I don't want to have to be this brave

So I’m in a new round of the never ending spiral of trauma processing. It’s tedious, boring, embarrassing, and painful and I really don't want to do it. I’m on the same trajectory I always take with trauma processing, where I’m grumpy and sulky that I have to do this, that someone can’t just Make it Better, that the people that broke me can’t just come and fix me already (Like that would ever actually happen, like I would want them to anyway.) And I bitch and gripe that it’s so unfair, that I’m so hard done by. And I get angry with myself because it feels so much easier and safer than getting angry with the people who hurt me

I mooch around self sabotaging in small ways, and think about self sabotaging in big ways, the ways I did when my mental health issues were uncontrolled and I was just trying survive my life rather than process it

I actually picked up a craft knife the other day and held the blade against my skin and thought about how easy cutting would be, how good it would make me feel, how it was a way to burn through my anger, how it would blank out all the yuck feelings inside me

But I didn’t hurt myself because these days I’m far too old and actually far to mentally healthy to be pulling that crap anymore. Just because I feel like a broken teenage girl a lot of the time at the moment doesn't mean I actually am one or need to behave like one. And I have a giant toolbox of coping and dealing strategies that will keep me balanced and help me heal if I actually dig them out and use them

I know eventually I’ll get down to processing these particular pieces of trauma because I always do, eventually, after the sulking and the tantrums and the self directed anger, and in the end when I'm out the other side, I’ll feel better for it, calmer, wholer, more focused

So maybe I should stop all the whining and griping and moaning and feeling hideously sorry for myself and just start on doing the processing that needs to be done.

I know turning the anger outwards and using it to work through my stuff is an amazingly powerful positive force for healing, I know that making things with my hands and with my words helps transform trauma into something beautiful and of value. I know that going through the pain is actually always less uncomfortable than dancing round the edge of it expecting it to go away on its own

What does this have to do with my relationship with Christianity? I have no idea, except that my main thing for lent was to stop wasting time, and actually do useful, healthy things, even if I didn't want to even if it was painful and tedious. So I guess I'll get on that