When I Was Fifteen (a follow-up)

So, I wrote my introductory post to When I Was Fifteen, and nothing really came of it. I was pretty nervous putting it out there and I guess relatively thankfully, it didn't get much reaction. My daughter never said anything, so I figure she either didn't read it, or she doesn't want to know the details... and that's cool. Someone recently shared with me their own experience with finding things out about their mother, and how it scarred them, and I am glad that I didn't push anything on my own daughter. I'm not a big fan of pushing information on people.

A couple days after my last post was an anniversary for me; one that has caused great angst and strong anniversary reactions in me over the years. It was an anniversary of something that happened - not when I was fifteen - but rather when I was seventeen. I do believe that that incident occurred in part because of what happened when I was fifteen though. Unfortunately traumatic experiences can increase chances of other traumatic experiences - especially when we don't know how to deal with the earlier experiences... and unfortunately for me, I've had quite a few.

The concept of trauma is an interesting one for me as well. There are people who have gone through what I have gone through and not been as traumatized as I have. But I am someone who has always felt things very strongly (to the point where my entire life people have told me I am "over-sensitive"). I used to get really upset with myself for feeling things so intensely, but fortunately I discovered that that sensitivity is actually really useful for some things (such as being a mother, or a massage therapist). But for many many years I felt not only guilty about what happened to me, but also rather ashamed at my reactions; I felt like there was something wrong with me for not being able to just blow it off and forget about it. And believe me, I tried. But one thing I discovered is that I may have been able to push things out of my mind, but I couldn't push them out of my body. The body remembers even what the mind can forget....

So I still carry with me the things that happened to me when I was fifteen. I *have* managed to heal a lot of the injuries, but there are still scars, and occasionally the wounds will still open back up - though not nearly as frequently as they used to. I think that one of the most important things I have learned over the years is that I can't run away from it; I can't pretend that things didn't happen. It *is* my life and it is my history, and the scars are my scars and the healing is my healing. And just like the visible scars fade over time, my emotional scars have faded some... They aren't gone, but they don't hurt quite as much as they used to.