I am having a hard time carrying the acute trauma, the old trauma, the ways they interact, the ways they are the same, and everything in between. I know I need to heal, but I don’t know what to work through first. He says I need to do what is serving me now. It can be messy and I don’t have to figure it all out. I express fear I’ll only heal the acute stuff, and go back to the baseline I never wanted to be my baseline. He says that won’t happen. That that’s not who I am. And that that’s why he’s there, to make sure I don’t.

He says I need to give myself permission for some things. I agree, but I don’t do it. I leave the session and write down the things I need to give myself permission to do.

GIVE MYSELF PERMISSION. for all of it. Permission for it to be messy. Permission to not do the work. Permission to do the work. Permission gives choice. Knowing there is choice can provide certainty in uncertainty.

I need to give myself permission to quit my job. To do something else. To know the system’s broken and look away.

I need to give myself permission to feel complicit, to simply bear witness, to know it’s broken and keep being part of it.

I need to give myself permission to not fix it. To not help it. To allow this experience to have happened and to have meant nothing, even if it could. To simply do what I need to do in my little life and worry only about myself.

I need to give myself permission to break down. To lose it. To feel it all and not be okay with it. To be angry. Really angry. Resentful. Furious. Betrayed. Taken advantage of. To have been so wrong about everything.

I need to give myself permission to do the wrong thing. If the right thing feels like it’s too much, or impossible, or is not serving me. To do what is right for me instead of what is right for others, for the world, what would’ve been right for some version of me who can’t be helped by changing things now.

I need to give myself permission to do whatever it takes to do the right thing. To go get my bachelor’s degree and then go to law school. To run for office. To try to change it. To try to fix it.

I need to give myself permission to try to influence people with that power, to spend my time and energy giving talks and trainings, sharing my story to try to  prevent the things that never should have happened from ever happening again.

I need to give myself permission to have these ideas that could make a little difference in a couple of people’s moments, and choose not to use my time and energy on them.

I need to give myself permission to ruminate on the past and the pain. To keep searching for solutions in it.

I need to give myself permission to let it be this imperfect, unjust, painful, failed thing and to do everything in my power to be free from it. To let it go. To find the present finally. To practice recognizing that is the past when it comes up, that it does not belong here anymore.

I need to give myself permission to let it go, permission to do so even if it feels like I’m abandoning my child self who everybody else failed. Permission to become another adult who failed to protect her. Failed to fight for her. Failed to give her what she needed.

I need permission to imagine that she would want me to forge ahead. That she might want me to forget. That she might not feel abandoned by me pursuing happiness instead of justice.

Imagine that I might not be failing her by doing so.