C-PTSD

Two weeks of reprieve, sleep coming every night even after waking to use the bathroom, then bam, needing medication two nights in a row.

Is it something within my ability to change?

Worry about being an insensitive friend because Nancy had mentioned in her long email that her kidney needed another operation. Walking too much hurt, but I’d read the email only soaking in the major parts and missed it. That happens a lot with my brain hip-hopping around like it does. Thinking a happy email might be helpful, it included my love of walking in the meadow.

But a few days later my mind began swirling in the night thinking about it, going back to re-read it the voice of mother boomed, “YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF!”

That was one of her ways of grooming me into silence so I would not speak of what her sons had done. Abusers aren’t the only groomers, families are excellent groomers too. No sleep for two nights, I’d made an unforgiveable error.

But after apologizing via email about my insensitivity, she writes back happily sharing her travels with family at a B & B. Her medical issues and emotional state did not keep her from fun things with not a thought about anything I said.  

But it agonized me. Going through what she is dealing with would terrorize me. Terror even of Samuel’s hip replacement, causing me to stay close to home not wanting to be with anybody, needing time to collect enough courage to face the entire next day in a hospital.

This thing I do, worrying about not being good enough, doing bad. How does one change that? Can it be healed?

It has to be managed, lived with. It became part of my personality at age 8, all alone, raped, and having to deal it on tiny shoulders, with more traumas to survive for the next several years.

It is a silent ravaging disease, anxiety, C-PTSD, low self-esteem, and so much more. Not many understand, comprehend, or want to, surely not enough to keep them up at night.

My soul shatters, comes together, then shatters again,

and oh so quietly nobody hears, sees, or knows.

A FRIEND?

My friend’s remark last week (with friends like that, who needs enemies?) erased a lifetime of work in her one-liner, you are back to square one. Six little words set me off my rails doubting everything about myself.

It wouldn’t help to tell her what an airhead she is. But it does call for my internal depths to deepen and grow. There’s no making someone understand who cannot.

To ease the pain lingering from her shallowness, and to understand myself better, a letter that won’t be sent, or maybe will be. The risk of letting myself be known is losing this ‘friend,’ because it already came close this time once again. Let it go, or work on tolerance, acceptance, and forgiveness? To not speak up when someone puts a boot in my face is not healthy.

Though I’m able to forgive your blithe remark, I won’t forget it. To look down on me without knowing the ramifications of my childhood and erase a lifetime of working at keeping myself alive?

Because yes, it has been that hard. In one short sentence you delete lifelong work. It tore me up, not because I believe it, but because you believe it. That after all these years you don’t know me or want to. And that’s OK, how could you? But to take a quick peek and dictate such a thing?

And interestingly, the answer I sought wasn’t forthcoming. You had said out of the blue recently that you were glad I was learning to love myself. My curiosity was in response to your blunt sentiments, entering a space you hadn’t been asked to join.

I regret asking. Boom, what seemed like a positive observance from you replaced with unsolicited advice that had nothing to do with my question.

You don’t know what a destroyed nervous system is like. Adrenaline pumping through my veins daily, cortisol bursts draining precious resources. My body, psyche, emotional being, and mind, all tired from a life of it. Daily occurrences that don’t make others jump with terror, terrorized me. Because all people became dangerous from what was learned in childhood.

We have sold the camper, giving up something loved. The possibility of going to Cory’s again is probably too much for me take on again. I cannot fly around the country like you do or drive anywhere long distances without my body being upset for days.

I need to stay home, and accept it, because I love the land, and being here. I am happy. I am mostly at peace, though little changes in routine upset my tired-out body. No, you cannot see my scars, but they are there, and they are life-long growing more challenging as I age.

Even Christmas with Shane made for a fitful night of sleep waking at 1:30AM and staying awake all day yesterday feeling teary and tired. I have a lot of days like that due to my sleep issues from Chronic PTSD, spilling over from what happened at age 8, terror so deep my body 60 years later still protects me from remembering, though I do know a rape occurred. I remember everything else which is bad enough.  

I believe a hidden agenda in such a grievous remark compounded with a lack of knowing your own motives was behind it. But it came out anyway sword-like. I never became accustomed to your barbs couched in syrup drawing blood over the years, but this one so trite in black and white I won’t forget.   

I write in the hopes you might see a miniscule fraction of what my life is like and stop quick judgments. The respect I deserve is sadly lacking. It is enough that I know.  

Patricia

Is this a friend to keep or not? That question has occurred many times, once almost ending it, but she stuck by loyally and loyalty is most valuable to me. To end it would also mean ending the monthly group of 5. What would remain is Samuel and my forest friends. It is as Samuel said once, “You don’t stop picking berries because of the thorns.” Well, actually I have.

INFERIOR COURT OVERTURNS ROE vs WADE

Anita Hill, Thomas’s victim of gross sexual misconduct, yet still robing up on the inferior court since then and plowing away with more evil.

Kavanaugh’s victim. If it wasn’t for the bathing suit under her clothing he would have raped her, if not killing her first due to his hand over her mouth making her feel like she might die. (just like me)

______________________________________________________________________

The INFERIOR COURT, led by Thomas the pervert, and Kavanaugh the attempted rapist and almost murderer, hand down judgments against the majority of what Americans want. What they want is to do evil and control others.

The ex-twice impeached president, like a stale fart excreted in a room, left behind his evil-doers to do more, taking away a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body.

AND making it legal to carry concealed weapons. More death, and babies being born to women who don’t want them nor can afford them. Would these criminals in justice robes like it if we put black hoods over our heads like the Afghan men require of women? My guess is yes.

CHRISTMAS PARTY

The winds howled and trying to sleep was of no use without a sleep aid, though later the next day when asked, my friends all replied that, yes, they slept great as if the wind sounds comforted them.

No, not me. That feeling of being so different sunk in deep once again along with the knowledge that the challenges faced daily are colossally more than they can ever understand. Yes, a solid group of friends, but the one who became the closest passed away several years ago. The privilege of knowing her, the best friend of my life, lasted only 5 years.

But it gave me a gift of knowing that the rift felt between myself and most others isn’t me, it is the unusual experiences of my childhood which were extraordinarily traumatic. Sue was also raped as a child, pulled off the street by a stranger.

And she willingly shared her experience when first meeting her, something I had not yet been able to do though eventually she would learn a brief outline of the overall facts. My attacker wasn’t a stranger, it was family. The taboo of talking about what happens in a family is still not something acknowledged or talked about. It has been that way for centuries.

But her family unfortunately handled it the very same. NO TALKING ABOUT IT, as if it never happened. These are missionary’s, you know, the ones who go about saving the world. What about saving your child?

By not allowing her to express such a trauma over and over until processed, and not providing help in the form of therapy too, Sue was cursed to live the same sort of life as me.

Going about pasting a smile on, and acting as if nothing is wrong, when anxiety internally threatens to break you in half or splinter you into a thousand shattered pieces. The cortisol bursts are exhausting. Your world spinning out of control in situations where there’s people, which is just about every situation unless you are at home.

So, Sue knew me to my core, without my ever supplying details of any kind, and without us talking about it. We just knew, and love flowed between us freely like warm swirling air enveloping our souls as one.

Waking after the storm, it was as black as the night before when having to light candles. No coffee? Starting the patio grill, upon it was placed a large kettle with water and coffee grounds. Walking the meadow in the early morning light, checking it after each round, finally the brew looked ready.

After 5 laps the kettle came in to be poured through the coffee filter and, Voila! Cowboy coffee! Samuel was surprised. It almost seemed that the planned gathering of friends might have to be cancelled, because how can glue guns be heated up with no electricity? But it came back on, and our party was a great success.

I do miss my friend Sue. That very special bond we shared, and that closeness found nowhere else.

HUNGER

Photos by Patricia (bluebird baby)

Having to pretend since age 8 that the horrors suffered weren’t real, it became customary for me to stuff them away. That took a lot of food, food that mother loved to cook then see others eat. Weight gain, up and down since age 8.

Even mangling my inner organs to be normal. That pleased my mother who told me about the magical operation.

She left out the part that meant intense pain for hours, and countless episodes on the bathroom floor hoping to upchuck the extra teaspoon of food swallowed. What was left of my stomach was  a tiny pouch with only enough room for a tablespoon or so of food.

That is a problem for a person accustomed to using food as an escape from the body, and had since age 8 when my mother’s cure for the first terrifying attack was to stuff with me food. And if my mother’s love was at the end of a spoon it was better than nothing.

To be in my body now is a revelation. Not realizing that my entire life has been an escape, the exploration into this brings up empathy unfounded in my own inner workings. Because usually there is harshness, blame, and self-castigation. Compassion has begun to blossom.

To go through all that all alone. To suffer like that all alone, except for a mother on the side-lines always making it worse because she didn’t want a fat daughter. So she put me in fashion shows, and beauty contests, and then as an adult excitedly telling me about this operation which years later put me in the hospital due to internal bleeding where the inexperienced surgeon make his cuts to rearrange my internal organs.

It was never about weight, but about pain suppressed. About a little girl alone whose only resource was eating because you readily pushed food, loved to cook, and loved even more to see it eaten.

Mom, normal is to feel. Normal is to go to your daughter’s aid and keep any son from attacking me again. It doesn’t matter if you’re left a widow with 8 kids, you’re story over and over again whenever trying to tell you how angry I was at you and why.

You could have 20 kids, just stop and do the right thing. No more attacks, and don’t tell your little daughter who is crying hot tears down her cheeks, that if it ever happens again to tell you. Of course I wouldn’t, too ashamed to do so. As if I had the power to stop it by telling you. YOU STOP IT.

So food became an escape from the body as other sons took what they wanted. And I became more and more invisible as my body got larger. And that was 60 years ago but the same methods of not feeling are still being used.

Yet beauty occurs, that of feeling deep down inside with peace not tsunamis. I can go there and be OK, better than OK. Still tentatively trying it out, but more and more comfortable being there. It is a beautiful thing, one others live daily without question. But for a trauma survivor it is a new place to be that brings wholeness, peace, and love for self.

Instead of self-repugnance for a too big body since childhood, there is the beginnings of understanding and compassion. Food is used to numb, to not be in the body. I have not understood just how terrifying my childhood was. That leaving the body became the norm when my body was attacked, not the other way around which is really the norm when living childhood without trauma.

Without intervention or release of the agony inside me, I ate for the next sixty years. Even when the stomach was butchered into a tiny pouch- I ate. I had to, even though it meant long periods wrapped about the toilet on the cold tile floor. There was still interaction with ‘family’ acting like I loved them because that’s what was required. Of course I ate.

It is a new beginning where food is eaten out of hunger, not all the other hungers, but true physical hunger. And that only begins to happen when love and compassion are heard inside of me filling the ragged holes that food once filled. That is not the head or brain… that is the soul hungry for love.

Little Girl Me

My Secret Garden

Running out of THC has caused sleepless nights with groggy days due to having to take other medication for sleep. CBD oil on its own does not work. An added bonus unrealized until the whole plant oil ran out was my legs and how much better they work.

Huffing up the meadow hill, or even just around the house, painful aches with stiffness became highly noticeable. How can this simple oil be so helpful in so many ways? The rat brain cycle kicks in, that of negativity, round and round, over and over again.

The little girl at eight, all alone when loved ones attacked, growing to believe it was all my fault. The loud voice of blame attacking me by day as brothers attacked at night. Those voices bang loudly again.

Despair knocks as tears fall. Going through years of sleeplessness again after months when the miracle of sleep was blessed upon me is untenable. 

“I cannot handle this,” weeping without wanting to while telling Samuel about yet again another sleepless night needing to take a sleep aid.

Samuel says, “You can get a prescription!”

“No, I tried on-line,” crying more, defeated, adding, “It is too hard, and too complicated.”

“It’s not,” he said. “I looked. All you have to do is find a provider. Fill out an application, pay the fee, get a card, then you buy it from a New York dispensary.”

Tears fall more. He had already been on the computer after the first rush of tears when I’d left the room. The tenderness towards him touched a very deep place covered with mistrust put in place years ago.

The only way to survive was to protect what was left after brothers obliterated the essence of me. The spark nestled beneath layers of iron needed protection, a tiny ember below all the doubt, fear, and surety of the destruction to come.

Not the virus, though that can kill, but people. My life has been about fear of people. Because little girl me learned early what people can do.

DEMONS

Finally, after many complaints about pain in various areas of my mouth, and after many suggestions of needing a mouth guard by the dentist, one was purchased last year. And the mysterious aches went away. If only I knew. If only I’d paid heed to the suggestions.

But a mouth guard? Samuel needed one but he ground his teeth in the night so loudly I could hear it. But I didn’t grind my teeth. It wasn’t until the hygienist used the word clench did I begin to think a mouth guard might be appropriate for me.

Clench my jaw? That might be a possibility as I must face many demons in my sleep, slaying them one by one, over and over again.

“Can I breathe with one in? Will I choke?” I ask her fearfully.

 The dentist replied, “I have never heard of that. There are many on the market that are inexpensive. Try one. If you have trouble we can fit you with one here.”

So I did, warming it in the microwave as the directions outlined, then fitting it to the top teeth. It fits perfectly, stays in, no choking or other irritant, and voila, no more mysterious pains.

Little had I known. I wish I had known years ago before the first gum surgery when the unskilled dentist took the tissue down severely because he wasn’t a specialist, but wanted my business and the money.

Then the next, a specialist.

During the procedure she said, “Oops. That’s OK,” knifing through to the upper sinus cavity having to put mesh there as a protector between the two places.

Oops?

Then yet another surgery where the new periodontist was up on modern procedures using cadaver tissue to regenerate new growth. Unfortunately that was also at the same time the area’s tissue bank faced charges of collecting uncertified tissue putting patients at great risk. Was mine OK? Turns out it was OK. 

It was the next procedure that made me decide no matter how many teeth fall out, no more surgeries. My terror was so great that on that way there I kept popping Xanax. She had to give oxygen during the surgery, later telling my husband I should have a breathing apparatus for snoring.

No, I don’t need one of those. I need you to stop digging around in my gums with your knife. I could have killed myself with those little white pills used out of terror for going through a procedure where she did not answer questions, and shouldn’t have been doing it anyway. In her haste she proceeded, and I let her.

All those terrifying experiences could have been avoided with a mouth guard long ago. Of course monsters appear when I sleep. What happened as a child is being reenacted, this time  I am victor. My strength is all powerful.

My greatest soul need has been to smash their filthy hands off me. To be the power. To smash their faces away that were so close I couldn’t breathe or ever feel comfortable with closeness  again. In my dreams I fearlessly conquer.  What I couldn’t do then, I do now. 

 

MEDICINE

Being so different can cause a rejection of self, the countering voice of rationality so needed but rarely the first voice I hear. Awake yet again, the banging critic starts in but cut off immediately with a wiser gentler voice… it is not your fault. Don’t do that, do not blame yourself for this continual inability to sleep. Perhaps a resistance has built up towards the CBD oil.

Still my mind goes over the day. It was different from other days where my being feels as if it stays together quietly without disruption.

Samuel insisted that no new carpet be purchased without painting the walls. This was 8 months ago. I was fine with the walls, especially after scrubbing them down. The new color, picked by me, is still yellow but bright enough to require sunglasses.

Dam you Samuel. I’d love to blame him, as I’ve tended to do in all the years of our marriage. Someone needed to pay for my pain.

But this time, (I’ve grown see?) the responsibility is mine because I elbowed him away while choosing the color. Still the habit of blaming him remains, this time resisted. He just finished painting so out we go to find a rug.  At the home improvement store the newly hired sales kid was exasperating.

While working with this very young inexperienced clerk, with huge rocks in his earlobes stretching holes in them over an inch wide, my eyes kept staring in wonderment. Quite quickly a manager was called after the third, “I don’t know,” in response to our very basic questions. 

The manager was older, and with lazy slowness coughed up a few details of interest, though his demeanor suggested total disinterest. As Samuel worked through pricing I mentioned the many ads posted in repeated succession about free installation that neither were aware of.

“Oh yeah,” both sales associates proclaimed, as if being aware of what they really weren’t aware of.

We collected what scarce information we could heading back home for a breather. Then out again to another store. While this salesperson gave us the spiel, my eyes focused on her super long yellow fake finger nails that motioned avidly while she talked.  

We went back to the original store buying the carpet from the boy with the fascinating earlobes. Again a manager was called to walk him through it. 

By this time my system felt as if on divided over-drive… the body, the head, and the heart. But really, can’t a person spend a day shopping with her husband? I didn’t heed those feelings early on when one store was most likely enough for one day. We drove to one end of the county, to the other end, then back again.

Not falling asleep, the tossing and turning hated so much began. By 2 AM a second dose of Xanax was needed. The doubling of CBD oil tried first had no effect. It is medicine, you need it, but detesting the need. The improved self-talk comforted slightly with soft bits of gentle kindness.

Sleeplessness is not my fault, no matter how many avenues are driven down to see where my mistakes might be. Perhaps one store per day could have circumvented the sleeplessness. Though that thought arose early on, the idea was rejected preferring instead to just get the job done. Who knows what the reason is on any certain sleepless night.

Perhaps the real culprit it is the sham of our president committing serious amoral crimes getting away with it over, and over again. Trump, who likes to grab at other’s pussy’s, has always been one of the monsters of my childhood.

The sadness behind his ability to get away with countless crimes,  and being a living container of all that is evil in the human race, ignites into anger. Then sadness wrapped in hopelessness descends once again. Are my hopes and beliefs of good winning over evil gone?

Perhaps there is no reason other than this life of mine means living with the effects of PTSD made permanent because no intervention was provided early on after repeated traumas.   

My nervous system is busted, and cannot take too much stimulation, especially too many interactions with others. That is acutely taxing, more than I willingly admit or accept. Around others my antennae rise sharply. Are you lying, being real, or falsifying like the fake ‘trial’ happening here in America? Can you be trusted?

No, the answer is no. We all lie, or at least fudge the truth when it’s beneficial to oneself, and I cannot take it. I never will be able to. After the gum thrown down the hall, and the ensuing (almost) rape, Chet tackled my body then thrusting his penis up and down my eight year old vagina after managing to yank my pants down.

Sex was introduced to my child self with violence. Sex from then on was forever linked with force. That has never changed. Trust for any human being was forever gone. And gone too, a wholeness of being that came with my birth irrevocably shattered. 

I fought at him unable to breath. Breath was chosen over fighting after that. 

“Here,” he said, holding up a pack of gum that used to come in a box with pillow shaped gum squares. Chicklets, peppermint Chicklets.

The box was empty. Picking it up with dismay he slammed into me with a body much larger than mine, suffocating me. Trust will never come again. Like most other challenges before me, gentleness and kindness are far better thought patterns than the harsh critical bully.  

Monsters Don’t Die

Monsters don’t die, they live in my neurons ready to attack. A sudden sound, even Samuel entering a room without hearing the approaching footsteps makes my adrenaline shoot clanging the warning sirens. In the quiet alone, the vast stillness in the house waiting…

Monsters don’t die, they live on. Chet’s kidnapping of my freedom, a toy, a thing, a little captive now grown still trying to untangle the chains of childhood. Shame kept me silent, and he knew it. Though living in a house with seven brothers and a mother, his attacks were as if thousands miles away trapped in a hut with only his disgusting manipulating force.

I want to kill him, though he is already dead. No one to save me, no one would help me. Hostages grow close to their captors. His death did not undo that. They are never gone, the ones who attacked me. They lie waiting to destroy, even as worms eat their rotted flesh in the dirt they are buried in.These are the feelings denied all my life because my mother insisted on niceness— sugar without spice. 

They are never gone. The most violent attack by Dan remains repressed, inside deeply subconscious, yet there in all its horror. Raymond once said, “So what if you don’t remember?”

So what? What is that if it came up all the symptoms of PTSD would magically disappear. And of course that isn’t true. The cure comes in kindness towards self, so hard for a personality shaped by believing my needs don’t matter or even exist. A fake life forced with the silence, the authentic one still rising. 

When a child is sexually attacked by loved ones, the ones that know, and the ones who committed the crimes do not want the child to talk. No one provides attention or care, not even medical care. The shame that one of their own has done this means sacrifice the child, controlled by more manipulations and implied threats of abandonment through shunning. The life meant to be gone.  

I learned what happened didn’t, like painting white over black. Life was dazed by trauma and terror, and still I lived with the monsters who attacked in the night. I was to love them. Love was never to safely come again, not for adults. Rare moments occur with children who have not yet learned deceitfulness, and all pets. Pretending became my reality. 

Progress is made in recognizing my needs with compassion, though numbing also continues  without knowing why. 

 

TRUE NATURE

Planning Christmas kept my sanity in the darkest month, now the wait for spring as each day becomes longer.

“Look,” Samuel says, “It is 5 and still light out!”

Looking outside I reply excitedly, “Wow, you’re right!”

My drudge through the dark months is proceeding with better management and brighter outcomes, though it takes work; disciplined habits including full spectrum lights, meditation, better diet, and daily exercise.

The uplift from exercise is curative, even moderate exercise such as walking or gentle movements on the elliptical. But it takes a push to go do it.

The food thing is harder as food is used to medicate PTSD issues that resulted from childhood sexual attacks by loved ones. Alone, stuck with it, and no one to burst the bubble of excruciating pain, it grew as I grew.

That beast stayed. The beast of self-hate, but compassion is slowly moving in as part of me steps back and notices that my use of food is not born out of laziness, lack of character, or that I don’t love, care, or respect myself.

It is self-care that turned to me food at age eight, bent over the toilet in the middle of the night vomiting up the food my mother pushed towards me in place of what I really needed.

Food was her love. My little body couldn’t take it, but it was all there was to numb the horror of what my brothers did and kept doing… the ones I loved so much and trusted.

Food is still used to medicate. To eat out of hunger is not usual. To eat to numb is. Hating myself for failing to be thin is a societal rule. Yet it also is a survival tool that sustains my life in the only way I know how. 

Turning to food saved me. It saves me now. It squelches PTSD symptoms by focusing my attention to how full it feels to the point of pain. Liking the pain because I’m so used to it. The other hurts too much to feel. 

The hurt of a family turning their backs, going on as if nothing happened. What about that pain? It is easier to go along with them. Sure I love you too. You did so much for me.

Donny did allow me to move in with his family because my mother’s drinking had adverse effects. I got a job, joined the Army, met Samuel. My life began. Don saved me at a time when I really needed saving. 

But what about when I was 8? You came into the bathroom at the sound of my screams while I was in the tub.

I said, “It hurts down there.”

What did you do then? Nothing. No one did anything. Not Seth either who I said to directly at the time, “Danny fucked me.” Just looks of horror in his eyes which to an eight year old meant I was the horror.

I want to ask these questions, but never will, though some was in an email to Seth causing more separation than closeness.  

Each day starts out, listen to my body. It will tell you what you need. By the end of the day the impulse to eat when not hungry for food, but ravenous for love, wins out. It blots out all other needs, and helps me hate myself.

A quiet voice whispers, perhaps it is self-caring, what you have done since the age of 8. A rumbling vibrates deep down in a space that is not bone, blood or tissue… a place that is ethereal, one where my true nature resides. The work is connecting, and staying connected.