Life Piles on Top of Life

It still catches me off guard. I still work to ignore it. I'm still confused by what's happening. 

The triggers. 

(a trigger is something that sets off a memory tape or flashback transporting the person back to the event of her/his original trauma. -- Psych Central)

A stack of photographs. I flip through them. I tell him I'll take care of them. This sorting of someone else's memorabilia is tiring and confusing.

I set the stack on my bedside table to deal with in the morning. But when the morning comes I am overwhelmed at the thought of dealing with them.

I feel pain and panic. Anxiety begins to build. I must talk about it, but it will undo all the good I've done. Change perceptions of me. I will lose everything.

Somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain a little thought forms. None of that will happen. You've told worse things and survived. 

I sit in my therapist's office and preface this discussion with my fears and how I've tried to reconfigure them into some form of reality. As I share, it becomes clearer. Why this photo has hit me the way it has. She doesn't think it's silly. It's perfectly logical. We will deal with it in due time. 

It's like everything else in this journey. There is no scheduling, and this is not a good time to have to deal with history. But so it goes. Life piles on top of life. 

Past, present, and future compile into life. The past abuse. The present suffering of my family as we are losing my father-in-law. The future of the impending birth of my cousin's daughter. 

We are all creations of all that we experience. But more importantly, we all children of God.


linking up with imperfect prose on thursdays