If you were to ask my favorite color, it would probably be somewhere on the purple spectrum right now...royal purple, burgundy, hot pink...all combinations of red and blue in varying amounts. Many of my go-to shirts are those colors.
However, if you were to observe my regular clothing choices for the past few years, you would see a bit different pattern. Yes, there were purples...but more black and grey and blue than anything else.
The colors I wear reflect my levels of inner torment.
I have been depressed since I was an early teen.
I self-medicated with food.
I wrote angsty poetry and sad stories.
I cried myself to sleep for years.
I felt disconnected and unincluded, even excluded, for most of my life.
All of these things are but symptoms...Complex Posttraumatic Stress haunts me, and shows up as nightmares, and messed-up sleep patterns, and messy relationships with food, and people, and things, and for many years, it reared it's ugly head as a heightened startle-response and fear.
For close to three years after Jason and I were married, I flinched and cowered and hyperventilated when he moved quickly. NOT because of anything he had ever done, but because of my prior experiences of abuse at the hands of someone who was supposed to love me.
After more than 30 years out of that setting, and 20 years of therapy, I know I am doing better. I have experienced some healing. I also know that the things that broke me as a child continue to affect me every day.
Someday, I may know that my favorite colors don't have be shades of pain, or to taste like tears. I may not always experience the conflicting anger and love and hate and apathy when I think about growing up as an abused child.
Black and blue may no longer be the colors of my thoughts.
