Memories

There is a lot going on in the PTSD department. Things are starting to come to a head again. I'm currently really scared, sad, and triggered. My head is spinning. I'm making new connections and realizations about my childhood and my stomach is turning. I emailed my therapist earlier today about the impending loss of my psychiatrist and I really wish I hadn't. I want to email her now but don't want to be overly needy or abuse this email thing. My psychiatrist did increase my prazosin today and so maybe that will help. Maybe I should take it now and try and stop my mind from thinking. I'm not suicidal but right now I'd like to down a bottle of pills to escape my mind. People have been reaching out to me and that in itself is amazing and awesome. I'm going to save that for tomorrow so I can write about something good and not this negative stuff. Please, if anyone reads this, please send healing energy my way tonight.

Light on the path

When I last wrote on Friday things were difficult. They stayed that way. It's been a rough couple days but I think I'm finally pulling out of it. I'll break this into pieces and start with Saturday. I stayed in bed all day. I still hadn't slept well and my back hurt from the fall. I was exhausted and emotional. My dog was sicker then she's ever been in the nearly nine years I've had her. She had diarrhea everywhere. I couldn't clean it and just cried. I called the vet and they said to put her on a boiled meat and rice diet. Great, except I'm vegan and have none of that stuff, my back hurts so I can't drive, and even if I could drive I don't know how to cook meat! It was mom to the rescue. We have our issues and our moments but I called her for help. She cooked chicken and rice and brought it over to me. (She lives about five minutes away by car.) Success, my baby could be fed again and I could go back to crying in bed. Sunday was a tad better. I was still overemotional and still woke up exhausted. I decided not to go to church because I didn't trust myself to be around people. And my dog was sick and I didn't want to stress her out by making her go. (She's a service dog and so comes to church with me.) I was still really anxious and irritable so I decided to take a large dose of trilafon. For the longest time it didn't make a difference but I actually ended up taking a nap late in the day. i even played around with my guitar for about 15 minutes. Not much but better then nothing. And two people from church reached out to me to make sure I was OK because I never miss church unless I'm in the hospital. These two are the only ones other then the minister who know about the DID and so I did let them know things were rough due to nightmares and lack of sleep. Both Saturday and Sunday I did a lot of reading. I also spent a lot of time on Pandys, a website for survivors of sexual assault. See the link to the right. Thank god for that site. My therapist found it for me and it has been a godsend. Yesterday I got a call from my therapist. She couldn't see me today as she had planned because the clinic she is returning to was making her go through proper channels. And then she added in that they weren't guaranteeing that her clients returning with her could stay with her. Um, what?!?!? Cue panic. She told me not to worry that she could make a strong case about how it was clinically indicated for me to stay with her. Still, I panicked. I spent the rest of the day alternating between panic and complete dissociation. On the plus side I finally took a shower and even shaved my legs, which hasn't happened in probably over a month. Today things finally began to get better. I had a problem with my bank. I was supposed to have overdraft protection so if I didn't have the money in the account the purchase would be denied. Apparently that changed in April. I've just been lucky enough not to have overdrawn until now. I did it three times and then got a fourth charge for being overdrawn for so long. All told it added up to $140 in fees which is money I can't afford to lose. It took a week to get an answer but I went back to the bank today and I won my appeal and the money will be returned to me! Thank god because I don't know what I would have done if I couldn't get it back. My therapist called and said I was approved to see her again, however, I had to call the clinic (again) because I said stuff the wrong way yesterday. Apparently me telling them I wasn't going back to said clinic unless I could see the same therapist meant I didn't want to come back at all. Yeah, I'm not sure how that worked. But it worked out and I'll see her again on Thursday. I can finally breathe again! So this should be a good thing, right? And it absolutely is. But because I've been so incredibly stressed out by all of this I completely dissociated once it was confirmed I would be seeing her Thursday. I just slid into nothingness again. I was there, totally disconnected for at least two hours. I finally grounded enough to go get a sandwich for dinner. I came home and got lost in my head again. I took out my flute about two hours ago. And I played for ninety minutes. It was fabulous. It brought me back to my body and grounded me. I haven't played for so long in ages. I worked on tone, articulation, rhythm, and sight-reading. I also worked on some pieces I'm planning to play at church. One of them has two passages that are driving me insane. It's not that I can't play them, its that I psych myself out with them. So annoying. I would still be playing now except I don't want to drive the rest of the building insane. Plus, when I was younger I broke my pinky playing basketball and when I play for too long my finger starts to hurt because it didn't heal correctly. So was it a detour or was it getting lost? I'm honestly not sure. And I'm not totally out of the woods yet either. However, I am starting to find my way again. The world isn't completely dark and covered in thorns I can't see anymore. I'm still going to have to be careful the next few days. I still feel pretty fragile and delicate but hopefully the light will grow stronger and I can find the correct path again. For now though I'm just glad to be seeing cracks of light again.

Hopefully its only a detour

There are very few journeys on which you can go straight from the beginning to the end without getting lost or sidetracked. And even if you don't get lost there can be difficult terrain to cover. I'm currently either lost or in difficult terrain. I may even be lost in difficult terrain just to make things that much more fun. I'm tired. I feel like I haven't slept in weeks. I've been having anxiety about going to sleep. I stay up until I can't stay up anymore but I'm still getting the requisite hours I need. However, apparently I have been sleeping but I've been having nightmares and flashbacks in my sleep. I wasn't aware of this until I woke up Wednesday night to go to the bathroom caught in a flashback/nightmare state that seemed to be happening right in my apartment. I was so confused by it and a little bit scared as this particular brand of flashback had never really happened to me before. I further realized there were sleep issues going on when I woke up exhausted today even though I had supposedly slept through the night. I've been crying all day. It's annoying. It has been a difficult day but not one that should have me in tears like this. Yes, I fell on the ice and landed on my back and hit my head. And yes, my dog is sick with diarrhea and my back hurts too much to get her out when she does her emergency dance every 20 minutes. Yes, I've lost my iPod which was found by someone in my building but its looking like someone else might have claimed it was theirs. All of that sucks but today it is sending me over the edge in a way it normally wouldn't. I'm just so overtired its affecting every aspect of life. I saw my psychiatrist today and she put me back on trilafon and prazosin to try and see if I can get some peaceful sleep which will make things better. The prazosin blocks my nightmares and flashbacks. I was able to go off it last April (as well as the trilafon) but apparently I need them again. She said I can go off them again once things stabilize. I cried about having to go back on them (big surprise there, right?) but also recognized I can't handle being like this much longer. I sobbed through the whole appointment and have to go back in two weeks instead of my normal four weeks. And to make my day even better my psychiatrist told me she is leaving the clinic in April and going into private practice. Medicaid and medicare won't cover anyone in private practice. I can't process that right now and so am not even trying to. There is a doctor there who has covered for her before who I know a bit and like. She has a lot of experience with dissociative disorders and PTSD so if she is able to take me on the switch won't be quite so brutal. It still massively sucks though because this doctor has been great with me and I've been seeing her for around eight years, possibly longer. And I have major trust issues, as do many trauma survivors. So I'm wandering right now. I'm lost. I have to find my way out of this yet again. I'm hoping that this will be a quick detour. That I won't be caught in this black thicket of thorns for very long. Some detours are fun (especially the ones where you run into butterflies and follow them) and then there ares ones like this that truly suck. I think part of what is bothering me so much is how this one has pretty much come out of nowhere. In the past when I've had nightmares/flashbacks when asleep I didn't always remember them but could tell it had happened by how my body felt in the morning. There was/is none of that this time. Maybe if I can get some decent sleep tonight the sun will shine tomorrow and lead me out of this dark space. I'm hoping this is a detour and I'm not actually lost because at least with a detour you are on the right path.

Age, Hearing Loss, Emotional Development, and Music

In therapy yesterday I told my therapist that I never feel my age. It just doesn't make sense to me that I am in my early thirties. How can I be that old? I never expected to reach 21, let alone 10+ years beyond that with no plans of that stopping anytime soon. I look younger then my age too. Most people guess me to be in my early twenties at most. When I was in the hospital in September the other patients thought I was 19. I thought that was a bit of stretch though. I honestly think I would feel even younger then my early twenties except for the fact that I can drive and am not in school. The not being in school thing really helps with that. Part of the reason my age confuses so much is due to trauma. This is the reason why my blog is going to be hidden from people who know me. I am very open about the fact that I have PTSD and bipolar disorder. But I've also been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder which is a controversial and misunderstood disorder. I don't want people thinking I am a freak, even more then they already might. So this means I have different parts inside who are different ages. Some are much older than my chronological age and others are much younger. The youngest given age is four with a range up to seventeen. Then the older ones don't give ages. I just know they are a lot older. There is a four year old, six year old, two eight year olds, a fourteen year old, and a seventeen year old. There are three without an age attached who are all much older adults. So in a sense I am not my actual chronological age when one of the insiders is in control. But there is another component my therapist seems to think merits attention. I was born with a severe hearing loss that wasn't discovered until I was almost five years old. My therapist thinks I missed out on a lot of social and emotional development because of this. I don't know what to think. My hearing loss has affected me in many ways but I never thought it affected me in such a huge way at such a young age. My mother actually told me last night that when I was younger people thought I was gifted. I was mainstreamed my entire life. I received speech therapy at school until it became clear I needed individual sessions. I'm not a huge fan of mainstreaming. I was the only child with a physical disability in all of my schools (private schools) K-12. I felt like such a freak. I was incredibly shy because of it. For years I had to have my hair covering my hearing aids. Of course I now wear a cochlear implant on my head with pride, but as a child, being different and shy was horrible. Add in hidden sexual abuse affecting me and yeah, I was a social pariah. I wish I had been in a program for students with hearing loss. I think it would have helped me so much. (If anyone who stumbles upon this knows of any information on delayed emotional development of children with hearing loss please send me the information!) You might be curious as to what got me through all of this. The answer is music, writing, and art. That is what saved me then and what is saving me now. My high school music teacher was amazing and the four years I was involved in the music program she was a godsend. I wrote her a thank you email a year or so ago filling her in on just how much she had helped me. I believe I would have successfully killed myself back in high school without her in my life. And I don't think I was the only student she was a lifeline for. The music program was wonderful because it also gave me a social group. Music was out of my life for many years. I started lessons again on my primary instrument at the end of August. I also decided to try and finally learn guitar. I had one but couldn't figure it out for the life of me. Stringed instruments have never made sense to me. Give me a woodwind and I can quickly teach myself. I even learned basic piano on my own. But stringed instruments? Nope, totally confusing. I'm now doing fairly well at playing guitar. I just have to figure out how to sing and play at the same time while keeping the correct strumming pattern. Hey, its a work in progress. Kinda like me.

A new beginning

I've written in this blog in the past but I ended up deleting all of the posts. At that point in time I was focusing on my hearing loss and how it was affecting me. I will still write about that but am thinking this blog will mainly focus on my journey of healing from sexual abuse. So its a new year. A new start. A new beginning, both in life and here in this blog. I'll see where it takes me. For now I'm going to keep identifying details totally separate from this. I'm not ashamed of my story and what I have lived though. I have survived so much and am coming out on the other side. However, part of what I experienced has left its mark on me in a way not many people understand and I am leery about people who know me knowing about this. I might tell some about this blog but don't want others to stumble on it and know instantly who I am. Maybe I'll change my mind in the future but this is how I will do it for now. In the past year I finally made a lot of strides forward in my healing journey, not the least of which was my six week stay on the Trauma Disorders Unit at Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Baltimore, MD. I was actually discharged from there on December 7th, 2011, but the difference it made in my life over the past year was huge. I've never had a year like the one that just passed (and I meant that it was better then my life has ever been). I honestly didn't know life could be like this. Was it a perfect year? No, I crashed quite badly at the end of August and ended up inpatient for five days. The end of August through the end of November kinda sucked. But I made it through. I actually knew true happiness and stability this year, for the first time ever in my thirty-something years and that is amazing. As for the trauma I will leave it at this for now. I was sexually abused by my father from a very young age until I was 17. I carry a lot of guilt that I was so old when it ended and that I never told anyone. I didn't know to tell anyone as it had been going on for so long that it just seemed normal to me. I was never able to prosecute him. I tried to do so several years ago but was told it would be he said/she said. And since he is a lawyer and I'm on disability for psychiatric reasons they decided to believe him. They didn't even investigate him. But hey, at least I haven't seen him in many years. I still wish there was a way for him to be punished for what he did to me. I know there is no way for that to happen now but I haven't completely given up hope the statute of limitations will change and be eliminated and I will get my chance.