"That's just Pilgrim"

I had survived high school (barely). Still in an abusive relationship with a boyfriend that I didn't know how to escape, still being raped on a regular basis, still hurt, still trying to deny everything from my past, and doing everything I could to run away from ...everything. I'd always had tricks to deal with the things that happened. My favorite was "disappearing"-- going into a secret space inside my head where I couldn't be hurt. I would leave my body, and I'd imagine myself disappearing up into the stars in the sky, far away from whoever was yelling at me, hurting me, scaring me. Sometimes it got out of hand-- I'd forget to come back for a while. Or I'd "wake up" from my secret space and be somewhere different, or in different clothes, or... it'd be Wednesday afternoon, when I could swear it had just been Monday night a few minutes ago. I would put myself into trances by closing my eyes and telling myself "not me, not me, not me" over and over in my head for however long it took for some traumatic event to be over with, for however long it took for me to be gone, for however long it took for some other part of me to take over.
Sometimes I heard voices.
It was inside my head-- I knew it wasn't from outside, but it sounded so real--it could have been outside my head, but I knew no one was around.
I tried to shrug it off.
I kept hearing it. I wondered if I was schizophrenic, and did some research on schizophrenia, just to make sure. Nope, the voices weren't telling me what to do, weren't coming from outside my head,no hallucinations, thank goodness.
I'd hear things like, "No!" and "Go away!" and once in a while a child crying "Mommy?!" Especially when I got stressed out, or when my boyfriend was hurting me.
I still didn't have a clue what it all was. I just figured I was crazy, because I knew something was wrong with me and always had been. I had a reputation in my family as being weird, a little too creative, a little too smart, a little too everything. "Thats just Pilgrim; thats just how she acts; don't take her seriously, she's just weird."

Posted by pilgrim | Filed under: The Bad Days