Of rugs and sweeping......

Somehow that black cloud still has me trapped, I'm discovering that most of the progress I had made in the past towards healing and recovering was this special little tactic also known as avoidance, avoiding the memories, the feelings, anything related to being raped. In avoiding these various triggers it becomes increasingly easy to convince yourself that you are "over it" that you've dealt with everything and you've moved on with your life. Actually what you have done is simply swept those feelings, the hurt, the memories, under a metaphorical rug in your mind, if you can't see them, they can't hurt, right? Except what happens when something else rape related crops up? Out comes the metaphorical brush and rug to tidy up your mind again, but before long you suddenly realise that your rug is no longer a nice flat rug, in fact there is a huge lump underneath the rug, which is now barely being covered by the edges, stray feelings, stray memories are creeping out because they are no longer confined in the darkness underneath the rug. This is what I've spent the past 15 years of my life doing. It's a vicious cycle, avoid and sweep until there's no where to sweep to, work through some of the issues until you feel satisfied with your 'healing' and then go back to avoiding and sweeping again. Now, logically, what I need, is to stop the avoiding, and instead deal with each and every issue as it appears, no matter how small it may seem, no more sweeping, no more rug to hide behind, just constant daily battling and dealing. By fixing the little things they shouldn't build into big things, right? So now I know what I need to do, the question should actually be, am I capable of doing this? How do you deal with the little things when so many times your head cannot seem to put the feelings into words for you, then sometimes if your head has finally managed to find the words, your mouth finds it just cannot speak them out loud. Then what? When you can't find the words to express yourself, or you have the words but find you don't have the voice you need to share with others. Then what do you do when you realise you don't have anyone to share this with? I don't actually mean literally, I have people that I trust, not many, but I have a few, I just don't like to turn to them, it hurts me to burden others with the memories, the pain, the thoughts I have. I have no choice but to live with them, but by sharing them with others, I feel as though I am taking away their choice too. Vicious cycle springs to mind because I know if I don't share then I sweep and hide. How on earth do you manage to break free of this awful cycle? Ideas welcomed with open arms at this point because I'm running out of ideas......