Where Have We Left Off?

Where to go from here ? How to draw lines and maintain privacy, after having exposed that I have been a survivor of domestic violence ?

After reading Alice’s Miller “The Body Never Lies”, I had started sharing publically any type of harassment I had come across. The book described what I had known since the day I could think, feel and speak: that the causes of depression and feelings of suicidality are; repressing and staying silent against systematic abuse and harassment. And that was one of the most liberating periods of my life. Right now, isn’t there harassment in my life? There is, everywhere and any time. Yet, I feel strangely disconnected from social media as a platform to expose this.

While I was also working, giving private lessons during the pandemic, I am working in a way which is visible to the public now. And that is why I feel like my true self has been withdrawn into a comfortable-not-so-comfortable shell inside me. What is now important is to maintain and develop my work, my title, and my true self can be silenced, muted and obscured. Yet wasn’t it the exposure of my true self, true concerns to the world; which brought me those “successes” in the first place ?

I sometimes miss the time before depression, where it seems that I was so happy and confident in just being myself… While I know that is not exactly true, I had suppressed so much of myself to fit into what I had perceived as the “adult world”, and the turmoil got bigger and bigger until it completely crushed over me…

If I could, I would go to yoga, tai chi, and aromatheuropetic massage 24/7 a day; that is how much I need to revitalize and feel like I can reach out to humanity again…

I both feel the need to draw firm boundaries, but also to be able to connect and form healthy attachments. This has certainly been my exam thus far in my life, as Turks would say. Everyone has a major challenge according to the folk wisdom in Turkey; some would have to devote their years to overcome “mishappenings” in love, some for health, some for work, some for family… My challenge in “proficiency” seems to be attachment to the world. Deep attachment, from the heart, while also protecting myself and controlling my own boundaries. Does that make me a freak ? That is how I have felt in society for years, and how the society seemed to operate.

If only this was as easy and simple as politics, or studying…