Ava Jarvis
MyPTSD Pro
Hello.
I have PTSD. It resulted from non-stop physical, emotional, and verbal abuse from my father. My mother didn't protect me from his abuse. She was also a target, because his rage seemed to know no bounds. I did my best to protect my mother since I was very young—my earliest memory is trying to push my father away from my mother as he was screaming and beating her. Just wedged myself in between and futilely shoved at him. His shirt was sweaty and moist, I recall. Terrifying doesn't begin to describe the experience.
My mother did try to protect me once. One day my father, after dinner, bore me down to the ground and strangled me. I think my mother pulled him off me. So he turned his attention to her, and smashed her head THROUGH the wall. There was a hole. After that he went back to his room, but did not stop his stream of abuse the next day. I tended to my mother. I was ten or younger. I could still fit into my small gray and pink jacket. I consider that the greatest failure of my life, that I could not protect her and that I did not have the foresight to see what my father was planning to do.
Anyways, after that, my mother usually would turn my father's attention to me when he got angry. Didn't always work. I suppose I can't really blame her. She was just too scared to protect her kid, and some people just don't really care about their kids. I wasn't worth protecting to her, and how can I blame her? I did nothing to prevent that terrible night.
Afterwards I got smarter. I managed to save our lives after that. Probably the closest incident was when my father grabbed a kitchen knife and went after my mother in a rage. I dragged my mother out of the apartment, even though she was so scared she refused to budge of her own accord. The apartment across the hall had their door open, and I dragged us in and slammed the door just as my father almost caught us. He raged out there as I locked the door, and screamed and threatened to kill everybody in the apartment.
This all of course doesn't account for all the times he threatened to kill me, sometimes verbally, sometimes physically. I've lost count of the number of times he threatened me with kitchen knives. I remember that he once lit a match and held it close to my cheek and threatened to burn my face off.
There was no logic to what he did, of course, except the logic of causing as much pain and suffering as possible to what he felt he could control in the world. He wanted to murder me when the doctor said I needed glasses. I'm not sure what kept him from killing me straight there in the kitchen, but he stopped at the last moment. My mother got out of the way when he charged in.
My father played mind games with me from when I was very young. I remember most the "anti-truth" training, as I call it years later. "What color is the sky?" "Blue." "You are a liar." Beating followed. "What color is the sky?" "I don't know--blue?" "You are a liar. The sky is the color I say it is. The sky is GREEN." Beating followed. "What color is the sky?" "Green!" "You are a liar. You don't really believe." Beating followed. Funnily enough, I never got the question (or others) right. He taught me that I think and see only falsehoods and lies. That only he told the truth, and I am so imperfect that I cannot even interpret the simple truths he told me as truth.
So 20+ years of this... Managed to get away to college. Tried to get things set up in grad school so that I called my parents once every week and they visited once a month. Before that, they forced me to call every day (they would call the police when I didn't) and they visited every weekend. They did not take my proposition well. My mother threatened to starve herself and my father sent death threats.
Complications later, I end up working for Amazon as a programmer because they were the only ones who would pay to take me away far enough. I only had what I managed to scrounge from my paychecks from college jobs, which my parents forced me to deposit into an account I shared with them. But they never did check the pay stubs.
Amazon did not give me any time to process the trauma and is a bit of an abusive workplace, all things told, depending on where you worked. I worked in the trenches, and had no knowledge of how to protect myself from abusive behavior, nor knowledge that abusive behavior is not the norm.
Complications later, I quit because I began to have physical health issues. I have no job currently because I cannot ... I hate this ... I cannot actually have enough good days in a row to work consistently any more.
I am now making progress on healing. Money troubles worry me constantly. But healing continues.
I have found three friends far away in California who understand the trauma and treat me well. Before them I had many abusive friendships. And even with people who are not overtly abusive, they rarely understand what I'm going through.
For instance, one person emailed and told me that since I was in so much anguish and pain, that I should consider suicide, as that was "as valid a solution as any other." He also said that I should not seek profesional medical treatment, because that is "arguing from authority" and that he trusts his own advice before seeing "Freudian quacks." He didn't believe me when I said a motivational coach (which ate up half of my funds before I stopped the arrangement) didn't help. He said that until I tried engaging in sports he would keep suggesting these things to me, because I'm not being sensible and also I'm lazy. I blocked him.
Another person decided that because I was in such a traumatized place that now was the perfect time to tell me that my gods are false and I need to turn to Christ. (I practice Shinto.) He told me "the truth hurts" and that I was insensible for not listening to him. It didn't matter to him that I hear Amaterasu-omikami as much as he hears God. He did no research on Shinto, pretty much dismissed it out of hand, and attacked me relentlessly long after I told him to stop. He later threatened that he would continue harassing me until I stopped talking about my faith on public forums.
Other people have cast judgement on me ranging from "you did something to deserve your parents' punishment" to "this happened to you because you don't believe in God" to "you don't really have PTSD, you just malinger" to "we are no longer going to help you shop or do other things on your bad days, because that just enables you."
I do not honestly know sometimes what to do with this feedback. I have only recently begun to assert myself but it is difficult.
I do not know if I am an OK person or if I am not doing my best to heal. I hurt so much, and I have so many triggers that I cannot avoid them all.
I do not know how to interpret what authority figures say to me. I see malice and judgement behind even reassurances that there is none, and of course also when there are no reassurances. I am scared to ask for them (partly because that was not a good way to survive at Amazon).
I have a lot of issues. People wonder how I could have been so functional for three decades and then "just fell apart" and I guess that's why some of them don't believe me when I say I am traumatized.
I don't know what to do. It's late and I should sleep.
I got triggered badly on Sunday. I'm trying to recover still. It hurts very much.
On the other hand I stopped being suicidal ever since I began to practice Shinto and the head priest at Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America sent me a specially made omamori against suicidal thoughts.
Anyways that's me.
I have PTSD. It resulted from non-stop physical, emotional, and verbal abuse from my father. My mother didn't protect me from his abuse. She was also a target, because his rage seemed to know no bounds. I did my best to protect my mother since I was very young—my earliest memory is trying to push my father away from my mother as he was screaming and beating her. Just wedged myself in between and futilely shoved at him. His shirt was sweaty and moist, I recall. Terrifying doesn't begin to describe the experience.
My mother did try to protect me once. One day my father, after dinner, bore me down to the ground and strangled me. I think my mother pulled him off me. So he turned his attention to her, and smashed her head THROUGH the wall. There was a hole. After that he went back to his room, but did not stop his stream of abuse the next day. I tended to my mother. I was ten or younger. I could still fit into my small gray and pink jacket. I consider that the greatest failure of my life, that I could not protect her and that I did not have the foresight to see what my father was planning to do.
Anyways, after that, my mother usually would turn my father's attention to me when he got angry. Didn't always work. I suppose I can't really blame her. She was just too scared to protect her kid, and some people just don't really care about their kids. I wasn't worth protecting to her, and how can I blame her? I did nothing to prevent that terrible night.
Afterwards I got smarter. I managed to save our lives after that. Probably the closest incident was when my father grabbed a kitchen knife and went after my mother in a rage. I dragged my mother out of the apartment, even though she was so scared she refused to budge of her own accord. The apartment across the hall had their door open, and I dragged us in and slammed the door just as my father almost caught us. He raged out there as I locked the door, and screamed and threatened to kill everybody in the apartment.
This all of course doesn't account for all the times he threatened to kill me, sometimes verbally, sometimes physically. I've lost count of the number of times he threatened me with kitchen knives. I remember that he once lit a match and held it close to my cheek and threatened to burn my face off.
There was no logic to what he did, of course, except the logic of causing as much pain and suffering as possible to what he felt he could control in the world. He wanted to murder me when the doctor said I needed glasses. I'm not sure what kept him from killing me straight there in the kitchen, but he stopped at the last moment. My mother got out of the way when he charged in.
My father played mind games with me from when I was very young. I remember most the "anti-truth" training, as I call it years later. "What color is the sky?" "Blue." "You are a liar." Beating followed. "What color is the sky?" "I don't know--blue?" "You are a liar. The sky is the color I say it is. The sky is GREEN." Beating followed. "What color is the sky?" "Green!" "You are a liar. You don't really believe." Beating followed. Funnily enough, I never got the question (or others) right. He taught me that I think and see only falsehoods and lies. That only he told the truth, and I am so imperfect that I cannot even interpret the simple truths he told me as truth.
So 20+ years of this... Managed to get away to college. Tried to get things set up in grad school so that I called my parents once every week and they visited once a month. Before that, they forced me to call every day (they would call the police when I didn't) and they visited every weekend. They did not take my proposition well. My mother threatened to starve herself and my father sent death threats.
Complications later, I end up working for Amazon as a programmer because they were the only ones who would pay to take me away far enough. I only had what I managed to scrounge from my paychecks from college jobs, which my parents forced me to deposit into an account I shared with them. But they never did check the pay stubs.
Amazon did not give me any time to process the trauma and is a bit of an abusive workplace, all things told, depending on where you worked. I worked in the trenches, and had no knowledge of how to protect myself from abusive behavior, nor knowledge that abusive behavior is not the norm.
Complications later, I quit because I began to have physical health issues. I have no job currently because I cannot ... I hate this ... I cannot actually have enough good days in a row to work consistently any more.
I am now making progress on healing. Money troubles worry me constantly. But healing continues.
I have found three friends far away in California who understand the trauma and treat me well. Before them I had many abusive friendships. And even with people who are not overtly abusive, they rarely understand what I'm going through.
For instance, one person emailed and told me that since I was in so much anguish and pain, that I should consider suicide, as that was "as valid a solution as any other." He also said that I should not seek profesional medical treatment, because that is "arguing from authority" and that he trusts his own advice before seeing "Freudian quacks." He didn't believe me when I said a motivational coach (which ate up half of my funds before I stopped the arrangement) didn't help. He said that until I tried engaging in sports he would keep suggesting these things to me, because I'm not being sensible and also I'm lazy. I blocked him.
Another person decided that because I was in such a traumatized place that now was the perfect time to tell me that my gods are false and I need to turn to Christ. (I practice Shinto.) He told me "the truth hurts" and that I was insensible for not listening to him. It didn't matter to him that I hear Amaterasu-omikami as much as he hears God. He did no research on Shinto, pretty much dismissed it out of hand, and attacked me relentlessly long after I told him to stop. He later threatened that he would continue harassing me until I stopped talking about my faith on public forums.
Other people have cast judgement on me ranging from "you did something to deserve your parents' punishment" to "this happened to you because you don't believe in God" to "you don't really have PTSD, you just malinger" to "we are no longer going to help you shop or do other things on your bad days, because that just enables you."
I do not honestly know sometimes what to do with this feedback. I have only recently begun to assert myself but it is difficult.
I do not know if I am an OK person or if I am not doing my best to heal. I hurt so much, and I have so many triggers that I cannot avoid them all.
I do not know how to interpret what authority figures say to me. I see malice and judgement behind even reassurances that there is none, and of course also when there are no reassurances. I am scared to ask for them (partly because that was not a good way to survive at Amazon).
I have a lot of issues. People wonder how I could have been so functional for three decades and then "just fell apart" and I guess that's why some of them don't believe me when I say I am traumatized.
I don't know what to do. It's late and I should sleep.
I got triggered badly on Sunday. I'm trying to recover still. It hurts very much.
On the other hand I stopped being suicidal ever since I began to practice Shinto and the head priest at Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America sent me a specially made omamori against suicidal thoughts.
Anyways that's me.
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