Don't Blink

[Sheer Force of Will]

Hey, I am right there with you! I used to not be able to cry about what happened to me, so I used to watch old episodes of Grey's Anatomy. It helped so much, just to watch that nonsense and let the tears flow. In recent years, they have given several characters on that show different kinds of PTSD, from childhood neglect to combat to accident. It really helped me to see that, yeah this is really messed up, but it does happen to other people.

 

[maryel42]

I find it reassuring to know that too. One thing that always throws me for a loop is that I tend to look at stuff from underneath.

One recent example, my therapist was empathesizing, saying that it must have been difficult and scary to watch my daughter after she had eaten wild mushrooms at school and not know if she was tripping or just having a very intense autistic moment. I said, not really. he looked confused, and I said further, compared to her multi hour full on sensory tantrum fits that i had to half restrain her for, for her own safety, that would leave me black and blue and wondering what would happen if she ever broke a bone, because her pain responses were just not there.

That was scary for me.So mushrooms? Not so scary. That was a step up.

 

[Sheer Force of Will]

Wow, Maryel, I am so sorry. I work with kids with autism and I have been in those exact situations and it is really hard, not knowing what the child is feeling. I cannot imagine how hard that must be for the parents. My thoughts are with you.

 

[maryel42]

Thank you. I appreciate that. It did get better for us, tons, which is not always the case. We got a miracle, though. She makes such considerable progress.

 

[maryel42]

theme song : "My Immortal" Evanescence

I'm calling up in my memory all the details. Slowly. Sitting in the waves of panic and of scared, and I'm waiting until they pass over me,

One tiny fragment at a time. One piece of the puzzle. I don't know how many pieces this puzzle has. I know where they fit together, and I know the overall picture this will have, but bringing that whole thing in line with these emotions is difficult.

I haven't cut in 15 days. I've wanted to, but I haven't, and I know that part of what I'm doing now is going to resurrect the urge.

I want to put down this weight and walk away and I know how that ends. It ends with the emotions buried and stewing and fermenting until one day they will rupture. I don't know what damage they will cause coming up. Other, lesser, memories exploded and turned to cutting, to suicide attempts, to scratching bloody tracks in my arms whenever I fall asleep. To hearing the silent screaming in my head. Terrified of the dark, of the day, wanting only to creep into a corner and huddle there and fade away.

Bringing what I know of the flashback into what I now feel from the flashback... there's got to be peace, somewhere, on the other side of this, isn't there? Integrate the two and process the new information and rethink my life in view of the new changes.

I'm sick and tired of rethinking my life. I'm so awfully tired of realizing the foundations of everything I had grown to believe were not. I'm tired of feeling like I have to placate people in power over me, and I fool myself into believing that I ever had a choice.

The choice comes now that I'm grown. If I can break free of the past. If I sit here, now, and stitch together all these damn feelings and emotions and memories and rewrite the map.

 

[Sheer Force of Will]

Hang in there, you can do this!

 

[maryel42]

I want to believe that i am strong. I want to say that I will come out the other side with my chin up, wearing my best bias cut skirt and body skimming tshirt, with adorable sensible shoes. I want to be the pretty one. I want to be more than a runner up in my own life.

I don't want to be sitting here again, next week or next month, or next year. Crushed by my insecurity. I want to look in the mirror and only see myself.

I don't want to get up the nerve to say to my doctor, I thought about killing myself a lot over the past three weeks. And then go cold when he openly doubts my seriousness.

Because I won't tell him my plan? Because he doesn't understand that if I tell him what it is, I will have to get a new one? Because when the day finally comes and I do follow through, I don't want anyone to guess it and hold me back. After a highly uncomfortable several minutes, he said that "well, I can't shove hope down your throat".

It is totally childish to admit that my initial reaction was to go right home and do it. Just to say F You.

I still crashed pretty hard. I'm still trying to come back from that. I'm still fighting back against the old comfortable place of self-loathing. The one that says, this is all you deserve. The lack of any means to support yourself. The pain. The knowledge that you are no more than someone's possession... my father's perfect little subby.

In my mind I can feel the same dead limpness that I felt with his hands on my neck. The same dead feeling I felt when my husband threw out the "I nothing you".

It's all I am worth, that he comes home almost every night and drinks a bottle of wine. But no, he doesn't have a problem. I have the problem with him doing it.

I ddon't have any sstanding to feel sorry for myself.Only thing that I am good for is to keep my damn mouth shut and swallow back all that hurt and work on fixing my damn attitude problem.

I guess the bitterness is strong in me tonight.

 

[maryel42]

I feel like a wreck on the side of the road. I am so weighed down that it's hard to move. I'd feel worse if I thought there was any hope this would ever end. I'm on a hamster wheel forever running.

I'm nothing. I'm nobody. No light or life or hope returning. There is just this. Forever.

I see the pain doc tomorrow. Triggering. And my therapist. Not so triggering? I don't know yet. It likely won't make a difference either way.

 

[maryel42]

***triggers***


The tiles are beaded with a very faint mist

The shower's been running. Water not too hot, not too long. I think the window is open. It's been a spring day. Warm outside The sun is shining

I'm toddling through the hall. Hear the shower running. Curious. Go in and the curtain comes back while I'm standing in the middle of the floor. He's standing next to me. Behind me. He's naked. Hard. It doesn't scare me. I've never seen anything like it before.

I can't move. Can't breathe. He's mad at me. Beyond mad. He's in that too mad to yell phase, where everything is just way too calm and way too controlled. Seething. I'm standing on the toilet lid. I am so confused. Don't know what I did, don't know why. It's my punishment. My penance. For being so naughty, for being so bad, for not listening, for coming in without knocking properly.

He's removed something yellow from his private bits. It's a case that fits all around it. like a sausage casing. Goes into the trash can.

I'm wishing I was anywhere but there.

 

[maryel42]

I run out of words.

When I slip into an overload, when I'm too overwhelmed by everything around me, when my brain shuts down,

I run out of words. My body moves on it's own, autopilot, the body is moving and talking and doing but I've only got a bare knowledge of it. I'm numb. I don't feel where my skin leaves off and I begin.

That is one of the scariest things about it.

When I can, I steer my body through the bare minimum of activity. Get somewhere safe, get somewhere quiet, then lay down and let it go.

I'm shutting down, I've shut off, and then I'm all on the inside of my head.

Breathing.

Only very dimly aware of life passing outside of me. The body doesn't matter. Just me. Just the tiny spark of me, locked in my head.

It's almost opposite of my dissociations.

When I leave my body, I'm shut down to the same extent. It must look the same either way. But I'm hyperaware of everything outside of my body and I'm locked in the unmoving, unreacting flesh.


Tonight. I'm not sure which I need to be doing more. Actually, I don't need to do either. I don't need to resort to escapism. I just want to. Inside my body, outside my body, I just want to be past this whole thing. I want to be about three years down the road from this. I want to skip over right now.

I want to not be me, tonight. I want to forget duty. I want to forget the expectations I place on myself, that I hold myself to, I want to get rid of the last little bit of doubt in me that says that making others happy at the expense of my own feelings is wrong. And who's to say that it is?

I don't have any justification for my feelings. I don't have options that keep a middle ground. My feelings don't matter, they're not logical, they're not real because they're totally irrational and the only practical thing to do is to get over it.

Lost? I frequently am. That's about as clear as I dare to say it right now. I don't want anybody to know. I don't want anybody to judge me. I can't bear the challenge of this process.

It's family stuff. It's relationship stuff. I don't know where to go from here.

 

[maryel42]

I remember the sun. I remember the bright, bright sunlight streaking air, dust particles caught dancing and sparkling. Dark orange carpet. I was standing in the hall.

A tiny house. Front door, livingroom, kitchen, pass through to tiny square that leads to bedroom on each side and bathroom straight ahead.

The shower is running. I'm going into the bathroom, my hand pushing the door open. I don't know why. I should know why. I don't know why I went in.

It's hot and the water is still running. I'm not supposed to be in there. The curtain comes back and I don't know and there's this jumble of images of skin, and this, this thing, and there is another thing. I can't move. I can't breathe. I can't move and I'm crying and trying not to cry. Condom in the trash can. Colors of the tile and the lineoleum. Whoever picked this out is color blind, or pattern blind, or both.

The water isn't running now. I'm scared and I don't listen because I'm bad, and I just won't learn. So maybe this will finally teach me a lesson.



I stood on the toilet lid and he put it to my mouth and I did as he said because it never occurred to me to do anything different. I wanted to be a good girl. I want him to like me, to tell me he loves me, I want to not be an annoyance.

And just like the water, when he'd wash my hair at the sink and the water ran down and over my face and I didn't dare breathe because there was too much water over my nose and it didn't matter how I struggled I'll never get away from him...

Just like that. I couldn't quite breathe and then I panicked. So much panic. No air, lungs hurt, my body held in place, and I feel so confused after. I don't know what I did wrong, but he's still mad.

I'll try harder to be good. I promise. I just want to make him love me.

 

[maryel42]

I don't know why I can't get it out of my head

I'm still three. Still thirteen. Still too young and too weak and too dead. I'm still seven.

Still seventeen.

I can still feel the bruises coming up, the last time my father touched me. I don't remember what I said to him, but I remember the touch. I remember him wanting to know why I couldn't talk to him.

I remember when it meant something to see a paperclip laying on the floor. I remember when I didn't remember at all.