are one of those who can’t handle the truth! You don’t have the depth of compassion to see where it’s coming from. Much like a gooey piece of taffy sticks to your teeth, most people have sugar coated their own truth or reality because they fear the judgement, the isolation, or that when they tell their best friends, they won’t believe them because they didn’t see it with their own eyes. The truth and it’s icky details get stuck because the truth is always uglier than the nice stories of rainbows and unicorns!

This birthday reminded me of the utter sadness that my heart feels and that part of me may never, ever heal. It’s just a fact. It has scar tissue left from people I never, in my entire life, thought would be who they have shown me. Maya Angelou was right when she said to believe people when they show you who they are. Words are meaningless without action. Scar tissue is removable from all kinds of wounds, just not the kind placed there by judgement, betrayal, lies, hate, jealousy, and watered by the despair and grief that is left in its wake. This Thursday I am going in for another surgery to remove scar tissue from my knee replacement. That irony is not lost on me.

I know too many just like me. Trauma healed healers. Warriors. Survivors, sober now from years of drinking into a stupor to drown out the noise. I like quiet. No. I love the quiet. I love the solitude. I don’t need any extra bullshit or fake people. I will not pretend to be what I am not. Maybe I am the one who moved out the people who couldn’t love me? Maybe I am the one who decided that I am lovable and deserve more than a wave as they fly by? Maybe I have healed to a point where it became my choice if i want to open a scar, not allowing someone else to pick at it? Maybe I love me enough that I shouldn’t have to wonder if someone believes me? I am truth. I live truth. I tell truth. I break cycles. I am me. I deserved the chance to be heard and understood. I don’t need them now. I am not here….I am healed.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=tpYdGgzCW-M