Why?

CONTENT WARNING: Descriptions of self harm.

It’s been nearly 10 months since my massive breakdown. Every day I feel the residual effect of it. At some point in the day, I cry. At another point I’m fake smiling, while I talk to a coworker or another mom at a play center. Always, I have an underlying current of weight, its sadness, but it feels so heavy.

This is no longer a sadness of ” oh, poor me, I was abused and neglected,” this is just a sadness of life. Its constant, and almost has no meaning, it’s just me now, it’s just the way I am, it’s as a part of me as my fucking skin is.

I’m sure there is some string that could be snipped and the weight would lift, like a balloon tied to a cinder block, I could float free and weightless, join the ranks of all the happy people. I just have to find it.

The very worst parts of my days are confusing. I want to be alone, I want to just think, I want the quiet house, absent of my husband and children. And when I finally get a home free of noise, I freeze. I sink into total dispare and agony. Over what!? I can’t even tell you, it’s a hellish wave, it washes over me with no control. I feel antsy, I feel helpless, desperate for relief, oh God why? Why is this happening. I need relief. I need it to stop, my heart is racing and I go numb in a place in my brain. I run my hands over the butcher block…to sharp, we dont want real damage, just a little. My hands nimbly search the junk drawer for the 2 multipurpose tools my husband keeps in there… the razor blades of both have been removed. He’s been through this enough to know better. I circle my house in confusion, assessing every item for level of damage I could do to myself, tears streaming, heart pounding, I don’t want this life. I remember the box cutter I hid in my vanity drawer; never used.

There is no pain as I draw the blade against my upper thigh. Nor when I do it again and again. There is a sting and emense relief. I feel my eyes and mind go hazy, I feel my heart slow, I feel my body again. I feel MY body. I’m back in it. Then I feel the external pain on my leg, replacing the internal pain. “I can control you”, I whisper to myself. I’m fully present in my body, no longer confused and crying, no longer disassociated, no longer anything. Blood pours down my leg and I watch in fascination for a bit. Then I clean up.

For the next week, every time I pull my pants down to pee, change, shower….I feel my underwear and pants scraping my cuts. They hurt now. The shame and guilt creep in. This is only a semi recent thing. I used to cut my arms in my early 20s while I was wasted, when nothing mattered. But people notice and people talk. I didn’t cut or self harm for nearly 10 years. A few months ago, while sobbing as I exited the shower, I impulsively picked up a pair of hair cutting scissors and slashed my upper arm. Not deep, not hard, just enough. I sobbed with relief… I felt so good. I felt such a weight lifted. I felt high.

So the next time I felt overwhelmed, I cut my upper thigh with the scissors. Then twice now with the box cutter. Everything has healed and I have talked myself out of doing it when I want to the most.

Last Saturday, as my husband sat down next to me in the morning, with coffee and rambling about our upcoming vacation, I snapped. I had been up with the kids since 5am, I just sat down to write in my journal. I just can’t. I quietly walked to my room, shut the door, got under my covers shaking. Why am I like this? Big, fat tears leaked from my eyes as I imagined drawing that box cutter across my throat. And then I sobbed harder for being weak, and not in control.

I stayed in bed almost all day. I slept and silently cried, while my two children played on the bed next to me, watching TV and eating snacks. While the sun shown and the blue sky mocked me from the bedroom window.

Why am I like this?

Why?

It’s been nearly 10 months since my massive breakdown. Every day I feel the residual effect of it. At some point in the day, I cry. At another point I’m fake smiling, while I talk to a coworker or another mom at a play center. Always, I have an underlying current of weight, its sadness, but it feels so heavy.

This is no longer a sadness of ” oh, poor me, I was abused and neglected,” this is just a sadness of life. Its constant, and almost has no meaning, it’s just me now, it’s just the way I am, it’s as a part of me as my fucking skin is.

I’m sure there is some string that could be snipped and the weight would lift, like a balloon tied to a cinder block, I could float free and weightless, join the ranks of all the happy people. I just have to find it.

The very worst parts of my days are confusing. I want to be alone, I want to just think, I want the quiet house, absent of my husband and children. And when I finally get a home free of noise, I freeze. I sink into total dispare and agony. Over what!? I can’t even tell you, it’s a hellish wave, it washes over me with no control. I feel antsy, I feel helpless, desperate for relief, oh God why? Why is this happening. I need relief. I need it to stop, my heart is racing and I go numb in a place in my brain. I run my hands over the butcher block…to sharp, we dont want real damage, just a little. My hands nimbly search the junk drawer for the 2 multipurpose tools my husband keeps in there… the razor blades of both have been removed. He’s been through this enough to know better. I circle my house in confusion, assessing every item for level of damage I could do to myself, tears streaming, heart pounding, I don’t want this life. I remember the box cutter I hid in my vanity drawer; never used.

There is no pain as I draw the blade against my upper thigh. Nor when I do it again and again. There is a sting and emense relief. I feel my eyes and mind go hazy, I feel my heart slow, I feel my body again. I feel MY body. I’m back in it. Then I feel the external pain on my leg, replacing the internal pain. “I can control you”, I whisper to myself. I’m fully present in my body, no longer confused and crying, no longer disassociated, no longer anything. Blood pours down my leg and I watch in fascination for a bit. Then I clean up.

For the next week, every time I pull my pants down to pee, change, shower….I feel my underwear and pants scraping my cuts. They hurt now. The shame and guilt creep in. This is only a semi recent thing. I used to cut my arms in my early 20s while I was wasted, when nothing mattered. But people notice and people talk. I didn’t cut or self harm for nearly 10 years. A few months ago, while sobbing as I exited the shower, I impulsively picked up a pair of hair cutting scissors and slashed my upper arm. Not deep, not hard, just enough. I sobbed with relief… I felt so good. I felt such a weight lifted. I felt high.

So the next time I felt overwhelmed, I cut my upper thigh with the scissors. Then twice now with the box cutter. Everything has healed and I have talked myself out of doing it when I want to the most.

Last Saturday, as my husband sat down next to me in the morning, with coffee and rambling about our upcoming vacation, I snapped. I had been up with the kids since 5am, I just sat down to write in my journal. I just can’t. I quietly walked to my room, shut the door, got under my covers shaking. Why am I like this? Big, fat tears leaked from my eyes as I imagined drawing that box cutter across my throat. And then I sobbed harder for being weak, and not in control.

I stayed in bed almost all day. I slept and silently cried, while my two children played on the bed next to me, watching TV and eating snacks. While the sun shown and the blue sky mocked me from the bedroom window.

Why am I like this?

Seeing The Gray

I have always thought of my self as a flexible person. I do not know why. I do know most people with CPTSD can be swayed easily by others. We fight with lost identity, never learning how to grow, how to feel, only to survive.

Over this last year of trying to figure myself out, my identity, how to grow, I figured out my thinking is very black and white. Either, or.

I have always been called intense or opinionated. But my opinion usally changes as the discussion evolves. Unless there is clear scientific data on a subject. Then I’m right and you are wrong. Just like that. Not well maybe we are both right, because science is constantly evolving. You are just WRONG!

Same with personalities. This one took me 30 some years to figure out. If I dont like you than I must hate you, because that’s the only other option in my head.

Or with ANY type of instruction. I need every detail, I need to know the RIGHT way…. if you give me the choice, say on making a simple work decision, I freak out. I over think, I think it’s a great idea, but will everyone else? Am I doing it right? This is definitely wrong. Just give me exact instructions!

Or when I get it in my head that I have been wronged, I head down a spiral to that person being the biggest asshole ever, I will NEVER talk to them again. Relationship OVER. But then we talk and every thing is ok. ..now we are the best of friends. But most people would brush things off in the first place. They have learned that a small slight, is probably just taken out of context or not meant in a harmful way. I go ballistic in my head. It is hard for me to relate to other people.

I didn’t realize I had this black and white thinking until I had a recent conversation with my partner. I am trying to explain to him my thought patterns. Why when he says something, my thoughts take to to a totally different place than what he meant. And he’s pretty clear when he speaks or explains something. The pathways of thought in my head go into the yes or no category, then they are further processed into feelings, then meanings, and honestly it’s no where near what my partner meant most of the time. He found this to be sad for me and kinda strange. I told him about my extream thinking processes and how I can’t seem to see the Gray. He looked at me and said “that’s funny, all I see is the gray in things.”

I think the “gray” must be very comforting. Confident, strong and not an intense, opinionated space. My partner never feels the need to explain himself to others, is very comfortable making small talk and bullshit, will not tell people his religious or political views. He always amazes me when I come up with an idea or we are discussing various topics, and he has a compleatly different way of looking at it that I whould NEVER even think of.

I try not to get offended when he tries to show me a new way to do something or a better way to handle a situation. I’m not a fucking baby, I can do it my self… but then his way usally is easier.

A close friend of mine also had a terrible childhood. She is the opposite of me. I’m loud, rude and brash with my words, using humor and cuss words to make people laugh and get attention. She’s quiet. She learned very early to just take care of her self and be quiet. Don’t be noticed. She is another “gray” thinker and we get along so well. She talks me down from my extreams and I explain the seriousness of this very unserious situation. Crisis after crisis happens to her, with family or kids and she always finds a way. I haven’t found my gray yet, but I’m searching hard for it.

Unstable Home(s) part 2

Warning, this post contains violence against children and should not be read by those who are extra sensitive to child abuse.

This is part 2 of 2, so if you have not read part one, please do so.

I was 12, going to miss 7th grade, lose all my friends, again. Isolation and being stuck with a psychopath for a year was very damaging. I was only aloud out of the house once in a while. “What makes you think you can go out every weekend?” My dad yelled at me once. Uh, because I sit at home and do nothing ALL day. My dad convinced my mom we needed a computer for schooling. This was 1997, the internet was new and still jacked into the phone line.

Here is how homeschooling that whole year went; my mom would go to school in the morning and as soon as she left we were sent to our rooms while he did nothing but look at porn and smoke weed. Fuck him. Even typing this makes me feel sick. I remember sitting in my room, knowing what he was doing and feeling revolted.

I was tested by the state to see how dumb I was. Fuck you again. Scored 12 grade graduate level on reading comprehension and science….. but 3rd grad level in math and punctuation. I got to go back to school the next year. But if you think sitting around doing nothing for a year is super great to prepare you for 8th grade, you are WRONG. It’s already awkward, but I was isolated, poor and was NOT popular or pretty. I was a target. I loved school because it wasnt home. But I never did a damn thing. It was all to fast and confusing for me. I looked at boys, I made good friends and had normal drama for an 8th grader. But going home was always the worst. My parents snooped in my room all the time. I came home to all of my Marilyn Manson CDs spread out. My dad screamed about what a sick fuck he was and took them to the garage and broke them with a hammer. I re-bought them all. Friends burned me copies.

And then after a very awkward year of trying to find my tribe, I made a group of best friends. We were all going to highschool together, we were going to have the greatest time!

And then my mom got the call that her father had been diagnosed with cancer. My aunt called my mom, my dad was already pissed. He hated my aunt, how long my mom would talk to her and how loud she would laugh. We only had one corded phone. When my aunt called my mom was silent and then burst into tears. “God-fucking-damnit, now what?” I vividly remember my dad saying. My poor mom.

After she got off the phone, she said the worst 5 things I could have heard. “We are moving to redacted.”

From the PNW to the deep fucking south. At least I whould get one more summer with my friends. Or so I Thought.

That summer, I decided I would lose my virginity to my boyfriend. We had dated the summer between 6th and 7th grade before his mom got transfer to another state. We talked on the phone for the whole year I was “homeschooled” and 8th grade. He was coming home to visit his grandma for the summer. I was dating someone else at the time. . But told him as soon as my real boyfriend is in town, you are out. He took it very well and we stayed friends for a long time.

We had it all planned out. We whould meet at the skating rink and then sneak out the back to fool around. Then I would ask him to take my virginity. But it didnt work that way… my ride for the skating rink was 2 hours late. We didnt have cell phones then. He thought I wasnt coming so by the time I got there he had left. Then a girl I’ll call Sarah, who I went to school with told me she had to tell me something. That my bestfriend, I will call her Beth, slept with him.. 2 days ago. I was devastated. I knew she had no rules at her house and people spent the night all the time, smoking week and drinking. I wasn’t aloud to spend the night, every time I came home I smelled like smoke and my parents hated it. He had even called me that day to let me know he went to her house to party and ended up sleeping over, but NOTHING happened. I was so in love with him and trusting of her, I literally didbt think ANYTHING about this. When Sarah told me this, I died in side. I called Beth, she admitted everything. I never spoke to her again.

I confronted him, he blamed it on the alcohol and weed, I myself had never done either yet, so I believed him when he told me he loved me so much and she meant nothing. A week later an opportunity to escape my home and meet up with him arose. I lost my virginity and it want anything magical. It hurt, I knew he was not a virgin and it kinda was the end of us. I never saw him again. We talked on the phone for years after, and wrote letters, but that magic of “first love” was gone.

I stupidly wrote this in my diary, which unannounced to me, my mom had been reading. I guess if you just pull hard enough, the lock pops open.

My mom was picking me up from the boys and girls club, on our bikes as usual. She was seething. I knew I was fucked. She told me she red my diary and I was grounded for a year. A YEAR!!!!! My whole last summer with my friends GONE! Now I was trapped at home, subject to outbursts from my extreamly stressed out mother (I didn’t consider her struggle of her father’s cancer, us moving, my psycho dad, and her out of control daughter)

My dad, surprisingly, had nothing to say about it. He did not ask a single question, or ever mention it to me.

Everywhere we went for the next few months, before moving to hell, I had to be right next to my mom. Even when we were at an event and i saw my friends. I couldn’t talk to them.

We packed and shipped all of our things to my aunt who put it in storage for us… the storage unit was not temp controlled and the south is hot, so a ton of things got ruined. Had I known this I would have saved my parents the money and thrown the stuff away.

Finally, the week before we moved my mom let a small group of friends come over to say good buy.

The night before we moved I considered running away, fucking up the whole moving plan. But I chickened out.

So we moved. Again. This time 3000 miles away from our Blue libral state, to a Red Conservative, bible belt state. The heat and culture shock were immediate.

We stayed in a tent by the week motel until our apartment was ready. It was one room and had a partition separating the queen bed room the rest of the place. Zero privacy. I cried for that whole week.

Then we moved…again… to our appartment. It was the 1st 3 bedroom we ever lived in. It was fancy to us. My mom had graduated college and was making decent money. We could shop at the regular department store, instead of the thrift shop, the only place I got clothes from for 14 years. We could ask for outlandish food, like hot pockets and toaster strudels, because we were no longer on food stamps, and we has some extra cash.

We were in a gigantic apartment complex, with 2 pools and a work out center. Something I has never seen in my hometown. I was new, I was immediately a target. I was also still grounded for a year, so I couldn’t make friends anyway. And to make matters worse, I failed 8th grade and had to repeat it instead of starting high school.

Things at home were a little different. My mom told my dad no drugs. She made him get a job and give all of his money to her. She socked that money away, and secretly bought a house with it.

She sat my brother and I down at the table and told us she bought a house, did we want our dad to come with us? Or were we ready to leave him. I had been ready from day one. My dad had a different relationship with my dad, because he was a boy. But even then we were all done. We told her everything he had ever done to us that she didnt know about. The things he lied about and how much we loved him, but couldn’t live with him any more. And that was that. We moved again. We pack our belongings while he sobbed that no one loved him, he couldn’t believe we chose this. Really dude? You are a monster.

The first night in our new home, with all of my moms friends from work helping her move, felt magical. Like a blackness had been removed. It felt right.

*After note. I left out one move in the 1st post. It was only for 2 months while we lived in extream poverty and my mom had to borrow food stamps from a friend at work. It was just terrible. If you were keeping count I was moved 13 times by age 14. This created a terrible sence of impermanence, and instability. I didnt know the background damage it was doing and how it would affect me as an adult. Moving causes extream anxiety and panic for me. I what my kids to have stability and feel secure. I will probably elaborate on this more in another post. But I’m honestly emotionally spent after these two posts. I feel like sobbing and taking a nap, but I have to Mom Up and take care of my kids.

Thank you for reading, please like, or comment with feed back so I know this isnt just going into the void ♡

Unstable Home(s), My 1st Years of Life. Part 1

Warning, this post contains violence against children and should not be read by those who are extra sensitive to child abuse.

I had to break this post into 2 parts. I wrote all of it in one day, before work, between meetings, in stairwells, and elevators. It honestly ripped a little piece of me up. But this is the point of the blog. To tell the untold stories. And for some one to read them and feel that they are not alone.

I was born into a violent home, to a very young mother and a father who already had a sordid past. He had 1 child with an ex he never spoke to again and a small criminal record. He didnt graduate highschool and could never hold down a job for more than a few weeks. He primary sold drugs to bring in income.

The 1st house I remember was the shack I talked about in a previous post. The one one where I learned to fear my father. This is the house my brother was born into. He didnt know what was in store for him yet, he was just a baby. I already learned a few things at age 3, to protect myself.

I remember having a garden at that house and a large BlackBerry brush that seemed to reach the sky. I often ran around barefoot, bee stings being a constant in my young life.

But then something happened and we moved. We moved to a small appartment on the coast. I remember being put in the bedroom. With my not yet walking brother for hours at a time, while my mom worked and my dad did and sold drugs. And then we moved.

We moved to a small basement appartment, it was in town, so it was easy to walk every where. My mom didn’t drive and when we did have a car, some piece of shit that always broke down, my dad would never drive us anywhere. So we walked. To the grocery store, the library, the laundromat; carrying heavy loads was a burden I learned young. I was 4 in this house and was becoming more aware of things that were “off”

This is when I learned another vital life lesson. On one rare occasion my parents were doing something with friends. The only friends they had, my dads best friend, who despite being a total coke head ran his own business, got married had a beautiful house and kids. Another woman was watching us, I do not remember anything about her but her long, curly hair and long flowing skirt. The little kids were napping and I was on the front porch with her. She was sitting in a chair, while I grabbed the banister holding up the porch roof and began to spin around it. “My dad hits me all over” I said as I spun around. “What do you mean he hits you all over?” She asked. “He grabs me by my hair and hits me all over.” This had happened just days before. I was being yelled at for something and I started twirling my long hair out of nervousness. Suddenly my dad gripped my by my hair and began beating meeverywhere, for not listening. She didnt say another word about it and continued to let me play.

When my mom arrived to take us home, the woman pulled her aside, I heard hushed whispers.

The whole walk home, my mom clenched my hand tight, and kept asking “what did you say to her!?”

When I got home I was sat in a chair and interrogated, for hours, like a criminal. I wasn’t even sure what I did… I was confused and very scared. “I will never forgive you for this” my mother hissed at me.

That’s when I learned the vital life lesson of keeping secrets. If you tell you will pay dearly.

We moved again. Into a tiny house in front of the railroad tracks. There was a large parking lot in front of our house, I dont know why, but it’s where I learned to ride my bike. It’s also where my brother and I were left alone for hours on end, while he went on “bike rides.” Neglect can be as bad as abuse. We were 4/5 and 1/2. Anything could have happened. We had NO neighbors. A mexican restaurant was to our left and the road was to our right. I would have en terrified to leave anyways even if something did happened. We didn’t even have a phone. These were the times my brother and I made up elaborate games. We whould take all the food out of the pantry, put it on the “kitchen” table (it was just one room with 2 bedrooms and a bathroon), then we whould put a paper shopping bag on a chair and scoot it around like we were grocery shopping. We played games where I was the mother and he was the baby. I dressed him in my dresses. I cut our hair with safety scissors. But sometimes we fought and hurt eachother….And there was no one around to help us, or tell us to stop, or calm us. If we fought like the way we did when my dad was home, we would be beaten. So we tried hard not to when he was there.

Once, when drug dad was passed out, we came up with a game to climb on the end table and dive off onto the fold out couch. Over and over like we were flying. I guess our laughter woke him up, became he came out of the bed room whipping his belt off (the sound of a belt buckle clanging, still triggers painful memories for me) He whippped the shit out of us, and more when he found out we broke the pull out. And then the endless tirade of his yelling began. I was so scared I couldn’t even cry. I just grabbed a puzzle box and held it close to me. “Dont think I wont punch right through that puzzle box and break your fucking face.” This is the house I started having vivid nightmares about a wolf in my room, I would wake up screaming, pissing the bed (bed=blankets on the floor)

We moved again, to a town house in the slums of our town. I was 5 and should have been in school, but my mom worked and there was no way my dad was going to go out of his way to get me to school. This town house was right next to another, low income slum, which housed a ton of kids. We ran rampant through the complex, making up games and playing until dark. But the dark was inside my home as well, even in the day time. These were the times I remember my dad being passed out, and sadly watching my mom get ready for work, trying to feed myself and my younger brother, and getting beaten for making noise. Once when my mother was leaving for the evening shift, she showed my which number to turn the dial on the T.V. to watch GEM, my favorite show. But when it was time, the clicking noise woke up by drug passed out dad and he screamed at me to stop touching the T.V. I was crushed, I watched antiques roadshow for a while and then just went to my room. Once when I came bounding down the stairs after waking up, I saw that my brother was bundled up from a walk with our dad, he was eating a gigantic chocolate chip cookie. My lip involuntary pouted, and tears sprung to my eyes. Where was my cookie? That’s all it took to set my dad off. The yelling began and we all ran up to my room I shared with my brother to hide. My brother broke his cookie in half and gave it to me. We were both crying. My mom was frustrated with my hair trigger emotions and admonished me for crying. My dad was set off all day. We just stayed in our room. Once in the town house, I was playing in the bathtub, squatting to play with my toys on the edge of the tub. I slipped and cracked my chin open. Was I comforted? No, I was yelled at for doing something stupid. I was yanked out of the tub and as my mother had me, my dad looked to see if it split to the bone. It had not, I was told by him how lucky I was that we didnt have to go to the hospital for stitches. My mom held a towel to my face and stoked my hair.

We moved… again. With each move was a panic to get out. Either the rent had been raised or my dads extream paranoia were the cuses. We always had to throw out or leave a ton of stuff. That’s why I freak out so badly if my partner now tosses things with out me knowing. I just need to be sure I wont lose something important again.

This time we moved to a 4 unit apartment. The ally behind us butted up against the back fences of the houses on the next street over. The house closest to us had 5 kids and always room for more. This became my refuge. My best friend was smack in the middle with 2 older siblings and 2 younger siblings. I spent a lot of time with them. I even went to church on sundays and large family events with them. I think they knew something was up in my house, but this was 1989. No one did anything back then. I still didnt go to school, I think my parents were half trying to hide the abuse and half just didn’t want to deal with other people. I was home schooled from a bunch mail ordered, Christian homeschool books. But my mom worked and my dad had no interest in anything but getting high and playing video games. But when my mom realized she could not teach me to read, the sent me to public school. I went halfway thru the school year and immediately attached myself to a tall blond girl who was the complete opposite of me. Only child, divorced parents, had a dog, big personality. This was thefirst, but not last time, I learned to mimic others. I learned to read, I excelled in school. It was only 1st grade, but I LOVED school. I didnt have to be at home. I walked to the bus stop to and from school alone. At age 6. That seems insane to me now, but was pretty commen in the early 90s. A month after I started school I turned 7. My mom bought a bag of cookies and said there were enough in the bag for each kid in my class to have. There were not, the teacher was upset, accused me of lying and had to get animal crackers out for the kids who didn’t get cookies. Guilt and shame washed over me as I held back tears… my mom said there was enough.

My dad practiced martial arts and had sticks, nunchucks, metal retractable batons and a sword concealed in cain. On one particularly bad fight, my dad grabedcon off the sticks and beat my mom black and blue. I screamed at him to stop. The next day my mom took us to the park, down to one of the public bbq areas and burned all of his martial arts shit. Then she packed us up and took us to a womens shelter. He had beaten her many times before, but never with an actual weapon. My brother and I Loved the shelter! There was a gigantic playroom, and we were the only ones there! We never wanted to go back home..but we did.

My time line is fuzzy on the 2nd time we went to the shelter. My mom worked nights and we couldn’t be at the shelter alone, which meant we had to stay the night at peoples house who volunteered to take shelter kids in. The 1st woman… was abusive to us. She wouldn’t let me use the bathroom in the middle of the night and screamed at me for crying. Threatening me if I peed the bed. I was petrafied. I told my mom. We didnt go back to her. The next night we stayed with a young, childless couple who were incredibly gentle. They had lots of rabbits and let us play with them. Then we went back home.. again. To the lies and promises a master manipulator makes.

We moved again, this time to an 8 unit apartment, in a new school district. By this time I was used to moving, but it still hurt. I had to leave friends this time. I also had a hard time concentrating at school because my home life was so bad, again early 90s, no one thought to ask if you were being abused at home. My 2nd grade teacher didnt like me at all. When a new teacher started at the school, she handed me and 2 other kids slips of paper saying we were being transferred to her class. I walked out to recess and cried. I loved my class, even if my teacher didnt hide her disdain for me. I didnt last at that school for more than 2 months before my parents pulled me and put me back at my original school. It was a 30min bike ride to school every morning, but one of my parents took me and picked me up. I remained in that school until 4th grade. But school is another post entirety. My mom and I frequently rode our bikes to the grocery store, with backpacks on. We would fill our back packs with what we could carry and bike home. We did have a car at this time, but there was no way my dad was giving us a ride. When we got out of the store, it was raining pretty hard, so my mom used a payphone to call my dad for a ride. All I heard was my mother moaning “no, noooo, oh my God no” she started sobbing, she said my little brother picked up the phone and all she could hear after he said “hello” was a bunch of snacking sounds and him screaming. She called her husband for a ride home in the rain and overheard her 3 year old being beaten. She felt so guilty. She cried all the way home, in the rain. When we got home my brother was cowering in our room, my dad was on one of his endless, fucking tirades, and he had beaten my brother so bad he peed his pants. I have a 3 year old now. This is really hard for me to recount. I could NEVER imagine this happening to my child. Of course the rest of the day was ruined.

Soon we moved again. Back into my school district. This was a 12 unit 3 story building. We were in a basement apartment facing the parking lot. One day I came home to find my parents upset. My dads only friend committed suicide. My mom read the article in the paper to me, both of us crying. I knew the guy my whole 8 years of life and he never spoke an I’ll word to me. The last time he showed up at our door, his wife was divorcing him and he was do fucked up my dad turned him away.

This was in another neighborhood FULL of kids. We all ran the streets, picked up bottles to turn in for change and buy penny candy at the cornerstore. It was nice to have a place to escape home, but this is the year I started having bad anxiety and panic attacks. I didn’t know what it was back then, but now that I’m an adult I can identify them. They whould happened randomly to the point of me vomiting. My parents thought it was low blood sugar. Things at school only got worse. I was tested to see if I was slow. Fuckers, I had top scores in everything except math and punctuation. So I got labeled as being lazy.

Where I grew up it rained a lot. Once it just wouldn’t stop. We lived right near a creek and a river. My paranoid dad made us start packing everything we could and a neighbor on the 3rd floor said we could bring it all up to her spare room. Good thing because the plumbing started backing up. Our appartment flooded to the point of water rushing out the front windows.

Guess what? We had to fucking move again. And this was the last move we made in this state. We moved to a shitty house on a dirt road. No central heating just a single gas heater in a very inconvenient place in the house. The walls were always wet and moldy. My mom decided she would go to college and my dad decided he would make it as hard as possible for her to do so. That was a bad time. We spent the summer in another state with my aunt. My mom was never going to go back. I got my 1st period that summer and was mortified. When we went back home I had my own room. My parents gave up their room so I could have privacy. The slept on a futon in the living room. I was turning into a teenager and spent a ton of time alone in my room, away from my dads monstrous fury. I was yelled at and beaten constantly. My dad hated women, and I was becoming one, so he hated me more.

Then I failed 6th grade. I could never understand what was going in in school. My dad decided both my brother and I would behomeschooled, by him. This was my worst nightmare.

This is where I will end this half of the post. It took a lot out of me to get all of this out. I usally just have a flash back of a specific event and dont think about things chronologically like this.

Thank you for reading ♡ please like or leave a comment so I know this isnt just going into the void.

Touch

I have a bit of a control problem. More like a self control problem. Because I had zero control growing up, about anything, I’m over controlling now. Especially about my body.

As far as I know I was never sexually abused as a child. But I was beaten constantly, for very small infractions. Like waking my drug passed out dad up, while trying to get food from the kitchen for my brother and I.

Being yanked, hit, held upside down, held by my hair, being forced over something to be hit, pushed to the ground. All while being screamed at for what a worthless piece of shit I was. I had no control.

Being touched is a vital thing for some people, I feel instantly trapped. Overwhelmed. My partner is a foot taller and much larger than me. He loves being touched and held. But I do not. It causes my chest to tighten and my heart to race, I feel panic rise and yell “I’m not in the mood for this!” His feelings are hurt alot and I honestly have no idea how he deals with it. When I asked him recently, he said he was used to my rejection by now. Trying to explain to some one with no childhood or any truama at all, that it’s me not you… sounds bad. And he dosen’t understand.

The biggest issue surround this is I did not always feel this way. Only since my truamas have started resurfacing, the last year or so. We used to be VERY snuggly and affectionate.

Another thing that changed it was having kids… I’m touched out. They need me to hold them and snuggle them, to grow. I feel unthreatened by them, and its esier for me to deal with. To be clear I DO NOT feel threatened by my husband at all. Hes just a big guy, a man.. and a man is the one who hurt me so much as a child that my body reacts with out my consent to get away.

This is painful for our marriage, as you can imagine sex is especially difficult. I often disassociate and feel numb. I can not control this and it just makes me want to avoid it all together. But being in a sexless marrage is torture to the one who wants to bond. So I really have to prepare myself. It sounds ridiculous, but if you have ever been abused, I’m sure some of you know what I mean.

Really, I wish I was just normal. Regular household and financial stress like everyone else. But I have a dark cloud over me that is constantly raining down shit.

8 Months Ago

Every year around June and July I have a mini mental break down. It usally starts with an argument with my partner, something so dumb it’s not even worth fighting about. But it’s the miscommunication that breaks me. Hes not understanding what I’m saying, I cant process what he is saying. We get stuck in a loop and my brain shuts down all rational thinking. The fight we had this time triggered something so Furious in me. I broke. I ended up screaming at him that we need tharapy and I was not setting it up! I take meds, I have been to therapists, I read books to help me cope. He needs to do something!

I started sobbing, shut my self in my daughters room with her. I hid between her bed and bookshelf in the same position for or over an hour. Every bit of me hurt as I sobbed silently so she wouldn’t hear me over the show she was watching.

When I finally calmed down enough to extract myself from between the furniture, I hurt all over. I felt numb. As I passed my partner on the way to the livingroom, he said ” hey, I found a counselor.” I ignored him to go crawl in my bed.

I was messing around on the internet that night and ran into something called the ACE score. Advers Childhood Events, scored from 1 to 10. 1 being the lowest score and least likelyhood of childhood Truama. 10.. how are you even alive and functioning, you are fucked.

The correlation of numbers higher than 4 and depression, suiside, mental illness, homelessness, drug addiction, incarsaration and a whole host of physical ailments are astonishing! The way the ACE score was discovered and developed is amazing and I encourage you to read about it. I will post a link.

I’m getting ahead of myself here. I scored an 8. Anything over a 4 is the danger zone. I researched what this meant for me, and if I didnt have the love of my mother and a supportive, non traumatized partner, I would be fucked. It led me down the internet rabbit whole and I found a diagnosis for people like me. Complex PTSD or C-PTSD. Its is a result of long term abuse and neglect. Children from violent, unstable homes like mine & sex trafficking victims are the most likely to have it. It has been submitted to the DSM multiple times and rejected for various reasons. It has a separate ICD-9 code from PTSD for insurance billing but gets rejected a lot. It’s not taken seriously in the US, other countries recognize it as a disorder and treat people for it.

I immediately bought and read

“The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma” by Bessel van der Kolk.

It changed my life. I felt like I was reading ME. Why I react to things the way I do, why I think the way I do, why my brain cant process information like other, because the abuse and neglect rewired my developing brain in to survival mode, instead of learning to be a kid.

I sobbed through the whole book. Infact I have read it again with a clear mind. My take away from this book was, I’m not fucked up or alone, im Trumatized. And if you are not you have a very hard time understanding those who are.I bought another book “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma” by Pete Walker. He states in the intro to look at the table of contents and flip to the section you need most. He himself is a survivor of child abuse and neglect. He, like myself, is breaking the chain of abuse by being gentle with our own children. Again, I cried reading this book. It states your truama types and I fit the flight description to a T.I bought another book “The Complex PTSD Workbook: A Mind-Body Approach to Regaining Emotional Control and Becoming Whole” by Arielle Scwartz, PhD. This one has taken me the longest to start… its grueling to dig into yourself and try to figure things out. They wouldn’t hand a book to someone suffering from a conventional disease and tell them to read it and try to heal them selves.Reading Body Keeps the the score made me realize most of my psychological disorders were preventable. The abuse and neglect rewired my brain, as I mentioned above, in to survival. It was preventable…this made me so sad that I cried for days. I felt detached,disconnected, floating almost. I went to work and cried during my lunch break. My parents came over every night with dinner. I couldn’t move, I was locked into some sort of self relization/pity I couldn’t get out of. This is not my fault, but I have to deal with it. I cant be a psycho around my kids. I dont want them in therapy because of me. For the most part they are totally normal and very well taken care of.

I went into a slight catatonia… I just could respond, connect or react to anything. I could go to work and fake it, but as soon as I got in my car I shut down, tears streaming down my face, as memories flooded me and I felt 3 again, 5 again, 8 again. And no way to stop it.

My partner booked us an appointment for couples counseling. She asked us each to explain why we were there. My partner went first, explaining the difficulty he was having with me and my basically shut down functioning. I started talking, 5 min in she held up her hand and said, “Whoa there, have you ever been to a psychiatrist?” I said no. She said “Something is going on and in order to treat you correctly I need you to get a doagnosis.” She referred me to two highly recommended psychiatrists. When I called to make an appointment, neither took insurance and the initial intake was $300, the $170 per visit after that…. no wonder people dont get the good kind of care they need.

I ended up going to one on my insurance plan. I read the reviews on line and almost cancelled immediately. But then I read the reviews about the psychiatrist I whould be seeing and I felt better.

The office was horrible. Red carpet, very calming…. damp smelling. Full of people muttering to them selves.

I finally went back and had some small talk, told her I was in mental anguish. She asked me a series of questions and took notes, I was terrified. She told me I had PTSD and the knot in my chest faded. I have been diagnosed with Panic Disorder, depression, anxiety, adhd, bipolar and OCD. But I didnt have enough symptoms to actually fit most of those diagnoses. Nothing is wrong with these diagnoses, they just aren’t mine. I do have depression and anxiety and a panic attack once in a while. And PTSD. But I will always refer to is as C-PTSD.

Now that I know my diagnosis and have an answer I can work on it. But my condition creates a lot of barriers to help. I have anxiety around setting up appointments. I worry I will waste time and money looking for the right therapist. So I just suffer.

Every day I feel like I’m stuck in a loop. I wake up, get ready for work, get my son ready for day care. Drop him off, go to work, pick him up, go home and sit on the couch. My partner works until 11pm, so I’m solo parenting most of the time. I feed my kids total garbage because I cant cook a meal right now. We lay in my bed watching cartoons until we all pass out and my partner puts them in their beds. My kids sleep pretty bad so I’m always getting up with one of them. I feel trapped. I feel like I cant be touched. My marriage is suffering, my kids are not being cared for the way I wish I could. I want to take them to the beach or park. But I just cant right now. And I’m still stuck wondering when this will end.

Got Your ACE Score?

Right Now

I’m in my 8th month of real depression. I can feel it in my chest, my brain lies to me and tells me life isnt worth it. You can see it in my face. I dont talk as much. I’m lonely, but dont want company… but I do. I just dont want anyone to see me like this. I have had multiple breakdowns of spiraling out of control in my heal, leading to sobbing, confusion and self harm. I cant keep up, but I’m still going.

I started keeping a journal in January, I wrote my suiside not in it.

I told my partner I fantasized about jumping from one of the largest bridges in the area. He suggested I might want to call the suiside hotline, just to talk.

I posted an article facebook about depression and how it takes every thing from you.

“Unlike suicide, depression operates ceaselessly at a low hum. A suicide is a loud clap that ripples through disconnected lives: it is known and felt instantly. But the slip into isolation before suicide, into the murk of the disease, rarely gets so much notice. We like to discuss the black, but not the fade. Subsequently, it’s hard for friends to know how to interact emotionally with depression, and especially as it spans such a longer period of time”

Lots of people messaged me. Telling me how depressed they are, or that they are here for me when I need them. But I still cant call for help. I mostly resort to sitting on my special spot on the couch, surrounded by the things I love. My journaling stuff. Some half finish craft I started in a burst of rare energy. A book I cant concentrate on… my cat. My kids. I have 2 and they are young, but know mama isnt ok. Something is broken in her brain.

I dont like who I am right now, i know this isnt me. I do not even recognize myself in the mirror some times. Who is that tired, sad looking woman?

I work full time, pay bills if I remember, grocery shop online because fuck going into a store. I want to be alone, but when I am, it gets scary. I used to have plans with friends, projects to joyously start pr work on. Now I just feel nothing but overwhelming dispare.

I know it will end, jut when is the question driving me crazy.

Here is the link to the article about depression I quoated.

https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/4x4xjj/depression-steals-your-soul-and-then-it-takes-your-friends?utm_source=vicefbuk&fbclid=IwAR0jbo6FFYWYMG_AK_eq5yw7xEic1o5-kEk_nVkSJSkeRJwbmmQSYWna_z0

My next post will be about when this Furious Season began.

Fear

For as far back as I can remember, I have been afraid. My earliest memories, I’m still wearing diapers. I remember sitting in my highchair as my dad (which I usally just refer to him as his first name now) slammed a bowl of oatmeal in front of me. I told him I pooped and he said I could sit in it. Something as basic as a diaper change was a thing to be in trouble for.

My parents lived in poverty, as my dad refused to work and my poor mother, pregnant with my brother, was forced to work minimum wage jobs to try to make ends meet. We did not have a car and I whould refer to our living conditions as squalor.

They also didnt have a bed. They slept on the floor in the living room of our shack and I slept on the couch. Once I peeked over the couch and saw my dads eyes were open, I was happy and rolled off the couch to cuddle him. I guess I landed on him wrong, he sprung from the floor, picking me up by my feet and beat me for waking him up. Then the endless tirade of him yelling at my mother and I all day began. I snuggled up close to my mother. She was crying and telling me she was sorry. She held my little feet in one hand and her her other arm drew me close.

I didnt know yet that my life would be a nightmare, that my mother was terrified but trapped. These are just my earliest memories, confirmed by her when I recounted them. I was 2. People say you cant remember that far back, but I think when bad thing happened, they get cemented in the brain.

Lessons learned as a child, dont tell your dad you need a diaper change, just sit in it. Never expect a snuggle when you see him awake. I learned fear as my 1st lifes lesson.

A Furious Season

The name came to me today on my lunch break. I usually have small, predictable breakdowns at the same time each year. A season of unrelenting disparity, a season of sadness, a season of hopelessness, a season of furiousness that this wont end. And by This, I mean my cycles of depression, feeling suicidal, and sheer joy and happiness. When will I just have a Happy, Joyful season?