Healing from an abusive past.

Emotional pain is a b*tch. 

What does it mean to heal from the past?  How do you know when you have healed?  Do you ever truly heal from the past?  How will I know when I am better?

All these are questions that I used to constantly ask my psychiatrist when I was an inpatient for 9 weeks.  9 weeks, sounds so long, in reality it went by in a flash after the first weekend.  I got used to being there, I got used to the routine.  I didn’t want to leave in the end.  But I was glad to get home to my boys, when I was an inpatient, I missed them like crazy.  It was hard in the beginning adjusting to ‘life on the outside’, you become institutionalised being an inpatient with your movements restricted.  But I was so grateful for all the help that I had received whilst I was an inpatient. 

It is nearly a year since I was first admitted to the day hospital, the 29th March.  The last year has been one of the hardest, and longest and at times I didn’t think I wanted to be around anymore because it was so hard.  I had remembered the abuse throughout my life, but anytime it surfaced I would push it back to a place I didn’t have to face it.  Stopping and taking the time to face the past is hard.  Being triggered and finding out more of your past is hard, it’s amazing how the mind works, and how much of our past we are able to bury.  I spent my teen years and in my twenties running so hard from myself, my 30’s I was in self destruct mode along the way, but I tried really hard to be a good Mom and pull myself together.  To cope I started drinking more and more to dull the pain of the present and the past.