Spinning

"Sometimes you close your eyes and see the place that you used to live when you were young."

The Killers

I don't know what it is about living in the home I grew up in that takes me back so often to the very first time I was raped. Maybe it's the lack of control I feel or the constant presentation of the surroundings that I had hated so much as a teenager. I was able to stay in my beautiful condo for two months after Mr. M left me, but circumstances have found me living again with my parents and siblings.

I am a vastly different person than I was then. Losing my oldest son in his infancy changed me in ways that I think nothing else could. That pain was like a refining fire, burning away some of my most visible imperfections. Having more children and struggling daily with loving a husband who suffered greatly with addiction have also drastically changed me. The pain of the way he hurt me and used me sometimes felt just like flames eating at my heart. It occasionally still does.

Tonight, something took me back to when I was fourteen years old. Feelings of being controlled, mistrusted, and deemed incompetent took me right back to that time period. It triggered thoughts that were so prevalent then.

You are stupid.
You are dangerous.
You can't be trusted.
Your needs don't matter.
You don't have anything worthwhile to say.
Your interests and passions are a waste of time.
You are not worth anyone's praise or approval.
You are a criminal.
You are immoral.
You are a failure.

Writing those thoughts makes it glaringly obvious that, while I don't think them as often, I have internalized them in a way that provides instant recall when triggered by a situation. Triggered is a good word. Triggers are what sufferers of PTSD, like myself, constantly struggle to avoid or control. I'm really pretty bad at dealing with my triggers still. I feel like I barely even know which situations are problematic and why.

In a class a couple months ago, I was participating in a debate staged by the professor- himself versus the class. Each member of the class was only allotted one chance to speak. The class as a whole was doing poorly and I attempted over and over to say my part. The professor intentionally ignored me until he felt like he couldn't anymore. I presented an argument that I thought was rebuttal-proof. The professor, realizing this, cut me off and took the chance to insult me. I began having a panic attack and needed to leave class.

I felt like such an idiot. Was I staging the whole thing because I was throwing a fit about being ignored and insulted? Why did I need to be heard so badly? 

I remembered being shut in a bedroom repeatedly as a preteen and teenager with another person demanding things out of me and finally refusing to speak because my words, and by association my thoughts and feelings, were consistently wrong. Nothing I said mattered. It was never about understanding my behavior, but about forcing compliance.

I remembered having the same conversations over and over with boyfriends and even my husband about what I wanted and needed. How I needed the exchange of thoughts, ideas, and emotions in order to feel loved and worthwhile. I remembered not understanding why the addicts I always seemed to love couldn't connect with me like I needed.

I remembered when I first found out about Mr. M's addiction and was forbidden to tell anyone. I remembered telling people I was fine while my heart was screaming inside me that I wasn't. Charlie was an incredibly colicky infant at the time who would cry for hours. When I had tried everything I could think of to help him, sometimes I would just hold him and sob, too, because my dearest hopes for a happy family were destroyed.

I remembered reporting to the police that I had been raped only hours after the event and seeing the officer act bored and skeptical, finally making it perfectly clear that he thought I was a liar and successfully pressuring me into denying my testimony.

Thinking about the stupid classroom situation flooded my mind with countless situations that I was not allowed to speak or my opinion was under attack or treated as irrelevant. Repression and shame have been significant themes in my short life that have helped to set the stage for repeated verbal, emotional and even sexual attacks.

In my mind, the feelings that were invoked from the experience with my professor were the same as those I felt when the friends of my rapist repeatedly sexually harassed me about the abuse, and the way a mind affected with PTSD works is that it interprets those situations as the same. Like you're back in the original trauma.

I don't have anything else useful to say tonight. I need to be up in four hours and my thoughts are spinning dizzyingly. There is no clean resolution, no way to neatly tie up the loose ends. I continue to free fall.

Final Thought

"Don't pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one." 

Bruce Lee