Reflection on 2013

So apparently 2011 and 2012 did their very best to break me, 2013 tried that little bit harder again and very almost succeeded!! Maybe now life will finally have realised that I cannot and will not be broken!! 

This year we had a holiday, the girls had a surprise birthday party, my sister got engaged, we discovered Buddhas and we made some pretty amazing friends too. 

Both of us have been on a journey to self discovery this year, the hubby has found himself enlightened, he's become more easy going, less tense, less snappy, an all round calmer and more placid person. 

I've had my own journey this year, I've been to rock bottom, I've found myself lower than I've ever felt before, believing the only way out was death and not caring how I achieved that goal. Thankfully I sought help, professional help before I managed to succeed in something awful and impossible to undo. 

I have faced my worst fears and I have come to realise and understand that I have the power within myself to be stronger and braver than I ever believed was possible, the biggest lesson I've learnt this year is that I am worthy and I am enough! I am worthy of love, the love others give to me and the love I'm learning to give myself too, and I am enough just the way I am, I am good enough, I am brave enough and I am strong enough to be the person I was always meant to be. I want to make 2014 my year, a year of self discovery, self love, self care and the year I finally get myself a puppy ;-) x

Repressed memories? May be graphic sorry.

So the other night I had a flashback. Flashbacks aren't anything new to me, I re-live being raped on pretty much a daily basis in one way or another. But Monday was different, it was different because the flashback I experienced then was a completely new memory to me, it was not something I was aware had happened the night that M raped me, it's not something I have ever remembered or been aware of before Monday, and its something that has left me feeling pretty shaken up and stunned. 

My first question - is this a genuine memory? Is this something that M actually did to me, something which I had somehow 'blocked out', refused to allow myself to remember in order to try to protect myself? Is that actually possible? 

Could my mind simply be playing cruel tricks on me? Creating fake memories somehow? 

The only way to explain this now is where it gets graphic and I'm still struggling to figure this out in my own head and I believe writing it down might be the only way to figure this all out. 

When I've been "assaulted" in the past it hasn't just been rape, I've been touched when I didn't want to be touched and been forced to do things I didn't want to do, which means that often these things are now big triggers for flashbacks for me. A certain touch, a taste, a smell, a certain sensation are all enough to send me straight back into the past to re-experience these things time and time again. That doesn't mean that every single time I do certain things I experience a flashback, I actually have no idea how it works, I have no control over the flashbacks so I don't know how to avoid them, I just have to endure them. 

There is one intimate experience that has never caused me distress because up until Monday I believed the only person who had ever done that to me is my husband and I felt safe knowing that it was one thing that we shared, that was his alone, it hadn't been tainted in any way by my past. Until Monday. 

I was suddenly rushed back to that night with M, except he was doing something to me that I'd never experienced before and I distinctly remember that I squirmed and I asked him to stop. It was all to real, and it completely crushed me because now I'm terrified that if the memory is real it will haunt me again and again every time we try to be intimate. 

It's also the first time I've been aware that I actually asked M to stop at any point that night. I had never been aware of telling him no because I was intoxicated, drink spiked, no memories etc, my big worry was that I'd agreed to what he did to me that night. Now I believe that I asked him to stop what he was doing. I'm still totally confused by this, if this is just a cruel trick them I'm simply back to where I started. If this is actually a real memory then how will it affect me now? How do I figure out if it's real or not? Where do I go from here?