Hi all. I've never thought about finding a place to talk about any of this. Kind of a cool idea.
I'm a long-term sufferer of PTSD stemming from my teen years. My mom died in 1975 when I was 14 of cancer - she'd been sick for several year. I was the youngest and no one ever told me anything - I just watched her wither and die without any real explanation. Came home from school one day and she was gone. Literally. Gone to the hospital, dead. Wham.
That was bookended by a bunch of other traumas. Our dog that we'd had since I was 3 died a few months before my mom. We sat around and had a meeting about it - should we put the dog down? I felt like it was a dress rehearsal for my mom but of course didn't say that. Then the cat got hit by a car. Mom died in September. On Christmas Eve, we found my personal cat dying in the garage - he'd gotten into some antifreeze somewhere. He died at the vet's on Christmas day.
That spring, my horse got out of the pasture in the middle of the night and got into the road. Black horse on a black night. He was hit by a car. Didn't kill him. My brother found him trying to crawl up the hill to get back home. He had 2 broken legs and horrible injuries. I wasn't home but when I got there the next day, there was a big blood stain right where I stood to wait for the school bus. Forty years later, I still see it every time I pass that way.
That fall, my 7-month-old filly broke her leg in the pasture. Had to be put down. My day had a new girlfriend by then and he left me home while they went to her family's place for Christmas. I stayed with my older sister and on Christmas night, I was raped on her sofa by a friend of her husband's. Three months later, I woke up in the middle of the night having a miscarriage.
It was the year and a half from hell. It felt like a country song. What more can die? I felt like a curse on everything I cared about. No one knew what I felt because I kept it all inside but I acted out, did drugs, lived dangerously, drank too much and never let anyone get close to me.
I was diagnosed in the 1990's but never really got any significant treatment besides band-aids. I don't even know if any kind of successful treatment is an option at this point. My life is pretty good. I have a husband I love, 3 kids, grandkids, cats, horses. But it never fully goes away. Lately my little black horse keeps intruding into my thoughts. I see him a lot. Think about him. Feel guilty because I didn't somehow save him.
It's funny how it's my horse more than anything else that haunts me. Not my mom, not the rape, not the miscarriage. My horse.
Sorry, too long. That's my intro. That's who I am. I feel like I've always been defined by that year and a half and that there's a sharp divide between my life before and my life after. And I don't even know what I want. I don't want to forget. But I don't want remembering to feel like this.
I'm a long-term sufferer of PTSD stemming from my teen years. My mom died in 1975 when I was 14 of cancer - she'd been sick for several year. I was the youngest and no one ever told me anything - I just watched her wither and die without any real explanation. Came home from school one day and she was gone. Literally. Gone to the hospital, dead. Wham.
That was bookended by a bunch of other traumas. Our dog that we'd had since I was 3 died a few months before my mom. We sat around and had a meeting about it - should we put the dog down? I felt like it was a dress rehearsal for my mom but of course didn't say that. Then the cat got hit by a car. Mom died in September. On Christmas Eve, we found my personal cat dying in the garage - he'd gotten into some antifreeze somewhere. He died at the vet's on Christmas day.
That spring, my horse got out of the pasture in the middle of the night and got into the road. Black horse on a black night. He was hit by a car. Didn't kill him. My brother found him trying to crawl up the hill to get back home. He had 2 broken legs and horrible injuries. I wasn't home but when I got there the next day, there was a big blood stain right where I stood to wait for the school bus. Forty years later, I still see it every time I pass that way.
That fall, my 7-month-old filly broke her leg in the pasture. Had to be put down. My day had a new girlfriend by then and he left me home while they went to her family's place for Christmas. I stayed with my older sister and on Christmas night, I was raped on her sofa by a friend of her husband's. Three months later, I woke up in the middle of the night having a miscarriage.
It was the year and a half from hell. It felt like a country song. What more can die? I felt like a curse on everything I cared about. No one knew what I felt because I kept it all inside but I acted out, did drugs, lived dangerously, drank too much and never let anyone get close to me.
I was diagnosed in the 1990's but never really got any significant treatment besides band-aids. I don't even know if any kind of successful treatment is an option at this point. My life is pretty good. I have a husband I love, 3 kids, grandkids, cats, horses. But it never fully goes away. Lately my little black horse keeps intruding into my thoughts. I see him a lot. Think about him. Feel guilty because I didn't somehow save him.
It's funny how it's my horse more than anything else that haunts me. Not my mom, not the rape, not the miscarriage. My horse.
Sorry, too long. That's my intro. That's who I am. I feel like I've always been defined by that year and a half and that there's a sharp divide between my life before and my life after. And I don't even know what I want. I don't want to forget. But I don't want remembering to feel like this.
