I have an autoimmune disease where my immune system sees my hormones as an allergin - I develop blisters, hives, swelling, lacerations on all my tissue, including internal. I take an autoimmune inhibitor to help slow this down. IF I get sick, my immune system has been turned off.The conditioning of a life of abuse meant that no matter how I felt emotionally I was unable to fathom that I was not the problem. I was ALWAYS the problem. My feelings didn't matter. It was always my fault. I never did anything right.
Until the blisters. When the blisters came it was like I had an immutable fact that could not be gaslighted away. Here my body rebelled & I had to support it. I had to learn what boundaries are & discover what abuse was. I learned that it wasn't normal for people to consume you their whole lives. I learned that even when I bled on my face and my skin swelled to splitting THEY STILL were not interested in doing anything for my benefit. I spent so much time subverting my feelings that I had to see blood before I acknowledged the problem was not coming from me. When I could feel my tongue swelling as I asked for basic human rights MY body made the boundaries for me. I could no longer ignore the outcomes of a life of abuse. I HAD to be my own protector and my body was begging to help me see it. So when my mom was sick 2 years before she died & I said, "I can't be around you if you won't stop being mean to me." & "I will come if you just promise not to be mean to me" she could not do it. She could not admit that her actions were making me sick & she was adamant that everything she had ever done was perfect. And so it came to pass that when my mother died I was not with her. I had not been for 2 years. And in those 2 years I learned what it meant to be kind, respectful, & what boundaries were & all the different kinds of abuse that could manifest. I learned that the best monitor was me. I learned to trust my feelings. I started to feel upset and then my flesh would raise & the blood would trickle. I had a friend at the time that was a very unhealthy relationship for me. I told him that I could not keep being the person he needed because I had to take care of me & hearing that threw him. He got so angry that I would no longer check in on him & put his needs 1st & prioritize my time around what he needed. He said, "so you can't be my friend or you will die huh, that bullshit" & so my skin showed me again who was safe to be around. The bleeding led me to a time & place where I could anticipate the flow of blood & begin to change the world around me. I could not be gaslight away from the pile of bloody toilet paper before me & the pulse that squirted blood from splits in my swollen lips. I could not be tricked anymore. My body was giving me a litmus test for every person in my life. And I learned to correlate the bleeding with my feelings. What was safe, what was abuse, who cared about me & who cared what I could do for them. This pathway I discovered we are all on together, right now. We're seeing the bodies pile up as a result of abuse. We can't ignore the numbers of the dead. We can't ignore the stories of the survivors. This abuse we are living through right now has come to a crescendo of screams from our collective lives.
The bodies piled in halls tell us. The over flowing morgues show us.
The refrigerated food trucks hauling our loved ones away beg us.
The saviors on the front lives in the hospitals & clinics are pleading with us.
They are as the immune system in my sick body. They are drawing a line that we can not ignore. This government we have now is nothing but a system built by abusers. They have discovered how to bleed us a million ways and are like leeches buried head first in our flesh. They are not ostriches hiding their heads in the sand. They are feasting upon our bodies & they know it. We must rise up and stop this systemic murder of the most vulnerable. We have to shake the reigns of gaslighting and propaganda off. We have to break the chains of fear that they have set around our necks. We must stand up & fight against all the abuse. Together.
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