Disconnected

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

I realized yesterday that I have been so disconnected from the outside world. I don’t read the newspaper. I don’t watch TV anymore, so I never watch the news. I rarely go on my computer, so I miss most news stories that tend to pop up when you’re surfing the web. Don’t ask me about politics; I have no clue what’s going on aside from Donald Trump running for president. Don’t ask me about popular crime stories; I haven’t heard them. The one thing I may know about is the weather, and my knowledge is limited to whatever the app on my phone provides me.  Which, by the way, isn’t much, since yesterday a friend mentioned a hurricane coming and I had no clue about it.

I realized that, while some disconnection is okay, I feel like I’ve cut myself off from the world too severely. I used to take pride in knowing everything about what was going on in the world, whether it be politics, economic affairs, ethical issues, et cetera. I watched the news every day. I spent hours online reading articles about whatever sparked my interest. Now I’ve become the total opposite.

I did a little self-reflecting to figure out why I’ve become so cut off. I know why I avoid watching television. It was something I did with my father for the last few years, since he was too sick to do much of anything else. We would watch all kinds of shows, even “trashy” reality TV. I admit, I am using the term watch loosely. I was mostly listening to the TV as I typed a paper up for school on my laptop and obsessively checked my Facebook newsfeed waiting for something exciting to come up. Regardless, watching TV reminds me of my father, and I just don’t want to be reminded of him right now.

I’m not sure why I’ve become so disconnected with reading the news. I wonder if part of it is just being so mentally exhausted from my own life, that I have little energy left to expend on anyone else’s. Maybe my mind doesn’t want to focus on anything else right now. Maybe I’m afraid I’m going to come across something that will remind me of home or my family. I don’t know.

But connecting with the outside world could also provide an escape. I won’t have to focus on me all of the time. I could think about other things. I’d be able to interact with people and talk about things without having to pretend I know what they’re talking about. I can feel connected to something again, something that isn’t going to put me in danger.

I did something last night that I hadn’t done since I first moved here. Part of it was prompted by my earlier blog post, and part of it was because my house was so numbingly cold. But I made myself a bowl of spicy green and wax beans (one of my comfort foods) and went outside on my back porch. It was too cloudy to see any stars, but I could still breathe in the air, and I could still hear the crickets chirping. So I took it all in. I sat on my stairs and ate my beans and for a brief moment, nothing bothered me. Then the police came for a domestic dispute across the street, a mother starting yelling at her kids to stay on the sidewalk, and my sense of tranquility disappeared.  Even so, I realized that peace doesn’t come without a little disruption sometimes.

Perhaps I will try to do this again. It helps me connect with myself. It helps me to connect with the outside, even if the outside consists of the area around my back porch. It helps me not feel so alone in the world.

Missing pieces

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

When I first moved here, I would go out on my back porch every night and sit and look at the stars. It was something I was never able to do back home. There was just something so amazing about looking into a vast sky with millions (billions?) of stars, wondering how many people were out there looking at the same stars as I was. But I don’t go out on the porch at night anymore, and I stopped looking at the stars.

In the beginning, I was full of hope and excitement, and running on a rush of adrenaline. Now, I’m coming to realize all that I’ve lost along the way during this transition. Pieces of me are missing. I feel incomplete.

It may be hard for some to understand, but when I was at home, I always held out hope that someday something would change…that someday, my family would become different people and the void in my heart would be filled and I would finally be whole. But now that I’ve moved away, I’ve lost that chance forever. I’ve been trying to fill the void with things that just can’t occupy that space in someone’s heart that is meant for family. I left them. I walked away and I took that chance to fill that void away from myself for good.

It’s not just the loss of my parents. It’s the loss of my entire family. It will never be the same again. I can never see my grandmother; she’s already fallen for their lies about me. My brother is too far brainwashed. Other members of my family don’t want to get involved. They don’t come to visit me, even if they are a quick drive away. I feel incredibly isolated from the people I should be closest to. Your family makes up part of your identity. So what do you do when that part of you is gone? I don’t even feel like I belong in this name anymore.

Then there are my friends. The ones I was closest to back home. The ones that now barely reach out to me, and the ones that haven’t bothered to visit me. I can feel what were once my strongest relationships now fading farther and farther away into the distance. I didn’t expect our friendships to remain the same, but I didn’t expect them to grow so far apart so quickly, either.

Then there are the quiet supporter friends: the ones that support me in private, but when I need them to stand up and fight with me, they are nowhere to be found. Then I am left alone to fight battles I don’t want to fight. It reminds me of the people in my life that knew I was being abused and chose to do nothing because they “didn’t want to get involved.” Not getting involved never solves anything.

People have changed the way they treat me. I’m not a child. I’m not made of glass that can be easily broken at the slightest touch. I’m perfectly capable of making my own decisions. I haven’t been able to make real decisions for the last 29 years of my life. Now I want to make them. I need to learn for myself how to make them. It doesn’t matter that they aren’t all good; no one’s decisions are all good. That’s called life. I’m no different from anyone else; I just have a little catching up to do.

It’s a little sad that the only person that I’ve come to depend on (aside from my therapist) is my roommate. My roommate…a woman I met off of Craigslist right before I moved. She barely knows me. She has no obligation to know me. Yet hers is the shoulder I cry on when I become overwhelmed. She is the one who holds my arms down when I dissociate and start scratching myself. And she is the one who sits with me when I don’t feel safe enough to be alone. She, a person unrelated to me and completely unknown to me until a few months ago, now burdened with dealing with me.

The nights that my roommate is not here, I have no one. Those nights are the worst for me; tonight is one of those nights. I often wonder if this is what my life will be like forever. Loneliness. Even Charlie is quiet. It makes me miss his angry ramblings just a little. He probably feels just as lonely as I do.

For so long, I defined myself based on the relationships I had with others. It was part of who I was. Those relationships mattered. And now those pieces of me are going missing, and I don’t know what to do. No family, dwindling friendships, and a lack of identity. I feel empty. It’s no wonder I don’t know who my parts really are. I don’t even know who I am.

11 weeks

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

I am 11 weeks free today.

I wish my mind could embrace that concept. Freedom. But there is still a huge disparity between what intellectually I know to be true and what my mind believes is going to happen.  I still jump at every noise: every creak of the kitchen table, every knock at the door, every honk of a horn. It doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing; when it happens, I go into panic mode. My heart races, the nausea kicks in, the crying starts, and the intrusive thoughts flood my mind. It’s an exhausting way to live.

I also wish the people close to me would understand me better. It doesn’t matter where I am.  I could be five miles away or five thousand miles away from my mother, but my brain will always be on constant alert.  I’ll continue to have that fear, even when intellectually I know that it’s not possible that she’s here with me. I also wish some of my friends would stop being so critical. I had enough criticism in my old life. I don’t need criticism in my new life. It bothers me when people ignore every positive step I’ve taken and only point that time I took a sip of alcohol. Just because you don’t agree with a decision I’ve made, doesn’t mean it’s a bad decision. I find myself torn between keeping these people in my circle because my circle is already so small as it is, or ridding myself of them and becoming even more alone.

I’m physically and emotionally exhausted. Sometimes I feel like I’m running on autopilot, and I don’t know how I make it through the day. Something in me has gotten me out of bed each morning, allowed me to take a shower, gotten me dressed, and pushed me to get to work every morning. But I’m tired. As weird as it sounds, living in my old life wasn’t nearly as exhausting as this. I dealt with the abuse, but I always expected it. Now, even though I’m in a safe place, I am constantly on alert. It’s draining. The human body is not built to handle being under stress 24/7. I’m not superhuman. I can’t be expected to do this much longer. I’ve already been through enough. Sometimes I wonder if this life is really better, because in many ways, it feels worse.

But I’ll keep pushing forward. I don’t really have any other choice. I won’t get to finish telling my story. The world won’t know who my mother really is. I won’t be able to help others fight the good fight. So far, I’ve managed to have just over 450 people read at least part of my story. That’s more than I could have ever imagined. Four-hundred and fifty people now know part of my truth. That’s a powerful thing.

If I give up, my mother wins. I can’t have that. Not now.

Daughter’s Day

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

Apparently it is National Daughter’s Day, or that’s what the internet seems to believe.  My Facebook has been inundated the last two days with pictures and posts from mothers honoring and saying beautiful things about their daughters.  I started to read some of the posts.  Then it got to be too much and I had to stop.  I’ll never have one of those posts from my mother.  I’ll never be honored on Daughter’s Day.  I am no longer a daughter.  My mother should have lost that right the first day she laid her hands on me, but she didn’t.  Instead, she lost the privilege to be my mother the day I walked out on her 11 weeks ago.

I went to the movies earlier today to try to clear my mind.  I thought seeing a kid’s movie would be a safe bet.  I was wrong.  Instead, I found myself crying five minutes into the start of the movie.  Why?  The movie began with the father standing by as his daughter got married.  I began to think of my own future wedding.  And that brought up a whole stream of thoughts about my future.

My father won’t be walking me down the aisle to give me away when I get married.  He won’t be dancing with me at my reception.  There will be no mother-of-the-bride at my wedding, no heart-to-heart conversation between mother and daughter before I take the long walk down the aisle to married life.  There will be no family to share in my happiness and excitement that day.  My side of the room will be empty.  I’m no longer a daughter.  I’m alone.

When I walk down the aisle at graduation in a couple of months to officially receive my degree, there will be no one there to cheer me on.  My father won’t be there recording the moment I shake the dean’s hand.  My mother won’t be applauding me after I make my speech.  There won’t be anyone in the audience for me; no one will be there to take my picture.  I’m no longer a daughter.  I’m alone.

When I have my first child, my mother won’t be there to help me get through those tough first weeks.  I won’t have my mother to turn to for help when I am feeling overwhelmed or have a question I am too embarrassed to ask anyone else.  My mother and father will never know the joy of holding their grandchild in their arms and seeing their grandchild’s beautiful smile. I’ll never be able to share each milestone with any of my family. My family will never be there to celebrate each birthday. I’m no longer a daughter.  I’m alone.

When I become successful, my mother and father won’t be there by my side to congratulate me.  I won’t be telling the world how I couldn’t do it without my parents’ support and guidance.  I won’t be thanking them or acknowledging their presence in my life.  They won’t be allowed to say “that’s my girl” or pat themselves on the back for a job well done.  Everything I have become and will become in the future is no thanks to them.  They deserve no recognition or honor.  They shattered me into a million pieces and took away the glue.  I’m no longer a daughter.  I’m alone.

As my children grow older and ask questions about their family, I’ll have nothing to offer them. I have no photographs. I have no happy memories, no stories to pass down to them. My children will never get to know what it’s like to be spoiled by grandma and grandpa. They will never even know that my mother and father exist. All that my children will be left with is a shell of a mother. That half of the family tree will always be empty for them.  They will be no one’s grandchildren. They’ll be alone.

When my mother and father pass away, there will be no tears or sadness from me.  I won’t be writing their obituaries or delivering any eulogies.  I won’t be attending their funerals.  I won’t be there as they are lowered into the ground, buried and left to rot.  I will never visit their graves, bring them flowers, or say any prayers for them.  I’m no longer their daughter.  They are alone.

Because of me, everyone is alone.

The highs and lows of my Tuesday

~ KJ ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday was such an emotional day for me.

I had very little sleep…two hours at most.  I actually woke up for work at 4 AM and knew I wasn’t going to make it, so I went back to sleep and ended up taking a cab to work, just so I could get that little bit of extra time.  I don’t know how I made it through the day, but I did.

I went to my job interview right after work and…I GOT THE JOB!  It didn’t even take much effort on my part.  I look great on paper and apparently I present myself well.  I was hired in less than five minutes.  I wanted to jump in the air and yell with excitement, but then I remembered that I’m still nursing a fractured foot and that probably wouldn’t be a good idea.  Instead I decided to go to the mall and buy myself a treat to celebrate.  I had time before the bus was coming anyway, and I hate standing around doing nothing.

I stopped at a pretzel stand to get a drink, and the woman at the counter asked me if I went to the gym there.  I said no, but that I probably should go.  Then she told me how she sees me walking by a lot and how much better I’ve been looking.  I have lost some weight, but I didn’t think some random people at the mall would notice.  I thanked her, and we engaged in conversation until another customer came by.  It was nice talking.  It was nice being noticed.

On the bus going home, there was a woman in her late thirties, asking the bus driver a few questions throughout the trip.  It was her first time on a bus.  She was so anxious, she didn’t want to do anything wrong.  I remembered how I felt first being on a bus by myself.  I thought I was the only one, but here was this woman, obviously older than I, having the same experience.  When we got to the final stop and got off the bus, I told her “you did a good job.”  It was so odd for me to talk to a stranger like that, but I did it.  And then she thanked me told me about what happened that made her take the bus.  Then she asked me my name, and she told me hers.  We shook hands and wished each other a good day.  It was nice.

When I finally managed to get home, I went to the bathroom to…go to the bathroom…and I just started crying.  Not crying out of sadness.  I was just overwhelmed with everything that was happening to me…everything I went through life being told would never happen.  Here I am, living by myself, now working three jobs, managing to get to therapy at least twice a week, trying to make myself better in the best ways I know how.  I’m doing it all on my own.  But I’m doing it.  My mother may have tried to raise a weak little girl, but I persevered.  I do what I have to do to survive.  I did it as a child, and now I’m doing it as an adult.  The difference is that now, I have choices.

Despite all of the positives of my day, my night was shaken up as my PTSD kicked in.  I was startled awake by what I thought was a knock.  Before I could process anything, I started to panic.  I thought for sure my mother had finally found me.  She had gotten the police to help her.  She was coming to kill me.  I was done for.  I started to cry and hid under the covers waiting for her to come get me.  But she never came.  Because she wasn’t there.  No one was there.

Even though I am protected by distance, my mind still believes I am in danger.  I check the locks ten times a night.  I look out the windows to make sure she’s not outside.  I still lock my bedroom door up even though I’m home alone.  I watch every car passing by to make sure it’s not my family.  I look over my shoulder constantly.  The fear is still there no matter how far away my family is from me.  The fear will always be there.  She instilled in me since childhood that she knows everything that I do…she will always find out everything.  And part of me still believes that.

A day with Courage

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

I had another thrilling 2 hour therapy session.  It started out okay.  We talked about my upcoming job interview (tomorrow – I haven’t had a chance to mention it), about my blogging orientation for HealthyPlace on Wednesday, and about my inability to set up an appointment with the social worker so I can get my medications adjusted and refilled.  Yep.  Mind you, I’ve been back and forth over the phone with the social worker since I got out of the hospital back in the beginning of August and she has yet to set up an appointment with me or get me set up with the psychiatrist.  Now I have two weeks of medication before I am left with nothing.  So, that’s going to be an issue.  Something is always an issue.

Then we started to color and just talk about whatever came to mind.  I started talking about why there were so many mushrooms on children’s coloring pages.  I wanted to know why.  There was a dog and a mushroom.  A mouse hiding under a mushroom.  A frog on a mushroom.  Why so many mushrooms?  I’m not sure I knew what a mushroom even was as a child.  Very strange.

As I finished the picture, I started to hate it.  My therapist asked me what was wrong.  I said it wasn’t perfect.  She came over next to me and looked at it, and like a typical therapist said “nope, I don’t see anything wrong with it.”  Then Charlie started to chime in.  Of course it’s not perfect.  It looks like shit.  Everything is shit.  So then I was having an argument with Charlie in my head while simultaneously trying to listen and interact with my therapist.  For the record, that is just not possible for very long.  Charlie ended up winning that battle.  When I came back to the present, and my therapist began to talk about him (he did not tell her his name – she asked what letter his name started with and he told her a ‘C’), I knew right away who it was because I remembered arguing with him internally right before.  And it was funny because my therapist said how he didn’t say much.  He certainly doesn’t shut up when he talks to me.  Weird.  Boys.

My therapist told me to try to think about what a 15 year-old boy would want.  I…well…I don’t know.  I’m not sure I want to know.  That’s entering a dangerous zone.  I don’t want to know about teenage boys.  How did I end up with a teenage boy part anyway?  The teenage boys I knew in high school were atypical bookworm types.  I doubt that’s who Charlie is.  I don’t know how to be a boy.  Not that I’m a girly girl in any sense either, but…I don’t know.  This is going to be hard work.

My therapist also brought up Charlie’s and Anna’s self-injurious tendencies.  She asked me if I wanted her to stop those behaviors or allow them to continue (within reason).  Shit.  I don’t know.  I mean, is there a right answer?  No one wants to hurt.  She asked me what I thought the reasons behind the self-injury were.  Do I think they are doing it to try to get people to see that they are hurting, or is it something else?  I don’t know.  Why would a seven year-old self-injure?  How does a seven year-old even know how to self-injure?  I don’t think Anna knows what she’s doing is self-injury.  I remember writing down that she told my therapist she was scratching to get the bad out.  I would imagine she developed that somehow from seeing my mother’s techniques of cleansing me from evil.  Charlie is another story, though.  Charlie is angry and wants everyone to know it.  I don’t think I (or my therapist, or anyone for that matter) could approach the two the same, because their motivations are completely different.  I’m too exhausted to think about this more than I already have.

At the end of our session, my therapist asked if I’d be able to carry something home.  Confused, I told her “yeah, I guess.”  Then she took Courage, the stuffed lion, from the other side of the couch and handed him to me.  Courage has been sitting on that couch through many sessions.  He’s seen and heard it all.  He’s helped me come back to the present many times.  I thought at first she wanted me to take him for the day; then I realized she was giving him to me to keep.

“Don’t you need him here for your other clients?” I asked.

“I can always train a new therapy animal if I need to.”

Then I realized I would have to walk around town with a stuffed lion.  He was too big to fit in my bag entirely.  I managed to stuff him in there, but his head and upper body stuck out.  Maybe this was some kind of test.  What is my therapist doing to me?!  I was going to go straight home out of pure embarrassment.  Then as I was sitting at the bus stop, I told myself fuck it, I’m going to the store.  So I took the bus to a nearby retail store to scope out a new bike.  It’s an idea I had been going back and forth with for a while; with the possibility of now having two out-of-the-home jobs, I can’t rely on public transportation all of the time.  So Courage and I went and tried out some bicycles.  I quickly realized, upon sitting upon the first bicycle I tried, that I could not remember how to ride a bike.  I know that I must have ridden in childhood at some point.  But my mind and body did not want to do it.  I couldn’t put both feet on the pedals.  I tried another bike, and another.  My body started to shake and I knew it wasn’t going to work, so I left before I ended up having a full-blown anxiety attack.  I should know how to ride a damn bike.

I was disappointed, but I didn’t feel like going home and wallowing in anger or self-pity.  So Courage and I waited for the bus and then we went to the mall.  By now, it was mid-afternoon and I had yet to eat, so I stopped at Chick-Fil-A because they happen to sell chicken nuggets, the most delicious food on earth.  I had my bag on the table with Courage hanging out lopsided.  I felt kind of bad, so I took him out and stood him up on the table, right next to my bag of food.  I didn’t even care what people thought.  I even snapped a picture and posted it on Facebook, as if this stuffed lion and I were on some kind of adventure.
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We even went for ice cream.
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By this point, I was completely over the weirdness of being an adult and carrying around a stuffed lion.  I realized that I now had a stuffed animal, and my strong part had a stuffed animal, but I didn’t have anything for Charlie or Anna.  So, with time to kill, I ventured to the nearest store that sold stuffed animals – the Disney Store.  I managed to find a variety of dogs – perfect for Anna.  I must have circled the display three to four times trying to find something that screamed teenage boy.  Then, on my last round, I saw Baymax from Big Hero 6 hiding at the bottom of the display.  Robot, super hero, teenage boy…sounds good to me.  So now my parts and I each have something.  And if any new parts make themselves known, they will get one, too.
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Maybe I’m not so terrible at this DID business as I thought I was.

Ten weeks

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

Here I am, ten weeks past my escape; ten weeks into freedom.

I’m exhausted, physically and emotionally.  It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get a decent night’s sleep.  My anxiety is so overwhelming.  I check the locks on the doors so many times.  Then I go upstairs to my bedroom and get in bed for five minutes before I’m compelled to go downstairs and check the locks again.  It’s hard to feel safe.  My mind races at night.  I can’t calm it down.  I can lay in bed for hours just staring at the ceiling.  I get startled at every noise.  I just want to be able to sleep.

Emotionally, I’m drained.  I cried a lot this week.  Perhaps it was needed.  I’ve spent the last ten weeks trying to show how strong I am, despite how I feel on the inside.  That is a job in itself.

I’ve started to open up more to people at work.  People seem to be inclined to open up and talk to me about things, and my coworkers are no different.  I’ve listened to them, and I’ve opened up to them as well.  We regularly talk about our therapy experiences and have an open dialogue about mental health.  It’s actually kind of nice.  While I haven’t revealed much of my story, I have told one coworker (who shared his own experiences in therapy with me) that I am in therapy several times a week.  He asked why so much; I told him I had a lot of issues.  Then he said how I seemed so level-headed and put-together at work, he would have never thought that about me.  For me, that was a testament to my ability to act strong and stable.  At least I have that.

I had a conversation with my parts yesterday.  I don’t know if they heard me.  I don’t even know if I did it right.  I could have just been talking to the ceiling.  I told them I didn’t want to be in pain anymore.  I know it’s not their fault.  It’s not my fault.  It’s not anyone’s fault.  I’m just tired of being in pain.  I don’t deserve it.  I don’t know what I did to burn myself, but it hurts.  It hurts to sleep, it hurts to shower, it hurts to sit down, it hurts to bend.  I don’t know how I managed to deal with this as a child.  Maybe it is better that I don’t remember much.  I know they want to protect me.  It’s just so complicated.

I’m looking for a third job.  I don’t know how I’m going to manage it, but I need more work.  I sent in a few applications yesterday.  I was too tired to do any today.  I’ve been checking Craigslist to see if anything close by comes up.  I’d prefer to find something in walking distance, because public transportation doesn’t really run past dinner time.  I thought about buying a bike.  It would save me money in the long run so I wouldn’t have to pay for the bus or cab fares, but I also have to consider whether or not I can physically handle bicycling everywhere.  I am not the most in shape person.  I also managed to break my foot walking, so imagine what I could do riding a bike.

I’m trying to pull myself over back onto the side of positive thinking.  I think I’m in the middle right now.  I’m trying to think of how far I’ve come, and how much further I can go.  I was clearing out my e-mails today and I came across a copy of the letter I was going to send my mother once I moved out; I had e-mailed it to myself in case I ever lost it.  I read it over and couldn’t believe what I wrote.  A strong person wrote that.  I could never have written those words in the position I am in now.  It’s like I sunk back into weakness the last week or so.

I wonder what would have happened if I sent that letter when I left.  Even now, ten weeks later, my family is still going out of their way to infiltrate my life.  They are telling anyone who will listen all of these lies about me, and I am not there to defend myself.  I have to realize that the life (if I can even call it that) that I had there, the connections that I had there…I can’t get those back.  I have to severe ties.  My family is poison, and they have infected everyone there.  No one is safe.  As if they were ever safe in the first place.

To end on a positive note, every day this past week, a butterfly has followed me as I walked home from work.  I didn’t think anything of it the first two times.  But on the third day, I thought to myself, this is just weird.  I was wearing a different color shirt each time, so it wasn’t that it was attracted to a certain color.  I don’t know why it (they?) followed me.  I’m usually not into symbolic things at all, but I have to wonder this time, with all of the spiritual and transformative meaning behind the butterfly, if there was a reason it was with me.  And this week, of all weeks, when I was at my lowest.  Whatever it was, it helped.

A break

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

Don’t worry, I’m not taking a break from blogging.

I am, however, taking a bit of a break from trauma therapy.  I’ll still be going to therapy as usual, but my therapist thinks it’s best to stop any trauma-related work for the time being.

I’ve been very off since my appointment on Monday.  It’s been difficult to turn off that “evil child” mentality that was activated as old memories were rehashed and I experienced that flashback during Monday’s session.  I’ve been extremely low and it’s been difficult to bring myself back up.  I also ended up dissociating and injuring myself in the same way my mother injured me as a child.  I re-enacted the same traumatic event.  Why?  I don’t understand it.

I didn’t even want to tell my therapist what happened.  I didn’t even want to go to therapy today.  But I went.  And I was in so much pain just sitting there that my facial expressions started to give my secret away.  She started asking if I was in pain and I tried to shut her out.  But she was (and always is) persistent.  Eventually I told her what I had done, and after a brief discussion, she came to the conclusion that it was best to take a break from the trauma for a while.

I felt like a therapy failure.  I asked her, “doesn’t this mean I’m weak?  I can’t even handle therapy.”  She tried to convince me that it actually took strength to admit what I did and that these things take time.  It’s not worth being re-traumatized.  I lived through this shit for 25 years, I can’t expect to jump into recovery in just two months.  I guess she is right, it was just not something I wanted to hear.

Everyone keeps telling me how strong I am, and how great I am doing.  All I can think is how weak I am and how close I am to failing.  A strong person doesn’t feel like dying on the inside.  A strong person doesn’t hurt themselves because some part of them still feels like they are an evil child that needs to be punished.  A strong person doesn’t need to take a break from trauma therapy.  Where’s this strength people see?  I’m having trouble finding it.  Sometimes I feel like I am so close to drowning.  I’m doing these things that people think are great, and I guess they are – but a part of me is dying, and nothing can stop that.  I can do all the great things in the world, but that won’t change who I am and what happened to me.

My therapist brought up my strong part.  I’ve talked briefly about her in therapy before, but not much.  I believe she is the part that got me through my escape.  My therapist started to ask me questions about that part and I shut down.  I don’t really know enough about her.  She doesn’t come out very often.  My therapist mentioned if I was self-sabotaging myself by not letting that part out more or getting to know that part.  I don’t know.  I feel that Charlie runs the show and doesn’t really let anyone else have a say, so it’s difficult for me to really know any of my other parts.  Maybe Charlie needs an Ativan.  Or a timeout.

I don’t know where therapy will go from here.  I’m just going to have to trust that it’s the right decision.

Dissociation, flashbacks, and suicidal thoughts all wrapped up into one day of therapy.

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

Today was supposed to be a good day.

I told myself I wasn’t going to dissociate today.  I was going to be normal.  I had an iced coffee before therapy, which calmed my nerves and made me less jittery (it also tends to make me sleepy – yes, I am not normal).  It was going to be a good day.

Ha.  Ha ha ha.  Ha ha ha ha.  Why did I think that was possible?  I should have known better.  I mean, therapy started out fine.  I felt okay.  I was comfortable talking about things that had come up over the weekend.  I even brought up how i threw away my old house keys and how my mother used them to keep me under control.  Then the conversation developed into how some mother-daughter sexual abusers tend to be pathological liars.  Yep.  My mother certainly fit that mold.  And you always had to believe everything she said, no matter how wild it was, no matter how wrong it was.  If you defied her truth, you were punished for it.  Eventually I learned to just go along with whatever she said, even though intellectually I knew she was wrong (even at a young age).  I think that’s where my brother and I differ.  He never had the intelligence and know-better to realize her lies were really lies; that’s why he’s still brainwashed, and I’ve been able to take a different path.  I told my therapist I sometimes see my intelligence as a bad thing, because I think understanding so much of what went on hurts more than just living in ignorance.  Then she said if I wasn’t intelligent enough to have those realizations, I would have been brainwashed, and where would I be now?  Still at home, still a victim.  I guess she’s right.

My therapist asked me what things my mother would say that I knew weren’t true.  I told her I didn’t want to think about that.  I was trying to think about anyone else but my mother and her bullshit.  But it wasn’t working.  And the thoughts came.  And then I remembered how she believed I was the devil’s child.  I guess she treated me like one, too.  And I remember reaching an age where I knew the devil couldn’t be my father.  All this time she lied to me.  But it’s like she believed it.  She believed I was evil.  But in reality, I was born from her.  So evil breeds evil, doesn’t it?

And then I went off to dissociation land.  I’m not sure for how long.  It was Anna again.  I guess my therapist convinced her to color instead of scratching her (my?) skin off (thankfully only minimal damage this time).  She drew flowers and a yellow dog.  My therapist asked me if I wanted to keep it, or have her keep it.  I said she should keep it, since Anna likes her better.  I realize now that was kind of a hurtful response towards Anna, but it’s how I felt at the time.  I still feel disconnected with her.  It’s something I am still working on.

Shortly after coming back to reality, I was hit with a flashback.  Out of nowhere.  Why?  Why is this happening now?  I pulled my hood over my face and tried to hide.  My therapist had no idea what was going on.  She sat next to me and tried to comfort me, but I was still hiding in my hood, trying not to cry, trying to find words, trying just to breathe.  Finally she asked if I was having a flashback and I was able to tell her yes.  I was trying to regulate my breathing so I wouldn’t throw myself into a panic.  My therapist was breathing with me.  Despite my efforts, that shit was still in my head.  I didn’t know why.  Why is my mother burning me?  My therapist kept telling me it’s over now, she’s not going to do it again.  In that moment, I was just waiting for her to come through the door and do it again.  I’m a bad child.  Here comes my punishment.

Sometimes I think I fail at therapy.  What if it’s better to just keep all of these things suppressed so I don’t have to deal with them?  What good is this doing?  Therapy ran over two hours, and I missed the bus back home.  So my therapist told me I could wait out in the waiting room until the bus.  She gave me some water, some snacks, and a couple of books to read.  My mind was still out of it, but I felt safe.  Then when it got closer to the time I had to leave, I started to panic again.  I didn’t want to go home and be alone with my thoughts.  Being alone is dangerous.  I went to say goodbye to my therapist and went to give her a hug, and had such mixed feelings.  I literally went from “I can’t hug you anymore” to “Please don’t let go” within 20 seconds.  My mind was racing and I didn’t really know what to do.  She asked me what she could do to help me.  I said I didn’t know.  I said I didn’t want to leave.  So she gave me another book to read and I went and sat back down.

I soon felt myself dissociating again.  I didn’t have the energy to stop it.  I was in a weird place, as if I had gone back to believing I was that evil child that needed to be punished.  And something was telling me I needed to be punished.  But yet part of me was aware of what was going on.  Part of me knew that by going home, I was putting myself at risk.  I knew I would do something dangerous.  I was thinking of different ways I could seriously hurt or kill myself, all of which were fully accessible at home.  So I did what I could to stay out and about.  I even waited in the lobby for another two hours (once my therapist left), going in and out of dissociation (I only know because I saw the marks from me clawing at myself) before I left the building.

I left the house at 9:30 in the morning to get to therapy and didn’t get home until nearly 8 hours later.  But it’s what I needed to do to stay safe.  I’m not the most mentally stable right now, but I’m not where I was before.  Some part of me fights endlessly to live, even when another part insists on my ultimate death.  And here I am, stuck in the middle of the tug-of-war.  This happens all of the time.  I should be used to it by now.  At least I managed to stay out of a hospital (for now).  I do have to e-mail my therapist, though.  She needs to make sure I am safe.  Even though I tell her I’m fine, she knows when I’m really not fine.  I just struggle with describing all the shit that goes through my head all of the time.

After nine weeks, she throws away the keys.

~ KJ ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been free for nine weeks now.

I wish I could say my life is so much easier.  While I am physically out of prison, emotionally, my mind is in a prison of its own.  It’s a lot harder to escape that prison.  I can’t just walk away like I did before.  It doesn’t work that way.  My mind still believes I am in danger.  My mind still believes I am going to be hurt.  It is something I can only hope will heal with time.

I threw out the keys to my old house today.  I don’t even know why I had been holding on to them all this time.  I took them out of my nightstand, held on to them for a few minutes, and then tossed them in the trash.  I don’t need them anymore.  I won’t ever be going back.  I would rather die before subjecting myself to that ever again.

I couldn’t help but think how something as small as a set of keys helped my mother continue her control over me for years.  I wasn’t even allowed to have any keys to the house until I was in my 20s.  Even then, I never had every key.  She’d always make up some nonsense excuse as to why I couldn’t have every key.  I knew the real reason.  If I didn’t have every key, that meant I couldn’t sneak out and get back in without her knowing.  It was her way of keeping me contained.  And it worked.  I never left.  The fear of her finding out was too real.  It also didn’t help that she took up residence five feet away from the door…literally, she slept just feet away from the door.  No one was ever getting past her unnoticed.

A mail key was another thing I never had the privilege of having.  I was never given a key.  I was never allowed to check the mail.  The mail had to be inspected by her first.  Oftentimes, I would be questioned about mail she deemed “suspicious” (from out-of-state, from a name she didn’t know, hand-written addresses, etc.).  A friend from a few states away had mailed me something a few years ago, and my mother interrogated me about it.  “Who is this person?  When did you meet her? What does she do?  What does she know about us?  What did she send you?  Why?” The questions seemed like they never ended.  The interrogations would last over a span of several days.  Eventually I got smart and had “suspicious” mail sent to my job instead.  I could usually intercept it there and avoid any issues altogether.  But even that was a hassle.  I had to turn down a lot of opportunities for mail because I didn’t want to risk my mother finding out about it.

My mother didn’t want me sending out mail, either.  If I wanted something mailed, I had to go through questioning first.  I used to find ways to sneak around her.  I remember in 8th grade, I asked a classmate to bring me a stamp so I could mail a letter to someone.  I ran to the mailbox after school let out and dropped it in before anyone noticed.  My plan failed though, because I didn’t think the person would write back to me.  Sure enough, my mother opened that “suspicious” mail and all hell broke loose.  I broke one of her major rules of talking outside of the family.  I got the shit beaten out of me for days.  I never had the desire to write another letter again.  I should have known better.  She always finds out.

It’s weird how I never really thought about all of this until today when I picked up those keys.  For the longest time, it was just a part of my normal.  I never really thought about how messed up shit really was.  I wonder what drove me to break the rules when I was younger.  There was so much fear there, and for good reason, yet a part of me still wanted a taste of freedom and went for it.  I know I had that desire to break free later in life, but now I can relate some parts of my earlier life to having that same desire.  I just wish it didn’t end up causing me more pain.