There are no injuries that run so deep that one can't add insult to them and make them feel even worse.

When do we stop crying over our own injuries? When we get old enough to swallow our tears, or when the people we love stop responding to our cries of pain?

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.

He loves me so he hurts me
To try and make me good.
It doesn't work. I'm just too bad
And don't do what I should.

My memory has so many different sections and, like all survivors, there are so many compartments with so many triggers. I'll remember a smell which reminds me of a man which reminds me of a place which reminds me of another man who I think was with a woman who had a certain smell — and I'm back to square one. This is the case for most survivors, I believe. When we try to put together our pasts, the triggers are many and varied, the memories are disjointed — and why wouldn't they be? We were children. Even someone with an idyllic childhood who is only trying to remember the lovely things which happened to them will scratch their head and wonder who gave them that doll and was it for Christmas or their third birthday? Did they have a party when they were four or five? When did they go on a plane for the first time? You see, even happy memories are hard to piece together — so imagine how hard it is to collate all of the trauma, to pull together all of the things I've been trying to push away for so many years.

No matter how intimate of a relationship or closeness you have with another person, you will never know every trauma nor every happy time they carry behind their eyes and in their hearts. Shit gets real deep with folks and only they know how deep it goes. Hold space for people to filter their knowing, if they so choose.

So great was the extremity of his pain and anguish, that he did not only sigh but roar.