Writer's Block, the Tiger, and EMDR

A few weeks ago, I sat on the back patio of my new home in the desert with a cup of green tea, totally depleted. I looked around at my new space. 

A lime tree, two palm trees, some cactus plants that I had recently potted and lovingly named Bonita and Richard. I tried to inhale and exhale, inviting the suffocating feeling of the last few months to leave me, but no such luck. 

I gripped my tea in my hands, inhaling and exhaling. Reminding myself that I had just recently completed one hell of a sprint since last December and that writer's block is perfectly normal. It is even to be expected, in fact, when the subject of your writing revolves around a traumatic childhood and especially when the parent who inflicted the mental and emotional anguish is posing to sue you for exactly what you are trying to produce. 

The writing and fear of consequences brings to mind and body the exact feelings of the abuse itself: 

Say anything, and it will get worse. You are angry and intentionally trying to hurt your family. You are dramatic. You are the problem. How dare you speak out against the family. No one will believe you. No one cares about you. Just move on. 

As my efforts to clear my head seemed futile, I reached for the phone and called my sister. I listened to the dial tone while gently smiling at my screen. Her name and chosen emoji staring back at me. "Calling MaggieWatermelon," as Siri likes to say.

My sister loves watermelon, and who doesn't?

It's delicious. 

She answers the phone, likely anticipating the usual hows-your-day chitchat, but she can tell that I am feeling things and I don't hold back. In fact, I've been holding the door open for weeks now inviting the lingering doomshameick to leave, but it hasn't and seemingly won't. It feels perfectly comfortable in its current home, enjoys making me feel like garbage. 

But when I talk this particular morning with my sister, my words actually make sense and I feel such relief. Oftentimes in overwhelm, my words feel like an overturned box of puzzle pieces falling haphazardly onto the floor. 

It's technically all there, but I can't really make sense of it or see the big picture, often feeling just as frustrated and scattered as before I opened my mouth or picked up my pen. 

But today, the pieces fall out and arrange themselves neatly for both of us. 

I am tired. I am drained. I am angry and scared and emboldened and ready and have nothing left to give. I am frustrated that I can't seem to just push through. I don't want to take any more time for healing, but I know it's my only choice. And when I actually consider it, healing is all I've actually been wanting to give myself time and space to do. 

My sister placed more pieces in their respective places, taking them delicately from my clenched palms and arranging them where they need to be so that I can see them too. 

Of course you feel all these things! You just finished renovating a house, moved across the country into a new house that needed work, changed jobs, experienced a gap in pay between said jobs during the most expensive time in your life, are trying to write a book and a blog and maintain social media things, all while processing the cease and desist letter sent by our father's lawyer. Of course you feel suffocated by the doomshameick. 

I knew and know all of this, but having it all pieced together and released in one simple phone conversation gave me more clarity than I've had in quite some time. 

I absorbed her points, and suddenly felt struck by an epiphany in the form of a metaphor - as always seems to happen for me. I went on: 

It's as if I had lived in an unsafe, unpredictable environment with a tiger for all of my formative years. Living with such intense stress, focusing all of my energy on not angering the tiger, and practicing extreme denial of self and dissociation just to make it through. In talk therapy, I learned how to run from the tiger. And I did. I escaped. But now it's as if I'm stuck with my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath, and looking around every corner sensing the lurking even though I am far far away. 

I was in talk therapy off and on from ages 16 to 24. I attribute my freedom to these women who heard my stories and helped me set boundaries and run. But I was only able to focus on escape from my immediate danger and in-the-moment survival tactics. I thought for a long time that would be it: Once I escaped, I would be fine. No more tiger, no more problems. But now that I am no longer circling the ring with the tiger, the lurking needs addressed. 

I grind my teeth so much that I have broken them, I have chronic muscle tension, slow digestion, migraines, and an astounding hyper-vigilance that no longer serves me. 

I have not wanted to go back to talk therapy, because I sometimes feel as though I have talked this shit out. 

I understand my trauma, and yet I haven't fully escaped it. 

In writing my memoir, I have at times felt re-traumatized in the paragraphs I have produced. Many feelings have come up that make me feel as if I am back in the ring, and I don't think I need to tell you that it does not feel good. The book needs written and will be written, but it needs written by a writer who is taking care of herself. 

Our memoir in the making is not a diary, nor a sterile handbook that we can write from an emotionally safe distance away. It is a series of stories that when pieced together shed light on a life, two lives - mine and MaggieWatermelon's - that were forged in a uniquely invisible fire. 

It is important to us to write this book for you and all survivors of invisible abuses in a way that is meaningful and timeless. 

We want to write the book of the decade that makes survivors feel seen, be able to laugh and cry with comrades, and ultimately serve as a model of what victory over violence looks like. It is a long road and surely imperfect, and I want to do our story justice. 

To do that, I need to take the timelines off of myself and put my ass back in an armchair for a bit. 

I'll be starting EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) in a few weeks. This is a type of therapy that is used specifically for trauma survivors in dealing with repressed memories that are often inaccessible to us in our day-to-day lives, but can be accessed again in moving the eyes in a certain pattern while talking about the doomshameick and of course, the past. 

I want to throw myself into this process with my whole heart and mind, and I know it will require a lot of energy and mental attention on my end to do so. 

I hope that in this new venture in healing I not only successfully release many of the things that I have repressed that continue to affect me, but I also gain clarity on the big picture, that I find and arrange all of the pieces. For me and for you. 

Thank you for being here and I can't wait to bring you the book of a lifetime as soon as it's ready to move from my brain, to my pen, to the page. 

Humbly yours, 

Emily Rose // Miss Magnolia