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"Survivor": I Finally Understand
'Survivor' used to be a difficult word for me, and that’s a gentle way to put it. Old journals state it more forcefully: “I despise this word.”
While well-acquainted with surviving, in no way did I consider myself a survivor. I was a mess; my life always on the edge of destruction, edges so raw I’d flinch at the wind. I hardly knew what I was surviving, I just kept shoving through the tangles as they came.
“I’m hanging on,” I’d grin through gritted teeth and clenched fists, “I’m still here.”
It got to where it felt as if the survival itself was killing me. I was still alive, but I was no survivor. I wasn’t living my life, I was barely making it through.
Even after I became excruciatingly aware of our internal mechanics, I rebelled. Even when darker implications of my childhood came into focus, I resisted, insisting I couldn’t be a survivor because my surviving was still ongoing.
Back then I couldn’t understand how every moment I spent fighting for myself made me a survivor. How every scrabbling step I took out of my own chaos made me a survivor. How all my daily surviving already made me a survivor.
Being a survivor isn’t something that happens in the past tense, but I couldn’t see that until I was no longer living in constant survival mode.
Moving beyond survival is the clearing after the thorny, pathless thicket, the gulp of air after swimming back from the deep end. Moving beyond survival helped me see the survivor I already was, to see how far I’d come and what I’d come through.
I survived the unwanted, the unsolicited, the unprompted; the neglect, resentment, and devastation. I’ve survived every single moment of my life; every sharp word flung, every weaponized emotion. Every numbed morning, every suicidal evening. Every disruption, every panic attack, every flashback.
I survived the events, I survived the survival, I am surviving the remembering, and in the wake of it all, I am thriving.
'Survivor.'
Now I see the strength living in that word. I see the flames hiding in its shadows, the blessing within its curse. It’s neither a pretty word nor a pretty implication. But it’s a resilient, teeth-gritting white-knuckling word, and staunchly, stubbornly rooted in truth.
And it’s exactly what I am.
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May 31, 2023 © ThrivingWhileMultiple
#ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder #Trauma #DissociativeIdentityDisorder
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