Anniversary looming

This anniversary is kicking my ass… I’m ok at times, then I’m a hot mess at others. 

I want to cry. I want to shred myself… 

I want to drown my head out. 

I’ve had the better part of a 16oz beer with a high alcohol content. As much as I want to throw up from the heaviness of the beer, I’m loving the spin happening in my head. While it doesn’t kill the agony, it dulls it to a tolerable level… 

I know Dr C wants me not to dissociate from this hurt, but I’m not sure I want the same thing she does. Yeah, it’s progress to sit with it all, but it’s also progress simply to be “free” and functioning. I’m battling the urge to simply off myself pretty much daily. I know I’m going to win that battle, but it’s hard on a day to day basis…

I keep telling Dr C, L, and myself that I will be ok at the end of this anniversary. Part of me knows that’s true. And part of me also “knows” that won’t be true. It’s the part of me that’s still stuck in the trauma… it’s the part of me that “knows” death would bring peace finally. I know it’s wrong though. I know that it may bring peace for me, but it would also push the pain to someone else. 

I’m so tired of the struggle. I’m tired of the cycle. I’m tired of fighting for my quality of life…

I think I’m going to take Dr C up on the concept of seeing an interim therapist. I think I’ve seen her before, but I was pretty dissociative at the time, so I don’t remember much of it. I know L saw her briefly, but she wasn’t directive enough. That works well for me. I don’t think Dr C has talked to her yet, but I’m really hoping she will figure it out before she goes away…

Insomnia’s kinda a bitch…

I’m so physically tired, but I can’t seem to get a decent night’s sleep (emotionally tired also, but…).

Over the weekend, I managed to gather a group of people together for art journaling. It was fun, but the clean-up before and after was exhausting, as was trying to smile and put on a happy face when I’ve wanted to cry all weekend. Don’t get me wrong, I loved doing it, I’m just tired.

Got therapy in a little bit. I’m trying to prioritize what to cover today. There’s still stuff floating around from previous weeks, but there’s also the impending anniversary, and her trip, and current stressors… I’ve got 2 hours in the next two weeks to address everything I need to before she’s gone for a month. :sigh: I dunno.

I’m really liking when my life focuses on art. It’s genuine, but that also makes it very vulnerable. As much as I want to be able to show off the works that mean a lot to me, I’m hesitant. Even the slightest rejection or displeasure around those feels like it’s a rejection of me (even if the person has no idea what the piece means). So I try to keep those hidden…

I guess I should head out of I want to grab something to eat on the way to session…

Surprise! Another trigger…

There was a scene in the Empire pilot where one of the sons was remembering the first time he dressed in his mom’s heels in front of his dad. The dad got really mad and grabbed the kid. He stormed out of the room with the kid under his arm. The mom yelled after him, scared and angry…

Something about that scene hit home, but I’m not totally sure how or why. It hit really hard. It winded me and made me cry. It felt overwhelming and heavy. It still feels overwhelming and heavy… I can’t tell if I related more to running after him screaming, or watching him storm off with the kid, or being the kid under his arm… or maybe all of it? But it dug at something deep.

Part of me wants to reach out to Dr C, but I can’t justify bothering her on her weekend. I’ll just try to cover it Monday (along with everything else I want to cover – how to deal with her month away, more of what was in that journal entry from 2 weeks ago, the anniversary, the growing depression…)

I want my heart to creep back into my chest; it’s still on the floor…

Therapy vacation coming up… :/

Dr C will be on vacation for a month starting in about 2 weeks. I’m not sure what I want to do during that time. She gave me the option of being set up with someone else while she is away, kinda a check-in thing. I told her I needed to think about it. She mentioned having someone that will cover for her in case of emergencies. I wanted to remind her that I would likely not bother that person, but I remained silent and nodded… I’m not really in a place of definitely needing someone to talk to while she is gone, but I also know it’s hard going even 1.5 weeks between appointments because of holidays… I know I’d be overall fine at the end of the month, but getting to the end of the month will be difficult.

She’s also considering having someone take over and run the group for her while she is gone. That would be good, since I think all of us have her as our therapist.

If I see someone while she’s gone, not only will I be keeping it all surface stuff, but I’ll have to do the copay at the time of the sessions… I hope she can find someone to cover the group. At least that copay would be cheaper (by a lot)…

At least she’ll be here for the shitty anniversary… hopefully once that’s over, I’ll be able to balance better.

Nightmares

I think it was here that I was talking about bad dreams vs nightmares (how I rarely consider anything I dream a nightmare because it doesn’t really scare me as badly as a nightmare should)… Anyway, I would definitely consider the dream I just woke from a nightmare.

In it, I was driving slow through a parking lot looking for a space. One of the cousins in L’s family was walking there with his kids. The oldest kid (still only like 5 in the dream) stated running around as they were walking. His parents tried to redirect him to be careful because of the cars, but they missed grabbing his arm as he ran by. I gritted to slam on my brakes,but they didn’t work. I hit the older kid before I simply slammed the shifter into park to avoid hitting everyone else… the kid ended up being ok. He had to go to the hospital, but he was ok. The rest of the family (in true dream style) just bounced off my car like marshmallows when it got close. I got in trouble for hitting the kid, but my punishment was to drive somewhere with the maintenance guy from my job (he was a Marshall or something like that in the dream). We drove through my Facebook feed, and everyone either hated me for being reckless, or the parents for not keeping better control of their kids… then part-way through the feed, as I’m sobbing because I hurt a child, a former boss sits down with me to do art therapy. I’m still crying hysterically and feeling shitty… then the dog woke me up.

Anyway, aside of realizing that in the dream, I managed to make it all about me and my emotions around having hurt the kid, it was definitely what I would consider a nightmare. It Feely like I couldn’t escape it, and like I had caused an insurmountable amount of pain for others. I couldn’t shake the feeling after I awoke either. It helped wiring about it though. For some reason, simply thinking about it as a dream doesn’t do much, but being able to write it out and see how impossible it is helped process it as a nightmare rather than reality…

It’s also an effective reminder that I need to finally change my brakes. At the last oil change, the mechanic suggested changing them within the next 3000 miles. It’s been about that long…

A pattern of tolerance for the negative

A theme for the week: tolerating triggering situations for the small benefits they may bring.

It was a topic of conversation during Monday’s session. It came up during the week, it came up again today, and it’s wrapped up in the self-harm… Dr C pointed out the pattern to me Monday, and suddenly it’s weaving it’s way through everything (well, at least, I’m noticing it). It’s even a thread through my healthier coping skills: Breathe through the tuff stuff to get to the other side… as Dr C pointed out Monday, it’s what I did to get through as a kid, and it’s what I keep doing. I get that it would be good for me to change that pattern, but there’s some comfort in it. I tolerate the bad for the bits of good…

There are however, aspects of life where I don’t follow that pattern anymore. My relationship with L is a great example of that. There is no tolerating of the bad to get to the good. Sure, we have disagreements, and both of us have our share of being jerks at times, but I think we have a healthy and supportive relationship. We try to address things as they come up, and we love each other. We avoid trying to make the other feel weak, scared, or small. We build each other up. We hold the other’s self-worth when it tanks. And we genuinely care.

It certainly wasn’t the image I had for a relationship growing up. I always thought I’d marry an abusive serviceman who would beat and rape me daily… I’m not totally sure where I got that idea from, but it had always been there. I would imagine being left alone to deal with the abuse, as everyone would ignore his behavior. I would be told to be quiet and let him do whatever because his job was stressful. I would swallow the fear and just get through the day…

So yeah, some places I’ve broken that pattern, but other places it’s still very present. I tolerate triggering shows and movies because there’s some part of them I’m interested in (Game of Thrones is one of them). I focus on the good parts of it to get through the uncomfortable parts… yet when Dr C suggested I stop watching it in favor of not having to repeat the pattern, I cringed. As triggering as parts of the show may be, other parts are highly engaging.

Similarly, when hanging out with some people, I sit through conversations around triggering topics because I’m not sure how to effectively set a boundary around it one they start (and I’m triggered). I know Dr C and I talked about effective ways to politely set that boundary, but when the moment came, my mind was blank. I listened to my friend talk about her familial abuse history. It triggered flashbacks and dissociation. I felt myself slip into a more detached space. For the life of me, I could not find the words to ask her to stop. The only 2 options that came to mind for changing the topic would not have been very comfortable (for me or her). So instead, I listened to what she said from miles away, and responded when I thought I should respond. I really wanted to scream or run out of there, but I was raised to be polite and courteous. That would have been neither (though probably right on target for a trauma response)…

Anyway, so yeah. Patterns. Fun.

Back to a comfortable distance

Just that… there’s a numbness, a buffer between me and everything.

I’m ok with that.

Hell is…

Went to a figure drawing thing at a local gallery tonight. The model was supposed to be a woman, but she was unable to make it at the last minute. One of the guys that had come to draw offered to model…

I made it through the first 30 minute pose, but just barely. I focused on the light and the dark trying to draw the model. It was the only reason I was able to do it at all…

At the end of the first pose, I packed up my stuff and left. Tears started forming in my eyes as I walked out… sometime during the first pose, I had text Dr C about it. I was looking for permission to leave. She hadn’t responded at the point that I left, but I had no faith in being able to remain “together” for the other 4 poses. I lucked out with the first one – he had his back to me and I couldn’t see too much. I wasn’t about to push my luck with the other poses.

I fought tears the whole drive home. I couldn’t get the image of the model out of my head, but it wasn’t really the model… I cried harder when the body in my mind’s eye changed…

Dr C finally responded as I was pulling off my exit from the highway… “No, you need to know that you’re free to leave any room with an exposed penis in it.” (I had asked if it was a failure to leave after the first pose)…

L asked why I was home so early (the text that I was leaving early didn’t get to her). I clarified my initial text about the model not being able to make it. She asked if I was ok, and she saw through my fake answer… I wish I could explain what happened internally, but there are no words…

I poured myself a triple glass of whiskey. It’s helped to stifle my triggered reactions and the impulse to shred myself… idgaf that it’s not the greatest coping skill in the world, but I’m not bleeding, so whatever.

Kid fears

After last session, I wrote to Dr C… well, I wrote a reaction as if I was writing to her. She hasn’t actually seen it yet.

Anyway, in the reaction, I disclosed some embarrassing/shameful/disgusting stuff… and now I feel like she thinks I’m a horrible person who she never wants to see or hear from again.

It doesn’t seem to matter that I know she doesn’t know this info yet. It feels like she would know it simply because I wrote it in the form of a letter to her. It feels like, because it’s now on paper and it was written intention of informing her, it has somehow psychically made its way to her brain. She surely knows, has suspected it all along, and knows I’m scum. 

It’s similar to the fear I had that the person I think abused me somehow knew I was saying those things after I told Dr C; that somehow merely saying the words released the knowledge into the universe and it made its way to the person I was talking/thinking about…

My rational brain knows this is not possible. My rational brain understands that there’s no way either of them could know what I was thinking… yet the fear is there. The discomfort and anxiety is there.

Do you ever catch yourself in anxious trains of thought that you know can’t possibly happen, but you fear them anyway? It feels like such a little kid fear…

I’m trying to think of what any of my therapists would have said about it. De comes to mind. She would always tell me to be gentle with the kid side; acknowledge what s/he is trying to communicate, and offer comfort. Maybe the kid just needs a hug and to be reminded that Dr C hasn’t hated us yet, I doubt she’ll start now (even if I hate myself for what I’ve finally admitted to in detail).

ugh…

I’m feeling impatient and restless.

I feel like I’m trapped with no outlet…

I’m not sure what to do with myself.

I feel stuck.

Inside my head, I’m pacing like mad.

I think I might scream (a silent, wordless scream)

It’s a lot like the feeling of running from something, only I feel like I’m running in place…

There isn’t enough distraction here (here being at home, in my head, in the moment…)

ugh.

 

Avoidance

I think I need to have a conversation around avoidance with Dr C… I find it difficult to go in after a week and try to delve right into difficult stuff. I tend to talk about the weekend and allow the session to veer from the heavy things I’ve been holding onto for the week. I was able to eventually mention the memories from the weekend, but I didn’t talk about it to the degree I wanted to address it….

I don’t have a good working title for this piece

This whole “reorganization” of how I handle stress; the shift from instant dissociation of emotions in order to deal with the situation at hand, to an overwhelm of emotions and feel incompetent, has my little world in a sort of chaos…

Flipping through some junk mail, I found the perfect image: a long-exposure picture of a barn and night sky. The long exposure made the stars look like circular steaks in the sky, and the angle of the image gave the barn a “funhouse mirror” effect of stretching and angling it to look ominous and looming.

I did an image transfer onto a page in a journal that already had some paint and ink on it (one of those “hey, let’s not waste this extra stuff” pages with stencil “stamping” and other random effects). The stuff that was already there can be seen through the image transfer. It gives some added depth, but also goes with the feeling in trying to convey (they were Halloween-themed stencils I had been testing out)… the transfer came out grungy; again, it fits the feel of the page. Sadly, much of the detail of the streaking stars was lost. It just looked like a glowing barn next to a large black area. I accented the streaks with my white pen. Sometimes I’m glad that my supplies don’t work “perfectly” because the intermittent lines made by the pen mimicked the steaks in the original image. It was frustrating when I tried to use the same pen to write lyrics from a Tori Amos song on the page, but it worked perfectly for the stars…

The page has a few different sets of lyrics on it. I don’t normally mix lyrics on pages, but the the two tori songs are connected in my head… and the telepop music inspired words are a reminder to balance the chaos (“just breathe. just be”… I was limited to the words printed on the washi tape, so not totally accurate to the song).

The lyrics in white at the top of the page are from Upside Down, by Tori Amos;

“god, I love to turn my little blue world upside down…inside my head the noise chatter chatter chatter chatter chatters… you see I’m afraid I’ll always be upside down… but my head it says I’ve been shatter shatter shatter shatter shattered… you see I love to turn my little blue world upside down”

The black lyrics in the barn are from Silent all These Years (also by Tori Amos);

“Years go by/ will I still be waiting for somebody else to understand/ years go by if I’m stripped of my beauty and the orange clouds raining in my head… years go by will I choke on my tears till finally there is nothing left/ one more casualty you know we’re too easy easy easy… let’s hear what you think of me now but baby don’t look up/ the sky is falling/but what if I’m a mermaid in these jeans of his with her name still on it/ hey but I don’t care cause sometimes, I said sometimes I hear my voice/ and it’s been here/ silent all these years”

There’s more to be done on this page, but I’m not quite sure what. Going to let it lead me wherever it wants to go…

train of thought crashes into a memory?

Was on the way home from a friend’s house. In the lane next to me there was a dog barking out the car window. I mentally noted how happy I was that this set of dogs doesn’t do anything like that… I thought how annoying it would be to have to drive with a dog that needed to pace back and forth between windows and bark at everything. I remembered an old dog who did not ride well in the car. She would do ok on short trips, and if the windows were open, but the long drive I took was a tough one. I remember her sounding like a squeaky door the whole way. I remembered who was with me on the drive. I remembered how annoyed he was with her, and some of the mean things he said… and then I started feeling things in my body. I had a brief flash of something specific, but it had to have been a mixed-up memory. The angle of the image I got was off… actually, it’s a near-impossible angle to get (at once laying down and sitting up)…

Can’t shake the creepy feeling since. Can’t shake the body memories.

It’s one of those times where it hit at a moderate level and has remained that way since. It’s bearable for the time being, but I hope it fades soon.

Good at something

In session today, we talked about the total disconnect I have with everything relating to the “memories” these last few days.

She says it’s because I’m really good at dissociating things.

I guess.

I reiterated that none of it feels real. (I left out that nothing feels real at the moment. None of my history feels like it belongs to me, not even the things I’ve known all along). I reiterated that it’s all just a story I made up, though I can’t figure out why I would do it.

She said that she believed me anyway. She said I might not have any connection to it at the moment, but she was there when the part of me who experienced it also re-experienced it when I told it.

She said she’d hold the “trueness” of it for me…

Ok… that’s good. Because it feels like a tornado whipped through a store-room full of cabinets and sent the papers flying everywhere. Things are mixed up, employees are battered and confused, and the secretary is running around trying to put it all back together again in some semblance of order (hopefully back where it all belongs). It’s nice to have someone take the weight of the truth away from all that running around and fixing… I picture a woman carrying a huge manual while trying to also pick up random scraps of paper. As she bends down to pick up something else, the manual tips to the side and starts to open. It’s tall and held together with flexible rods through one side. It’s much easier to pick all the stray papers up if the manual is not in her hands…

The boy grew up while we were talking (briefly?). For the first time in several sessions, I actually left feeling ok; like I had stated to talk about what was pressing to come out. I’m not quite sure what the boy wanted to cover, but he seemed satisfied with whatever it was we talked about.

I still don’t like this process. I still feel like I’m falling apart more than coming together, but she says that’s a good thing. She says the system has outlived it’s usefulness and now it’s time to move on… I’m not sure I believe that last part. At least, I’m not sure I want to believe it.