therapy

Flee, Part 4

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

As I was walking home after my therapy session, I put my ear buds in and turned my music up as loud as I could. Music is my method of release. And I needed to release.

The first song that came on  was Lie to Me (Denial) by Red. It’s a Christian rock band. Even though I’m nowhere near Christian, I like the music and tend to relate to a lot of the lyrics. This was no exception.

Although it was a song I heard many times before, one part of the song stuck out at me:

All your secrets crawl inside
You keep them safe, you let them hide
You feel them drinking in your pain to kill the memories
So close your eyes and let it hurt
The voice inside begins to stir
Are you reminded of all you used to be

All the pain you fed
Starts to grow inside
It lives again and you can’t let it die

Well, then. If the timing of that song wasn’t on point with what I just went through in therapy.

Hiding secrets. My whole life was spent hiding secrets, and here I was, still hiding secrets. And my parts are hiding secrets, too. They’re holding their own memories, safeguarding them from me and from the world. Until the time they come to the surface. Why is this memory now coming to the surface? Why am I being reminded of a past I don’t want to remember?

I think there’s still a part of me that believes if I just ignore it, it will go away. I made a similar mistake when I first started managing life with DID. I ignored my parts, hoping they would just go away. But ignoring them only makes it worse. They get louder. They get out of control, and then life gets chaotic.

If I ignore these memories, they won’t go away. They won’t die. They will only keep causing more and more pain. And I don’t need any more pain. I’ve had enough.

Then I started to wonder if it was fair to my parts to keep us from processing the trauma. I have to think I am experiencing these memories for a reason. The reason why, I don’t quite know, but I’m sure there has to be a reason. I’m not even sure the reason really matters.

It’s weird. In a way, dissociation itself is your mind’s way of fleeing from reality. You can’t physically escape the danger, so you mentally escape it. My parts took over for me to protect me. Maybe I don’t need so much protection anymore. Maybe they need to be protected now. I don’t know.

I wish I wasn’t still running from the truth. Why can’t I find my voice? Why can’t I say out loud what happened to me? Why is it so hard? And why does it hurt so much? I know why it hurts so much. Because speaking the truth out loud makes it real. And I don’t want it to be real.

I want my father to be a real father. I’ve always rationalized his physical and emotional abuse, normalizing it as something fathers just do. He was better because he wasn’t abusing me like my mother was. Maybe he just didn’t know. Maybe he didn’t understand what was going on. All of these years, I held on to that belief that he was just oblivious. He would’ve helped me if he knew.

I can’t hold on to that hope anymore.

Because as my mother was abusing me, I turned to him, crying, and he turned away. He turned away. He knew what was happening.

How do you turn away from someone in pain? How could you turn away from your own child?

My heart is still hurting. I still don’t want to admit it out loud. I don’t want to admit rejection. That is what hurts more than what my mother was doing to me. And I don’t know how to get over that.

I don’t want to be stuck anymore.

Flee, Part 3

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

“I think we’ve reached an impasse.”

Those are the words no client ever wants to hear. It’s a fancy way of saying therapy isn’t working. Inside, I’m thinking that’s it, she’s giving up on me. I’m so damaged that not even she can fix me. No one can fix me.

The educated counselor in me understood what she was talking about. I knew exactly how I was stuck. I’ve been in therapy ever since I escaped just shy of 11 months ago. I go multiple times per week; I’ve never been your standard once-a-week client. But the people who go to therapy as much as me, they are working through and processing really intense trauma.

I’m still struggling through the basics of safety and stabilization. We can’t work through any trauma until I have a grasp on the basics. Any time we try to work through something, I shut down. I can’t get through it.

And every time a trauma emerges, my safety and stabilization goes to shit. I don’t eat right. I don’t sleep. I become self-destructive. I need to work on the trauma in order to move past it, but I can’t work on the trauma because I’m neglecting the very basic necessities of my physical and emotional health. It’s a seemingly endless, fucked up cycle of making no progress.

Something has to change. My therapist brought up changing our sessions, going less than I am now (especially since I am in a financial bind until I am back in school again). That possibility was terrifying to me.  “No, I can’t handle that. I don’t even feel like this is enough. I feel like I need therapy every day.”

And I just proved her point. I’m still struggling with everyday things. My therapist can’t be there for me every day. It’s why she suggested inpatient some time ago. I could sense her going in that direction again. But I can’t do inpatient. Financially, I can’t be out of work. I’m also in the midst of an educational transition that has to be done within the next month if I want to start by the Fall. I have a lot going on. I can’t just put my life on pause to spend weeks in a hospital. A hospital is not real life. How will it help me with real life?

I’m not perfect, but I’m also not completely dysfunctional. I wake myself up every day and go to work. I’ve been going to the doctor. I’ve been getting my schooling back on track. I’ve been functioning like any other person. Yea, I’m crying in the bathroom, and on the bus, and over the phone. But I’m still getting shit done. Isn’t that enough?

“You need to decide if we still need to work on this (safety/stabilization) in therapy, or can we work on the more intensive stuff and you can work on this outside of therapy.”

I want to work on the trauma. I need to. But I don’t know how to not shut down. I told her, “You’ve already told me all you could about this stuff. I already know it. I think either something is wrong with me or I’m stubborn, but I should be able to handle this on my own.”

My therapist told me nothing was wrong with me. She did agree that I was stubborn. But she also said that stubbornness helped get me where I am today. That stubbornness protected me from my mother. That stubbornness kept me alive, because I refused to believe my mother’s lies. That stubbornness helped me flee from prison.

Flee, Part 2

~ KJ ~ 7 Comments

“Are you protecting them or are you protecting you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t understand this.”

“You don’t need to protect them anymore.”

I know that; intellectually I know that. But I was still so afraid to say out loud what happened. We were trained not to tell anyone anything. She told us they wouldn’t understand. So I kept quiet. I never told. And even though she’s not here now, I’m still not telling. I’m still living in fear of a threat that is no longer valid.

I think I am protecting her. I am still protecting both of them. I can still hear her voice inside my head sometimes. Don’t tell. Don’t tell. Don’t tell.

“Look around. You are safe here. They are not here. No one can hurt you here.”

I knew where I was. But I was somewhere else in my mind. I was existing within two worlds at the same time: the world of now and the world of my childhood. It was as if I were standing on an invisible line, with one foot on either side: the past to my left, and the present to my right. I can see both worlds, but I can’t pick a side. So I stand there, existing in limbo.

“What was your mother doing?”

The pressure built up inside my head again. I could feel my insides shaking and I started to panic. Why is it so hard for me to tell? I want so badly just to let it out and I can’t. I can’t do it.

“Do we need to take a break?”

I wanted so badly to say no. I wanted to be strong. I wanted to fight through the chaos inside. But I knew in that moment that I couldn’t go on. I wanted to flee from my own body. I wanted to escape right then and there. But why? I was in a safe place. I was with a safe person. So why do I still want to run away?

I want to run away from the truth. I want everything to be okay. But it’s too late for that.

I told her yes. I didn’t acknowledge in that moment how powerful it was for me to admit that I needed a break. I never did that before.

My therapist asked what I had for breakfast. Nothing. She asked what I had for lunch. Nothing. She asked about coffee. I always have coffee before therapy, even if I don’t eat anything. I used to drink it black, but now I get it with cream and sugar for the added calories. It all tastes the same to me.

I’m in therapy now, talking about coffee. I was slowly crossing over the invisible line into the present, no longer teetering into the past. We talked about my school situation. We talked about the GRE, and how I cried over the phone because the person registering me could not understand me. But I wasn’t crying about the misunderstanding or about the GRE; I was crying because I couldn’t handle everything that was going on in my mind.

We talked about TV. I bought a TV back in February and have watched it twice since then. I don’t know why. She asked what kinds of television shows I like to watch. She mentioned reality shows. “I can’t watch them, my father watches them.” She mentioned another type. “I can’t watch them, either. He liked them, too.”

I have disconnected myself from anything that reminds me of my abusers. I told my therapist about the Poptart incident from the week before. I told her how I can’t wear headbands because my mother wore them, how I can’t eat certain candies because my mother ate them. I don’t want to be like her. I don’t want to be like my father, either.

“That doesn’t make you anything like them. You need to reclaim those things. You can eat a chocolate Poptart because you like to eat them. It doesn’t make you your mother.”

“It’s alright, I switched to peanut butter. My mother hates peanut butter.“ But I knew that wasn’t my therapist’s point. I’m still avoiding. I’m still restricting myself from things that I could enjoy just because those other people enjoyed them, too. It’s not fair.

By the time the coffee and Poptart conversation was done, we were nearing the end of session. It didn’t feel like all that time had passed. I was sitting there, still very much unresolved. I knew the memories were going to come back. I knew I failed again.

I want to stay here. I don’t want to flee anymore. Help me get through this. Help me stop this.

Flee, Part 1

~ KJ ~ 17 Comments

I sat in the waiting room of my therapist’s office this afternoon, fighting the urge to get up and leave. I looked at the door, then looked at the clock, debating if I could dash out without running into her. I can’t leave. She’ll worry. I have to leave. I can’t do this today. I spent so much time debating with myself, that before I knew it, my therapist came out of her office and my option to flee was gone.

I was scared. I wanted to run away because I was scared of what was going to happen. I knew my therapist would know something was wrong. It doesn’t matter how many times I say “I’m okay.” My face always tells the truth, and today my face was telling the world that something was wrong.

Sure enough, my therapist knew I was not okay. She asked when it all started. I told her. I told her how I couldn’t stop crying. I told her I couldn’t sleep. I told her about the memories that were (are) not stopping. I told her I didn’t want to remember anymore. I couldn’t take anymore heartbreak.

My therapist talked about memories and what memory loops mean, and all the things I already knew. Therapy was a safe place to talk about it. I knew that. But I was still scared. I tried to process it anyway. I knew that hiding it and avoiding it was not working; that was obvious to me given how I’ve been the last few days.

He knew. He was there. I started crying. Uncontrollably. I felt the pain in my heart come back. My head was hurting in a weird sort of way, like a pressure was building up inside with no way to release it. And I just kept crying. I didn’t want it to be true. I wanted that little bit of hope I had been holding on to that my father was just the tiniest bit of a decent person. But that is shattered now. That hope is lost.

It was too much for me to accept. I started doubting everything. Maybe these memories aren’t real. Maybe I’ve just made this all up in my head. I knew in part that these memories were real, but I didn’t want to accept them. I wanted my hope back. I wanted my innocence back. I wanted my father back.

I’ve had memories before where he is there, but not really there. This was different. It was clear what was going on. There is no doubt in my mind. He knew. And he didn’t protect me. He didn’t help me. He helped her.

Why? I don’t understand. My therapist says not to focus on the why, not to stress myself out trying to understand people who cannot be understood. But I can’t help it. I don’t like it when I don’t understand something. I don’t understand my life. I don’t understand the people who raised me, although I’m not sure saying “raised” is really accurate at all.

I struggled to stay connected to the present. The difficulty of working through flashbacks and memories is realizing that you are in the here and now, and not back when the trauma happened. Sometimes I am afraid of reliving it, so I push it down and try to forget about it. For the record, that never works.

My therapist has to constantly remind me that I am safe there, that no one is going to hurt me. So why is it so hard for me still? I want to feel safe. I just want to feel safe for once in my life.

Please, no

~ KJ ~ 9 Comments

I’ve spent the last hour laying in bed crying, trying to block out the flood of memories that have been bombarding me off and on since this morning.

It all started in therapy. My therapist and I were going over the stages of treatment worksheet I had done last week. We got to the section on medical care, which tends to be an issue for me, but I’ve been working on it decently the last couple of months. Primary doctor. Check. Dentist. Need that. Gynecologist. Initiate panic.

I started feeling sick. My stomach was queasy, my head was spinning, and I felt my chest getting heavy. I didn’t want to talk about it. Please, no, don’t make me go. The panic got worse, and then the memories started flashing before me. I tried to make them stop but they wouldn’t. I remember crying and then I drifted away.

I knew what triggered the memories. It’s the same reasons I’ve avoided going to that kind of doctor. I connect it with what my mother did to me. She said I was sick there, and she needed to help. But she didn’t help at all. She hurt me. Over and over. And it never got better.

The thought of someone being in that position with me is mortifying. I can’t deal with it. Fuck, I can’t even handle it in therapy. Imagine if I was at an appointment, what would have happened. I can’t. It’s not going to happen.

My therapist wants to work on it together a little bit at a time. But I’m scared. I’m so damaged. It’s not even going on anymore but the damage is done. I can’t erase the memories, I can’t forget how it felt.

And if that wasn’t enough, the memories have kept coming, even hours after my therapy session. Don’t tell anyone, they won’t understand. I’m just trying to make you better. I didn’t tell anyone. I was a good girl. So why did it keep happening? Why didn’t I get better?

Daddy is standing there. He’s holding my hand. But it still hurts. Why is he letting her hurt me? Does he know I’m sick there, too? I don’t understand. What did I do? I keep saying please, no but no one is listening. My voice is gone. I close my eyes but I still feel everything.

I don’t want to remember anymore. My heart hurts.

I’m just a passenger

~ KJ ~ 6 Comments

I have spent a good portion of the last few weeks as a passenger in my own life. I’m not in control. I’m not in the driver’s seat. I can see everything that’s going on, but I have no control over it. I’m just an observer. I’m just a passenger.

This happens a lot more than I care to admit. Yesterday, I realized I was (literally and figuratively) out of my own control. I found myself involved in a situation in which the ways I was acting and speaking were not my own. I knew it was me, and I could see and hear everything that was going on, but my responses were not me. As everything was going on, I felt like I was sitting next to myself. I would say something, and then I would ask myself where the hell that just came from. I would never say this. I would never do this. I don’t want this. Yet there I was, saying it, doing it, and apparently wanting it.

It concerned me, because this situation is something I very much don’t want to be involved in. I told myself, maybe I’m just crazy.  I don’t even know what’s going on. I don’t even know how to explain it to someone else because I don’t even understand it.

I wanted to bring it up to my therapist, but it felt so awkward and uncomfortable. Oddly enough, I had a therapy assignment from our session earlier in the week – the stages of therapy. I looked over the sheets and crossed out the things I didn’t have issues with, and circled the things that I felt I needed help with. Next to relationships, I wrote “making questionable decisions”. I was hoping my therapist would read it and ask about it so I didn’t have to bring it up myself.

And she did. So I explained what happened yesterday. I told her how I felt disconnected, but not entirely disconnected because I still had full awareness of what was going on, but I just didn’t have control. And I thought she was going to think I was crazy and not making any sense, but she didn’t. She understood what was going on, and suspected what I had suspected as well – another part coming through, a part with completely opposite wants. Great.

I sort of have been hiding some things from my therapist, not just about relationships, but with other things as well. Not purposely, I just didn’t feel like they were important. But most of the things I had been pushing away seemed to come up with that assignment today. One of the things I crossed out was ‘drugs’. She asked about it. I said I haven’t used in a while, and that I even threw away all of my pills last month. Then she asked why. I don’t really know why, I just know it happened during one of my regular crises.

Then she asked if I remembered doing it. No. I hadn’t remembered doing it. I only knew because I went to throw away my trash weeks ago and noticed a bunch of pills fall out from my bin and into the trash bag. I don’t remember doing it, or why I did it. But clearly I did it.

And as we went on, I realized there was a lot of occasions that I don’t remember. I’ve just been telling myself it’s because I’ve been so tired lately, that’s why I can’t remember shit. But it’s more than that. And that worries me. I know I’ve been under a lot of stress, especially in the last month. But it’s concerning because I am in the midst of making some pretty considerable life decisions, and I don’t know if it’s 100% me making those decisions.

I have been in a dissociative denial.

Why I Want(ed) to be a Counselor

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

I have been in and out of the mental health system for the last 15 years.

Let me be totally honest; the system sucks. I could go on and on about just how badly it sucks, but I just don’t have the energy for that right now.

I’ve had quite a number of therapists. Most of them have been horrible. Some of them, I seriously question how they were (and likely still are) allowed to practice counseling.

My first therapist enjoyed talking about herself more than about me.

My second therapist avoided any topic that was mildly serious. You self-injured? Oh. How is school going? 

My fourth or so therapist: Your mother loves you. You’re just overreacting.

The social worker assigned to me after my first hospitalization: I think you have an attachment disorder. You can never leave your family. You should try drinking wine (knowing I had a history of alcohol abuse). Your mother loves you. She’s just overprotective because she cares. I get it, I have problems with my mom, too. All children have problems with their parents. It’s okay to be suicidal.

I could go on about this woman. I had been telling her for weeks that I felt something wasn’t right, maybe it was my medication or what, I don’t know. But I told her that I was suicidal and concerned about ending up in the hospital again (or worse). That’s when she told me it was okay to be suicidal, and basically ignored my concerns. For the record, I ended up hospitalizing myself shortly after that, and my medications were changed.

Unfortunately, they sent me right back to this woman. I used to refer to her as SSW (shitty social worker). It had gotten so bad by that point, that I sought out a therapist just to help me cope with SSW (I didn’t want to risk missing my appointments with SSW and being re-hospitalized). I dealt with her for a few more months.

During what would turn out to be our last session, I told SSW of my plans to run away and leave my family behind. She immediately shot me down, telling me I could never leave my family. You can’t abandon your family. They are your family. What? How could you tell me this, knowing my history? I was so angry, so filled with rage. I knew I couldn’t go back to her. It was not healthy. She should not be a counselor in any capacity. She is dangerous.

That was my final push. I told myself I needed to become a counselor because people in need should not be subjected to people like her. Victims should not be invalidated by therapists. Clients should not be put in danger. Clients should not be ignored. I wanted to be everything my previous counselors were not. I wanted to change the profession. I wanted counselors to know that mothers abuse their children, and that they need to acknowledge that it happens instead of telling the person they are just misunderstanding their reality.

I wanted to be a counselor to make a difference in others’ lives. I wanted to go on that journey with them. I wanted to witness their growth and transformation. But I also wanted to initiate change and make a difference with a larger impact. I wanted to change the way counselors were being educated. Why aren’t they being educated about female-perpetrated abuse? Why are they not being educated or trained in dissociative disorders? Why is the system continually dropping the ball when we are perfectly capable of being better?

That is why I wanted to be a counselor.

But things change.

Problem solver

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

“You’re a problem solver.”

That’s what my therapist told me last session. I’ll get things figured out, because I’m a problem solver.

I do like solving problems. I have always liked solving problems.

I like solving mathematical problems. I was a bit of a math genius growing up. In elementary school, someone could give me a multiplication problem of any difficulty, and I could give an answer without even working it out on paper. I sat in the corner at school every day engrossed in learning and solving mathematical equations, and by the 3rd grade, I was already working on high school level math. I love math.

Why do I love math? I don’t know if my reasons were the same as a child as they are now, but I love math because you are solving problems that have an answer. (Most) math is finite. Math is logical. Math has rules and methods. Zero multiplied by any number will always be zero. Two plus two will always equal four. There is always an answer in some way or another. In math, little to nothing is left up to chance. It’s clean-cut problem-solving.

Problem solving in life? Not finite. Not always logical. No established set of working rules. Not always an answer. Not at all like math.

It is extremely difficult for a logical-minded person to make decisions with his or her heart. In the months (even longer, really) leading up to my escape, I was burdened with tremendous fear and anxiety. Not only about the actual escape, that’s understandable – but because my mind and my heart were never in agreement. My heart would tell me you need to get out now while my logic-driven brain would tell me no, you need more money before you can leave, this will lead to financial ruin. My heart would tell me you should tell the people you care about while my brain would tell me no, telling people increases the risk. Numbers. My brain is always about the numbers.

Obviously, I solved a huge problem when I ran away. But did I really? I solved the problem by leaving the abuse, yes, but I just set myself up for different problems. And now I have to put on my problem solver cap and solve a new set of problems that don’t have simple answers.

Finances. Blah. Most times, I’m really good at saving money. I pay all of my bills on time. I have managed to feed myself for under $25 a month. I only buy things that are on sale, even if it’s not what I particularly like. Some frugality has become a necessity.

With that being said, I’m still paying bills that aren’t all mine. I’m stuck paying off my mother’s bills because they are in my name. I don’t have any other way to solve that problem. I’m paying a bill for a friend because that bill is also in my name. I own a car that I don’t even have because I don’t drive. All problems. All problems that I’ve created by my own doing. All problems that I will need to solve.

Therapy. I could save more money by cutting down my therapy to once a week, or choosing a Medicaid-covered therapist that I wouldn’t have to pay for at all. Except I need therapy multiple times a week. It keeps me functional. To be honest, I should probably be in therapy every day sometimes. I couldn’t imagine myself existing without therapy. And when I say therapy, I mean my current therapy schedule with my current therapist. I pay out-of-pocket for a competent, professional, knowledgeable, and experienced therapist, because that is what I need after 15 years of absolutely shit therapists.

Which leads to my next issue, and why I have avoided using mental health care covered by Medicaid. It sucks. Medicaid here covers mostly social workers, mostly fresh out of college with little experience. While there is nothing wrong with that, my issues are a little complex. Many social workers don’t even know what a dissociative disorder is, let alone how to treat one.

I need my therapist just as much as I need oxygen to breathe. I can’t give that up.

School. What a conundrum. Even if I wanted to continue with this grad school, I can’t afford it. I’ve done the math. It’s not possible. I will run out of aid half way through the program. And then want? Then I’d really be fucked. Aside from finances, I have to figure out if I am even capable of being a counselor. Am I too damaged? Are people right? If I am a counselor, I would be limited in my ability to share and write about my life, because being a counselor requires a considerable amount of privacy. My writing is important to me, and so is sharing my story. Can’t I find a way to be able to do both? I need to solve this problem, too.

I am a problem solver, but I am not that good. This equation of life is too complex for me to solve.

Tears on a Thursday

~ KJ ~ 10 Comments

I cried a lot today.

I cried at six o’clock in the morning. I had just woken up and I already wanted to go back to sleep. The amount of effort and energy it takes for me to get out of bed and go to the bathroom is draining.

The pain in my foot is excruciating in the morning, to the point that I cannot put any weight on it. I cannot even balance myself without holding on to something; as soon as my foot touches the floor, I am hit with enough pain to topple me over. One morning, I fell over and managed to at least fall into the wall, so I was able to push myself back to a standing position.

Since then, I’ve managed to slide out of bed and onto my desk chair every morning, roll myself all of the way over to the door, open said door, and take about three or four minutes to pull myself up and slide myself into the bathroom and onto the toilet. Sometimes I don’t even make it to the bathroom on time. That is how pathetic I am right now. I am 30 years old and can’t even manage to walk to the bathroom on time.

I couldn’t tolerate the pain anymore this morning. As I rolled myself back from the bathroom to the bed, I just started crying. I couldn’t stop. I just wanted the pain to go away, but I knew it wasn’t going to. I just have to deal with the pain. It’s what I’ve been doing all of my life.

After a while, I managed to calm myself down and stop crying. Then my mind started going into anxiety overdrive. What if I go to the doctor and it’s not a simple fix? What if I’m not able to work? I’m really fucked. Then I started crying again. I called several doctors in the last week trying to get an appointment. Every doctor I was calling had the earliest appointments at over a month out, until I finally found someone who would take me next week. But I am still so afraid to go.

I feel that this isn’t going to be an easy fix. I’ve had some really fucked up foot issues, including massive multiple bone spurs at the top of my foot. This, however, is by far the worst foot pain I have had in my life. That worries me. I needed surgery for something that was far less painful than this is, so what does that mean? Another surgery? How am I going to live if I can’t work? Disability takes (in the shortest) a month to get. I can’t financially handle not working. So I just kept crying, imagining all of the possibilities, imagining all of the horrible shit that could come from this.

I actually cried myself to exhaustion. I tried to distract myself from the anxious thoughts and I ended up falling asleep, which was probably a good thing anyway. I woke up and still didn’t want to do anything, but I knew I had therapy in the afternoon and had to get moving. I took some more pain relievers, wrapped up my foot, told myself I wasn’t going to cry anymore, and hobbled my way to the bus stop.

My therapy session started out alright. I knew the focus was going to be on my graduate school conundrum. I told my therapist before that I was likely going to drop out, as much for financial reasons as for the drama surrounding the anonymous reporting. I told her again that I just didn’t think it was going to work. I didn’t think through all of the financial shit before I jumped into starting this grad school. It’s not cheap, and there are less expensive options out there, although the quality is likely lower as well. But I really don’t have any other options.

I don’t remember exactly what set it off, but I felt the tears coming. I tried holding them in and that lasted for about thirty seconds; then I just started crying. My therapist noticed and asked me what was going on, and how I was feeling right then. All I could say was “nothing”.

My go-to answer, as usual. I don’t have feelings. I’m okay. Nothing is wrong. Why can’t my therapist just go along with that? Why must she insist that I connect with these feelings?

Then it all came out. “I made a huge mistake coming here. Why did I think I could make it by myself? I should have stayed. I wouldn’t be in this mess if I had just stayed.”

“You’re not being physically and sexually abused here. If you had stayed…”

By that point I just started drifting in my own head. I know what I escaped. But that was my normal. When you’ve been abused for so long, it just becomes your normal. I’m not sure the damage could have gotten any worse had I continued to endure it. When faced with overwhelming challenges, we go back to what we know. And that home is what I know.

I started having short flashes of memories from the recent past, reminders of how I made myself numb to what my mother was doing to me. Then I started to cry even more. What is wrong with me? I know what I went through and yet I still ask myself why I left, I still want to go back in time and forget I ever left.

My therapist told me that if I had stayed, it would have killed my spirit. “My spirit is already dead. That wouldn’t matter.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I still see the spirit in you.”

That’s not spirit. I don’t know what that is. After all of the shit I have been through, how could I have any spirit left? Shit, I don’t even know how I’m still living.

I think I cried for most of the session. By the end, I had a hand full of used tissues, neatly folded into little squares. I’m not sure why I kept on crying. I really try to keep that under control.

Perhaps it’s the physical pain I’m in. Perhaps it’s the sense of hopelessness once again creeping up on me. I don’t know for sure, but I do think I’m dehydrated now.

She didn’t deserve you

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

I was feeling rather confident going into my therapy session on Monday.

After all, I made it through Mother’s Day relatively unscathed. I felt a small sense of pride in being able to handle the holiday as well as I did. Mother’s Day is one of, if not the most, difficult holiday of the year for me.

Mother’s Day is not a pleasant holiday when your mother is a narcissistic sociopath. Mother’s Day is a horrible, painful reminder when your own mother was also your abuser.

I felt like writing those cards to myself and to my egg donor that Saturday night really put me on a better path. I got out most of what I needed to say. I read the card I wrote to myself over and over, trying to absorb its truth. And I think, in some ways, I did.

I brought the cards with me to therapy on Monday, just in case there was nothing else to talk about and I needed to fill time (Who am I kidding – there is ALWAYS something to talk about and there is NEVER enough time). I mentioned them to my therapist. She asked if I would be willing to share the one I wrote to myself. I hesitated a bit, and then downplayed the whole thing as lame. After all, who writes to themselves? It’s such a weird thing.

I got over the weirdness and took my card out of my bag. I managed to read the card all the way through without getting overly emotional. I had already read it to myself so many times within the two days prior, that the words were starting to become me. I told my therapist how I spent the day, the positive steps I took, the negative ones I avoided. She was proud of me.

But even with all of the positive things I did on that day, I found myself still missing, still grieving the absence of a mother. I laid in bed that night and stared at a picture of my egg donor for a good half an hour or so. It’s the only picture I have of her. I found it on Facebook on another person’s page awhile back and saved it to my phone. I don’t know why I did it; I don’t need any pictures of that woman. But I can’t seem to find it in my heart to delete it. So I stared at it, and went through a plethora of emotions, from sadness to anger to just feeling…blank. Here was this woman who no one really knows, pretending to be normal and decent. She even cracked a quarter of a smile. It wasn’t genuine, but at a quick glance, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

After a while, I made myself put my phone down. I was not going to torture myself any longer. It wasn’t fair to me.

I told my therapist about that moment, about all of the emotions I was going through, about my lack of understanding on why I did it. I told her about the card I wrote to my egg donor. My therapist then asked if I would be willing to share it with her. Whew. I don’t know. My emotions were running pretty high when I wrote it. It actually took me awhile to write it, as I would write a paragraph and then put it aside and decompress for a bit before starting to write again.

I took a deep breath, got the card out, and showed my therapist what I had written on the front of the card. A little twisted humor, maybe, but truthful humor at that. I started to read it out loud. As I got closer to the middle of the card, talking about how I thought something was wrong with me, I felt the emotions starting to come up. As I read the words I lived in fear of my own mother, I started to cry. I remembered what it was like to live in fear. As an adult, I realize how unfair that was to my child self. No child should have to fear their own parent. But that was my normal.

Through tears, I continued to read the rest of the card. By the end, I was a bit of a controlled emotional mess. I was angry, sad, lost, and empowered all at the same time. I was able to recognize that I didn’t need my mother anymore, but that didn’t change the fact that I needed a mother before and never had one.

I wanted it to be my mother that I was reading the card to. I wanted her to hear my words, to know how she has affected me. I wanted it to be her feeling for me, and not my therapist. But that will never happen. And even if it did, it wouldn’t matter. My mother is incapable of empathy. She doesn’t think she has done anything wrong. If it’s not about her, she doesn’t care. I can’t change that.

As I wiped my tears away, my therapist said “she didn’t deserve you.”

For how much of a decent human being I am, how caring and good-hearted I am, and all of that, my mother did not deserve me as a daughter. I never thought of it that way. All of this time I had been focusing on the fact that I deserved a real mother; I never thought that my mother didn’t deserve me. But my therapist. That woman didn’t deserve me. She doesn’t now.

She will never deserve me.