Category Archives: trauma

lost friends

Posted on by

7

You’ve had a hard day of therapy, so you take yourself to the grocery store for a distraction. It’s usually a good choice. However, today you run into two former friends.

It’s obviously awkward for everyone. They don’t try to hide the Deer-in-the-Headlights look on their face. You say hello. They say hello back with a vacant distant look. You shuffle on as quickly as you can so that everyone can stop feeling awkward.

Afterwards, a part of you hopes for a text or an email from one of them, but, alas, there is none. You finally realize that the friendship is really over.

You drive home, cry a little, and then once you pull into your apartment complex you get out of car and immediately go for a brisk walk. The frozen grocery items can wait while you walk! You turn up the Glee playlist on your iPhone because you need to get the self-defeating thoughts out of your head. You replay “Defying Gravity” a few times, and even “Gives You Hell,” but you feel only mildly better.

The PTSD was too much for them, and a part of you understands. It’s true that they triggered you inadvertently a few months ago, and it was made worse later by one of them. It was The Episode That Made It Worse that was the real breaking point. You realize you’re talking in riddles here, but you can’t possibly relive it again.

You’ll never forget that horrid Winter Dance where you and your partner were on the verge of splitsville. “Billie Jean” started playing, and, for lack of anything else to do, you went on the dance floor to dance by yourself to that horrid song. This short, spunky woman then starts dancing next to you, and says, “Hi, I’m Faith! Doesn’t this suck?” Yes, the dance did suck, and that was the start of your friendship.

You just have to accept that they are gone.

TW: Floaty free-for-all

Posted on by

3

Mega ginormous therapy day was had by the lot of us today. We did not like it one bit, not a sliver, not a crumb of like.

It’s weird in life how one seemingly disconnected thing can lead to one thing and then another, and before you know it you can draw the connection between these things. I’m getting ahead of myself, let me explain …

On the long drive to Doc’s office my head started shaking, and it felt a bit … involuntary. I know it’s strange to say that, but that’s how it felt. It felt like I was vigorously shaking my head no, but I had no idea why. The only thing I could surmise was that one of the peeps did not want to go see Doc today.

So, I get in to see Doc, and convey all this to him, and he agrees that is likely the case. It turns out that one of the little peeps did not want to come back because last time when Doc was setting me up for neurofeedback I had a memory come back to me as he was putting the electrodes on my head. I started remembering my mother detangling my hair in a painful manner. I think this memory was triggered because Doc was touching my head while I was a little peep. Anyhow, my mother decided to have my hair cut short, like a boy after this particular detangling because she was tired of dealing with it. My hair was cut so short I looked like Huckleberry Finn in a dress. I was beyond mortified.

To add to the mortification, Easter was upon us very soon after this hair hacking job. I had an awesome baby blue dress that looked like a boy decided to wear a dress to Easter Mass. I was mad, and embarrassed to be seen with the hack job on my head.

Right after Mass my idiotic stepfather had the entire family gather on the lawn in front of the church for a photo. The dork even brought his camera. Who brings a camera to Easter Mass? As we were gathering for the picture I grasped my hands in front of me. My stepfather started taking pictures of us, and my mother shouted out at me that I needed to stop holding my hands that way because it looked like I was touching myself.

Once I conveyed this to Doc I was floaty and out of it. Since then I’ve been grappling with feelings of despair and ideation.

If there’s more to remember, I don’t want it. Don’t want to hear it, don’t want to know it.

Coming up for air

Posted on by

5

You look out into the sea of faces, and welcome the group to the video conference. All is well, and going smoothly until a voice starts bellowing, “There is no contract between blah blah blah blah.” At least that’s what it sounds like to you because you are not there once you hear that inevitable berating nasty tone. You’re gone, just like that. Somehow you’re saved because one of your colleagues handles the nasty woman with the question/comment.

But then there are others with the similar berating tone, and you find a way to fake your way though it even though your body is floating, and you hardly feel like you’re on the ground. You’re answering questions, and keeping your body from shaking, but it is the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life. It is painful to stand there, and keep it all buttoned up.

Right before the lunch break a woman approaches you to ask you a question. She’s nice and polite, but you haven’t eaten in three hours, and you feel yourself start to fade while she’s talking to you. You take her hand in yours, and tell her that you desperately need to eat something, and you would love to hear her question after the training ends. Mercifully, she smiles and says that’s fine, and that she’ll see you after the training.

You run to your office cube, and shake and shake and shake ,and then you eat your yogurt and granola. You want to cry like a baby, but you go back on camera in 15 minutes so there is no time for that.

You are back on camera, and the worst of it is over. However, your body does not know that, and it wants to TWEAK out. Keeping a lid on the pressure cooker in your body is an “all-hands-on-deck” affair. Somehow you get through it.

The lovely woman with the question right before lunch finds you after the training, and she turns out to be a joy to speak with. She is the one bright spot in the entire experience. The two of you wind up talking extensively about issues tangentially related to the training.

You are able to get to the end of the day, and you’re exhausted. Unfortunately, your body is in overdrive, and does not realize that the ordeal is finished. Your friend, Jack, takes you out for an early birthday dinner, but you’re twitchy. In fact, you’re especially twitchy when a couple is seated very close to you in the restaurant. You just about jump out of your skin.

Finally you get home, and just melt down completely. It is full on panic/freak-out mode, and you are drop-kicked into the horrid past of your parents yelling at you in that berating voice. You find yourself wishing that your mother had killed you that time she tried to run over you with the car. One of your friends calls you in the midst of this episode, and comes over to check on you. They wisely assess that you need your Xanax, and a break from your brain. You take one, and eventually are able to peacefully sleep, and put this dreadful day to rest for good.