I don’t always feel hopeful or strong.

Abandoned insecurities masquerade as anxiety
Splintering me into a million shards                                     
I seek safety in an impossibility                                           
A home to isolated and shattered parts                      

The weight of my sadness                                               
Sits idly at their feet until they kick it away           
Severed connection to nothing but loneliness                 
An open rejection of my pain

Forbidden feelings cast love in violence             
Attached to nothing but despair                         
Neglected needs gone cold, I suffer in silence     
Shadows of comfort stripped bare

Choking on my emotions                                                     
I live in desperate loneliness                                 
Where I roll through the motions                                   
That ride a wave of emptiness               

I stand alone in alienated isolation                         
Handing out pieces of unsanctioned love                           
I stand apart from the separation                                   
On this side of never enough

I hurl my love into an open pit and listen for it to land
Wait for the earth to swallow it                                       
Like water soaked up by the sand

This is the truth of abandonment                                       
A malignant curse coated in disgust                         
These are the scars of misaligned attachment         
Raw, gaping, and unversed in trust

My heavy emptiness stands unhealed by time         
There’s only one thing in life that’s permanent and it’s not life                                                                                   
My worth lies untouched by love                                         
A shadow of myself hides beneath the emptiness
Where it is lost between too much and never enough

If you’ve read anything else I’ve written, you may have noticed a strong undercurrent of hope and strength woven within my reflections. Unfortunately, I don’t always feel hopeful or strong. At times, I am crushed by the weight of my pain. The words above capture a jagged sliver of the darkness that sometimes brings me to my knees. As I heal and grapple with tending to my long-ignored attachment wounds, I am furious and gutted by grief. A few steps into my healing journey, I am learning to really feel. The pain was always there, clinging to me like a soaked shirt on wet skin.

Of course, I felt it to a degree, but not like this. The universe has cranked up the volume of my emotions. Sharp lines and vibrant colors have replaced the blurriness that once robbed my vision of clarity. I see my life through new eyes. It’s simultaneously blindingly beautiful and mercilessly gut-wrenching. Not that long ago, I couldn’t feel what I didn’t have in my life. Now I feel it all. I feel all of what I never had, and I hate it. I hate the canyon of loss it has carved into my soul. I hate it even more that my therapist is right when she reminds me, “the only way out is through.” I don’t want to listen to her because I know it means embracing this pain and feeling the burn of its raw rage and gut-churning grief. How can there possibly be more pain? And yet there is.

It’s unfair that so many of us live with these deep wounds that can only heal by being opened again. If you’re reading this and you relate, hugs to you. Then again, if you’re battling an insecure attachment style, you might not want one anyway. Or maybe you want a hug, but are terrified of the implications. It’s one of those things where if you know, you know. I’m not making light of the destruction created by these wounds; I’m simply pointing out that they are the gift that keeps giving and these “gifts” suck. The stupid things don’t have a return policy; they are ours to carry. It’s infuriating. I’m not going to sugarcoat it; this is a crap deal, and we didn’t do anything to deserve this. We have every right to feel the way we do, whether it’s rage, sorrow, denial, or an unappetizing stew of all these feelings.

Many of us find ourselves suffocating beneath the unforgiving weight of this heavy emptiness. Unfortunately and fortunately, even though we may often feel alone, we are not. As I mentioned in my article, “The Club We Never Asked to Join,” many people share similar experiences and feelings. Thanks to the way our traumatic experiences have disfigured our ability to connect without fear, we may doubt that we can be loved and that it is safe to love others. Love can feel like the riskiest feeling of all. Recently, I realized that I’m terrified of embracing love because in my mind, it so often comes with strings and/or a price. This discovery of my distorted thoughts about love ignited my rage. It also solidified my commitment to doing everything I can to heal the wounds I’ve carried for decades.

Although our strength and hope are at times submerged, it doesn’t mean they’re not there. They are there. If they weren’t there, we wouldn’t be here right now. We’ll get through this. We always do. I have to think that when our wounds heal this time, thanks to the tender love we give them, the scarring will not carry the sting that it started with. I also believe that we will come out the other side with a relieved and much-earned smile on our faces. Mine will be a little bit cocky because I just can’t help it. Love has its place in the world, but sometimes it’s okay to be fueled by the fumes of our rage. I will heal this gaping, bloody abyss because I’m irate and I’m too stubborn not to at least try. I hope you do as well.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

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Heather Jurvelin

Finally feeling truly alive for the first time in my life, I am writing from a place of gradual healing with an eye to the future and a hope of connecting with others on similar paths. Forced to withhold a tsunami of emotions deemed irrelevant under the roof of my childhood “home,” the blank white pages of my notebooks invited my raw reflections without judgment. Writing allowed me to free the burdens of my soul, but at some point, I muzzled myself. My pen lay dormant for years until, at 41 years old, I experienced a traumatic flashback during an everyday activity that shook me to the core. Five days later, I started writing about the things I had long withheld. I couldn’t stop. Written words have once again become my refuge. I now recognize that these words, resurrected from the ashes of my pain, may have the power to help others. Above all, I want to magnify and share the messages that I have most treasured on my journey: we are not alone and we don’t ever have to go back. This is where we live now and the future is ours.