I've been with my boyfriend almost five years now.I exposed myscars to him in the first year of our relationship because I could tell he was going to be different than the other relationships I ever had before him. I had to tell him if I wanted a chance for the relationship to survive. So I did, I told him about my rape/assault. I gave him most details. It felt good to tell someone for the first time…ever. But when I let those scars show for the first time I released a dark shadow I had managed to stuff really far away.

It crawled up the wall reallllll slow like..til it was much bigger than I was..and then it sort of just started to consume me. I started having a lot of pretty nasty flash backs I guess is the best word for it really. I started re-living pieces of the moment. It felt like they were happening in real time. Before I knew it I was loosing whole pieces of time….almost as if I had taken a nap and didn't remember doing it but of course, I never felt rested.

Then the worst started happening. When my boyfriend and I would bicker I would fall into these past moments of reality , like as if I was transporting through time with my consciousness. I was one place and he was still here in reality arguing with a shell of a human being trapped in another time completely. Without a lot of drawn out explanations. It all folded when I started smashing my forehead on our concrete floors and he intercepted with tears in his eyes, only then did the clouds of my misperceived reality start to slowly dissipate away. By then I had damaged my forehead fairly badly. It was purple with tiny red blood spots spread the whole way across. My first thought was …oh my god….how am I going to hide this? My second thought was…

What did I just let out of the inside me? Can I put it back away now that its out ?

It took a lot of working through it together but he learned to recognize when I had slipped away and what would triggerthose …time warps. Slowly we were able curb the appearance of that all consuming shadow and I was able to resume pretty normal living with a few nasty nightmares here and there and the odd…….feeling of doomed anxiety.

Recently, I for SOME insane reason concluded that it would be good to open up this Pandora's Box again and reveal this scar to a cousin of mine that I really don't remember. We've just sort of started talking because I produced an art piece for her to use as a logo for a dream shes had for a long time. It meant a lot to her and it ended up meaning a lot to me as a result of knowing how special it was to her and from there we kind of connected.

I felt especially comfortable with her, so I dont know I just ..almost blurted it out. Well since I had that bright idea, I haven't slept literally one night through the whole way without some kind of serious sedation aide. I'm not slpping into my past thoughts and acting them out like I would when Id have an argument… but Im loosing whole pockets of time again. I often close my eyes and ….

*its a flash and Im back there…lost in that moment. It feels like a blink of the eye but when I come back I've lost upwards of two hours at times. Sometimes Im remembering bits of theslips, like they are dreams you wake up from and remember the tail endsof. I usually have a headache after it happens. Usually that's how I know it happened, a sudden headache and a block of time I can't account for.

Now I can't figure out …this time….how to stuff back in its box. I had him physically in front of me to work through this with and …I just …its different when its the other half of your soul but how do you just explain this to your flesh and blood? And ..there is just no way I could suffer the humiliation of a flash back in front of her…..

God, what would she think of me?

I can't ..ask her to work through my pain with me….
I didn't want to ask him…it came of necessity. Explain or loose him forever.

Im terrified…and its griping me by my fears and manifesting in the worst way…

Help…… Im suffocating inside myself….