what messages did you receive growing up…

Posted on by ag

Your world is this big

Nothing bigger

And by far nothing smaller

.

You will eat when I say

You will smile when I ask

You will conform in every way big

And every way small

.

I will find you at all times

You will follow when I don’t ask

Guess what I need

And treat me with respect

I haven’t not earned

Nor have I given

.

The day I ask you to bend will be your last

You will understand what is asked

Even when it is unspoken

And even when it’s the opposite

Of what I told you yesterday

.

All men are to be respected

All women are in some way

Independent yet need a man

To be

Whole

.

You will respect every man I bring into this house

You will not ask questions

The man tonight is different

Than the man last night

But that is none of your concern

Who the fuck do you think you are to ask

You will never do that again

You will for sure not ever do that again

.

Why aren’t you smiling

Why do you insist on pushing

Your sadness on the rest of us

.

Why aren’t you smiling

What happened to the smiling little kid

The one that asked for lady shoes on her third birthday

It was so cute how you wanted to reach doorknobs and light switches by yourself

How cute you wanted to be independent and self reliant

.

No mom I needed to be able to get out of a room and not sit in the dark

You were too busy

You were too drunk

You were too unwilling to look around

Too busy pleasing a man

Too busy finding your way

And fighting the anxiety

You passed on to me in spades

.

Too busy digging the ditch

That I now have to climb out of

That I’ve spent the rest of my entire

Fucking life

Climbing out of

.

There is nothing you wouldn’t do

You’d say

That you’d be there

And you’d protect us

.

But I remember what you don’t

You didn’t

Protect us

You weren’t

There

.

I miss hearing your voice

I want to be closer

We should talk more

You can call me you know

.

Yes mom

I know

I know all the things

I know what you want

Clearly

And when

.

I understand what you need

And live daily with the reminder

Of how I’m not

How the world was never quite enough

For you

How hard life was for you

And how now I’m not enough

.

I wasn’t enough then either

For you to be sober

Fuck for you to even be awake

My accomplishments

Big and small

Mattered none

.

I mattered none

.

Except as your servant in so many ways

Except as his plaything in so many others

I was the project, this little clay form

To be molded and shaped

.

Into the most perfect porcelain doll

I will provide the exterior you so wanted

The life you wanted everyone to see

But from here I’ll be the same

Fucked up self that no one can see

No one can touch

No one is allowed in

And no one will save

.

This will be the legacy

I’ve inherited from you

.

Why can’t you be more

Why can’t you be the daughter I’ve always wanted and felt forever connected to

Why can’t you be what I want you to be

it never goes away

Posted on by ag

I feel like lately I’m slipping deeper into the cave of madness. Insanity in a sense but also anger. Rage that sits far enough below the water line it isn’t visible but for a second or two in a day. And then tucked neatly beneath the calm heaviness of the water, pounded by waves and beat into submission by sheer volume of opposition.

It’s hard to explain. And I feel like I say that a lot.

I’m struggling lately with the idea of how to live as myself in a world that doesn’t quite understand. A world that believes everyone is like the outsides that they present and therefore we must all present the shiniest version and the friendliest smile. Well, except for the ones that choose resistance and anger. They have their place too…rallying against the pull for everyone to be the same—not in the wanting to be different, but in a refusal to give in. And yet anger is its own acquiescence. Those that choose its path instead submit to the frenzy and hurl their insults, just as stuck in their rage as the rest of us sitting in a frozen smile.

How are you?

I’m fine, how are you?

It’s the game we play over and over. Permanently denying truth its existence and permanently insisting we’re all not good enough to be real with each other.

Is the misery of being alone better than the thought of being seen and abandoned because of it?

For me the answer is clear. Stay hidden in the shadows and allow what is most agreeable to be the parts people see and interact with.

It isn’t fully a false me. But it also isn’t fully the real me.

I’m angry at myself for not allowing it to be different. Angry I’m allowing the house I grew up in to continue to dictate my worldview and actions so many years later.

It’s a logical if not futile and silent scream.

Why will you not just let go?!?

You don’t live there any more.

You don’t answer to them.

Let it go. Let it be.

And for the life of me I can’t.

There was this air of perfection. An air of holding all the bumps and cracks—and outright breaks in the porcelain facade behind the curtains and out of public consumption.

We. Are just fine.

Some of it *is* in the hallway conversations where my mom pulled me aside by my arm and insisted I smiled. Swallowing whole the blackout nights and violent man sitting 20 feet away. Refusing to remember my dad ever existed while convincing me I wasn’t wanted, this was the life I had. The only life I had.

Shape up. Or, as the threat went, ship out.

I smiled.

And began to believe the lies.

Things were okay.

That pit in my stomach as a kid was nothing. The gnawing thoughts in my head and the early insistence I should be dead were nothing more than fantasies.

Clearly my family was fine.

It was me that wasn’t.

And that’s where I am now. Unable to shake the fact that I need to be fine at all costs.

Unable to give up the grip on showing the best possible face to all the people.

I’ve been at a new job for two months. I was fired from my last job for a bunch of reasons… Not because of my work necessarily, although my bosses came to believe it was subpar. Not because of my “illness” per say, although I was deemed anti social and, although HR approved and medically warranted, it was easy to see my ongoing appointments as job abandonment. 2 hours twice a week for treatment for PTSD. Not that I said that out loud. Just dutifully provided doctors notes as needed, requested permission up front, offered mitigating options, stayed in the office anyway, made up hours, dropped appointments if I felt like I was leaning too far over the line for me. I wasn’t fired directly because I was the only woman on the team or openly complained about how I was sexually uncomfortable at the frat house mentality at times. More of a soupy and unclear version…it was all of those things and none of those things.

And in the absence of something solid, something I could wrap my hands around and touch and know, I went back to believing I was wrong for being me.

I was fired because I had not guarded the internal core well enough. Because I had allowed pieces of the sadness and the unbelievable anxiety to seep into work.

Of course that might have been because I was sleeping 2 hours a night for the better part of a year by then. Terrified of sleeping when I was conscious of it—intentionally staying up as many hours as I could; waking up fully alert after an hour when I wasn’t conscious of it and had managed to allow any version of sleeping along the way.

Medication wouldn’t help. A well intentioned friend suggested earplugs when I tried to explain the upstairs neighbor’s pacing is what kept me up. To be fair it did. But it wasn’t just that. The extra sound was my feeble attempt at picking a reason people could understand.

Most people can’t understand the terror of every noise and movement, the sheer panic at knowing your body will be completely vulnerable and unable to protect itself if you allow it to sleep. And equally as aware that not sleeping isn’t helping. But completely helpless to alter the cycle.

I tried the earplugs, wanting to present the shiny exterior as being agreeable and willing to do my part. I woke up within 45 minutes that night, startled and holding my wrist. I remembered the dream…walking down a street close to a church near where I grew up. A tall and slender man was leaning against the fence looking away from the street toward the church. He didn’t look at me directly but as I got close he nodded, “how are you doing tonight?” The town I grew up in was much more genial than where I live now, but also a lot more violent. As soon as I passed the man, a car pulled up and swerved into the sidewalk about 20 feet in front of me and the rear passenger door flung open. I woke up as the man grabbed me around the neck from behind.

I’m fairly certain my struggle in that second was an actual one with the wall. And I probably scared the shit out of my neighbor. My wrist was sprained. And a sore reminder for the better part of a week of the day I thought I could trick hypervigilance into sleeping.

I’ve learned all of my lessons well. Smile when you’re told. Don’t sleep unless you’ve been given permission.

And there is, very, very rarely permission.

My new job then is both a blessing and a curse. It is the opportunity to be different. And a completely agonizing excuse to trust. It is the opportunity to keep up the same facade, and a completely suffocating struggle to manage all the symptoms and not appear crazy. I’m drowning under the weight of trying to keep the startle response to something inaudible and hopefully small. I’m draining energy at an unbelievable rate to sit at my assigned desk with my back to the entire room in an open floor plan. Killing myself to attend the company outings, hoping this might be the time I can enjoy myself like everyone else seems to be. Hoping on one level I’m not seen and won’t be fired and wishing desperately on another that I don’t have to carry the extra weight of trying to fit in on top of everything else.

I can’t adequately explain it. For those that haven’t lived in this kind of daily terror it’s impossible to understand why a fast movement in the visual periphery *has* to be responded to as an all out attack and full life threatening event. And impossible to talk through logically. It won’t settle no matter what I’ve tried and I can’t hold it in—or together—much longer.

The decision might just be not allow it and be fired again or start to let it out and be fired again. How crazy can one actually be at work? How much “quirk” is allowed before you are no longer acceptable? How marginalized will I be if I start talking about mental illness in a place where my job is 100% reliant on my mental capacity. How clearly can I explain a phenomena I don’t fully understand myself to a group of perhaps well meaning bosses and coworkers who are also highly uneducated in this particular area.

I can’t. Or still won’t. And one way or another it’s killing me.

anger hide and go seek

Posted on by ag

Anger exists

Just hidden away

In a quiet place

I left it behind the bushes

In my favorite hiding spot

At the edge of the house

I let it fly out of my hands

In rolled up socks and

Button up shirts

While I folded the laundry

When the frustration

Level was so high

And I felt so helpless

Nothing but hot tears

Spilled down my face

The words no longer

Even in my mind

Just this unexplainable

Upset

A cry for fairness

A cry for someone to

Hear me in any way

But the laundry

Didn’t listen

And still needed

To be folded

The hiding spot

Only existed

When I could

Sneak away

So anger

Never found a home

The socks lay neatly

In their drawers

And the ironed

Shirts sit comfortably

In their spot

pick a thing, any thing

Posted on by ag

There are more things than I’d like to pick from. More options on the menu than I’d ever care to taste again.

And yet there’s this concept of time. Are those things still as bitter or acidic tasting as they were the first time around?

Perhaps they’ve aged into something better. Or perhaps they were flash frozen in time and are just as amazingly awful as the day I set them aside and insisted they didn’t exist.

tell me your story he said

Posted on by ag

Holy shit. I have no idea where to even begin with that one.

Do I talk about the most recent stuff? How the car accidents I ran to help are etched into my retinas and ear drums? How scared I am to be around my family and freaked out about being left by those close to me again?

Or do I go back in time…what my house looked like growing up…how old I was when my dad left, how much violence and rage was beneath the surface with my step dad, how old I was when my mom started doing the blackout drunk thing every day after work? How my sister attempted suicide to get out of it all at 19, leaving me at 12 to deal with that house on my own.

Or maybe I should talk about my first sexual memory at 5. Or being convinced I was pregnant at 9. How unsafe I felt trying to explain something to my mom about any of that or how some curious things were encouraged… At 8 I traveled off our tiny little island for an extended weekend alone with an older navy guy we’d known for a few months.

Or maybe it’s worth going to the stuff in the middle. How old I was when suicide became a clear and interesting option. How much this random man who assaulted me in my home under the guise of sweet and helpful took from me in terms of my sense of identity, my sense of worth, and perhaps most of all my sense of safety. Or how fireworks always remind me of the shooting I was in the middle of one night.

Other middle parts include how my original assumption of sex being consensual at 7 carries through the rest of my life. Where being an active and willing participant meant more saying yes along the way not just an absence of no.

Oh. Well…that sort of means none of them were consensual then. Certainly not the one where I had bruises in the back of my mouth and throat for days after. Or the one who spent several months grooming me to be less reactive and upset at her physical transgressions and overstepping. Or how many people would call wrestling with someone on the ground in a playful way for sexual gratification assault. Hmmm…never looked at that situation that way.

But that’s just it. I never look at any of those situations that way.

I don’t put any weight in how many times the abandonment has left me so bereft and lost. Don’t put any weight in the dying woman’s blood hands reaching up to prevent me from helping her when I close my eyes at night.

Don’t think anything of the relationship I assumed was going to be my forever one—where we indulged dreams of having kids and owning a house…where she flipped positions and demeanors, spent ages seducing me and then gaslighting me, being super affectionate at my mom’s house and then insisting we weren’t anything but friends and downright cold when we got home. How much her mom colored her view and eventually spewed toxic Christianity into the relationship. How I then decided I must be something wrong, something bad…indulging this personal self hatred to keep my identity and still love her and her amazingly cute dog.

And now?

I really don’t know.

I haven’t figured out how this goes from here. How a refusal of admitting my story doesn’t sound like I’m tired of listening to you complain and more like acceptance. How admitting the weight of all the shit might actually be the way out.

Instead I fight to keep the tightest grip. Fight to maintain some kind of sanity. Some version of reality that doesn’t mean I’m falling the fuck apart or have the right to give up on all of it.

Somehow I’m still walking this very thin, very fine line of inadmissibility and unforgiveness, compassion and understanding.

dually whole

Posted on by ag

There is something in this piece that is hidden. Something in my ability to blend in and seem exactly like you.

I’ve always been the odd one. Always been the one that thinks other than, doesn’t quite follow. But from early on that was never reflected back to me as good.

Smile, my mom said.

Stand up straight, don’t slouch.

Don’t be loud.

Don’t interrupt.

Shape up.

Or ship out.

I remembered those from when I was a kid but I had no concept of how much they’d shape my adult life.

As a teenager I learned how to swallow my emotions. How to smile when I was suicidal, play along amicably when I felt like curling in a ball and cowering from the world.

My favorite poem as a kid was We Wear the Mask by Paul Lawrence Dunbar.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!

My favorite poem. As a kid.

I began dreaming of being dead or drowning in alcohol or something seriously other than the life I lived well before I hit double digits. The world would always dream otherwise.

I’ve been in this conversation with a few of my friends lately. How silent is disability? How easy is it for some of us to hide in the plastic and shiny exteriors we’ve all learned so well to maintain.

For the better part of a year I’ve held onto how completely crazy my internal world has gotten. I’ve made it to work every day. I’ve managed to look like I have enough of it together.

In truth? I’ve been more suicidal this year than probably any other. More cuts combined on my leg and arm than ever before. I can’t handle taking a shower because taking off all my clothes at once sends me back into haunted places in my childhood and other vicious nightmares in adulthood. I don’t sleep. I dig my fingers into my legs or skin or whatever else doesn’t look too overt to try and keep from dissociating in every group of people. Somehow the pain keeps me *mostly* present.

I must have learned that somewhere because eventually physical pain like that where I have to peel my fingers from this tightened fist in my pocket at the end of an interaction turned into actual physical harm. Single soldier like red lines running down my arm and leg. Of course well covered with my sleeve or pant leg. The mask must be maintained at all costs you know.

But really?

Does it?

At what cost exactly?

Is it better to commit suicide and leave people wondering what was truly going on? To never be seen and to wish desperately that people could see what you cannot tell them?

I don’t even know how to live honestly at this point. I’ve learned so well how to hide the inside that there is no concept of the second woman hiding beneath this perfectly crafted shell of female empowerment.

I’ve started to ask people to ask me different questions when they want to know how I am. Trying somehow to break the spell of the forever prudent game…

How are you?

I’m well thank you, how are you?

I dare not answer that question in any other way. I’ve learned that unless I shape up I get sent away. Unless I’m fully pleasing at all times no one will want to be around me.

My dad left when I was really young. My mom drank and took pills after she married a rageaholic. At every turn it was reflected back to me that I wasn’t good enough. That when I wasn’t happy bad things happened and if I didn’t behave well worse things might come next.

Only the fucked up part growing up that way? There is nothing that can be done to prevent the shit that is life. There was nothing in my childlike behavior that could have adequately predicted, prevented or even remotely have touched any of those. And yet I bore the weight of it.

We smile but o great Christ the cries…

I wished desperately to have my dad back. I wished desperately for my mom to be awake, even the remotest way engaged in my life. I wished today wasn’t the day I got ripped out of bed at 5 AM because I left one cup in the sink the night before. That today wasn’t the day I listened as he beat the shit out of the dog.

I’d sit with the dog some nights. Staring into her sad little eyes. She knew me. I didn’t have to put on the mask for her. I didn’t have to pretend that we had this happy shiny family where nothing was wrong. She’d rest her head on my lap and we’d sit for hours sometimes in silence. Me in my hiding spot hoping no human could find me and her desperate for some kind of company, anything other than being alone.

That dog is long gone. So is that marriage, that house…a different era. And yet something in me refuses to discard that mask. I haven’t figured out how to accept the woman that looks back at me in the mirror. Haven’t learned that she desperately wants to be loved without the mask but assumes the only way people can love her is if she grips tightly to the perfect persona everyone else is projecting.

I can’t…

Posted on by ag

I don’t quite know how to adequately explain where I am right now.

Just super feeling like no one really gets it.

And sort of like I’m the brat that won’t be grateful for the things around her.

My sister just texted me:

Hi, i know it’s been a long time. I spoke to your therapist the other day and mom talked to her this afternoon. I’m really sorry you are going through all this. I heard your finances are tight, you were laid off. Please don’t worry about making payments to me. I don’t know what i can do to help, but I’m here and will do anything i can. I love you, i miss you. I don’t care how much time has passed – let’s say it’s been one week. Call me, text me, you can ramble, i can ramble. We can make no sense, talk about the weather, i can regale you with animal antics. You are amazing and talented and i love you.

And I’m the asshole who’s upset at that message.

Ruth questioned me on it.

What exactly is your endgame here?

I can’t adequately put into words why this isn’t a wow, she cares and understands and I should be so happy kind of text.

Mostly because I responded to the act of the text itself and not the content first.

I’ve asked twice now that communication go through the family therapist. That all of this is really beyond what I can handle emotionally.

It’s helpful when I have a container for all of it and a buffer that’s a therapist that can help me navigate where I am and how I feel. I’ve spent so many years stuffing all of that and I really just don’t have the energy or strength to compartmentalize right now.

It’s just all too much.

In days when I literally have enough to stare at the wall all day and fight with every non active part of my being not to get up and grab the scalpel sitting on the counter or find the closest gun store to my new apartment, it really doesn’t take much to upend the apple cart.

And when I say those things I think “you’re such a pussy”… I haven’t cut in a while now. And I’ve been suicidal for ages. So I think talking about either of those is kind of like an idle threat. Like if I’m not actually doing those things or actively acting them out I don’t get to talk about them anymore.

Quit being the girl who called wolf.

I should be so happy that my family cares. That they miss me and love me.

I should get over the part where I feel super unsafe in their presence and appreciate the here and now for how it is.

I shouldn’t hold the past relationship over my sister and her voluntarily keeping the fact that her husband that I saw and interacted with frequently was a registered sexual offender. Well, he still is, but they aren’t married anymore.

Out of sight, out of mind.

I should be the bigger person and allow my sister and mom the grace of being exactly who they are.

They care. They’re human. They’re flawed. And they love me.

Who am I to say that has to be a certain way or to engage in the part where I don’t feel safe.

Why indulge the part of you that got sucked entirely back to childhood where the majority of your coping mechanisms seriously don’t work and everything feels raw, scary, out of control…

There is this voice that insists family is all you have. That you’re being an asshole for not talking to them and refusing to come to the table even.

This quiet rage of I don’t know how to say it and don’t have the words to quite make people understand is simmering inside.

It’s that voice that reminds me I have a blade in my pocket right now. Or that there’s a million ways to get ahold of a gun.

Or, since I promised not to do those exact things, that I have these lovely inherent weapons at the end of my arms that I could relentlessly beat my head with.

That’s what I want to do.

That’s what everything internally is telling me I should do.

And yet I sit still.

Externally the entire world looks calm. There is nothing about my demeanor that deceives this collected shell. Nothing that would indicate the amount of absolute anarchy going on inside.

Insurance says I no longer need treatment. Ruth and I are hip deep in beginning to look at trauma. Over the last week or so I’ve recalled a troubling flash in my head of being held down as a kid by someone much bigger and stronger than me. Me kicking and screaming and yelling. A fully violent scene. To no avail.

It’s a second, maybe two…but more than enough to remind me of the sheer terror that nighttime brings.

And today I realized just breathing is triggering. That I breathe shallowly and silently so as not to make a sound. If I don’t make a sound maybe he doesn’t know I’m in here and I won’t go through that terror this time.

Where on earth does that come from?

No idea.

On top of that I had the back side of the scalpel against my wrist the other day. Before the breathing scene. Before the family communication. Things weren’t well a few days ago. Now? With a clueless family that can’t seem to understand me? Knowing I’m trying as desperately as possible to not make a sound or even exist? Knowing insurance thinks I’m all better? Fighting so hard to maintain an exterior that belies the underneath when all I want to do is injure and seriously hurt…

Now I’m way less better than I was with the scalpel in hand. And feeling so incredibly misunderstood. I was hoping writing was going to help this internal rage, but I’m not sure it has. I can’t quite explain it. I can’t find the right words. Nothing I do or say matters anyway. Even in the desperate attempt to be seen I’m being missed terribly.

opening the door a bit…

Posted on by ag

My family has been pushing on the family therapist I’ve seen for a timeline. I haven’t actively talked to them in over a year at this point. And they want to know when. Not having any idea what exactly this year has been or where I am now I decided to have the family therapist send this for me (since apparently I need her in the middle right now):

I don’t quite know what to say at this point.

I feel overwhelmingly like I’ve created this crazy drama, making a scene over something that isn’t, or feeling like I don’t have access to find a way back and that’s everyone’s problem to wrestle with as I figure that out.

This has been an unprecedented year. One I have difficulty explaining to myself. At the end of it it’s clear, though I’ve dealt with PTSD for years, it’s on an exponential level now. Probably Complex PTSD at this point. For reasons I do know and reasons I don’t fully know but get glimpses of in habits and body responses.

And for now the reasons don’t exactly matter. What does matter is what life looks like presently under the weight of that. I’ve slept an average of 2-4 hours a night for almost 2 years. According to the professionals that might be all that’s needed to send me down the physical/mental/emotional spiral this last year has been. One therapist calling sleep deprivation a known method of torture and my neurologist looking me squarely in the eye: “you will die on 2 hours of sleep a night.” In truth those numbers are averages, some nights zero and some nights 30 minutes at a time separated by an hour and a half at a time to *maybe* reach 2 hours.

So I guess it isn’t surprising my brain isn’t working well. Or that I don’t have much tolerance for anything emotional. Or fly out of my seat when I catch hair moving out of the side of my eye. Or why unexpected sounds leave my heart racing for sometimes hours. My sensitivity to light, sound and smell are super acute at this point. I no longer listen to music, avoid bright lights and tend to duck when sirens go by.

Ultimately there are pieces I think we need to talk about in terms of why I had to step away, but I’m mostly writing to say I can’t imagine what this is for you. I know it’s impossibly hard for me and that I miss being around and talking with you. But I also haven’t been able to focus on much of anything. The way my body and brain react to literally the smallest of sounds and movements is quite beyond logic at this point. Like I’d even consider it among an autonomic nervous system disorder diagnosis. But those are hard to pin down. And this cycle has proven nearly impossible to disrupt. There isn’t anything linear about progress and the things that might be most helpful are hard to push fully into when sleep is so dysregulated. In short, very slow going.

The thought in the beginning is these things came on rather suddenly, and, while I can appreciate it was probably years’ worth of buildup, there was some thought of there being an “off” switch. It had been turned on rather suddenly, there must be a way to turn it back off again. But after a year of fighting it with every tool I can find and professionals have suggested, it’s perhaps time to look at it more like a lifestyle instead of a phase.

Which hit me worse than dealing with it for a year. The thought of what if this never goes away. And it might not. If that’s the case I can’t leave the rest of my life on hold while I figure out how to get rid of it. Although that does mean things have to move as slowly as I can handle. And I have no idea what that looks like until I’m in it. And sometimes not until later/after the fact.

What does that look like then for us?

I think maybe that starts with a session with you and the family therapist and then the three of us and the family therapist to start working on how we navigate the space of now. And I’d like to offer talking to one of the other therapists I see that might be able to best answer questions if you have them about nervous system/sleep and what’s going on with me now. She has a good way of explaining all of this in a regular English kind of way and can perhaps best translate what all of this means at the moment.