My Domestic Abuse Survival Journal - Part 2
The journey to myself "officially" begins with frequent posts
In the aftermath of an attempt to make my psychic pain stop, I reset my life, vowing to myself that things were going to change. I didn’t know how that was going to come about, but I did know that I couldn’t do it alone. I needed to commit my thoughts to the written word; to make sense of things, sort out, remember, document it all like I knew it could from past experience. And so I did write in earnest - in a black spiral notebook filled with looseleaf.
My first entry in the journal is dated Friday, 12/28/90, 8:26pm and is transcribed here:
Starting from zero - got nothing to lose… (Tracy Chapman, Fast Car)
So here I am on my favorite night of the week, but in so many ways it’s the first Friday of my life. In just a short six days my life - and I - have changed more than I could ever have imagined. Right now I’m floating in a therapy afterglow and it’s so nice! That’s the right word too - not stupendous, terrific, fantastic, wonderful or any other synonym - just nice - and nice is very nice! The peace I feel inside myself is comforting - like all my sharp edges have been smoothed and now that I’m not constantly being poked by them, I can see and feel something else - Me. “Feeling” me is different because I’m so used to just hiding from and avoiding things that make me uncomfortable - just the easy way to squeak by and live a “pretend’ version of life. By challenging myself to grow up and become the best person I can, I’ve broken a lot of my old “rules” - and damn it feels good, not scary. For the first time in my miserable excuse for a life, I’ve decided to let (Therapist) help me learn to really take charge of my own life. Yes, Gina, you really do have the right to your own opinions, ideas and emotions and you can learn to express these to people who love you. I’ve needed to grow for a very long time but I haven’t recognized the symptoms - something just had to change - it was time to shed the cocoon and become a butterfly - or get eaten up by that big predator - ignorance. Hope I can do this - it’s definitely worth a try. It’s going to take a lot of practice.
Things I’m worried about tonight…
Falling asleep - I’m tired but a little anxiously excited about all this; also my throat, head and ears hurt - am losing my voice.
[Client] owes me some money and is giving me no respect by stringing me along - I told her I needed it by 10:00am tomorrow and she said she’d “try.”
Good news today…
I handled a full house of kids today and I’ve still got it in me to handle it!
Baby K began today and it went really well.
Got a call from [New Client] - begin Baby C January 14.