Trapped Inside Myself
We all have internal secrets that we keep
We all have internal secrets we keep to ourselves. Sometimes, I feel like I’m a completely different person inside. People that know me in real life tell me they think I’m the strongest person they know. Why? They feel that way because of all the crap I’ve had to overcome in life. They have watched and witnessed the survival of one trauma after another.
The thing I’ve never told anyone is that I feel my entire life is a result of some punishment, and honestly, I’m tired of surviving from one trauma to the next. It all feels pointless sometimes.
My internal self feels like she’s locked in some horror film, waiting for the end. My character is good at evading death. She doesn’t run up the stairs. She finds places to hide, escaping danger to one end of in the next house of horrors.
It’s like living inside a warped fun-house park, with each building a different twisted version of reality, filled with perversions of nature. Here I am, waiting to find the key to the gate to leave, which I also can’t locate.
I’m exhausted from all the years caught inside of this nightmare. I want to lay down, go to sleep, and never wake up.
I have many days where I feel like I’ve disconnected from myself. I have days, months, and years living within someone else’s twisted mind like I’m a character in a Steven King novel. Hell, maybe it’s several of them.
My inward being is waiting for someone to let her out instead of perpetuating this sickening alternative life. It seems like every time I come close to escaping, another trauma will hit, and I’m even further from who I feel locked inside. It’s psychologically exhausting to live like this.
For a long time, I’ve tried to release myself from this perpetual hell. I’ve cut out toxic people and changed my lifestyle. I’ve gone to therapy. I’ve been working on recovery.
And still… I feel like I’m living a lie.
How can this be my life? Can you person be destined to suffer so much? Why? What did I do to piss the universe off?
I wish I had a simple answer to end all of these difficulties, the traumas that seem to worsen, instead of getting better with time. I’m tired of feeling broken and damaged beyond repair. How do I make it end?
I don’t want to feel trapped anymore. I want to find the freedom to be able to release this hidden woman inside. A woman without fear of trusting others, able to trust herself, and stop being beaten up by others.
My single reprieve comes from sitting with a pen to paper, where I can rewrite previous outcomes and learn from my mistakes. As the pen scratches along the surface to pick up where I went wrong, I get to, sometimes, see that some of my issues aren’t my burdens to bear.
Maybe that’s where the disconnection comes in. I pay the price for someone else’s actions inflicting trauma in my life. Why? I think that’s because I have been groomed, by my mother, to carry the weight, shame, and guilt of everyone else’s poor decisions.
I cannot fix my past. I’m having difficulties in rewiring those lessons taught to me in my earliest developmental years. Until I manage to educate myself that I shouldn’t carry other’s faults, I’m going to have a hard time feeling connected within myself. Even then, because of the teachings of my youth, I’ll probably always feel disconnected and inherently wrong inside.
I could be that damaged. Inherently flawed so profoundly that I’ll always feel like I’m living someone else’s life. A life trapped in a horror show of the most twisted mind.
***This was written as part of the summer workshop series on writing better personal essays, How to Write an Essay Everyone Wants to Read. This was created as part of exercise #4.***
