Harming myself
I saw their faces when I told them the thing that made them ask if I had ever had thoughts of harming myself (they didn't say it like that).
I knew the shift, I understood what was and what wasn't being said, I changed tone but I also quite liked the discomfort that had set in.
Unusually I was as open and honest and confident of my story as I have ever been, I noticed that about myself, I could talk of the stuff of childhood with extroadinary ease, a sense of ownership and no shame, I felt less torn, less at war about this, my position had shifted.
But the openness and rawness of it gave them cause for concern, of course, I understood but this is the best I have been and you think this is bad?
There are lots of us in this much pain, especially women... exhausted by the burdens of any interaction at this point.
Normalising the survival mode.
A cry for help? This was not it, as I said possibly the best I have ever been, a self-aware woman navigating the afterwards of kids and partnership and the battles that held, but this pain?
This pain is deep rooted and from that before time, before I had that man to hold me up as he did on so many occasions, that man that I am trying hard to not lean too much in to.
Before I had him, him and him, my three lovely hims.