Vulnerability

Tis strange. All day I felt this trepidation like, it was daylight but such a depressingly rainy day, and who knows, maybe it is always darkest before the dawn. I obsessively checked my email after sending a really vulnerable email in response to a really kind email to me; but until someone else responded it was hard to trust that tge kindness was real. Then I hit this breaking point where I got in contact with my ‘mother’ who acted like there was no dysfunction at all or if there was it was me and then I tried to get her to text me so ething kibd and it wasn’t much but it almost made me question my whole story I’ve been building up about how hopeless it is to ever think any understanding could be had between us at all. I will never understand her behaviour and I told ger she totally broke my trust in her and even when she screamed at me to leave the house and die, multiple times, that trust didn’t break; yet in those weeks before my last hospital stay, it did.

And yet tonight, despite making contact which I sure would be so counterproductive and dangerous to me, I have faith in something I haven’t had faith in in a long time: community. For some reason I feel so guilty about it though. I wrote honestly earlier today about the effect this shelter was having on me — I thought it was pretty obvious that staying in a shelter means being at tbe end of your rope so I didn’t think more vulnerability was necessary and I certainly felt guilty feeling like I was asking for more — but I got an email tonight saying, basically, it is clear we have to find a way to get you out of the shelter.

And all of a sudden I feel like there is a community that is responsive to my needs, that somehow actually cares and isn’t just saying, I hope we can give back to you what you have given to us, because they secretly hate me and blame me for giving them COVID! Now I am humbled knowing it was real and I am like, why, how… and wow, if only I had a community before that saw so readily that it was clear I needed to be gotten out of a place.

It is strange timing though: now my ‘mother’ despite being more or less still antagonistic and blaming me for staying in a shelter even and not hearing a thing is making me at the cery least question whether I should put her name in quotes; and when my backpack was stolen I thought, for the first time, since I’d broken no contact anyway, maybe I can ho back there to regroup and get a new license and everything and it won’t be so bad. But it would be so bad andI think that is exactly what she is counting on: that I will decide there is enough love there to return, only to be messed with again, only to fall right back into abuse and disempowerment… because as disempowering as it is living in this shelter, and as little as I know if where I will go from here, it is still better than the powerlessness and learned helplessness I got used to there.

In my first days at this shelter, I don’t know why, but they kept telling me I was on the no entry list every tine I went out for a while and came back. They would trigger me saying, you do have a place to live, meaning they almost did not let me stay here because I could have stayed with abusive dysfunctional family? I wonder who came up with that scheme; lots of people here probably have family members they could technically stay with but I’m the only one they try to kick out just because my ‘mother’ is technically willing to let me stay with her! And she is so convincing. After a while those kinds of threats became less and less and I have no idea why that happened at all. It is so strange and confusing and it was like they heard her version of the story or something, which I wouldn’t doubt. She is still sooo capable of being abusive; just because she is not withholding all my money from me doesn’t mean she would care for my life if I returned, and that has always been ny problem, I think other people are like, well, you *do* have a place to stay, and I can’t explain, no, honey, that ain’t a place to stay…

So maybe I have a bit more money to work with but if I even think of that place as an option I become so much more powerless: more helpless *and* less urgency to be vulnerable and share my situation with community. They also want to hear more of my story in sacred space and to do some deep listening which again is wow love that is what love feels like but I am scared because my story is so big and… my problem has shifted so much since earlier in the day.

For better ir worse trying to talk to my ‘mother’ changed how I see things and I do not know how but I still know it is just as dire that I cannot return to that house. I have mentioned sexual abuse here and she is still at least not cutting off my lifeblood, my money, so maybe I am safe saying, I cannot return to live there and I am a survivor of incestual abuse around which I have so much amnesia but which is the most triggering thing in the world. I am scared when people act like I do have a place to go when it is a place connected to that and to such unsafety… and I am slightly scared if I tell my story wrong these folks too may say, you do have another place to go, why are you asking for support from us?

But oh, I need it, and knowing that they care to help me find a way out of this place is so much more than I ever could have imagined yesterday.

Still as much as it scared me that I was not being asked more about my story, the sudden expression of interest in it feels like, whoa, real community! But eek, vulnerability! And am I really ready for that? What do I share of everything that has been my life?