“According to legend, when Pandora opened the box, horrible things flew out, and all of life's miseries were let out into the world. I think my Pandora's box contains your memories, which will spill out of that box like ghosts tearing apart the fabric of the soul and bursting forth.”
― Shahid Hussain Raja
The memories keep coming. I want to stop them, but I know that part of what has kept me sick for all these years has been pushing these memories down and away. I have not wanted to deal with them - I mean, who would. And in the act of not wanting to know them, I have protected them, kept them in my own Pandora’s Box. They have been locked away, safe in a way that I never was as a child.
I asked the trauma therapist at the rehab I just attended, why it was that they began surfacing now and with such fervor. She believes that the little girl in me can no longer stay silent. The little girl in me is drowning and needs to be heard and saved and that I need to finally let her speak her truth. I don’t know how I feel about that. I don’t know personally or professionally what I believe anymore. I wasn’t even sure about repressed memories until I started experiencing them for myself.
When they come it’s like I am transported back in time and for a moment I am re-living what happened. It feels real, I suppose you would call it a flashback. I can recall the sights, smells and textures and what was said. It is beyond terrifying. I would not wish it on my worst enemy. I would not wish it on my abuser or parents even. Afterwards I feel like a lost little girl and have the emotional capacity of a limp rag.
I am exhausted just about all the time. I am in group therapy three times a week for three hours. I am about to start EMDR in individual therapy today. I am on a myriad of new medications for mental health and some for a medical issue I am dealing with at the moment. Three of the medications I take cause fatigue. I want to sleep all the time, but I don’t. I have to get up and keep going. If I don’t face this head-on now, I will continue to cycle in and out of active addiction and in and out of rehabs. To say nothing of being a constant source of disappointment and concern to the people who care about me most… I don’t want to die… not anymore.
I want to live and live well. I don’t want to be so haunted and afraid. I want to walk through life and exist congruently. If that means that for now I have to open my Pandora’s Box and deal with all the terrors and evils that are in my past, then I will.
I have to remember that the last thing to come out of the original Pandora’s Box was hope.
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