PTSD

Six Months of Stability

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

Last Friday marked six months of stability for me.

I use the term stability loosely, because in quite a few ways, I am anything but stable. My health is kind of a mess. My eating disorder has hit some pretty low lows. My emotions waver from non-existent to overwhelming. I’ve been spending 30 to 40 hours a week in intensive group therapy. I am not exactly the picture of stability here, and I know that.

But stability is much more than that. For me, stability started the day I found a safe place to live.

I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought that when I ran away from home and moved down here, that was stability. But I mistook freedom as stability when it really wasn’t. It was a change in environment, an improvement in many aspects, but it wasn’t stability. I tried so hard to move forward by going to therapy twice a week, yet I was still struggling. I was stuck because I was spending all of my energy trying to manage the stress in my environment that I had nothing left to put towards managing myself.

It took a long time (and a bit of outside influence) for me to realize that the way I was living wasn’t healthy or stable. So I worked (with help from others) to change that. I changed my environment. Things started looking up; not great, but getting there.

But that didn’t last, because after a month, I ended up broke and homeless. Well, this is great. Now I am the most unstable I have ever been. I was about to give up. But then, a friend stepped up and offered me a place to live. And that’s when the real change started. Because it was way more than just a place to live.

These past six months have been some of the hardest, yet some of the best months of my life. For the first time, I am living somewhere stable. I don’t have to hide in my bedroom. I don’t have to sleep outside. I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to eat because there is always food available (whether or not I am willing to eat it is another story, but…progress). I don’t have to worry about getting yelled at, or put down, or hurt. I can make mistakes and still be cared for because care isn’t conditional here.

I’m not used to this life. I’ve never had anyone there to tell me I need to eat, that I need to take my medication because I’m getting sick, that I need to go to the doctor, that I need to go to treatment. It’s a completely different dynamic. Before, I could just self-destruct and it wouldn’t matter because no one would notice, no one would care. That’s just not the case any more. I don’t just affect me; I affect others.

There’s been so much change over these last six months. Even though my health has declined a bit, I’ve managed to cope with it somewhat well. There are still (many) times when I need a push to take my medication or to make a doctor’s appointment, but I do it (eventually). I experienced the loss of the first dog I came to love last weekend and I’ve been able to grieve his death with spiraling out of control. That was a first for me. I also had support, and I was able to support others. Another first.

Even in the hardest times, I’ve managed to find happiness in the smallest things. Playing with the dogs. Going out to dinner with the family. Shopping at Walmart on a Saturday. Watching TV with a friend. Playing cards with the kids. Baking cookies and making dinner for the people I care about. These are the things I try to remind myself of when I want to give up. The brief glimmers of something better. The somethings I was never able to do, let alone enjoy before.

I take pride in the small accomplishments. Making it through the Costco parking lot without freezing from fear. Sitting through dinner at a restaurant without having an anxiety attack. Shopping in the grocery store without running away before I’m done. Eating a meal in its entirety. Going to a party without getting drunk. Trying new foods. Going to places I’ve never been before. Little things that no one really celebrates because it’s normal for them. But it has never been normal for me.

Yea, I’m a mess. I can’t work. I survive off medication. I spend most of my days in therapy.

But I’m not the same mess I was before. I have safety and stability. I have food on the table. I have people who listen to me and help me. I have reasons to not give up.

I guess I’m a little more organized chaos and a little less clusterfuck.

To know what safe is

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

I don’t wanna be afraid
I don’t wanna run away
I don’t wanna be here fading
It’s more that I can take
I’m never gonna be the same
I threw it all away
I don’t wanna be here fading
Just let go

This song played today (Red – Let Go). And even though I’ve heard it dozens of times before, today it stuck with me in a way it hadn’t before.

I am in fear. Every day of my life, I am scared. And it’s frustrating, because I believed that once I got away, I would be safe. But I don’t feel safe.

I don’t think it matters where I live. I’ll still be afraid. Even though I have been in the safest place I have ever been in my life, I’m still just existing here, waiting for her to find me again. My heart still drops any time I get a handwritten letter in the mail. I still get anxious any time someone new follows my blog, wondering if it’s really her. Because why would she stop? She’s already done it before. She’ll do it all again and more.

I told myself I would lead a hidden life when I got out, but I didn’t. I wasn’t cautious enough. I took a job that put my name out there. Anyone who googles my name will find a plethora of work I’ve done and articles I’ve written. I’m not a nobody. I’m not hidden. I am exposed. And that scares me. If I had just stayed silent, if I had just blended in with society instead of writing and speaking out, maybe I would feel safe. Maybe.

I haven’t been writing like I used to. I haven’t published an article in over a month.  All I can think about is her reading it and finding her way back to me. All I can think about is her reading it and knowing how much she has ruined me.

I haven’t been able to sleep. I’m often awake for two or three days at a time. Severe insomnia, they say. I’ve tried everything short of a self-induced coma. But I don’t think it’s anything Medical keeping me awake. I can’t go to sleep, because I’m afraid. I keep having the same bad dream with her in it. I’m standing in line at the grocery store and there she is, in the line next to me. And I freeze. That’s as far as I get before I wake up shaking.

I don’t want to sleep, because I’m afraid to know what happens next. I don’t want to sleep, because I don’t want her to find me in my dreams. I don’t want to sleep, because I don’t want to relive her terror in my nightmares.

I can’t tell the difference between the past and the present. I know she’s not here with me, but I feel like she is. I spend my days in fear of punishment that will never come, because she’s not even here to hurt me. I hide under my bed some nights in fear that she will come into my room, yet I’m in a house that she doesn’t, has not, and will never live in. I tell myself I can’t do things, because I’m still living in a time when she makes all the rules and I need to oblige.

I am living my life in fear, wondering when I will have to run again. Wondering what threat will come next. Wondering where my mother is, because as long as she is alive, I will always be in danger.

My therapist asked me today what I thought feeling safe was like. I couldn’t answer. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt it. I’ve only known varying degrees of unsafety. 

I am tired of being afraid. I am tired of running. I am tired of this kind of life. A life ruled by fear. A life with me fading. A life being ruined by a woman who doesn’t deserve to have that power.

I just want to know what safe is.

Trapped

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

I can’t talk about anything.

I can’t write about anything.

Everything is trapped. My words, my thoughts, my emotions. In the prison cell that she created. And I don’t know how to get any of it out. It’s suffocating me.

I’m still afraid. Afraid of her. Afraid of the truth that I will never be free.

She speaks inside my head. She reads my words. She is everywhere, even when she’s not.

POTS, Not Pans

~ KJ ~ 14 Comments

Part of my hesitance in going to the doctor is because I don’t want any more diagnoses. I feel like I have enough. Hell, even disability forms have spaces for 10 diagnoses, and I had already exceeded that. I don’t want any more diagnoses. I don’t need any more problems.

As much improvement as I’ve made in seeking out medical help, as soon as the possibility of something more comes up, I push it so far back into purposeful forgetfulness in the hope that it will never come up again. I did it last month when I attended a COPD support group. The respiratory specialist pulled me aside after group, asked me a few questions about my history, and recommended I come back to be tested for Cystic Fibrosis. She seemed concerned. I told her I would come back; I never did.

It’s a lot easier to forget shit when it doesn’t affect you every day. I’ve had breathing issues most of my life. I’m used to it.

What I’m not used to is passing out onto the floor. That I can’t forget. The concussions. The bruises. The people who have to surround me when I get up because they all know I’m going to end up on the ground unless they catch me. The very thing that led to me losing my job.

I thought I had answers, at least in part. Clearly something was off with my heart rhythm. They said it was an arrhythmia. They just couldn’t tell me which one. That’s why I had the cardiac implant. It was going to tell me what was wrong with my heart.

So when I went to my cardiologist appointment on Tuesday, I was fully expecting a simple answer. Just tell me what arrhythmia it is. Just tell me how we can fix it. I need to work again. I need to be normal.

But that’s not how the appointment turned out. The doctor scanned through the information from my monitor. I had the PACs and PVCs as suspected. He could have prescribed a beta blocker to help regulate my rhythm, but because of my age, he thought the risks were greater than the benefits. But even with that, the irregularities weren’t enough to cause my consistent passing out.

The cardiologist sat there and started to tell me there was nothing left that he could do, that he ran all of the tests he could and none of them could fully explain my symptoms. He brought up seeing a neurologist to rule out seizures, but I knew these weren’t seizures. I knew that something was wrong. But I felt defeated. All I could say was okay.

But my friend is not like me. She was not about to back down and say okay and leave my doctor’s office without any real answers. And I think the doctor realized that. So he brought up more things, some fancy words, but still nothing concrete. He mentioned something about blood pressure, and I told him well that’s complicated in itself. He asked me to explain. I reminded him that’s what led me back to him in the first place, when the PHP program found an irregularity in my blood pressure — high in one arm, low in the other. Drastically low at times.

Something must have clicked in my doctor’s mind, because he told us to follow him to his office. He pulled up my records on his computer. And the more my friend described what was happening to me, the more firm he felt in his belief about the diagnosis.

I have POTS: Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. It explains why my heart rate can go from the 30s to the 130s in a matter of minutes just from moving. It explains why I pass out when I stand up, or after I’ve been sitting down for a long time. It explains why my head gets so foggy sometimes out of nowhere. It explains why my blood pressure changes so drastically. POTS explains that all.

I got an answer. A diagnosis. But it’s not an easy one. In reality, I would rather my issue just have been an arrhythmia. They are easy to fix. Simple. POTS isn’t so simple. POTS isn’t so easy to fix. And when you really start to look into it, it’s only a piece of a much larger puzzle. Because POTS is never just POTS. POTS is a part of a larger problem.

POTS is one form of Dysautonomia. A big word, but basically it’s the dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, which controls all of the automatic processes in the body: heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, digestion, and temperature control. It’s also the system responsible for the fight-or-flight response. The system that’s been overworked since I’ve been born.

So much makes sense now, and not just the passing out. People with Dysautonomia can have problems with malnutrition. They can have trouble regulating their temperature. It explains why I always end up vitamin and protein deficient even when I’m eating right. It explains why I can’t feel temperatures like everyone else can, why I don’t realize when it’s too hot or too cold. It explains why I can’t always feel pain when something is hurt, and when I don’t realize I am sick when I’m really sick. The system that’s responsible for the basic necessities of life is broken.

There’s no direct link between Dysautonomia and trauma, but I can’t help but think that there’s a connection. The very system that plays a role in the body’s response to trauma is the same system affected by these conditions.

Maybe the autonomic nervous system is like a car. A car only lasts for a certain amount of mileage before it starts to break down; that’s how it’s designed. If you drive it a lot, it’s going to break down faster.

What if that’s how the ANS was designed? Maybe it’s supposed to last a good 80 years of regular use. But when it’s overused, when trauma happens and it’s constantly activated for years and years, it breaks down faster. Because the human body wasn’t designed to endure consistent trauma. It’s why trauma survivors rarely suffer from just the psychological effects of what happened to them. There’s physical damage, too.

It frustrates me in more ways than one. Another diagnosis, and one that I can’t ignore. And even though there are things I have to do now — take medication, increase my salt and fluids, wear compression socks to push the blood back to my heart — it’s not a cure. I’m still going to pass out. I’m still going to be affected. It’s another disabling condition.

I sat in my cardiologist’s office in wavering denial. My friend asked him about my ability to work, how no one wants to employ someone who’s going to pass out like I do. She asked him straight out if I could work, and he wouldn’t give a straight answer. He circled around to talking about keeping myself safe. He wouldn’t tell me what I really wanted to hear.

It’s another diagnosis I didn’t need.

You’re so young

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

But you’re so young.

I heard that exact phrase at least two dozen times over the last two weeks.

It wasn’t the first time I heard it. I’m sure as hell it won’t be the last. But hearing it over and over and over again day in and day out made me want to scream out loud. I didn’t, of course. I only screamed on the inside.

I know that the people saying it weren’t saying it to be negative, but they didn’t realize that every time I heard that phrase, it was like a tiny jab to my already damaged heart. I know I’m young. You don’t need to remind me. I know I’m sick. You really don’t need to remind me.

I can’t blame them, though. I’m 31 years-old with a disease that affects the elderly. They see my COPD diagnosis and they don’t understand it. And then they want to ask questions. How much did you smoke? How long were you a smoker? I can never seem to tell them I only started smoking after I got sick. I can never explain to them how I grew up and lived in a (literal) toxic environment, how I spent most of the last 17 years in and out of hospitals. It wasn’t just the cigarettes that gave me COPD. It was my life.

It’s hard for many people to realize just how much trauma affects the body. I see it all the time. I’ve never met a person with PTSD who wasn’t struggling with at least one type of physical problem. The effects of trauma aren’t just on the mind.

My body started giving up long ago. It wasn’t just about the broken bones, the bruises, the damage it withstood on a regular basis. Every last bit of energy is spent trying to survive. After awhile, the body can’t fight anymore. There’s no way to win the war. So things break down in ways they shouldn’t, way earlier than they should. Broken mind, broken body.

But most people don’t understand the connection. They don’t want to hear about the trauma, about the battle you endured that brought you to this point. They want hard facts spoken in brevity.

I don’t bother with facts. I don’t bother with the truth. Just bad luck, I guess. That’s what I tell them. As if luck has been the one and only cause of my destruction. Luck took away the cartilage in my knee. Luck caused me to get COPD. And now luck has led me to a heart problem that has yet to be solved.

Fuck luck. Fuck genetics. I want people to realize the connection to trauma. I want them to stop telling me I’m so young, and start asking how I really ended up here. I want somebody to stand up and realize that I am breaking, not because of luck, not because of genetics, and not all because of my own doing. There was and is something more here.

I want to be able to tell them the truth. My heart is weak because it’s tired. Thirty one years of my life has been constant stress and fear. I’m surprised it still beats at all, to be honest. Why hasn’t it given up on me yet? Why does it try to quit and then get knocked back into beating?

And just when I thought it was over, the appointment was done, the surgery was done, the questions were done — it happened again.

The manager of cardiac unit called me the following day to check and see how I was doing post-surgery. I told her everything was okay (except for some mild pain), and then there was an awkward silence. Then I heard her again. Do you mind if I ask?  You’re so young, why did you have this done? We’ve only ever had to do this with older patients.

I really wanted to say wait, you mean not every 30-something has a heart monitor implanted into their chest? Instead I told her the basic passed out a few times, they found an arrhythmia, completely downplaying the fact that I passed out way more than a few times and I had a collection of issues that included more than just an arrhythmia.

She’s right. All these people are right. I am too goddamn young to be dealing with this shit.

But I am dealing. I am living life as if nothing is wrong. Because that’s how I learned to live.

And that’s what got me here.

Saved

~ KJ ~ 9 Comments

I passed out last Saturday.

I was in the shower about to condition my hair when I noticed my vision getting blurry. I couldn’t even make out the bottles. I felt weird, and very off-balance. It was similar to how I felt two years before, when I ended up passing out in the hospital. I had just enough reaction time to open the shower curtain and lean on the toilet so I didn’t fall down.

It scared me. I hadn’t passed out like that in two years. And I was alone with the door locked. What would have happened if I fell and got injured? No one could have helped me. It could have been a lot worse than it was.

Since then, I’ve been taking breaks every morning when I shower. I’ll stand for a few minutes, then step out and sit for a few minutes before getting back in. I thought I could just deal with it. But I still didn’t feel right. I was still feeling light-headed, even at random times throughout the day.

We are supposed to report any side effects or events like that to the nurse at the program. But I hesitated for a few days, because I was afraid it would mean I had to stop taking the medication I was taking for the PTSD (it is primarily a blood pressure medication). I finally decided on Wednesday to tell the nurse what had happened. I hadn’t been feeling well that morning and I was scared again.

I told her exactly what I remembered. She asked a few questions and had me sit down to take my blood pressure. Then I saw the confusion and concern on her face. Something’s not right here. My blood pressure was reading exceptionally high — the exact opposite of what she was expecting, since my symptoms all pointed towards low blood pressure. She took it again and ended up with the same result.

At this point, I think we were both a little concerned. Something made her check my other arm. This is so bizarre. I asked her what was wrong. My blood pressure was reading very low. Two different arms with two drastically different blood pressures. She had never seen it before. She wrote down the results, asked me a few more questions about different symptoms and went to consult with the psychiatrist.

When I checked back in with the nurse, she told me the doctor said to stop taking the Cardura right away and see a cardiologist ASAP. This wasn’t normal at all.

I was scared and a bit of an emotional mess. I couldn’t focus on much of anything at that point. I just wanted to pretend like this never happened. Let’s just go on like we never found this out. But I knew I couldn’t do that, and the nurse didn’t want me to do that, either. So I called the cardiologist, explained the situation, and got an appointment for the next day.

Even though part of me wanted to flee that appointment, I went. I also knew I needed to go because the people at program were concerned about me, and insisted that this was important.

They were right. It was important, and my issues weren’t normal. I need further tests, but the cardiologist thinks it is an arterial stenosis, or blockage in one of the arteries on my left side. I need to have a CAT scan and ultrasound to confirm exactly where the blockage is before we can do anything further. The cardiologist also wants me to see a neurologist to rule out seizures, because he says my pass out events are not typical of heart-related fainting.

And now I have to sit and wait. Wait for insurance to approve the tests. Wait for a diagnosis. Wait for more answers.

I don’t want to wait. I don’t even want to deal with this right now. I just…I don’t even know what is happening to me. I am falling apart in more ways than one. And I don’t understand why all of this is happening. What did I do wrong?

My emotions are in all the wrong places. I have been crying off and on and I’m not even sure why. I eat, I cry. I sit down, I cry. I go pee, I cry. I’m a mess.

I was angry at myself for causing this. Maybe if I had just gone to the doctor all these years like a normal person. Maybe if I didn’t smoke. Maybe if I just took better care of myself, I wouldn’t be in this moment right now, dealing with a serious medical issue.

I was angry at the nurse for finding something off and sending me to the cardiologist. If she didn’t check my other arm, this would have never happened. Like it was her fault for all of this. I know it wasn’t her fault at all. And I felt incredibly ashamed for feeling anger towards her in the first place.

The nurse checked my blood pressure today. Part of me hoped that other day was just one big mistake, that the machine was just acting up. But it wasn’t, and once again, there was a drastic difference between each side. I wanted to cry. The nurse was trying to be encouraging, just as she has been these past two months as I’ve continued to struggle with my declining health.

I told her about my feelings towards her, and the misdirected anger. I felt the need to apologize for my feelings that she would have never even known about if I hadn’t told her. She didn’t take it personally. She said a few things, and then she ended with and I may have saved your life.

And she’s right. But I still struggle with whether or not my life is even worth saving anymore.

 

I am

~ KJ ~ 7 Comments

I went to a session today on self-compassion.

It was actually my idea. It was supposed to be an orientation group for new people, but no one was going and the other groups were getting full. So the lead therapist asked what group topic people wanted to cover instead, and for some reason, I blurted out self-compassion.

I say “for some reason” because I’ve been avoiding self-compassion groups when they’ve been offered. I hate self-compassion. I understand it on an intellectual level, but in practice it feels like one of the hardest things in the world, something I’d rather not (and don’t) bother with.

I don’t know why I said it. Perhaps it was the pain medication kicking in. Perhaps it’s because I wanted to learn how to be compassionate towards myself as I’m learning once again how to navigate the world on crutches. Or maybe another part of me knew it was needed. Regardless of the reason, I said it, and everyone was in agreement.

It was a good group. We each picked out a random card from some kind of motivational collection and shared it with the group. I happened to pick the card with the quote:

“Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.”

Well, shit. Isn’t that applicable to me in so many ways? I spend my days making people smile and laugh. I devote part of my life to supporting others with DID, as well as those who have survived female-perpetrated abuse. I bring the sunshine to others how ever I can; I think I always have. Yet I live in darkness. I give all I can to everyone else, but I keep the support, the goodness, the sunshine from myself. I never really thought about much before until then. Where is my sunshine? Where is my light? It has to be somewhere.
Then there was a writing activity. I usually enjoy writing, but I had a feeling writing about something connected to self-compassion was going to be too much for me. I hesitated, even huffed and puffed once I heard we were writing something (which was ironic, considering I had suggested weeks before to have more writing activities in groups).
We were directed to write an “I am” poem. I had never written one before. It is meant to follow a specific structure, but the therapist said we didn’t have to follow it exactly. The paper had 18 lines, each beginning with I (something) followed by blank space to fill in. I thought the suggested structure was a bit much, so I strayed away from following the guidelines and went with how I felt, still keeping the first two words, but continuing with my own inclinations.
We sat in silence writing out our own poems. Once everyone was finished, we had the option to share. A few people shared theirs, and I sat there looking over my poem, judging what I had written. My writing was dark. Maybe too dark. Did I do this right? I hesitated sharing, as I had done weeks before. But I took a breath and started to  read.
I read the first line out loud and everyone laughed. I thought to myself laugh now, because it gets bad quickly. I waited for the laughter to settle down and I continued to read. I shook a bit, but I didn’t stop. I made it through to the end, looked up and across the room to see one of the women crying. I wanted to apologize, but I caught myself first. I didn’t need to be sorry for someone else’s emotional reaction. I learned that here.
I covered my face with the paper to hide my own tears. I pushed the emotions back down. I wanted to speak but my words were stuck somewhere in the abyss of my mind. All I could get out was “I’m good, I’m okay.” I was spent. Emotionally, physically, and psychologically. It’s very easy for me to write, but not nearly as easy to speak my words out loud. It’s still new to me, still hard to do. But I did it.
I am moderately intelligent and mildly conscious.
I wonder what it’s like to not live in fear.
I hear my mother’s voice inside my head.
I see darkness wherever I go.
I want to know how to experience joy.
I am afraid of life.
I pretend to be happier than I really am.
I feel anxious all the time.
I touch my pen to write my thoughts on paper.
I worry about what the future will bring.
I cry when no one sees.
I am unsure of the world around me.
I understand that I cannot be perfect.
I say that I’m okay when I’m really not.
I dream of a different life of freedom.
I try to be better than what she wanted me to be.
I hope I can change the world some day.
I am trying to be me.

She follows me

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

She follows me.

A monster with eyes all around.

She sees everything.

She is everywhere.

I try to hide, but she finds me.

 

She follows me.

No choice to make. No chance to flee.

I beg her please, just don’t hurt me.

But she doesn’t listen.She breaks me.

 

She follows me.

Attaching to me

Like a leech attaching to skin.

Feeding off my blood

Sucking out the last bit of my soul.

 

She follows me.

Into my body now.

She is a part of me.

Tearing me up from the inside.

Never stopping, never letting go.

 

She follows me.

I cannot stop her.

I cannot stop the pain.

I let it be.

Hoping one day she will let me free.

 

She follows me.

Too weak to fight.

I try to run.

Run for my life.

Now I am free.

 

But she still follows me.

She infiltrates my dreams

and turns them into nightmares.

She lives on every day

Inside of me, my body and my mind.

 

She follows me.

Inside my head

Her voice yelling at me

Telling me everything wrong

Telling me to pay for my sins.

 

She follows me.

She reads my words,

watches my life.

She won’t leave me alone.

She won’t let me be free.

 

She follows me.

Like a storm cloud

raining on my life.

I can’t see the light.

She blocks it from me.

 

She follows me.

I will never be safe.

No matter where I am.

She is there.

Breaking me, killing me.

 

She follows me.

And I cannot escape.

Strength

~ KJ ~ 10 Comments

I am strong.

My strength has gotten me through life, and allowed me to continue beating impossible odds.

My strength allowed me to get through my childhood, broken but still alive.

My strength got me to get out of bed every morning, even when I knew the day would inevitably bring me  pain.

My strength carried me through to the day I finally escaped — the day that I needed all of the strength in the world to bring me to freedom.

Strength helped me walk away, run away, far away.

And my strength helps me still today, as I continue to choose to live rather than to die.

I’m not sure where my strength came from. Is it something inside me? Is it in my heart or in my head? Or does it flow through my body like a life force within me? I don’t know where it came from, or even where it is right now. But I know it’s there, helping me fight, helping me stand up when it is so much easier to just lay down and concede.

I share this strength with others every day. I share my story with the world; the good and the bad, the ups and the downs. Because my strength isn’t always so easy to see. But they can see it, sometimes more than I can see it myself. When I feel weak, I am reminded of the strength it took for me to get away. Incredible strength, that not everyone has, but I have it. I always had it. And now my strength gives others hope that they can be strong, too — that they can survive even when it seems impossible.

I used to hate the phrase “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” because I believed my experiences showed weakness, not strength. I was standing, breathing, bleeding, but I was dead inside. That wasn’t strength. Strong people don’t feel the way I felt for so long. Strong people don’t feel at all.

But I was strong. My experiences may have knocked me down, but they did not kill me. They made me come back to life stronger than ever, with a will to live and the ability to share that will with the world, to change lives for the better.

My strength gives me hope, even when everything seems hopeless.

Strength is not about winning the battle. It’s about fighting, even when the odds are against you.

I wrote this in group today. I’m not even sure where it came from. I stared at the paper for a while before I even started to write, completely at a loss for words.

What specific attribute, quality, or skill distinguishes you from everyone else? How did you come to develop it? What positive things has it brought to your life? How are you able to share it with others?

What distinguishes me? Nothing. My thoughts automatically went to thinking that I was less than human. Unworthy. How could an unworthy person have anything special about them?

After 10 minutes or so, I started to think of things other people told me about me. I recalled many people speaking of my strength. Oddly, in those moments, I never saw myself as strong. I’d nod my head in agreement, yet inside my head, I was discrediting everything they were saying. I struggle with accepting positive things because I became so accustomed to hearing the negative that positive seems like a foreign concept to me.

I wrote down I am strong. Then it was like something clicked in me. I kept on writing without even thinking of what was coming out on paper. And I ended up with this.

Even after it was done, part of me wanted to rip it up. It doesn’t make any sense. No one will understand this. It’s horrible. I hesitated sharing it with the group because I believed the same thoughts I was having in my head were thoughts that they were going to have as well. Part of me was ashamed.

But I tried to stop the judgments. I took a breath and read it out loud. Even as my voice trembled and my legs and hands shook from anxiety, I read it through until the end. There was something different about reading the words out loud. I wanted to cry, but I held it in. This was my truth, spoken out loud. I made myself vulnerable. I didn’t have to. I didn’t have to share.

But I did, and that alone is an example of strength.

I need to go

~ KJ ~ 15 Comments

It was just supposed to be a regular doctor’s appointment.

I wanted to see if my doctor would change some of my inhalers, since my recent hospital visits indicate that something isn’t working right.

I was still sick on Monday, but I didn’t think anything of it. I took the train ride down and walked a mile to my doctor’s office. No problem. I made it just fine. I was still standing.

After a few minutes of waiting in the waiting room, the nurse called me back to the room. She took my vitals, and asked if I was okay. Of course I’m okay. I’m just here to change my meds.

The nurse practitioner came in, listened to my lungs, then left the room. Well, then.

A minute later, the nurse came back with an oxygen tank. Then the nurse practitioner came in. “You need to go to the hospital.“

I sat there, completely shocked. I just came for a followup. This was not in my planning. I had work in a few hours. I needed to get out of here so I could catch the train back home. I don’t have time for the hospital. I don’t have time for this.

But I didn’t have a choice. There was no air exchange in my lower lungs. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. I ended up being taken by ambulance to the emergency room, in a hospital I had never been to, 40 minutes away from my home.

I couldn’t focus on anything but the time. If I could just get this over with, I can still make it to work. I didn’t understand what the big deal was. I haven’t passed out. These people are just overreacting. I am fine. I can walk. I can talk. I am fine.

But I wasn’t fine. The breathing treatments hadn’t helped. The IV steroids weren’t helping enough. My oxygen was still too low, and they had to admit me. It was then that the panic started to set in. Once they wheeled me to my room upstairs, I started to lose it. The emergency room I could handle, but not this. I started crying.

I could feel myself starting to slip away. I tried to tell the nurse what was going on. I told her I had PTSD, that something bad happened to me in a hospital and that this was extremely difficult for me and that I would rather leave. I kept saying I need to go.

What did my honesty get me? A psych hold. As if I didn’t have enough going on, their response was to put me on a safety 1 on 1. I wasn’t suicidal. I was in a panic state.

I was humiliated. They forced me to take off all of my clothes, including my underwear. I explained to them that I was a survivor of sexual abuse and that I needed my clothing to help me feel protected. They gave exactly zero fucks. I asked if I could speak to someone about this to explain the situation, and they told me no. I asked again to speak to someone higher up, and was told there was no one to speak to. Once they put you on a psych hold, you have no rights. I asked for water for over an hour and couldn’t even get that.

I should have been at work that night. I shouldn’t have been laying in a hospital bed without my clothes and possessions being treated like I had committed a crime. I couldn’t even pee by myself. The aide had to stand there and watch me pee and wipe, just like my mother used to watch me before she decided she needed to “help”.

I cried off and on that night. I wasn’t even concerned about my lungs anymore. I wanted my protection back. I wanted my dignity. It was stolen away from me. Again. My therapist was trying to help calm me down, but I was so out of it I couldn’t process everything she was saying. I eventually got so tired of crying that I fell asleep.

I called my program therapist early the next morning to tell her what was going on and ask for support. I was concerned about the psych hold more than anything. I didn’t want to end up inpatient, and I wanted her to be able to advocate for me if needed. My experience with the nurses had been so horrible, that I had low expectations for the psychiatrist. I expected to have to fight. But I didn’t have to. I saw the psychiatrist later that morning and after two minutes, he had taken off the psych hold. I told him I  had explained to the nurses that I had previous trauma in a hospital and I had PTSD, and he said my reaction was completely understandable given the circumstances.

It was great that the psychiatrist realized that, but I had been put through 17 hours of unnecessary bullshit, re-traumatization, and cruelty. For nothing. I was punished for being a victim.

By then, I didn’t even care how my lungs were at all. I could have been dying, I didn’t care. I was not staying in that hospital any longer. The pulmonary doctor came to see me. She saw something on the x-rays and told me I needed a CT scan. Nope, sorry. I have things to do. My patience was already too far gone. Am I dying right this second? No? Then I need to go.

I told the pulmonary doctor I would come back for the tests. But I don’t need to go back.

I don’t need any more diagnoses. I don’t need any more problems. I don’t need any more humiliation. I can’t take any more.