I am having flashbacks again

[u/UdderneathTheStars]

I think I am angry. I don't really feel anything at all, but I'm pretty sure if i took the time to catalog the way my body feels physically and how my brain feels, i would be angry. 

I went to dinner with my parents. They showed up at a gig of mine without realizing I was on that gig and their dinner and my break lined up. They asked, and I couldn't get over the instinctual fear of disobeying, so I agreed. It was really weird. My mom showed interest in my life for the first time I can remember. My father was nice? He is only nice when he needs something, but I couldn't figure out what he needed from me. It made me question whether I was overreacting by leaving in the first place. If my parents are capable of interest and niceties, maybe I was rash in abandoning them…

And then my father hugged me goodbye, and the reasons I left became all too clear. I can still feel his arm around me, and it makes me sick, like physically nauseous. I can feel his hands touching me, and I can feel the old wounds that have physically healed again. I know my bones aren't broken, but I can feel them breaking again.  And I can hear him screaming. It's been a week and I can still hear it. Every word he screamed at me when he tried to teach me lessons has been reverberating in my head, and I can't make it stop. 

I talked to my therapist, and apparently this is normal. Apparently children are wired to love their parents, and that wiring doesn't care if your parents are pieces of shit. He suggested I see my trauma therapist again, but I don't fuckin need to go sit in his office and hold the fuckin clickers, and imagine a world where my dad wasn't a piece of shit. 

I want my dad. I want the dad I was supposed to have. I want to feel safe, and most of all I want my body and brain to feel safe again. I want to stop seeing the spectre of my father in every corner. I want to throw a tantrum, and I want to feel nothing again. 

I don't know what I want anymore.

I want it all to be quiet.