Therapy is sometimes like surgery on your heart and mind. It’s scary, it hurts a lot at first, and there’s no guarantee that the outcome will be an improvement.

That said, I’m really leaning into mine, and it’s at times terrifying and exhausting. I’m the only one that knows

where the bodies are buried, and I have to be willing to exhume them in order to deal with my issues.

Trauma. I’m talking about being a childhood trauma survivor. It’s at the heart of what I refer to as my anxiety. Well, today, I came as close as I’ve ever dared to come

to unburying the box where those demons exist. I didn’t open it. I don’t even know how far out out I’ll have to dig to find the edges. I just finally know it’s there. Now begins the hardest work: unearthing and opening things I buried 35+ years ago.

For me, the trauma isn’t the

issue. It’s the root cause, but not what fuels my anxiety. For me, anxiety is trying to make sense of a lifetime of survival because that’s the only way I know how to live my life. That programming was hardwired at such a young age that I’ve never known anything else.

So much of my childhood was bad. It was just bad. Dissociation was my only out, and it became my default mode. Unfortunately, the very thing that protected me - that survival mode - has also kept me from ever truly experiencing life. Life, for me, is something that happens.

I don’t really get a say in it. Whatever happens, good or bad, is simply what I deserve. It’s a life, but it’s not living. To analogize, it’s like I spent years in a forest with only a shovel and hatchet for survival, and when I rejoined society, those were the only tools I knew

how to use. They served me well so why abandon them?

So, today, I literally asked my therapist if I could stop living my life like that. It seems like an easy choice, but it’s so terrifying that I’m shaking and crying right now at the thought of it.

If I change, does that

mean everything I’ve done until this point was wrong? Of course not. Not to a “normal” person. To someone, me, it’s like asking me to learn to breath something other than earth’s atmosphere. It’s that alien in concept.

So, I asked if I could, and she said I could.

If that seems childish or childlike, it 100% is. Much of how I view the world is through the lens of a child. That’s when I stopped learning how to process things. That’s what trauma does. It freezes you, or at least it did me, in a perpetual state of that hurt and fear.

Now,

at 47, I’m going to try something new, which means unlearning a literal lifetime of unhealthy coping mechanisms. That’s the next step on this journey, and I’m so frightened that I needed to ask and be given permission to take it. Now I have to give myself permission.

I don’t

know what any of it looks like, or what’s on the other side. I don’t know if that next step is tomorrow or a month from now. But, for maybe the first time ever, I feel like I have a choice. That’s enough, for now. I hear people say “choose happiness” and it makes no sense.

I’m not even sure I’ll get to that point. I’m hopeful, though, that I can muster the strength to see what a life lived intentionally looks like. I don’t need control of anything, but wouldn’t it be cool to finally have a say?

That’s it. No moral. Just a brain dump. Knowing

that I’m not alone is a huge thing when I’m in the darkest places, and I’m hopeful that if anyone else is on a similar path, something in what I share resonates. If not, just getting it out into the universe helps me a bunch.

Happy Saturday. Don’t forget to take care of you.