you think you’ve healed and done the work so you have been able to move past it and talk about things from your past which have hurt you, shaped you, changed you, only to watch something which triggers you into remembering, feeling…oh feeling…remembering things from your past which hurt, which made you small, which broke off shards of your soul and twisted you into a caricature of who you may have been. i was not defined by what happened. i overcame it. i survived it. i became who i am now because of it. but reminders of the damage can still sneak up and surprise me, years later, so sudden tears of sorrow well and fall hotly over cold cheeks, taking my breath away leaving me with a stomach tight and heaving. desperate to hang onto the sanity i found. the security i built around myself so carefully and out of necessity. there is no room for loss of control in my life because when it’s taken from you by force, it becomes the only thing you count on to manage everything else from that point forward. which is why i am so impacted by his presence in my life. he does what i do not and can not allow from anyone else and it feels like it places me at risk but he has not hurt me, and yet i don’t trust it. and why i am so shaken by the vulnerability.