Dr. Sarah Marusek

I know that he did not mean to hurt me.

I know that he did not mean to hurt me.

I know that he did not mean to hurt me.

I have to keep saying this over and over to myself because oh my fucking God did he hurt me! I honestly do not know how to live through this.

I have never let anybody so close to me ever. And we were not even that close, so this is a really sad testament to my lonely life.

But I have never trusted anybody like that.

I had faith in the healer, so I surrendered myself to him with all of my heart.

I am never submissive like that.

I am stubborn and my body is unique, so I rarely listen to other people. Whereas with him, I actively sought out his advice!

I do not know what happened, why I lost myself so deeply.

I even stopped taking ice baths when the healer told me not to. This is the only real pain relief that I have, but I was in love and wanted to heal.

Now I do the several a day he told me not to.

Back then, I wanted to be normal with him.

And he treated me like I was normal, which is why everything spiralled.

I am not normal. I am controlled by a monster.

Wanting, however briefly, to be normal made me surrender my nervous system completely to the healer.

That led to the fight or flight crisis that made me suicidal.

Which was pretty much one year ago now.

Since then, I have done over 1,000 hours of exercise and more than 500 ice baths, as well as saw the shaman three to four times a week for eight months.

Now that my facial nerves are finally releasing, and only now, I am understanding just how fucked up my nervous system truly is.

I am much, much, much worse than even I expected.

I am not taking this well.

My extended seizure is helping me to access the injuries and I am so hurt now that I am able to process how badly people have treated me. Especially considering the true extent of my disabilities. My lust for life is gone.

Why? Because there can never be justice.

Nobody has ever intended to hurt me, so every time I expressed my anger – my monster rationality – other people have thought poorly of me.

And then I think badly of me.

And I mean, I think really fucking badly of me.

I have lost too many friends like this. It is always my worst nightmare.

I know that the healer wants nothing to do with me now not just because of the review, but also because I said unkind things to him privately.

I have felt so guilty and ashamed for saying these things.

But I am now realising that everything I said therein was also true.

I was not overreacting – actually it is worse. I really do not know if I can.

Because he treated me as normal and I loved him and went along with it, my body refuses to let go because it is still waiting for him.

The monster does not have any physicality, but my face will not let go.

It was the mother/baby dynamic that I talked about all the time.

When I think of him now, I start seizing and cannot breathe. My body thinks it needs him to fix it, like I needed my mum as a baby. I have never felt so worthless, weak and wanting to die. Other than that night I almost did.

I really do feel like the ‘us’ we created tried to kill me, which is why I got so defensive – I really was terrified.

As a result, I never actually hated anybody until the healer. I trusted him and yet ended up feeling physically threatened by him.

I know he did not mean it but this is why I said those unkind things to him.

It was not crazy or nasty or even monstrous.

It was a prediction of what was to come for me.

My so-called irrational outbursts at others are often (definitely not always!) rational responses to the physical suffering that I have to endure.

This is why I did my research and wrote my book Faith and Resistance about religious rationality and faith as a way of knowing.

But I also feel like the shittiest person in the world for having to express myself like this. I do not want to be a monster. It has always made the physiological need for suicide really fucking hard to resist.

So I am sorry again for being unkind to the healer.

However, I really do not want anything to do with any other human anymore. Now that my body is healing, I am understanding just how much everybody has hurt me and it really does make me not want to live in this world…