Ever have some really bad shit happen and you deal with it as best you can and you’re like, well, that’s horrible, but I need to try to put it behind me…

…and then you get updates about the bad shit and suddenly it’s a thousand times worse than before?

Still not my fault. I think. Pretty sure.

No. I am sure, about that at least. What I’m becoming less sure of is how the fuck I managed to not turn out to be a devastatingly awful human being, like the rest of my immediate family.

Logic would dictate that the odds of me not being awful are low…wouldn’t it? Am I awful, and just blithely unaware of how awful I am?

I’ve expressed this genuine concern to enough friends who’ve shouted me down about it to think that perhaps this is the trauma talking. But I feel insecure regardless. That’s what narcissistic abuse does. It makes you doubt and question EVERYTHING about yourself. You grow up in a mirror world that suits the narcissist above all else, to the point that their lies feel more true than actual reality. It becomes second nature, and trusting the truth, trusting yourself, feels too dangerous.

I feel like I have been running a marathon since Thursday afternoon. You know what I did today after I got home from Sunday school? I took a nap — and I actually fell asleep for about an hour. That does not happen; I can’t fall asleep at night without medication to help. My brain is too hyper-vigilant. The last time I actually slept during an attempt to nap was probably two years ago during recovery from bilateral sinus surgery, and there may have been some residual anesthesia helping me out there. My body is very much in survival mode again, remembering dangers it has fought very hard to escape and overcome, and not quite processing that those dangers are not in the here and now. As such, it is — I am — utterly exhausted in a soul-deep, bone-etched way that I don’t know how to fully explain.

I am working on reestablishing safety and security and calm within myself — because I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t outrun your trauma, it catches up to you. In the end, it’s far better to stop running, turn around, and meet it on your terms.

It has become clear that I am the only member of my immediate family who is capable of doing that. With help from others to assure me, I am somewhat more capable of believing that I am not devastatingly awful like they are.

No. Not devastatingly awful. Just devastated. That’s all.