The strength it takes….

I’ve just left yet another therapy session. Another one of those sessions being forced to face the darkest and most painful parts of my life. I’ve done it hundreds of times before and I know I will still do it many more times. Yet each time it’s hard again.

So hard.

Impossibly hard to go back to those days of hell. To those days of confusion and misery. The days were filled with abuse and trauma and the nights consisted of nightmares of that days events. Or at least on the nights that I was able to fall asleep on my tear soaked pillow. Soaked from the bitter tears shed over my situation.

Imagine, just imagine for a moment that you are on your way home from work. You just closed an awesome deal at work. There’s music playing in the background. As you turn onto your block, you see smoke and flames billowing out of your home. The home you just built and invested so much of your life savings and earnings on. The home that was so beautiful. A true dream home is now up in flames.

The flames are spreading wildly and angrily consuming every part of this once magnificent house. You’re standing there helplessly.

You are frozen.

Powerless.

Grief stricken.

The smell of burning wood and the billowing smoke is choking you. The sound of the windows shattering from the flames are so frightening. You’re watching as the angry flames destroy more and more of your life’s investment.

In all the chaos, you completely forgot that you’ve installed a new sprinkler system in your house. However it needs to be turned on from a lever on the second floor. You are now fighting an internal war. There is only one way to save this home and that is to run in and go switch this lever on. You’re debating it. However as you near the entrance, the heat becomes so intense that you need to surrender. You surrender to the flames. They are stronger than you and you therefore can’t get to your last attempt to fight them. What’s so painful is, that the key to saving your home is inside this inferno, yet you can’t get there and are therefore forced to surrender.

This is my life. The home is my soul and body. The flames are the abuse that I’ve been through for so many years. The sprinkler system is my therapy and all the healing work that I need to do to heal and help extinguish the flames.

Like in the story, the only way to heal is to go into the flaming inferno. You can’t fight it from outside. You need to go right into the line of fire and fight it from the inside. However, it’s close to impossible to get inside. The heat is enormous. The smoke is choking you. The sounds of the breaking glass are terrifying.

Yet we need to go in. But we can’t. But we do.

We do it again.

And again.

And again

Not because we want to. Rather because it’s the one and only way to put out the flames of abuse and attempt to heal. It’s hard. It’s painful. It’s horribly frightening but we do it anyway.

Today, I was given one of the most painful assignments that I’ve gotten. I need to go into the fire and take care of something there. It’s the key to my healing. It’s the thing that holds so much power for me to heal.

However, I’m terrified.

I can’t go in.

I want to so badly.

But I can’t.

I will.

But I can’t.

I want to.

But I can’t.

It’s the key to healing.

But I can’t.

It will bring me so far.

But I can’t.

It will heal me so much.

But I can’t.

I just can’t.

Or maybe I can. Maybe I do have the strength. Maybe I can. If I lived through so much pain and trauma in the past and I’m still alive and so highly functioning, maybe that’s proof that I can enter this burning house. I can’t bear the pain but I can bear it one minute at a time. Or perhaps even one second at a time. One assignment at a time.

Do I really want my abuser to rule my life and tell me what I can or can’t do? Do I really want to still live under his clutches. Do I still want him to have so much power over me? Is it not time to take revenge? Is it not time to buy my life back? I think I can. I think I’m ready. I think I can go into the burning building and face the mighty inferno and actually get to that place in which I can finally free myself from his burning flames.