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The Sundae Papers

The Shift to Conscious Memory

If last week was a shift from doubt to belief, this week has been a shift from recovered memory to conscious memory. It began on Wednesday night... shortly after I turned the light off, a somatic flashback began... most of the 'usual' horrifying stuff that I won't go into right now. My somatic flashbacks tend to involve position (I will literally move into positions I was in at the time), sensation and emotion. But this one was different. As well as the somatic element there was a diff
PlumSundae

PlumSundae in Diary

3
Untangling It All

Learning to Allow Myself Affection

I understand that to some this concept can come across as pretentious or like a non-issue...so I ask that if you read this, you're willing to hear me out on why I don't view it as such in my case. It has been a painful road to navigate trying to understand my assault and why my assaulter chose to do it to me. I'll likely never know his reasoning. Unfortunately, in this situation, your brain can take it upon itself to start filling in the gaps before you even realize it. At least for me anyway. N
masongator

masongator in Processing

2
Untangling It All

I'd Give Anything to Be Able to Trust Someone.

TW: Assault and coercion will be mentioned, but not detailed. More context can be found in my thread in Sharing Your Story if you'd like to read it. One of the biggest things I've struggled with is realizing how much I was betrayed after I started remembering my assault. Not only that, but how deeply it colored my willingness to trust others without me even realizing it. For the majority of my life that I can remember, I've worried about getting close to people for fear that they will immed
masongator

masongator in Processing

2
Untangling It All

Picking Up Some Pieces

See tags for TWs. More context can be found on my post in Share Your Story, but it's not required to understand this. Today, I went to church and prayed for myself privately. It's actually the start of my "weekend" because my days off are Sunday and Monday; figured I'd try to make this week one where I'd try to focus on healing, and this is where I started. Yet I sat in the church, alone in my pew, singing hymns, reading out of the Nicene Creed, and I felt shame underneath it all. Who was I
The Sundae Papers

Ending the doubt

What a week. Monday was one of those 'meltdown' days. It often seems to be a Monday, I don't know if it's the come-down from the weekend, climbing with my best friend, some semblance of "normality" and then I'm thrown back into my thoughts on a Monday. I've been slowly bridging the gap between 'known' memories and recovered memories. My doubt has been rampant because how can I tell recovered memories and somatic flashbacks are real and not fantasy? But on Monday I remembered an in
PlumSundae

PlumSundae in Diary

1
Siobhan's corner

Entry 2 Inner child work

Something I am not too good at yet is communicating well with my inner child. There is plenty of reason why, and there is more reason to get better at it. What has happened throughout this week is that I have basically not been able to tap into my inner child's feelings, if you know what I mean. ... If not, ok, maybe it sounds confusing. It is not always like it happened this week, so this is something I am struggling with now, but then again, we only recently begun to do more inner child work.
Siobhan_

Siobhan_ in diary

3
The Sundae Papers

Calibrating My Nervous System [Trigger Warning]

I realised, as I was discussing with my therapist one day, just how skewed my nervous system is. Also, how much recalibration I have done, and how much there is still to do. [TW: descripton of abuse] I made a chart for myself to get an idea of where my calibration could be, where it would be healthier. And I am getting much closer to that these days. (I was asked why getting basic needs met was an inconvenience on the 'normal' side — it means that if you only get your basic need
Siobhan's corner

First entry – some baggage

First entries are always the hardest, aren’t they? It is like this for me, and since this is only my third day here, I’ll just write a few things to get started. I am still trying to figure out how things are supposed to work here.   Among all the silly things I have been doing, one of the most fruitless debates was whether what I experienced was really csa or if I maybe qualified as an adult, because I was 15 (only three days in, though) when things happened. And this does not have to ma
Siobhan_

Siobhan_ in diary

0
Love and Other Lies

A curse and a prayer.

I wonder if we do it to ourselves. "To death do us part", we say, as if that's supposed to be comforting. Is it a curse or a prayer?  I think back to the years of Bible-Presbyterian instruction - maybe a decade of it. If I had gotten a head start on all those ancient philosophers maybe I could have filled the rustle of the sanctuary with something other than a longing to fit in, at desperate odds with the building hum of something that came from within that wasn't Christ Our Lord and S
Love and Other Lies

The mind does not have to be a prison.

The mind does not have to be a prison. Feelings, change, observations, ideas - they don't have to be dangerous to you. I have kept myself so barely held together over the past decade and change that I would reject it out of hand. It was frightening, and foreign, and threatened to expose the truth that I knew was there - I was depressed because I was under someone else's control. I think someone who hasn't been in that position can't understand it. I think that's why it takes so long to come arou
Love and Other Lies

Still.

I am reaching into myself and it feels... as it should be. The one thing that I am learning is that life is imperfect, and when something bothers me, that collapsing pit in my stomach, all that means is I haven't accepted what it means yet. It is OK to feel anxious, frightened, stressed, uncertain, disappointed, offended, hurt, embarrassed, rejected. It is OK to feel like you fucked up. Everyone fucks up, and other people sit with their disappointment and recalibrate their expectations as you si
the monster

healing

Lately, I've needed to go to therapy much less. I'm not sure what this exactly means. Am I getting better, or am I just tiring myself out with work and assignments that occupy my mind, so I don't think negative thoughts anymore? I like to stay busy for this reason, but I do think I am healing. I can forgive my sister, the countless men who took advantage of me, and myself. But I'll never forget. I'll never forget how my sister used to fight every day with my parents, gaslighting them to oblivion
Love and Other Lies

Quiet.

At Grief Group today, the therapist said that sometimes I am very quiet, but when I talk I have very insightful thoughts. I thanked him for that observation - it felt good to get that sort of compliment, and it seems like many members of the group appreciate my perspective. Today I am taking note of feeling seen. It is quite wonderful. There was a new person at group today, an older lady who had just lost her husband some months ago. She talked about the depression phase, and if it ever gets eas
the monster

men

My dad has always been here. He's always been physically present in my life, just not emotionally. It's known in my family that he never planned to have us as children. It doesn't mean he doesn't love us, but it's made it so I can't fully connect with him. When I was 14/15, I never really spoke to my dad about anything personal. It was all very surface-level stuff. Like how my day was or about a video game we both liked. I never really hugged him or said I love you to him. I do love him though,
Love and Other Lies

TEN

My therapist made an observation, when I complained of how I am unable to feel and express anger. Reading the emotion wheel, how many primary and secondary emotions that flowed from anger sound familiar, in the context of my mother? Let down, humiliated, bitter, mad, aggressive, frustrated, distant, critical. A different wheel adds irritated, insecure and hateful. Betrayed, resentful, disrespected, ridiculed, indignant, violated, furious, jealous, provoked, hostile, infuriated, annoyed, withdraw
Love and Other Lies

THE ACT

I am struggling to come up with anything to express today. And then I remembered that part of all this is the act - of sitting with myself, thoughts and words blinking in and out of existence. Sometimes I hope they form a connection, meet in the night and build rich and full lives. Sometimes I am glad they disappear forever. I'm thinking of giving up on the idea of a life with someone entirely. I'm thinking of entirely giving up on the idea of a life with someone entirely. Wait, that's not
Love and Other Lies

TEN YEARS IN A DAY

There are days when years happen. (I wonder if at some point in my life it will all be too much to explain, too many details. Potential problems and anxieties, and glimmers of fantasies of the future. Maybe that's why geriatrics have to be especially good story tellers - otherwise their listeners wait for them to end their sentences or pass on prior to completion with indifference as to how your story ends.) I wanted to say that I learned something, from meeting up with my abuser's current
Love and Other Lies

SPACE

There isn't much space for grief. It's almost a month into grief group and I haven't quite gotten a handle on the impulse to feel ??? about mentioning non-death-related grief. Of all the things that are never talked about, maybe that one is the real kicker - we spend so much time trying to convince ourselves and the people around us that we are in fact OK. Maybe I should consider myself lucky. I am disabused of this obsession to present a face - when you've broken down in front of strangers and
Love and Other Lies

MESSAGES

A friend, B, that I hadn't talked to in a while called me today. I am lucky to have her in my life - she was one of two people who engaged with my abusive partner, W, and told me that how he treated me was wrong. She insisted I had to get out. It took several months for me to come around to it, which was helped along by the fact that W hated social situations and outings with the kids, so I had a lot of time without him to consider my experience of the kids, community, connections, without him.
Love and Other Lies

ESCAPE

I react so badly to being scolded. It is interesting how much white men in professional positions of power are accustomed to be curt and charmless. Tone is everything, I suppose, and I am growing increasingly impatient with impolite, largely impotent men. What is it about that? That slinking, sinking feeling? It's a place that is all too familiar, it's where I have lived all my life. I do not want it. It makes me feel ill, and it sets me off. I wonder how far this is something I must self-r
Love and Other Lies

Where I Am Today

It is important to me to write. There is such an urgency within, without the musculature to follow through. (Question: Have you considered that your depression stems from insufficient reflection? Something shifts in the world when you read back paragraphs you have considered, and found yourself self-assured enough not to annihilate each word immediately, for fear of judgment --whose?-- When you make yourself do the thing you feel successful. It is very important to feel successful.) Of
Love and Other Lies

Love and Other Lies

There is a place I used to go to, when I was fourteen. In the 2000s I would write journal entries, read about my friends' lives. In high school I found out that I had somewhat of a following. I guess that made me a writer at a time that I wanted so badly to call myself one, but never dared to because I always felt "less than". Back then I was moderately depressed. I wonder if there has ever been a time in my life that I wasn't. I grew up in Singapore, where in some families, a child's worth
the monster

fifteen (tw online grooming & child exploitation)

sometimes I get these overwhelming and intense feelings of anxiety and sadness at random times. I could be fine throughout the day, then suddenly something or nothing will trigger me to feel down in the dumps. It's been two years since I talked to him but it feels like its been only two weeks. my story is being groomed is one that I've felt so much shame about, mostly due to the feeling that I somehow brought it on myself. I was naive and vulnerable at the time, with little to no friends or a cl
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