flood

My experience in Tomball left me a scarred, terrified wreck. I went in hopeful, looking forward to the future, welcoming my new life, feeling extremely grateful for the opportunity I was given. I came out emotionally raped, beaten, and literally broken. The leg is healed, though sometimes it still aches, and of course I still have the scar with dots up and down the sides of it to show where the staples were.

My psyche is still in tatters. I'm gathering, but boy, it's hard. It's so very hard.

The past almost 18 months since I left have been a long recuperative period, one with which I am by no means done. In private entries I have shared that my PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) has mostly disappeared...but I can tell you one thing that still brings on the flashbacks.




I listened to this CD without cessation for the first three months I was in Tomball. I had joined a gym and I went there every day after school, and I walked their indoor track, and I listened to this CD.

Aaaaaand...I listened to this CD.

I LOVED this CD.

I can't listen to it anymore. Sara Evans has always been my favorite country singer, ever since Three Chords and the Truth, when she was taking the tiger by the tail.

I might as well throw it away. It literally takes me back to Tomball, to walking around and around that track. I can smell the sweaty gym smells, I can see the hardbodies working out on the level below, I can feel the blisters on my feet and the stares from the fit people, wondering WTF the fat girl was doing there. I remember thinking about my students. I remember wondering how I could get back into the good graces of the principal who suddenly and inexplicably seemed to hate my guts, and was more than willing to prove it to me.

All that is tied up in this CD. I still love it. It's one of those rare CDs where I like every single song and I knew all the words. I read today on MSN how she's filed for divorce because her husband's a perv and an adulterer and all that, and I listened to snippets from the Restless album and I felt SICK. Which makes me MAD because I LOVE THIS CD.

Bah.

FUCKING Tomball. Goddamn it.

I wonder if I listened to it with hopes that I could attach some new, happy memories to it, that I could listen to it without nausea.

I can listen to Restless with chagrin--not for long, and not without flashbacks, but I can. However, I can't listen to this album AT ALL:



Because I listened to it on the way to school, during the first happy days when things were going all right. In fact, I listened to Frail all the way to Tomball when I drove there myself for the first time, to start my new life. That became the song which summed up 2004 for me.

I also cannot bear the words "tea and sympathy." I literally recoiled when I read those exact words in Harry Potter 6, and I try to skip over them in each re-reading as fast as possible. They make me want to {censored}. And since I just stopped doing that, I don't want to start up again.

Seriously. I just tried to listen to it. It made me want to {censored}. There, see, that proves I'm not lying. Oh, God, the stomach, with the churning. Must. Stop.

And I LOVE Jars of Clay. Now the only album of theirs I can stand is the one with "Flood" on it.

Flood

Rain, rain on my face
It hasn't stopped raining for days
My world is a flood
Slowly I become one with the mud

But if I can't swim after forty days
and my mind is crushed by the thrashing waves
Lift me up so high that I cannot fall
Lift me up
Lift me up - when I'm falling
Lift me up - I'm weak and I'm dying
Lift me up - I need you to hold me
Lift me up - Keep me from drowning again


Downpour on my soul
Splashing in the ocean, I'm losing control
Dark sky all around
I can't feel my feet touching the ground

But if I can't swim after forty days
and my mind is crushed by the thrashing waves
Lift me up so high that I cannot fall
Lift me up
Lift me up - when I'm falling
Lift me up - I'm weak and I'm dying
Lift me up - I need you to hold me
Lift me up - Keep me from drowning again

Calm the storms that drench my eyes
Dry the streams still flowing
Cast down all the waves of sin
And guilt that overthrow me

But if I can't swim after forty days
and my mind is crushed by the thrashing waves
Lift me up so high that I cannot fall
Lift me up
Lift me up - when I'm falling
Lift me up - I'm weak and I'm dying
Lift me up - I need you to hold me
Lift me up - Keep me from drowning again


"Flood" is a good song for right now. I'm struggling. And I would say "Frail" is a good song for right now, too, but since I can't stand to listen to it, I guess that's out.

And I guess you all can guess why I named this journal Learning to Breathe. I'm trying to trust that everything will be okay, and I will survive this, because there are times when I'm just not sure I will.