Dear Angelkeeper, Thank you for your kind words. It sounds like a real difficult journey you went through. I really like your name though. You keep all the angels safe...! I feel like I am in the state you just described. Not eating and just curled in my bed for hours. It has been like this for a while now. And my life seems to be one endless crisis.
I am not sure what I am going to do yet. I havent eaten a healthy meal in a long time now. Tomorrow my trip is planned back to Braunschweig where my kids live. My doctor gave me a lot of medication to be able to handle it. But today at my appointment, he really frustrated me again. He avoids me talking about my symptoms because he doenst want me to be triggered... but how am I suppose to tell him what is happening and that I feel I need more help? He says I need to stabilize before I do a trauma therapy... but he doesnt give me any options for this except to drug me out. Then I come home and feel so hopeless again.
And making these plans are triggering me big time. On tuesday I would be returning to Berlin, so I would only see my kids for a couple days and then have to return. I am completely in debt and my application for unemployment has been refused because of my status as a student. I keep on seeing one social worker after another, and sending letters, hoping the application will go through soon. I am at home, and imagining terrible things that I would do to myself. I think I am able to control it. But the pain is really really big and I want to get help for this. The situation is much more complicated.
If I go to a the psychiatry, I wouldnt want my kids visiting me there. But being in the hospital did help stabilize me. But as soon as I got home, it all started again. There are other really nice psychosomoatic clinics here, where there is traumatherapy done, where I wouldnt have a problem with my kids visiting me. But it is a long waiting list to find a place in one of those clinics. And I do want to avoid going to the psychiatry for now. I was already there and just wanted to leave as soon as I got there.
The biggest problem is that I still dont have a regular T here in Berlin and just can't get my thoughts straight. It calms me a lot just to write about it so I will explain more carefully. Whoever wants to read through this... sorry it's so long! It will just help me sort it out maybe.
Just to avoid misunderstandings, the trauma happened more than 5 years ago. I had been living in the same city my kids live in (Braunschweig) for those 5 years and was seeing them regularly. And falling into a regular depression. When I was kicked out I was left with nothing and had to start over, all by myself. I didnt have any family and he had his whole family clan supporting him. I moved in with my best friend who was there for me when I had no home and needed help. Without her I dont know what I would have done. We were both studying Fine Art. I had found a second family at my art school, it was like my home. And I worked really hard even with the PTSD and depression and just finished my degree in July 2011. And was awarded an extra year of school, which I thought I would go through with.
But this last October our scolarship ran out and we had to move out. I didnt have a job. I had applied for a PhD scholarship and wanted to move in with my kids. But my ex declined this. I was waiting for an answer from the scholarship but it was declined 20 days late and I was on hot coals every day, because my roommate wanted to move out. Then we were informed that we had to move out of our apartment 10 days earlier, so that I had to store my things at my school and go homeless.
So 5 years after the trauma of being homeless, it happened again. I was having panic attacks every other day. My therapist started doing EMDR with me and it brought out a lot of the memories too. She said anybody who was in the situation I was in wouldn't be doing well. There was no way to decide where I was going to live, because I wanted to move in with the kids but also was waiting for the scholarship. Everything was up in the air.
We were doing councilling and the councillor told me that I would have little luck taking him to court, because he has had the kids for so long now... and plus me with my depression(ptsd)... with no job... wouldnt help...! I still am responsible for paying him alimony, although it is completely unfair that he has the kids in the first place.
I didn't have a job, and didn't know yet that I had PTSD. It was really really hard not having a home, because I didnt have a place where my kids could come and visit me. It was really hard for them too. So I decided to move to Berlin and find work, and commute to Braunschweig regularly, so that once I get grounded and stabilized my kids could eventually move to Berlin with me. It seemed like a viable option to all of us also my ex. He didnt say yes but I had felt we had grown up enough to be able to talk to each other like adults about this and about the best place for the kids to be. I found a job taking care of disabled children and also other jobs as an artist/ singer/ performer... Which is what I do.. and have already been succesful with. And I thought if I wanted it bad enough I would earn enough money so that my kids could come to Berlin at least 2 times a month and see me. I got a job taking care of disabled man, and then I got this 1 room apartment I am now in. I made so much debt doing so. My PTSD showed up several times, while working for the disabled man, that I got fired.
I started having anxiety continuously, heart pounding and racing. My kids came to visit me twice and after they were here I had real bad depressions. After a month I couldnt pay for my children to come and visit. Everything fell apart and I just totally gave up. I didnt have my T and my friends as support anymore. All the effort and resources I had found to keep my health and sanity for the last five years just left me. I even cut myself. And ended up in the crisis intervention center, and then in the closed psychiatry.
Now I have this diagnosis, and everything has changed and the also the perspective on all that has happened. Although I am planning to leave tomorrow for Braunschweig, it would just be for a few days. That is what is so terrible about it. I would see them for one day and one night and would I have to say goodbye again. In the city where they live, I do not have my own home, so I cannot be with them for so long as we will be staying with friends and there is not much room. Now that I am so unwell, I think it was a bad idea to move to Berlin. But in the other city, I just couldnt face it.
With PTSD I am understanding that I unconsciously left that place, not only because I felt triggered by it, but because I unconsciously wanted to fall, and needed to get this diagnosis and deal with the PTSD, and needed to be on my own to do so. In the other city I always had the pressure to perform for my kids when they would come and be happy for them. They also were very traumatized by the event, when I was forced to go, and their father just covered it up... and the kids also became numb to it. He has this way about him that is real controlling to people...he does it on the emotional level, which scares me to death. And I know the children didn't have any choice but to forget what happened. They love their father and I also want to respect that. And I am glad that I can be sure that he is not beating them, although they are getting a pretty strict religious upbringing that I never was happy about.
I know something has to change in this whole set up. And maybe this crisis is meant to tell me and others how unfair the situation I am in is. I do not see a way out at the moment. Writing about it seems to be the only way out. I am an artist, and often worked autobiographically. So sometimes I think all these terrible things have to happen to me so that I can write about it. But also it is quite an upsetting destiny to consider. And sometimes I just give up.
I am feeling more stable now after writing. Geez.
I am going to do my absolute best to go back tomorrow and see my kids even it is just for one night. I will take lots of pictures and just find ways to treasure that without thinking about the separation. I hope my anxiety doesnt start up again.
