I am horrified at how much crap I have in my house.
Me too, sweetie - me too! It's a trigger into my own feelings of being "less important than the stuff"... a big feature in my mom's hoarding issues. She has important relationships with her "stuff" - because she isn't able to have relationships with people, is my theory.
I just have to say that I'm very impressed with all your decisions after that first post, two days ago. Good job! That "big chunk" of you that seems to be "missing"? It might be busy, pre-occupied and obsessed with resolving old fears, conflicts, doublebinds but isn't able to since she's so young... in other words, I think you might recover that part of you as you start to work through the issues with your stepdad. Maybe not all in a whoosh, at once... maybe gradually. I'm still working on integrating that part of "me" with my life now... from my own history. There are some surprises - pleasant ones! - in this process. If I'd known there was an upside to this process, it would've helped me manage some of the fear - that was my own, at this age - about opening my own can of worms.
Oh, that reminds me! About the fear... I don't know if I can say this in a way that you can grasp yet... but the overwhelming, totally consuming fear belongs to the 12 yr old you. She is still afraid. And she's asking for help - like you did with your first post of this thread. The things that are so frightening at that age, sometimes are still fearful to adults - but adults have some extra capacity for dealing with fear; experience that helps them go on in spite of fear, etc. It's not a disabling, overwhelming fear anymore to adults, even if it remains significant. Still to be reckoned with; but not an invincible obstacle.
You, yourself, can help comfort that little girl... protect her... calm those fears and help her come to a new understanding of what she went through. The journal will get that process going and your T can help, too. But, most importantly - you'll be there helping her; your "missing piece" will be found, recognized, soothed and protected by the same tiger-mom woman who told sister's bully ex where to go in no uncertain terms... and found out that felt really good! This is sort the blurb-edition of the type of healing that I sense you're on the verge of.
It will be OK, it will be alright - keep telling that 12 yr old you're going to help her now, every time the fear starts to threaten to break through in a flood. Tell her you'll set aside a special time - just for her because she's important to YOU. And then start doing it. Just sit quietly and comfortably in a peaceful part of your day and ask if she's there and what she wants to talk about - and then start writing that down, as it comes. It might get difficult; she might clam up again. Or she might feel so relieved that it comes faster and faster in such big torrents... that you don't have enough time to get it all down! You can gently remind her that her time is up for now, that she surely won't forget where she was in telling her story to you, and that you'll pick up where you left off tomorrow.
It wasn't long after I started journalling this way, that I could start to tell which was my 12 yr old voice and which was me now: processing, understanding, creating a full picture of what happened - a clear narrative - and then digesting it (finally!!) and moving on to the next bit of the story. And I started to finally understand that I could help myself heal those old wounds; the things that were completely indigestible - unfathomable - and so, incomprehensibly resolvable way back when. But I started it all, with the T. I absolutely needed another person - in 3D - because of the intensity of my fear. There were two clearly separate working phases... and I didn't start working on finding my "missing piece" - until I went back after a break of some months. It's almost as if I needed to build up some confidence and trust - in myself and in the process with the T - first. And then we tackled the real reason I was there.
Good luck, sweetie! I'll keep checking back to see how you're doing... if you come across something you need help with or whatever. I think you'll feel ever so much better when you start to get the "poisonous infection" out of your system!
