Time Doesn't Heal

Over time, I’m sure I’ll be ready to write more of my story on here – what happened to get me to where I am today. But right now, I think all I’m going to say is I’m coming out of a very abusive and painful church situation that started for me when I was 14. I’m 19 now, and I’ve walked out of organized religion completely, and I really can’t see myself ever being able to return to that. The entire of this purpose of this blog is basically to be a place for me to be able to say whatever the hell I want about it, because, 5 year since it all started, 1 year since it’s all been over, and I’m still trying to heal.

I sat in a ragged old, over-stuffed blue lazy boy across from my counselor this week - my third in two years. I’m back again because the details of what happened still haunt me. I had just told him about nightmares I’m still having, fears and pains that won’t die even though I’m over a year out of the dead center of the situation now. I feel like I should be able to be done with it now, should be able to move on, but I haven’t really been able to. I’m incredibly frustrated, because I desperately want to be free, but feel like I’m not in so many ways. We talked about the old saying “Time heals all wounds.” We agreed that this whole idea is complete bullshit. He said it’s like if you get a paper cut and ignore it, it’ll be fine in a few days, with time, but if you break your leg and ignore it, time is only going to give you a pretty fucked up leg.

It reminds me of a song I heard when I was driving the other day. Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks sings in an angry song “I’m Not Ready to Make Nice” about a time when she was hurt or wronged or something. She starts off “Forgive? Sounds good. Forget? I’m not sure I could. They say time heals everything, but I’m still waiting.” The chorus goes on to say “I’m not ready to make nice, I’m not read to back down. I’m still mad as hell and I don’t have time to go round and round and round. It’s too late to make it right.”

Corny though I think the Dixie Chicks are, I identify with these parts of the song. It’s been a few years, but I’m still furious about the situation my family and I went to at the hands of our church, our spiritual family.

I wish so much that I could just let it go and heal, but I’m not really sure how. Time hasn’t done it. Even with a few solid years of counseling, the dreams and thoughts and anger that haunts me proves that I’m still incredibly wounded. Even though I didn’t treat the broken leg like a paper cut, even though I’ve tried to get the help I needed and have tried to move on with my life, I haven’t healed. I hope that some day, I will be able to, but I can’t fathom a day when I won’t carry the anger and frustration with the church and Christians that I still carry today.

Time has brought me one thing, and that’s the understanding, vague though it is, that there might have been a purpose in my own life for this all to happen. Thus far, the only purposes it has served were to get me out of my town and into college a year earlier than I should have, and to completely redefine the God I believe in now. I’m completely comfortable being angry now, and letting that anger come out even towards the God I now believe in it.

I haven’t really been able to connect with other people like me til recently, people who were victims of church abuse at a young age like I was. I’ve actually started looking for blogs of people like me, and I’ve found some that have bloggers whose wounds are much much fresher than my own. I wish I could say to them that things get easier with time when it’s all over. I wish I could say that it won’t always have a foot hold in their lives. I wish I could say they’d get over it. I can’t. I know that isn’t very encouraging.

If I can be any encouragement at all, hear this: what happens in abusive churches is a big deal. It’s painful, it’s scarring, and it wounds you on such a deep level. I’ve had so many people – friends and mentors and pastors and teachers – ask me why I can’t just get over it, why I can’t just move on. Simply put, they don’t understand it. It’s not that easy. My blog won’t be sugar coated, and it won’t lie about this pain. I’m not going to try to belittle it anymore.

Is there ever going to be real healing for me? Yeah, I think so, but I’m not quite there yet.