The waves of anger, fear, dread, revulsion are subsiding. Whew! That was some wild ride. I have yet to start EMDR so I don’t have any illusions about how much progress I must surely have made in that last three-week long emotional purge.

But I do think maybe now I am ready to begin doing the work.

But honestly I am simply enjoying the current emotional calm.

Ahhh!

Saw Dick this morning. Relief! He says I’m doing great. Okay. I needed to hear that. The pain and sick feeling came on while I was in Dick’s office. It’s like when you get medication in the hospital and you can feel it spreading through your body. It starts in my gut, deep. Then it flows up to my chest and neck and head and down my arms until I can feel it tingling in every fingertip.

It doesn’t feel good. I slip back into the observer. Let the tears come. If it’s the Angel of Death girl I was, I have to engage my hands. I just keep them down. Can’t let this wave of anger take over my body.

Right now I’m kind of depleted. Exhausted. I can’t believe I wrote a rational letter to the editor last week. They called for permission to publish it.

Meanwhile, this pervasive background of dread pervades my days. I did not have a happy childhood. It’s a miracle I’m alive.

Ok so actually it takes nothing external to trigger me. I trigger myself. My mind is flooded with memories, disturbing memories, vivid in their realism. It’s like being there. Oh it was awful being there.

I find I need to talk, but mainly I’m too shaken to talk, like my voice would be cracking. After a while I have to stop to prevent overload.

Repeat until you believe it: Your own pain can’t kill you.