[This is from the series on sexual assault.]
Sometimes it seems like all I do is make metaphors anymore. I guess it’s the only way I know to try to understand things – to put them in terms of other things I already know…
Anyway.
Way back before I knew I had a heart problem, it felt like I had a full life (let’s think of it as a train with many cars) that was moving along, maybe even speeding up… And when the heart stuff happened, there was trouble. Alarms started going off (or whatever happens with trains).
And eventually, the train was totally derailed. It was kiiiinda ‘ruined’ on the side of the tracks. And it felt so super sad at the time, because I loved my train. I loved it so much. I was making it better all the time – making it faster, adding frills to it, etc. And then it crashed.
And I spent the next few years building a whole new train, because it felt like there was no other choice but to start from scratch.
And I did it. I toiled away on things I thought would make me a better person in every way – the marathons, the charity work, the performances. And then I started missing my old train less and less, because my new one was greeeat.
And then…
That train got in a freaking accident! (That would be when I was sexual assaulted.) And it felt like it brought my life to this screeching halt.
And at first I tried to just get the train to work again. I’m climbing all over it, opening up the engine. (I don’t know anything about train engines or how to open them in real life, but I’m just using my imagination here.) And I cannot get it to start moving again.
So, then I think I’ll at least check on the cars of the train – even if we’re not actually moving forward, I should be able to have a good time in the various cars of the train.
And I have all these beautiful train cars, but it’s like I saw all the doors slam shut in front of me.
I can see my friends hanging out behind the glass doors, and it looks so great, but I can’t get in. I can see my running shoes and fun workouts in another car, and I can’t get in! I can see numerous cars, all with things I love inside, and I can’t get in!
I can’t get into my train cars. I can’t get my train to move. I’m just stuck on the side of the track, covered in soot(?), exhausted from climbing in and around and above and beneath my train. And it’s like, “Do I have to make a new train again?! Are you joking me with this?! It was so much work to make a whole new train in the first place. Aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye.”
I maybe have no choice at this point. I’m doing the best I can… It’s just exhausting to make a new train.
[This is from the series on sexual assault.]