Why is she wounded?

I sit here with my cold coffee that I have been trying to drink for hours. I am in the same clothes as yesterday and could really use a shower. My fundamental rights have been ripped away from me by my adorable 10 month old baby. I smell like breast milk, a dash of B.O., and a sprinkle of urine. TMI?

Okay, let's get down to it. My last post was about a lot of heavy shit that I still carry around whether I have fully acknowledged it or pushed that S.O.B. deep down and carried it around subconsciously for the past 29 years of my life. Who is Natausha? Are all my choices and actions one's I chose or are they a result of my traumas?

If that little girl was not subjected to violence, manipulation, abuse, and so on, would I be more successful, beautiful, skinnier, smarter, outgoing? Would the assault never have happened? Would the short but sweet battle with drug addiction in high school cease to arise? How about the mistreatment I suffered from countless men whom I "loved"? Would those punches, those slaps, that spit, that choke and that kick never have the opportunity to show their grotesque faces?

Is Natausha just a vessel to lug around this soul-clenching carnivore called “trauma?”

I will take this moment to stop and reflect on her. To check in on that little girl who is a fragile ball of clay being molded, constructed, kneaded and aggressively shaped into a person she did not give consent to become.

That feeling. I feel it again, right in this moment. It is getting harder to breathe, my eyes begin to water and my rib cage feels like it is being cinched tighter and tighter. But by whom? Who is the person at the end of this dry, scratchy rope that continues to push the bristles of its lasso densely into my delicate adolescent skin?

My shoulders are caved forward, my eyes damp, my leg persistently rocks back and forth as if my adult self is trying to sooth that little girl. I am angry. I am dejected. Who can this little girl turn to? Who was protecting her? I am 29 years old and somehow my nervous system remembers what that little girl saw, what that little girl survived, and reminds me everyday with releasing cortisol and adrenaline into my body when I am faced with my subconscious traumas. My nervous system automatically says "Shut up and take the damn adrenalin, I am here to help you".

Subconscious trauma is focused on the beliefs, patterns, habits that are or were developed in a response to a traumatic event we may not even remember or recognize as traumatic. Crazy right? My body is having an allergic reaction to my feelings that I cannot even pinpoint to a memory or form some sort of pathway in order to connect the dots. I choose to believe the reason for this is because of my family. I know they tried their best to protect that little girl from that carnivorous, identity thieving, S.O.B., I call my trauma.

I thank you, the one who would drive my brother and I around in her Jeep TJ with the top down blasting "I'm a Barbie Girl". I remember you and what you did for us. I remember your freckles, the way your hair curled, your smell, your cheeks and nose.

You were one of my favorite people. You were gentle, soft, warm, and you had a smile that reassured me that I was loved. That I was enough. That I was loveable and perfect just the way I was. Who would Natausha be without you? You were able to take that ball of clay and soften, smooth and define the parts that were being manhandled and mistreated, if only temporarily. You provided relief to that little girl and we thank you, not just me now, but her and me together.