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I wanted to say Thanks for the Celebration of Life yesterday and talk about integrating my life into health. So, Thank you all, my work people had fun. The thing that hit me the most yesterday was that my life is now integrated. I remember a year ago, October, sitting in the Seneca House Coffee Room and Eric talking about the fact that I appeared to live two lives: one was this together, nothing wrong stable appearance and the other was the hidden life where I was constantly hurting myself in some form or fashion. At different moments in my life, I have had many more. It was amazing to have gotten down to two major ones. At a very young age, I learned to have different lives going on. I was taught it. We did not talk about what happened at night at my house. Did not speak of it during the day, did not speak of it outside of the house, not even with other family members, did not speak of it even with ourselves. Things done in secret to stay in secret. I quickly created my little worlds in my head. The horror world that became my insanity world that was full of pain, demons, and horrors that were unspeakable. Then, I had the day world and school world of the perfect achiever, trying to do everything I could around the house to please everyone and achieve in school to win approval. The worlds fragmented more and more as I got older and moved into different things. The “good” little Christian girl who was a youth leader. The partier in graduate school. The obsessive CPS worker. All of them came together this year, under one heading of Cheryl and all of them were represented yesterday. I had all of my history from a Junior High friend, high school friend, youth from the youth group a lead, people from graduate school, early CPS, now CPS, and present church. All of my worlds came together. And I think my worlds can kind of be summarized as the masks I wore in those areas, and all (at least those that I am aware of right now) of the masks were off for everyone to see the same person. A healthy, alive for a year “ME.” I never dreamed a year ago that this would be where I would be. I never dreamed that I would be alive. I thank you all for being a part of the celebration. |
