Helplessness

Each episode of PTSD usually follows by several days of intense feelings - they indicate how the person felt after the abuse. I felt utterly helpless yesterday, and again helpless today. Yesterday morning I also felt lost - I looked to people for any acknowledgement of my pain, but I couldn't find any. Then I cried - I felt like nobody could help me, and I was so overwhelmed by pain, that I didn't know what I could do to stop it. I also was stopped in starting anything - I felt terrified that I would do something wrong. I felt like I did something so wrong to cause all this pain - that it was all my fault somehow. Today I went looking for praise and recognition - I turned to everyone, and yet I felt terrified when people made contact with me - my entire body felt raw, skinned. I was jumpy and very emotional. At the end of the day, I became angry - I became so angry that I honked at anyone driving slow or not to my liking, and I blasted really loud music in my car. By late evening I realized that all of these feelings, in this particular succession, must have been what I felt after the abuse. I felt one more thing, something very disturbing. I caught myself thinking - when I grow up, I will be like them. I will inflict pain, and I will know how to do it. They think they can torture me? We will wait and see - I can torture them too. And I decided to not trust anyone ever in my life - except that was not an intelligent decision of an adult, it was a feeling a 2 year old girl felt, and couldn't explain, but it felt real enough to me to understand its meaning.

I felt like a lone animal, licking my wounds. I felt like never ever opening my heart to anyone, ever again. I felt like crawling into a cave, and watching the entrance, so that I could bite anyone who dared to enter, and I would be always alert, always always, so that this pain doesn't happen to me again. The day after I remembered, I also couldn't eat. I didn't eat breakfast, and I barely ate lunch. Today, the same - I didn't eat breakfast and ate only lunch. I was always very thin and my mom told me she always had trouble making me eat. I get it. I didn't want to eat, I wanted to disappear from this world. Today, a thought crossed my mind - I didn't want to live. It was a thought and a feeling - and a question - what can I do to stop living? Stop talking and stop eating. And that's exactly what I did.

Interestingly, for different people PTSD manifests itself differently - they see moving shadows, hear sounds, smell odors, etc. For me it is always only snapshots - very sharp and pretty pictures, most of the time non-related to the abuse itself, or so they seem. By now I know that they are, and by now I know how to put the pieces of the puzzle together. By now I wonder, do I want to pick up the phone and ask my mom if she took me to the doctor, if she dated a doctor (OMG, I just realized that the father of my sister was a doctor - and my sister exhibits all signs of abuse), or if she remembers that my grandfather was together with me alone, or if she was out of the house for a long period of time? To find out for sure who it was - my grandfather or somebody else, or somehow maybe it was a doctor visit. It's almost like I don't want to know, I've had enough. This memory was so disturbing, that I understand why my body didn't release it to me before. I had to be ready, and I had to understand what is happening to me to live through it. I wonder what other layers of the onion are left in my brain. I feel like I don't want many more, I'm about to be done with this whole remembering stuff. But I also know that there is no way back, and that by remembering it I will allow my body to process it properly for the first time, so that it won't be running my life anymore, but it will be ME running my life. 

What I am saying is - I am willing to go even deeper, to face memories much worse. I hope there is not much left, but I am ready to face it. I've read somewhere that 2 years old is about the limit of when a person can remember things clearly, and that before that all that is remembered are pure feelings. I also read somewhere that you can remember things as far as when you were 6 months old. I do hope there is not much more, though a feeling of being jerked up from a table by my right leg sometimes haunts me, and the knowledge that one of my legs is shorter that the other due to some unknown injury only adds to the anxiety. Do I want to know? Do I really want to?

I know only one thing right this moment - I am ready for a break from all this, and I'm going to go to sleep.

Photo by Erin Purcell.