• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Through The Mud And Toward The Sun, The Lotus Blossoms

KwanYingirl

MyPTSD Pro
Well, I'm ready to try writing. The lotus one of the eight auspicious symbols in Buddhism. A lotus starts growing in the mud and clouded water, only to blossom into brilliance when it stretches above the waters surface. I have one tattooed on my arm to cover up cutting scars. The symbolism is pretty straightforward. As with the lotus, I too can emerge from the depths of darkness to settle into a world of beauty and calm. The only thing missing is my utter lack of faith. PTSD brought its axe down onto my mind and body and stole my spirit. My journey has been the search for my soul. It's a bitch.
 
I like the symbolism. The lotus can't know what the difference will be once the surface is reached but it keeps growing toward the light. That seems like a lot of faith.
I think your search for your soul shows a lot of faith. It's just clouded over by some murky water right now.
 
I have all kinds of scars. My crotch was burned with cigarettes by my rapist, many times, to keep me quiet. My neck is scarred by the telephone wire used to strangle me. I missing half of an eyebrow from being thrown across a room into a dresser by my asshole father. He hit me a lot, threw things at me, called me horrible names. The final straw was the day he came at me wielding a large cast iron skillet. He was aimed at my skull. My sister jumped on his back and gave him a choke hold and saved my life. My mother threw him out, but she took him back. He quit drinking and the physical violence stopped, but not the misogeny. He's dead now for seven years. I don't care that he's dead. I just cared to keep my daughter away from him.

Scars. Most of my physical scars are self inflicted. Is my inability to consider Spirit just another self sabotage? Like I've doomed myself. Why is it so unattainable for me? Getting sober meant relying on a Higher Power. Well, I'd had enough of powerful forces thank you very much. But eventually I was able to accept my home group as my Higher Power. I am very grateful for them and AA as a whole. You hear many recovering alcoholics talk about a black hole in their soul-the place we poured booze in to fill it in. I'm not alone.
 
Drugs. It helps me to have a topic to write about. I know I am not providing a chronological memoir, but truth be told, I am missing years of my life and what I do remember is painful, terrifying, hopeless. I had no adult in my corner to soothe me. Stories abound how as a toddler I would get lost often. Once I was found in the incinerator covered with soot, once I was discovered at the top of the chain link fence behind home plate. Usually I was found at a neighbors house. No one was paying a lick of attention. Even the I was hiding
 
Oops hit the wrong key! Anyway, lots of neglect. My mother liked to remind me that she was in a car accident on the way to the hospital when I was born. Foreboding.
I started self injuring young. Chewed my fingernails down to the quick, laced sewing needles through my skin. In my teens I got my hands on razor blades. Nothing was ever said about my scars, I hid them. I can't help to wonder what connection harming myself was recreating the abuse, especially being burned. It is what it is.

After the incidence with the iron skillet I becam I'll. I slept 18 hours a day. I was out of school for three months. My parents said I had mono. Clearly I was depressed. Finally the school called to tell my parents to get me a tutor. He was a godsend . I developed an extremely close relationship with him. Finally, a grown up was taking care of me and being positive and nurturing. We stayed close for two years until he betrayed me and turned me into the Principal at school that I left school property ( to use drugs) as an adult I think he was sick of enabling me, as a sophmore i felt betrayed and I dropped him.

Two weeks before I was slated to return to school, my BFF came to visit. She had moved out of state-a huge loss for both of us-and she was in state for a visit with her father. Well, she had some drugs and we swallowed them up in my bedroom and proceeded to trip for hours. We loved it. From that point on, I was rarely straight. My drug of choice was crystal meth. My grades skyrocketed because I didn't so much hang out with druggies, I liked how well I did in school. Kept this up for two years. When I went to college, I stopped doing all drugs. But that was Massachusetts and they had lowered the drinking age to 18. So I went from drugs to booze. Still I always was at the top of my class. My love affair with alcohol lasted til I was 37. I tried quitting so many times only to pick up when my intrusive memories came a-knocking. I specifically remember saying to myself, if I had to live under these conditions, I don't want to remember it. Yet I knew that I had a brain that needed altering just to feel normal. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.

So there I was sober and all was supposed to be well. But my ex turned into a lazy drunk and I started having anxiety attacks. I went back to work when my children went to school. I never left them with a babysitter and my anxiety and fear always escalated at ages I had been raped. I really struggled with keeping my kids protected.

We lived in our garage while my ex was supposed to be building the house. I lived in that f*cking garage for seven years. No running water, had to use an outhouse. My children were aged just born and two years old. He never helped get me water. I was lugging two five gallon buskers uphill while pregnant. He was so lazy, he started it in 1986 and it's still not done.

So there I was loving my job, sober and looking forward to the gifts of sobriety. I got poisoned at work, lost my career and was deathly ill. Then my marriage dissolved and I had another breakdown. My doctor sent me for a neuropsychologist to see what damage the fumes did to my brain. I got diagnosed with PTSD so my doc sent me to a shrink. Now I enter the world of legal drugs and now I am hooked on Xanax.

It seems like I'm stuck in a loop of altering my mind. I'll tell ya,?the loss of my career devastated me and I had my third breakdown. Justice was not served and the hospital was not held responsible for the contamination despite the fact that OSHA came to investigate. They nailed the hospital for illegally disposing of chemicals and provided proof that the chemicals could cause my lung disease but the Labor department denied my claim. My boss said he wanted to murder me for causing trouble with OSHA.

When I got sick I was divorced and had two kids. So began the turmoil of child support and losing my retirement to pay a lawyer to keep the kids with me. Now my ex has turned them against me. This was the end of my soul. Without my kids I am just going through the paces of life, they are my blood and bone. I am lost without them. They're my exes drinking buddies now and when we have family events like graduations and birthdays, they all get drunk and completely ignore me. How can there be a Universe caring for us when so much tragedy has been dealt to me?
 
Yes, I barter with my Reiki master. Yesterday I wanted to get an emergency session but it didn't work out. I e mailed my therapist and he said I dip my toes into writing and recoil. I've tried working in workbooks but I get super overwhelmed. I've been reading The Body Keeps the Score, but, again, I have to put it down for awhile. I carry the distorted belief that I am being punished by the Universe, but he said I'm punishing myself. That was hard to hear on many levels. Thank you for your concern.
 
Wonderful summer day at the beach with my best friend and some of her extended family. Perfect weather, tolerable water temp-it is Maine after all, but we get really hot and then just dive in. As adults my friend has been through my healing journey with me. You can't find a better person on earth than her. When I'm reliving traumas that take days to recover from, she calls every single day til I feel better. I am lucky to have her as a friend. We'll have lots of days at the beach I'll work on my tan and Wednesday well head to Portsmouth to see my fave Bruce Cockburn. I'm reading his memoir. I'm on page 190 and he's only up to 1980!


He writes about his faith journey. He has a lot to say about God and soul searching. Some of his philosophy is too deep to comprehend but the dude makes wonderful songs. Nice to have nothing to do but play in Nature.
 
Back
Top