And I feel that this happened in the church, the dark church, when I was four. I see the red carpet that triggered this memory. This is my latest and worst trauma flashback that woke me up at night. Previously, it was of standing naked with three men, one of them my dad, getting ready to withstand sexual abuse from all three at once. Maybe this is the same memory or set of traumas that repeated.
A few months ago, though, it was of crawling into the middle of my parents fighting and getting punched in the face for that. This part that felt this just had happened took over during a dissociation episode in which I could not move for hours, then this part took over. I could not communicate what I was feeling, which was overwhelming abandonment, shock, pain. Once I was able to talk, it was as a baby, one word, repeated, through sobs.
For hours I had to ice pack my right eye because it hurt SO BADLY. But I could hardly move, not strong enough to do the icing. I had to collapse onto the ice pack. I was a one year old in the large, heavy body it could not control. I could not see out of my right eye, as if it were swollen shut. But it was not, only a severe pain throbbed behind it. I wondered if I was losing my eye or if it were bleeding?
I don't know if other people experience severe flashbacks or parts taking over and reliving trauma time, or the time right after being traumatized at a very young age, and feel the pain in their bodies as in real time, and cannot realize it is not happening now, having to treat the injury as if it just happened. I had to treat the eye with ice packs for hours and take my meds. The only thing that helped was trusting my husband enough, when the episode passed enough to the point that I recognized who he was vaguely. At first I didn't know who he was, and it seemed as if he were the ghost of a long lost friend, an imaginary friend.
It's not easy to explain or talk about the fact that I regularly go through dissociative episodes in which I seem to not remember who my husband is, even though he is my oldest and best friend. We have been in love since we were 17, when we met. We are 38. You'd think that 20 "good years" would cut through this stuff that comprised about 7 hell years. But often, I am afraid of him. I sometimes think he is one of my abusers. I get triggered by something he does, and it's like the face of my father covers his face like a mask, and I hear my father's voice in his voice or it echos into the voices of my father's friends that he let abuse me with him. The shadows of my past are more real than the present and those who matter in it. The damage is so deep that I cannot find its bottom, nor can 20 years of love.
I anger when people say "pray" because I have never stopped praying with all my being, and my soul had to leave my body so many times, and I never saw God or angels. There was nobody waiting for me. Which is why it was traumatic.
I have repeatedly had protectors come out and verbally go at him, my loyal, patient husband, trying to keep the terrified kids in the background that I'm trying to hold back. If I can terrify this man, then maybe I can convince those kids I can protect them. Maybe they won't bleed through and leave me terrified, shaking, hyperventilating, and blacking out or total submission, what I call dead weight, play dead. But they come through anyway, most of the time, or their pain is there, in the background, egging me on.
Last weekend, this happened. I got too tired during a family outing, and got repeatedly triggered, and was in denial and trying to pretend it couldn't really get to me, which only works if it's one thing and then we go home. But this was too many things, and I was too tired, and I lost it before we got home. A protector came forward, only I didn't realize it until later. I felt only that I had to keep whatever was triggered BACK and fill the void, to prevent it from coming out. But he called my bluff, and it broke lose. In front of my kids, I began shaking uncontrollably, and sobbing in a way I do not like people to see. I call it broken.
This is when rather than individual tears roll down ones' cheeks, a stream of water comes pouring down like you wouldn't think possible. A puddle of water is under me, I am drenched in tears that seem a river of steady pain pouring out of my body. The children inside terrified are in control, and they want to be seen in the pain they are in. They talk about how afraid they are. My voice is recognizably shrill coming out of my throat, I do not control the words, I think I do but something else is speaking. I do not know me or what I am saying. I cannot speak if a man is present. I spoke to my daughter, who I confused with my little sister. I start out intending to talk to my daughter, but the children take me over and talk to her as a child talks to a sister or a mother. Wanting to be heard by all of us. Wanting to speak.
When my husband returned, I could not speak, I was afraid of him, I had trouble breathing much, and I hyperventilated and total submission-ed, collapsed and lost power. I feel like a battery inside has died. I cannot rouse myself or will to live when this happens; it seems to go along with a large dose of anger at the men who tortured me. This lasts a long time, maybe an hour or more. After being left alone, I can rouse, if I feel safe enough, somehow I self-soothe, self-pity to rouse. Then, I busy myself being a worker bee again, distract with chores, organizing, things I must do. Cannot feel, must repress the awfulness that was just relived, and felt, cannot bear to feel it anymore. Back to normal.
I am realizing that this is the usual me, a worker, a duty-driver distractor. Where the real me left and went off to, I have no idea. Nor do I believe she can come back, was too damaged, too young to come back here, or doesn't want to.
