Around The Bend

[Powder]

I am proud that now I remember. I am getting better at this. I'm starting to be okay with remembering my childhood. It hurts and I cry a lot. But I feel somehow better, like I feel like I'm making headway with it. I know there is a huge backlog of work left undone, but I don't want to be like my parents and not do it. I don't want to be like that. I don't know if I'll ever be finished or feel like it's taken care of entirely. But I feel a kind of respect for myself for doing the work.

It's not making me feel happier or good. In fact, I feel pretty damn bad some days. Like I've been in a death march for 30 years and am finally laying some of it down, still marching, but getting lighter in burdens carried as I lay them down, one by one. I keep marching on, more aware with each memory that surfaces, that I have survived more than I thought and no wonder I have always been so sad, so afraid, and so haunted. I don't see any light at the end of any tunnel. It's pretty dark here. But I am not turning back now. I'm not afraid.

 

[Powder]

Actually, I think it was a flashback at night. I could smell the smell and got sick feeling in my stomach. I have been having the stomach sickness stuff/symptoms come back last week and through to the present. Then, I got the flashback that explains a bit of the stomach problem. I remembered feeling sick to my stomach often,

I am still having this. It is still here.

I am fixated on this memory of the heroine, so there must be a pathogenic kernel in it that I need to release and process.

I am getting the tenseness in my stomach. With this I am thinking about my father's mother. I don't know what this has to do with her. I don't get it.

I keep feeling like somehow I did something wrong by being curious. I didn't want to see him shooting up, but I was always hyper-vigilant and patrolling and protecting. I was always looking for the source of the danger to try to keep myself and my siblings safe(er).

When I saw my Dad using, I think I had hard time identifying that man as "him" similar to during the rapes. I thought he "changed" into "someone else."

Because I have dissociation, I also feel that I "change" too much for my sense of safety. My weight yo-yo's. I don't recognize my own face in photos or in the mirror. I feel that if I close my eyes, that is "me." I have no "image" or "self" and whatever people think they see or who they think they know as "me" is incorrect.

Maybe this is why I have a fear of photographs and taking photographs (my hands shake or I'll try to "get it over with" quickly and blur the image--can't have a steady hand anymore. Used to be fine as a teen, when in denial).

I just want to get back into therapy. I know I need to process this stuff or it will just keep messing with me.

 

[Powder]

I looked at a house and nearby, I finally found the burial site of my mother's father. I didn't get to go to either of her parents' memorial services due to having just had a baby or other problems.

[DLMURL]http://www.locategrave.org/l/6439695/Raymond-Elmer-Otten-WA[/DLMURL]

In some ways, I realized today that both my grandfathers are my soul's true father. In many cultures, the grandparents role is more central that in our culture. I honor mine because they didn't abuse me and loved me, I was able to have a healthy relationship with them and have that "fathering" every child needs from them.

Thus, I was encouraged to be successful academically and professionally by them. I followed Raymond into teaching. I was guided by his light and quiet wisdom. Like him, I love to be on a boat in water or by water. That is a place we both felt more in tune with our spirit and calm. Education and human dignity, equality, and respect for the journey was gifted by Raymond to those he loved. His protective animal guide was Elk, and he helped me see these qualities in my husband, who is also an Elk. Thanks to Grandpa Ray, I found the special quality in my husband and kept him, not succumbing to the self-isolation of PTSD.

Like Ruben, I love to read and passionately protect and love my own family. He loved to hunt deer, which I hated to see, but like him I like to be outdoors in the forest. He shared his love of nature, fishing, horses, and snow. He let us watch Pooh Corner during his football game. He showed love in concrete ways, hugs, smiles, hand-crafted toys and gifts, actions, sharing. He was earthy.

Both of loved woodworking and often smelled of wood, a good earthy smell. They were fathers who connected me to my mother Nature. They loved her and were faithful to her, and she loved them. In this love, I found my husband, a son of a carpenter, who has a natural gift working with wood. He is an earth sign also loving and grounded.

Part of my recovery is seeing the good. With PTSD, the bad is like an electric shock that seems to go off in my wiring all the time, when least expected.

To balance, I find the light and shine it bright. I find the goodness I was blessed with then, and the goodness in life now.

I dream the future, and I make it good and sweet. I pursue the dream and it makes me happy to dream it. I envision my future, taking steps toward it, and having faith that this is necessary and that it make look different, but I see the joy of the future. I hold onto it like a new born baby. I nurture it like a good and loving mother. My dream, like a beautiful baby, is perfect, fragrant, and special. I delight in it. I see it. I imagine myself enjoying life in it.

If I forget my dream, I lose this baby, and I become full of grieving for the past. I could spend lifetimes mourning the past and all of me that died then. But if I hold onto my future, I give birth to new aspects of myself. I cannot bring back to life those who have died, nor parts of me that are no more, that died, and were murdered by my parents' abuse. They committed soul murder on myself and my sister. Parts of us died and haunt us, cannot grow up, and are buried.

But we are "still here" and life is still happening with all its creative power. This is divine creative power. With this power, we must find the light and love that cannot be killed and is never lost. By this, we create love and celebrate our survival. We create. We make a future. We leave a legacy of other real children, who we love and protect.

To beat PTSD, I have to believe in my dream, my hope. So many survivors have said, how they survived was their ability to use their imaginations to see something good in the future. For some it was a house they designed in their mind and would someday build. For others, they saw themselves doing things that made them happy. The more detail and time they spent visualizing and "being in" the dream, the more their spirit rested and was able to survive the trauma and fallout.

Then comes the work of nurturing the dream; actually doing it is the next step. But the original vision needs to be regularly enjoyed, delighted in, and bathed in light. :)

Anyone who reads this, What, my friend, is your dream?

 

[Powder]

I am fighting depression feelings and having to go to two long training classes in teen suicide and native education in which someone cried in public has not helped.

I have a persistently low mood, over 2 weeks. One week could be chalked up to PMS. But I think the following week I usually feel better. Not so this time. It's like it never stopped. I actually thought about taking an SSRI again and maybe going in for meds. But then I remembered how horrible that always was, and that they give me even worse anxiety.

In fact, isn't depression a side-effect of dealing with high anxiety? That seems to be the case for me.

 

[Powder]

I haven't had my exercise or much time to myself. Winter is dark and the kids are boxed into the house. This is not a great way for me to cope.

Also, my sister emailed me and my uncle sent me photos of my abuser, plus I've been unable to go to therapy to process the recent memory of the heroine use.

It seems stuck. I feel the depression of living with my dad's secret drug use. I need to release it and get back to present time. This is not happening well because I am too burdened with daily living.

 

[The Albatross]

Muse, your post #63 is one of the most wonderful things I've read in a long time. I am an "earth" person, meaning to say I am firmly rooted in what is and I allow myself to experience that. I do not have a dream, though maybe I will one day.

You are making good observations, can you think of any way to lighten the load a little or some activity or self care that would lift your spirit?

 

[Powder]

Albatross, your words are heartening. I feel spiritually fed by them, warmed. Funny how we can do that for each other online. I am so grateful for my friends here. I wish I could repay all the blessings of your words and the feeling and care put into them, all of you.

I have been walking the last couple days. It feels like when I walked during labor; it hurts and feels all wrong. But it empowers me, shows me I can move through the pain. I don't have to just sit and shake with it and let it wither me away.

Today I walked. Then, the sun came out, so when I got home from work the family walked. The dog pulled too hard and spun me around because she is giddy now for walks (who isn't by March? We just had snow!) and so was my little daughter giddy. Then, because we are all so impatient for spring and frolics, she demanded a little girl play with her (because she liked her dress). When the girl didn't respond, my child shouted "I hate all these people" referring to all the strangers also eager to get their kids out into the sun.

Everyone stared. My child is four and has the ability to sound 40. It was shocking. She said it wish such vehemence. I sometimes worry about her, that there is something wrong--she is that intense.

So long story short, she ran and screamed and hide behind a tree, attracting even more negative attention. I couldn't calm the dog or my child and something just "happens" to me when I can't control other's outbursts. I just trigger. I try to contain it, but I go all dizzy and cannot breathe. I have read it is a panic attack. I felt that I'd been punched in the gut and could not breathe. My back, legs, head hurt. I could barely walk; I couldn't think. On the way home, my H. tried carrying our 4 year old and her heavy trike as she tantrum-ed and yelled. Our 14 tried to help but couldn't do much. I ended up having to sit down twice on the quarter mile back, for fear of falling, I got so dizzy.

Then, I had a lie down, decided to beat this, and took a new textbook to the library for an hour of quiet that helped. But I was smoldering. I get angry. I get somatic symptoms. I took a bath when I got back from the library because on the way home, I managed to get angry with my spouse for not talking to me in a way that helped comfort or reassure me; rather he was very short with me and frustrated with me (or stressed).

I'm trying. I just don't know what I can do. I took a vacation to try to relax, and this walk, and the result was the same. I felt much, much worse. I was falling down and sitting of the side of the road.

I feel desperate in life, that life it just too hard and so much has been asked of me that I cannot understand how I have survived. I wonder if the dream is only there to escape and survive. (this idea now caused a hot flash, palms sweating). I am so stressed.

 

[Powder]

The stress feeling is too much, so after posting Tuesday, I decided to try going on half of the Clonidine again. The next day, I felt relieved and more peaceful. The energy level remained high and good, but it seems that I was rough from withdrawal from Clonidine (or I just do better on it).

Today, my 4-yr-old hid from me and then roared loudly behind my back, triggering a full on attack. I was getting ready, and was able to in a numb state, but then got the "delayed reaction" triggering when somatic pain, feeling agitated and like I should run, run, run from the predator, and mental confusion as I tried to focus on what I was going to do today all collided. She didn't mean to do this, and it's frustrating that my body doesn't differentiate between a "real" threat and a "perceived" one.

I went through the flight, then the dizzy and weak knees, then the crying and emotional "let down" and the "recuperative state, all this lasted about 4.5 hours. What I am noticing is that I can't fight the process that being triggered starts. I was fighting the tears, afraid that if I let myself cry, I would not stop, like the emotional flooding from the past. However, since I'm allowing the PTSD to surface in the last few years and I'm accepting myself having it, I don't flood like that. Instead, I cry a more "normal" time, like a minute or two, and then I feel that's it. Like that was all I had "stored up" to cry. I find it helpful to talk about what I'm feeling, and I reason with myself that this is the same stages I go through. If I accept the stages, and do not try to push them down and resist them, they pass like a very brief storm, and then I get on to the next stage more quickly.

This is the major difference for me from losing a whole weekend to a trigger attack vs. a few hours. If I were in therapy, I would be discussing this with the T. right now, but I 'm not, so I'm working on it here. :)

In recuperative, the particularly distressing memory of my F. brainwashing me that it's normal for a F. to cut a hymen so it will work better, and that everyone else does it, came up. My heart races when this memory comes up, and I can still feel, as I have in the nightmares, my fighting and arguing and not wanting him to cut me with the scalpel. :( I feel uterine cramps and leg cramps as I write this, a somatic reaction.) Then, with this memory, I hear his voice in its cold, Dental professional "this hurts but it's for your own good" voice. He was not high on heroine when this happened.

I therefore cannot pass off his behavior onto the drugs. He premeditated it and used his adult, professional training to abuse me. It was cold, calculating, and manipulative/lying.

This is also why I have trust issue with medical and religious people, as he was both, and used his personal of both against me, and his "pillar of the community" reputation as a weapon of silence. I doubt I will ever feel easy around medical or religious people.

 

[Powder]

Link Removed

Melissa Moody went to see Robert Grant Ph.D. in Pittsburgh, PA. He is a trauma therapist and treats catholic missionaries for their trauma reactions. He says that those who seek out traumatic missionary experiences often have repressed childhood abuse trauma that subconsciously drives them to work in relief efforts in traumatized parts of the world. This is the case when they are in denial phases.

This certainly is the case with my parents. They still have not come out of the trauma closet or come clean.

The problem with stuffing one's trauma too much is we often end up creating more victims as we project trauma onto others. Dealing with one's own trauma is painful and isolating but can prevent us from making victims of our loved ones.

 

[Powder]

My daughter brought me my childhood Bible that my mother had monogrammed for me when I was baptized in 1985. She hand wrote a reference, and at the time, it seemed cryptic to me.

I asked her about it, and her answer was cryptic, cut off, meaningless. I could summarize it as "Mumpf...." Nonsense. I took it to mean that she maybe didn't put any thought into it (she's a terrible fake-y-flaky narcissist). I also took it to mean that she didn't think I would understand.

So, maybe two or three times in my life since 1985, when I happened to encounter this entry of her, I have looked up 3 John verse 4,and read her selected inscription: "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth."

I read it thinking I would again feel that it was meaningless.

Instead, I felt rage.

Is rage better than confusion?

 

[Candleflames]

For you, in this case, with that quote, I will say that your rage is completely justified and healthy. Your mom needs a serious wake up call!

 

[Powder]

Thanks Candleflames,

I have to remember that I read the situation as an adult and she wrote from the standpoint of a permanent teenager who wants to look cool. Part of my healing is seeing people and situations for what they actually are, not for what I wish them to be.

My sister-in-law told me once that I seem to only want to see the best of people and ignore the rest. She had a great point, and I'm grateful for the honest and loving feedback she gave me. I am still seeing more in what she said.

In order to go on in life, I never could face the facts, and dissociated the harsh reality to take the edge off my constant suffering. No, I don't blame or judge myself negatively for it; I see my siblings doing the same. I think it's just a coping mechanism that we learned in childhood, a fantasy life we had to live to survive and do our best. Had we been realists, which was not modeled for us, we would have faced facts and been more grounded, but we may have suffered even greater depression.

As an adult, I find that perspective and perception continually tolerates less and less illusion. This process is a life long learning. But I never saw my mom subjected to maturity in any form. She actually seems to devolve into a more infantile state, like her mother did, growing less clear-headed and less able to see the other every passing year. Slowly they turn further inward and feed on themselves until there is nothing.

My T. said we should pity her for never fathoming or feeling love. Basically, it's like an emotional disability that means she can't walk in love like most people can.

I'm interested in other perspectives. I tend to ponder the full import of what people say about such things. I still don't fully grasp so many things about myself or the key people in my childhood. With PTSD, I think I have difficulty analyzing things normally. It takes me longer to connect the dots.