To be frank
I think most of us agree that we’ve bit our tongue a couple of times to preserve certain relationships that we have deemed more worthy than what feels truthful, necessary and authentic to say. Personally “a couple thousand” times is a more accurate depiction of the times i’ve stapled my tongue this last year.
Well this week was her second birthday, and as much as I’m obsessed with my child and would literally die for her (although I practically already have)… what was seen around her birthday was not the actual truth.
What was seen was the birthday balloons and the excited smiles, the blueberry pancakes and a trip to the creek. A new bike, a birthday party at an aquarium, friends, and a turtle themed cake. On the surface it looks rainbows and butterflies. Although it wasn’t. And neither was the year before, with nightmares, panic attacks and tears in tail.
What happened two weeks before was a “birth debrief” that ruined me for days and days and days. A last ditch attempt at trying to combat my grief on my own.
But what happened around her birthday was a body that gave up from sheer exhaustion trying to shove down its own feelings and post traumatic stress flashbacks. What happened was multiple panic attacks, an immense amount of crying, extra showers to hide the sweat my body made when it couldn’t compute that it was safe at home, extreme fatigue where I didn’t know how to move my body at times, and a genuine question about whether I should call lifeline.
If someone was cut open with a knife to the level of their intestines in battle, were tied down to a table, and while awake was witnessing the whole assault as someone physically cut through 7 layers of skin you wouldn’t question whether that person had PTSD after. It would just be assumed.
But there I was having my body shoved multiple times over into the table in order to pull out what felt like my uterus. I was screeching, crying and stretching my face through the onslaught of my insides being cut open, then being vacuumed out and finally my organs rearranged in the most pivotal and primal moment of my life… when my new born baby is screaming for me and I can’t do a thing to get to her.
While I loose over half my blood and have my hands literally tied down unable to even touch her and are trying with all my might not to loose consciousness while I bleed much more than half of my blood and see the only person getting me through the horror be told to leave the room because you don’t keep loved ones around when someone looks like they’re about to die on your table.
When you have endured 35 minutes of a literal assault to your body and the INSANITY of the pain finally is so much your brain looses memory of the rest of the stitching up period…. well I guess you have really fucking horrific trauma.
I think people think it’s like somehow different because these people were “technically” trying to save you. Oh and you got a beautiful baby out of it, so that pretty much cancels it out right?
If someone ran up to me and threw me to the floor and started stabbing me because they thought in their mind they were “saving” me from like some end of the world apocalypse, their intent doesn’t change what happened in that moment!
It’s no different. My body has been through an assault, a gory, disgusting, horrific assault, and my nervous system has gone through that too, which is why its so evidently broken still. It didn’t even get a chance to run through its natural fight or flight mechanisms. It was just stuck, frozen, dying out on a table.
As a human with processing and community needs, for the last 2 years I’ve at large felt unseen, dismissed and forgotten. Who’s shoved down rage, sadness, and fear just to be to my child what she’s deserves…
I thought I would have had people who wanted to walk along side me through the depression, the anxiety, and the dissociation I experience in my everyday life. I thought I’d have people check in with me and really support me when I had a baby on my hands, on top of all the general extreme sleep deprivation and exhaustion from feeding, but also because I was doing this off the back of other trauma too, and on TOP of that… a 9+ year chronic illness that only months before becoming pregnant saw me in a wheel chair and walking only 100m a day with physical assistance. I actually thought they would get it.
So to be frank. This is also the week of my kid’s birthday. Not just the joy and the balloons but this ^
I’ve dissociated from things in the last 2 years that I really needed to feel seen in, but maybe finally, just finally, I’m starting to dissociate from more important things… such as being vulnerable with people who are unsafe to hold space for your feelings, who can listen without letting their own fear get in the way and make you feel like you shouldn’t be exactly where you’re at, and worst of all minimising and comparing your experience to people who have had it worse.
Sorry. Although I’m not. But to be frank, fuck that.
It’s sept 13th, my “Birth Day”.
