Challenge #01470-D009: Survivor's Tale

I am mentally ill. I can say that. I am not ashamed of that. I survived that, I’m still surviving it, but bring it on. Better me than you. I don’t want to be a victim.
— Carrie Fisher -- RecklessPrudence

On the cusp of sleep, I hear voices. Stranger's voices, almost always. Sometimes, they're spouting nonsense. I know they're the firings of my subconscious brain gearing up for a dream. Other times... well...

They're the voices of people I know, but they're always things they never said. Always horrible things that they would never say. But when I hear it, it's so real.

"She's asleep. Time to kill her," is always a favourite. I joke to my therapist that my subconscious hates me. Either that, or it was trained from the days when my parents... ha. But then, everyone blames their parents. And everyone thinks their childhood is normal until they go to someone else's house.

Possibly one of the many reasons why my parents, when I could ask them for such favours, never allowed me to visit friends, nor allowed friends to visit me. And very likely one of the reasons I went to a close, community college and my parents gave me a curfew.

But they couldn't hold me in that house forever. They couldn't keep me close to home. They could not keep me under their iron thumbs. And when I got away, when I found out that other households don't do the things mine did...

I broke.

Some part of me... shattered. Never to be whole again. I was used to beatings and starvation and being left in the cold until I improved my manners. I was not used to kindness.

It took a month for my roommates in that first house to realise what I was doing to myself when they were the slightest bit angry with me. Thereafter I was adopted, and taught new ways of living. I'll never forget Carol, simultaneously my mother, sister, and best friend.

I should never have told her about the voices. She got... obsessed. And stressed. I ended up hurting her and the voices delighted in telling me that. And most often, it was her voice.

I did everything to keep her. Everything she wanted. But in the end, the voices drove her away. My voices, hurting me, hurt her too much to abide.

It's been a long and slow crawl to a place of comfort. To a state of mind where I believe I deserve comfort. I've gone through more than a few desperate relationships before I learned that I could look after myself without any help from my partner.

Relationships are a lot less stressful, now. A lot more comfortable.

I'm not cured. Not by a long shot. I never will be cured. For all of my life, I will hear those voices on the cusp of sleep, and when they say horrible things, they will wake me up in terror. If I am alone, I have my service dog to bring me back to reality. If I am with a partner, they help too.

It's not an easy life. It's not completely comfortable, either. But it is my life. What I choose to do with it is important. I survived. I am surviving. I will survive.

And one day, on a good day, I will get to live as well.

[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Colecanstock]

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