Appendix B.
B is for brave.
B is for beautiful.
After the appendix a post, we had a comment so honest and vulnerable and insightful that, with permission, I'm sharing it here because we all need to hear it.
This is as beautiful as the most breath-taking beauty I've ever seen.
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Another hard case here. So much of your appendix is true, but I think I might be a harder case than your hard case of appendix a. In my family, there was all of the shaming and others' needs are larger and such, but there was also the hitting, particularly if you're crying over dad's unfair manipulation (which was really the biggest thing to cry about).
Crying is nearly impossible when you've been training yourself since kindergarten to take beatings and sexual abuse without shedding a tear because you've figured out that the beatings are shorter that way so who knows how bad the sexual abuse would hurt if you added crying. When you've spent your whole life holding in the deepest pain you have for fear of being hit, and IF you let yourself cry, it's only in your room alone in near silence, without coming out for hours afterwards just in case it's still showing on your face, and even then you're terrified because you never know when someone will burst through your door in that boundaryless house.
I love your writing and your heart and so often I read your blog and feel like you're speaking directly to me, but on this one, it's so much deeper than you could imagine without having been there. I rarely cry, and even more rarely in front of other people.
My therapist has encouraged me that those times that my throat is tight and my eyes feel misty ARE crying, and I need to simply let myself cry in my own hidden way. After years of accepting that as my way to cry (in addition to a LOT of therapy), I have been able to cry more often in the traditional form. Maybe someday I'll truly cry freely, but if not, that's ok. That's not a fault of mine, it's a fault of my parents, and they will stand before God someday and have to face every instance that I needed to cry and couldn't, even as an adult. That's THEIR burden to carry, not mine.
I agree that music and art and love and permission are all great tools in accessing emotion. But some of us are nearly impossible cases, and for us, it needs to be enough to access the emotion in those ways, even if the tears never come.
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Brave, brave, beautiful girl--thank you.
If I believe--and I do--that we are all one Body, then your pain is mine and my tears are yours.
And, to me, when we put our hearts together like this, it is the highest and holiest communion I know.