Ghosts of my Past and Other Trite Titles

My therapist gave me some homework to do this weekend, wherein I was to list all of the traumas I have survived and then explore the feelings associated.  He (therapist) has suggested that I am detached from those emotions as a coping mechanism, and he is not the first to make that statement.  He is also right, and it is up to me to break through that barrier.  When certain people experience traumas, some of us file those moments away in our minds as something akin to a movie once seen on late night teevee; it didn't really happen to us, so we don't really have to face it.  Unfortunately, these moments never go away.  They ripple out into our lives for a long, long time, and if we stubbornly refuse to digest them then our every decision is skewed as a result.  Or so I've found.  I, like my father, am a compulsive list maker.  Outlining, numbering, bullet-pointing - these are the comforting routines for organisation in my life.  This list I've made today is not a comforting list.  It is on one hand a sad and scary account of a hard life; on the other hand it is a testament to strength and resilience.  I survived rapes, I survived molestations and I survived physical and mental abuse.  Goddammit, I survived.  That is something to be proud of, no?  But I can't be completely proud, because this shit all happened.  It was no story book, it was no late night movie on the teevee, it was my life. It still is, actually.

This morning, my husband left to go to work and returned one minute later to tell me that someone broke into his work van and stole his GPS unit.  Not the thousands of dollars worth of electrical equipment he carries for his job, not the cds, not the sundry other items worth more than the van - just the GPS.  Two neighbors in our building have apartments facing the van, and there is no doubt that they heard his alarm going off whenever it occurred, but they didn't do anything... they didn't say anything.  They let it happen.  What is wrong with this world?  No one wants to risk a moment of their time to help another human?  Le sigh, true believers; le sigh.  Had one human stepped up to help me in my times of dire need, maybe I wouldn't be so scared of men, so fearful of disapproval and so yearning for acceptance.  Maybe I would be strong enough to face my past head-on, instead of in a dodgy little list.