I know I am not going to live a long and healthy life, especially if I continue to fool myself. As much as I may eat healthy, exercise and work on strengthening my mental health, from time to time I am reminded that I am still not recovered from my past. It still eats at me. I may think that I am all healed up from the hurts of sexual abuse, but deep in my mind I still have many scars that are still very fresh. The stress that builds up in the sub-conscience part of my brain bubbles up every once in a while and I can only imagine how much this stress damages my physical being without me even knowing it.

Last night, I was awoken by a dream. A painful dream. A dream that upon waking up, made me realize just how far I have to go to repair the relationships that have been broken… or build closer relationships that never were really there. My dream was set at a parade in my hometown. At the very front of the parade were a bunch of my aunts and uncles, but who should be in the middle of them? my father -my abuser. Being sexually abused by your parent is a very messy situation. When you make the leap to cut ties from your parent so that you can live your life free from your abuse, it leaves family members to have to make decisions that they would not normally want to make. When I woke up from my dream, I was instantly thrust into a feeling that has been eating away at me for a long time: Does my family actually believe me? Am I a laughing stock?

There is a lesson to be learned here and that is that I need to build a better bond with my extended family. I was not raised to be very close to them and my character flaw of not being able to trust easily gets in the way. Compounded to that is the feeling that I am not believed about my past and it all combines to me feeling as though I am not worthy of their company. There are times I feel very lonely like I am an orphan, but I don’t want to impose. I feel as though that big elephant of my abusive past is still in the room, but I need to work on removing that if I am ever to get over this current hurdle in my life. Staying away and avoiding contact does not resolve this, I must make a better effort.

I may try to convince myself that I am over my abusive past, my dreams remind me that I am not. I still have relationships to build and heal. While I have been busy trying to build a better relationship with myself, I have failed to work on those that are exterior to me. My deepest mindset has reminded me that I need these people in my life. I just hope that I can muster up the strength to make amends before it is too late.