Reclamation of Home

Regaining a sense of identity after abuse and trauma

I’m not sure reclaiming a sense of who I was is really what I meant, there. Regaining an identity, certainly. However, I don’t think you can go back to what was, before. You’ve changed, the world has changed, and there is no way to go home again.

This, then, is what I meant: reclamation of a sense of ‘home’ where you are. Not where you wish you could be, although that can be part of the forward motion as time continues to pass. There is nowhere to make time stand still. There is no way to turn the hourglass over and flow the sand backwards until it’s all in the same position, every single grain. We have moved, and having moved, the doors close behind us, locking securely.

Closed to what was. A profound sense of loss, perhaps. Also, from a different perspective, a sense of safety. The past cannot hurt me if I don’t leave that door open and allow the slimy tentacles to pass through it and wrap around me. I have pictures, of what was. I can choose to look at the ones that bring me warm memories and joy of watching my children grow towards adulthood. I can remember my own childhood and growth that made me into who and what I am right now. I can choose to ignore the parts of my past that savaged me and left me with fading scars and stunted growth. Can’t be helped. Can only be managed and acknowledged, dealt with and as the function returns to parts of me, celebrated for the little victories that perhaps only I know and care about.

Ruminating on the past just gives that person/place/event a power that it had at one point, but doesn’t still need to have. I’m coming to a close of an epoch. I’m ready to turn the page on something that has hung over me for twenty-five years now. However, that was also the genesis of four wonderful beings who I treasure more deeply than they may ever know. It’s a mixed thing, sorrow and joy taken up together into one draught. I’ll be able to talk freely, without worry over consequences to those who can’t defend themselves. Freedom!

All the facets of life, sparkling with possibilities. It’s all in how you look at it. Perhaps what I want to reclaim is that ability to see the beauty and the joy and life all around me. At one point in my life I had determined that in order to fulfill my duty, I had to kill my self - my identity, although at some point I may also delve into the deeper and darker ramifications of what this misguided insight did to my mental health. I had to become someone I wasn’t, in order to make another happy. I didn’t know then, had been taught the opposite, as a matter of fact, that you can’t make someone happy. You cannot compel another to be something they are not. I could force myself into what I thought, and was being told, was the correct mold for human wife, mother, sex partner: one each. I could do that, by shaving off the bits of me that didn’t fit neatly into that mold. I lost so much of me. I diminished, day by day, until finally there was nothing left. Nothing at all, and I in the fog lost my way.

Home is not a place. Home is not static. Home is where you are safe, and loved, and they are happy to see you. Happy with no conditions, just pleased with your company and comforted in your presence, as you are in theirs. Home is warm, body and soul.