Tag Archives: personal

Then and Now

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Four years ago I faced the one year anniversary of my sexual assault, and I was barely in a better place from the prior year. At the one year mark, my PTSD was overloading my brain with triggers.

I was on a business trip four years ago that had me triggered beyond recognition. It was raining hard, the kind of hard rain that leaves very little visibility, and it was pitch black dark. The hard rain scared me, and I could barely drive. At one point I realized that it was taking all my energy just to drive 50 mph on the highway, not safe at all. I pulled over at a rest stop for a while, but I was still freaked out when I resumed driving. In the end I decided to find a hotel to stay in, though I was only an hour away from home. But I knew it wasn’t safe for me to continue driving.

That whole experience caused a barrel of stress after the trip, as my employer at the time did not want to pay for an extra hotel night when I was an hour away from home. I started getting more serious about my treatment after that trip. Eventually I left this job because I realized that all of the travel was getting in the way of my appointments.

Now I am back doing the kind of work I was doing four years ago, but with a different employer. This position has travel, though not as much as my previous position. Without realizing it, this past week, I was reliving the trip from four years ago. I found myself on the same highway with heavy rain, and a dark night. But this time I understood myself better. I knew that some of the peeps inside were scared, and this is why my body was in stress mode.

When the rain was coming down at a ferocious rate, and I couldn’t see a thing, and I could feel myself start to freak out internally something just snapped me out of the scared mode, and I just said “NO! We are not going to die like this on a road to nowhere with no one around. We are getting out of this, and we’re having room service when we get to the hotel. You hear me? Room service! We’re living through this thing!”

Blessedly we made it to the hotel without incident. I ordered a seltzer and a cobb salad for dinner, and we were so happy to be alive, and safe, and dry.

Then the next morning I had my meeting, and headed home with drier weather and calmer skies. I’ve traveled this road a number of times since that sexual assault four years ago, but this was the first time I noticed the hotel, THE hotel where it all happened. It’s surely been visible from the road all these years as I’ve passed it by. But this was the first time I ever noticed it since that day.

I blinked. Could this really be the place? I stared as I drove by, and, yes, indeed, it was.

What happened next surprised me.

I stared at it, and drove on.

I am not sorry

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To The Person That Confused Me:

I am not sorry I cried the other night when you told me it wasn’t a good idea for you to come over to my apartment for dinner this past weekend. I am sorry that you noticed I was crying on the phone, but I am not sorry that the depths of my feelings led me to cry.

I will never be sorry that you know exactly how I feel about you.

You’ve acknowledged that you have similar feelings for me, but you won’t act on them. I am sorry that you’ve chosen not to act on these feelings. It’s an even sorrier situation because it seems like you nibble at the edges here and there by flirting on the phone with me.

I must briefly digress by thanking you for spending the anniversary of one of the hardest days of my life recently. That will always mean a lot to me. The memory of you in the pizza place with the loud tie with red, white and blue stars and stripes is embedded in my memory forever. Then to learn that you wore the tie in commemoration of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom made my heart swell with pride.

And, yes, I had such a good time with you that night that I wanted to spend more time with you last weekend. I would have been sufficiently happy just cooking and playing a board game with you. I feel how I feel about you, but I would not have tried anything because I know where you stand. I respect you enough not to go against your wishes. I would have simply enjoyed talking with you.

I cried because I realized that our friendship will not grow because you are not comfortable spending time alone with me. And my brain just gets all clackety clack with that thought because I have a bunch of other related thoughts rolling around in my head: Are you afraid I’ll be “crazy?” Are you afraid you’ll see one of my other selves?

But there’s more to me than this thing we call DID. You created a barrier between us because of this. I know that you intended not to hurt me, but you hurt me nonetheless with your confusing ways. You also contributed to my feeling of not being good enough in this world because of my DID.

Though I am good enough, you’ll just never know it, and never experience it. I may be flawed as hell and prone to dissociation, but I will get to a better place, and you will miss out in sharing that place with me.

I have to move on, and even typing this makes me teary because you already have my heart. But I have to take it back because you do not want it.

You have every right not to want to have involvement with such a condition.

Still though, I cannot ignore the fact that it breaks my heart. If I didn’t have this illness you could see me as me. I wish you could see the me underneath all of this. Part of me wants to say, “Wait! Let me just get integrated in a couple of days, and I’ll be all better.” But I know better. I know that my recovery is a process that I cannot expedite any further. I so wish I could for me and for you. I wish with all my might that I was without this illness, and that I could just carry on like other folks.

But that is not what life dealt me, and all one can do with such a hand is make the most of it.

I wish I was DID free for you. But I am not. Someday maybe, but not today. And for that, I am sorry.

I have a dream

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Today is the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. I am happy to learn that there is good side to this date, August 28th, because for the past five years this date has been a terrible reminder of the lowest point of my life. In essence, my drinking facilitated a very unsafe situation that had huge consequences. At the five year mark I can finally say that there is some real hope.

In the spirit of the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s delivery of his “I have a dream” speech at the March I offer a few dreams of my own …

I have a dream that one day I will no longer shake involuntarily especially at inopportune times. The shaking will disappear because my anxiety no longer gets so high that all my body can do is shake for relief.

I dream that one day I will no longer have to struggle with numerous selves with competing needs. This will no longer be a struggle because I will have successfully integrated my selves into one, and that one is me.

I dream that there will be a day when I will no longer need to see a psychiatrist two days a week. It will be nice to put that money towards other bill categories instead of payments for sessions not covered by insurance.

I also dream that I will be able to spend time in my own home without losing time. I’ll be able to cook and clean in my apartment without becoming dissociative.

I do dream that one day I will not fight with that demon inside me that tries to convince me that I’m not good enough for this life, that I should give up the fight. I will no longer fight this demon because it will be defeated for good.

Most of all, I dream that one day all of us with mental illness will be able to get the help we need, and we’ll be able to get that needed help without making ridiculous financial sacrifices for our mental health. Even more than that, we will be seen as individuals that can contribute to society in the workplace as well as in friendship.