Face Your Demons
The floor beneath our feet shook violently.
“What was that?” you ask, frightened by the sudden jolt.
“Oh that’s nothing,” I say, returning to the dishes. A deafening crash sounds out from beneath us, followed by the roar of some unearthly creature.
“Okay, stop bullshitting me, there is something beneath us!” you scream, pressing your back against the wall.
“No, it really is nothing,” I say, glancing at the floor quickly before returning to my chore, “it was something terrible a long time ago, but it’s gone now.” A thundering smash hit the ground and shook the house. It sounded as if a train had derailed into the basement.
“What do you mean it’s gone?! Can you not feel the damage it is doing?” you yell over the repeated sound of the terrible thing beneath us.
“No, no, you don’t get it,” I say, “it’s locked in the basement, it can’t hurt me anymore because I can’t see it. Yeah, every once in a while my whole house shakes and I don’t know why. I fear letting people into my basement, no matter how close we get. Sometimes I fear going out or making myself vulnerable because I know there are more of them, and I don’t think I can fit any more down there.”
“Well, you can’t keep pretending like it’s not there!
You have to do something about it!”
you shriek over the cacophony below us, but I couldn’t hear you anymore. The truth is I couldn’t open that door, not after all these years. It might be more horrifying than I remember. It hurt me worse than I can imagine being hurt, and I am afraid of facing that pain again. I can stay in the moment, I can pretend it isn’t there, I can keep adding locks to the doors and turning out people like you who won’t stop asking me all these fucking questions.
“It can’t hurt me again if I keep it down there,” I say, but my words are drowned out by the shattering sound of the support beams beneath us snapping like twigs. I never look back as the floor collapses and swallows us both in a pit of jagged spikes and twisted edges. I hold my eyes forward so I can keep ignoring it even as it kills us all.
We have all experienced painful events in our life.
Most of the time, keeping our focus away from these memories serves to promote happiness in our lives, as we don’t unnecessarily suffer over something from our past that we cannot control. I have spoken at great length about how important letting go and accepting the pain of the past is for our happiness. Sometimes there are events that you may think you have accepted, but all you have done is bury it alive. It will stay alive inside of you, destroying your foundations until you deal with it.
The short story I began with is a metaphor for these events; something so traumatic that you either repressed them out of your memory or buried it in a way where you think you can ignore its existence.
You believe you are serving yourself by keeping it down there, but it just keeps doing damage, eventually eating away at your health and destroying you from within.
While the issue of completely repressed memories is a contentious subject in psychiatry, it is believed that we may possibly process traumatic events in a completely different way than we process normal memories. This can lead to that memory not being normally accessible to everyday consciousness, but can possibly be remembered when the body is put back into a similar stressful situation. This repression can still wreak havoc on your health in the form of stress, anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Even though the thought may not be visible, it can still be destroying you even though you locked it up out of sight.
You may remember the traumas you have locked up, but you think pushing it down and pretending it doesn’t exist means you are fighting it, and that you are winning. You may turn to drugs, alcohol, or other addictions to keep it down, and you think by doing so you have placated the caged beasts, but all you have done is gotten the beast drunk. To make it worse, you can add on all of the physical, professional, and emotional complications of substance abuse. In order for you to truly overcome these traumatic memories you have to open that door. You have to walk down those steps. You have to face them.
Fortunately, we don’t have to walk down those steps alone.
You need to realize that while some people may have endured worse traumas than others, you can relate to feeling helpless, feeling scared, being hurt, or hating life. You can remember how many times you wished you could pour your hearts out to someone that could just listen and be there. If you know this, then you need to know that others need this too. You need know that we all need this.
We need to stop the stigma surrounding being vulnerable, overly honest, and humbled by our pain. We need to constantly reaffirm that it is okay for us to open up to one another and to constantly offer to be the one for others to open to as well. Ask your friends. Ask your family. Stop pretending repression is strength and find someone to open that door with you and hold your hand as you descend the steps.
Sometimes, a professional mind is needed
to truly clean out our basements.
Thankfully there are tons of resources out there for us to utilize. There are group therapies where you can find others dealing with the same trauma as you. There are in person therapists, including low cost ones available through community health programs. Online therapists can help you through a wide array of mediums, whichever you are most comfortable with. There are a million books, videos, articles, and more on the subject. These were made by others who have gone through what you are facing and come out with advice on how to start your own journey.
Locking your demons in the basement can feel like accepting them and getting on with life, but as long as you keep them alive you keep their ability to hurt you. True, honest acceptance, the kind that allows you to actually live in peace, takes facing the beast until it knows that you are in control. You must learn to stop blaming yourself, and to forgive others at least in the sense of not allowing their evil to hurt you anymore. You have to fully believe in your strength to overcome the pain you have felt so that you don’t have to be scared anymore.
This article hits home from me because I had blocked trauma from childhood. I completely agree with your advise ‘You must learn to stop blaming yourself, and to forgive others at least in the sense of not allowing their evil to hurt you anymore.’ People in general do not understand how healing the act of forgiveness is, and that is not to condone the actions of those who hurt you, but to set yourself free from the pain you carry and hide in the basement.