It has taken me five days to compose this post. That’s how hard it’s been to write about this.
In a previous post I recounted the ways in which I am a bad friend. Well, I had a revealing conversation today that gave more evidence of that. A friend of mine asked me how my Memorial Day weekend was, and she could tell it was not a good weekend for me. I told her that it was a hard weekend because I found myself recounting previous Memorial Days when she and I were closer, and I missed it. I then went on tell her that I felt she and the rest of the group of friends abandoned me when I really needed them.
She then shocked me by telling me that was not the case, that she, in fact, called me frequently during the time after I had my traumatic incident. She then went into detail about lengthy conversations we had on the phone, and I recall none of it. She has no reason to lie to me, and she gave too many details for it to be a lie. Plus, it’s not like her to tell anything but the truth.
And in that vein, of always telling the truth, while I was still grappling with the fact that she did, in fact, keep in contact with me, she called out the elephant in the room. She said to me, ” You never visited after my son was born. You only held him once. You disappeared as soon as my son was born, and I never understood why that happened.”
So there it was, just like that, she called it out. After nearly 5 years of walking around the elephant one of us finally called it out. I decided to go with it, and tell her after all this time why I did what I did.
Nearly five years ago I hit rock bottom. I was drinking and carelessly putting myself in unsafe situations. This behavior culminated in a sexual assault from someone I knew, and that person held a job in high esteem. My friend says that I she and I had long conversations about this attack where she implored me to report it. I do not recall these conversations, but the fact the she knew so many details indicates that we did have these conversations. I can only attribute my memory loss to my DID.
Shortly after my assault my friend adopted a newborn baby. My hitting rock bottom and crawling into the rooms nearly dovetailed with the arrival of her son. And I couldn’t deal, couldn’t and wouldn’t go see the baby. All of a sudden I had an aversion to her baby. It flummoxed me because I love babies. But I could not come near this baby without getting twitchy and freaked out.
The baby was not at fault for my body’s reactions. My friend was not at fault for my body’s reactions. Although I knew that, I was powerless to change my reactions. I could not function around this poor child, and found myself avoiding going to her house to see him. I avoided this new lovely child because of the reaction my body had around this precious being. But the fallout was my friendship with this person whom I cherished. That friendship took a very bad hit, and then, eventually, the friendship was no longer alive. There were no words exchanged about it, it just became a long goodbye.
Now it is all out in the open, and the realization of the impact of my conditions on friendships has hit me hard. I have a better understanding as to why I’m largely alone. It’s hard to swallow, but it makes sense.
A Year in the Life of PTSD 