My Own Personal Torment

One persons torment is someone else’s circus. When telling your life story or a small part of that story someone will say, “well mine was worse”.  It may have been worse, a lot or just a little.   Every person’s “torment” is different; it can, might or will be hurtful.  Mine is not better than yours, yours isn’t better than mine, for both of us, “it just is.”

I can’t speak to the horror some go through, I have been present when they spoke of it, in essence relived it and I can’t even begin to imagine and I don’t want too.

Some are tormented by others for years, bullying at school or at home. Some torment themselves over something they had no control of, doesn’t matter how awful it was or sounds; only how it affected us.  The effect can play with you all of your life, even when you have done what was needed to rectify, solve or change.  In that case you logically know, understand and work for the change, you can see it.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a psychiatrist, psychologist, therapy group or otherwise it always ends with us having to solve it ourselves in order to “move on”. 

These professions are supposed to help you help yourself, give you guides to do just that.   Suggestions that help, not tell you exactly what to do.  No matter how good a doctor or therapist, for the patient this is a lifelong process. It never really goes away.  We are supposed to look at it, get it out, push it away, each person does this differently. 

For me, most of the time, I write poems, good poems, bad, funny, nasty, even scary poems.  Sometimes I rant and rave and that is ok too, I am getting it out. I have already seen a therapist who studied what happened to me and many other women, she showed me how to look at it, process it, tease it, and get it out.  So I sit down and write something.  I feel better after I do, that usually includes tears, a little talking to myself or the dead.  It really isn’t unusual for me to talk or argue even to scream about a subject when I am alone.  Occasionally I solve that problem, I get it out, I own it.   You may even see this on my blog, occasionally something comes out of my own primordial ooze and bites me in the butt.  As they say “shit happens”.

     

The phrase for those who have been though therapy laugh about these words, “And how does that make you feel” often repeated by your therapist. It isn’t really that micro second in that room with your therapist, it’s deeper. We need to see and feel, that long ago emotion of the traumatic event itself.  You can’t heal what you can’t see, so put a band aid on it for now. Take one step at a time, where have I heard that line before?

  The object is to look down that long line of your life find that moment when the “thing” happened.  Look at it from outside if the pain is too great to relive it in the moment. But look at it; see what you did next, how that moment in time may have helped you unconsciously to make decisions.  We may say I hate that he/she did that, hating the moment isn’t going to get you anywhere.  Really!  You have to go back look real close know that fear or hate at age 7 or 17 or anywhere before during or after those arbitrary ages.  That is a start, from there you can go anywhere, self pity, outrage or just “hell no”, now let’s fix what we can. We need to look at it, understand, deal with then put it away.   All the time knowing that it will rear its ugly head again at anytime, that is okay, you will deal when that happens.    

If you tap the dragon when it’s asleep, don’t be surprised when it eats you.

All this came from a nightmare last night odd very odd.

Saroya Poirier    September 13, 2012

PS  I forgot to talk about my personal torment, oh hell, if you want to know just start reading my older blogs..  If you embarrass easily you might want to skip the poems about sex.. or not.