Erase and Start Over

The resurfacing memories of a woman with PTSD.

Monthly Archives: January 2015


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Demi’s Nails

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April 2014

The alarm went off. I reached groggily for my phone and slid the alarm screen to snooze. I must finish my tax return today, I thought. Then my arm and phone dropped heavily by my side, and I drifted off as if I had never left sleep.

I couldn’t find Demi. I searched all over the house, never questioning that I was back in the home of my first marriage. She wasn’t in her bedroom with the pastel pink, blue, and yellow curtains I had made her. She wasn’t in the living room, where her Teddy Ruxpin bear was laying on the carpet before the couch. I searched from morning until twilight all over that tiny house, even peering through the garage, but she was gone, vanished. My panic kept rising like bile in my throat. She was so little, just five years old, and night was falling. She couldn’t survive alone all night.

I went to the front door and finally opened it, thinking I’d go drive the neighborhood, and there she was, curled up on the front porch in front of the door, sound asleep. There were streaks of grimy tears running down her face. Her little hands were tucked under her chin, and I could see they were dirty and blood-stained, like she’d been scratching at something and tore her nails bloody. Something squeezed my heart painfully as I looked at that sweet, beautiful, clearly traumatized little girl. I turned my head slightly and saw the marks along the lower part of the front door. I suddenly imagined her, kneeling at the door, crying, screaming, calling for me and clawing and scratching to get back in; trying to claw her way in all day, finally giving up, finally realizing that no one was going to save her, not even her mother.

The alarm went off again, jarring me awake, but a part of me was still standing at the door in that nightmare, feeling the horror and guilt of recognizing that I had hurt my own child. The adrenaline pumped so hard that I wasn’t the least bit sleepy. My heart and breath were both going double-time.

It was just a nightmare. Demi had never been missing, I told myself, not ever. Not even for an hour, much less a whole day. She had never hurt herself by scratching a door. I knew logically that none of it had ever happened. So why did I hurt so much? I slid the alarm off and peered at the phone. 6:11 a.m. The whole dream took all of ten minutes.

Sighing, I flopped over onto my back and lay there, steadying my breathing. Demi was down the hall, 29 years old, and likely hitting the snooze on her own alarm clock. I have to get up, get ready for work, and take Daisy to school. But I didn’t move. I felt so heavy in heart and body. My skin was trapped in the clawing sheets, punishing me by pulling me down into the uncomfortable mattress. I could hear the water running in the bathroom beyond my bedroom door, but whoever was there couldn’t know that I was in trouble. I couldn’t shake this feeling that I had sinned against nature, that there was something inherently wrong with me, that I was a bad mother, bad employee, bad person and deserved to sink into that nightmare tangle of bedclothes and never wake up.

My face was wet. My girls were awake. I dug my fingernails into the mattress, silently fighting back, and pushed myself up into a sitting position. “Snap out of it,” I whispered fiercely. Gritting my teeth, I made myself look at my phone, and click the news app. Oscar Pistorius sobbed during his testimony that he didn’t mean to shoot his girlfriend. Russia was claiming it didn’t mean to invade Ukraine, that it wasn’t their fault. Good. My boss was not in the news today. That means it should be a slow day.

I stood up, grabbed my clothes, and headed for my own shower. I thought I should probably talk to someone about these difficult mornings, but I was ashamed to admit that it was hard for me to get out of bed for something so silly as a nightmare. I just have to do a better job of eating right and exercising. My nightmares were my own fault. Somebody in this world needs to step up and take responsibility.


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Breathing Through PTSD

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It’s hard to breathe. My veins feel carbonated; tiny bubbles with that same slight burn throughout my limbs and torso that I often feel against my tongue when drinking soda. I’m slightly disoriented, as if my airy blood is trying to make me float. My forearms are light. They can’t help but rise up toward my face. My chest is pounding. I must breathe. Just for a minute. I don’t want to do anything, think anything, feel anything. I just want to sit and breathe, very still, with my face buried in my hands.

I know it’ll pass. It always does. I just wish I could get through a day without freezing. Without feeling rising memories and having to involve my whole body to keep those thoughts at bay so I can focus on work, family, paying bills, doing dishes…

It’s hard to keep up with simple daily life when I must drop everything, without warning, and breathe for half an hour. But I do it. I must keep going. I begin my DBT exercises.

The floor is beneath my feet. I can feel the floor. The iPod is playing in my daughter’s room. I notice the song. I notice my daughter is humming to the song. The room is warm. I can feel the temperature of my skin, sending signals that the room is too hot. I open my eyes. In front of me is my coffee cup. It is solid. It is blue. It has a flower pattern. It is empty. I can smell overripe bananas. I remember that I meant to toss the bananas out this morning. My head turns toward the kitchen, and..

I’m out of it. I rise naturally toward the kitchen, not dizzy, not scared. I feel myself again. I toss the bananas, wrap up the trash and easily lift it to the front door. Okay, back to my day.


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Teach Your Daughters Well

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This image from Blue Nation Review has been trending on Facebook. It depicts the consequences of a girl thinking that being smart is way cooler than boys, cigarettes, parties, or being popular.

You cannot teach this to girls. I have two daughters of my own, one 30 and one 16. I also have given workshops on college campuses as a Women’s Issues Director student leader. You can instruct, cajole, demand, and give a song and dance, but young women will always hear you with wariness. Their internal voice of rebellion and personal freedom will always have a contradictory argument for you. “You don’t know what it’s like, Mom, being a teenager today.” Women between the ages of 13 and 22 are confident they know better than those of us who’ve been around the block more often than we care to count.

No, you cannot teach values and principles to girls. But you can model them.

Your daughter will be as disciplined as you are, not as disciplined as you tell her to be. She’ll read because she sees you reading. She’ll appreciate regular exercise because she remembers seeing you get up uncomplainingly every morning for a walk or run. She’ll unconsciously prefer to skip drinking with her buds in order to get some extra studying in, because she grew up seeing you turn down alcohol or attention from husbands/lovers in favor of opportunities to grow or stretch.

In the end, she’ll be her own person, but you’ll see the positive and negative influences you modeled for her appearing in her life more regularly than you might think. Especially given how much she may argue with you. Go ahead and lecture her once in awhile, but don’t beat the dead horse. She’ll get it, just by remembering what she’s seen you do.

My mom modeled that women are nothing without a man. She spoke like a feminist, but her words were just parroted from current events. Her actions made it clear to us girls that her husbands/lovers were much more important than we were. I began to unconsciously believe that my future was predicated on having a man in my life. When I hit 14 and noticed that I was being noticed, I made the most of it. I fell in love regularly, a serial monogamist, sure that each boyfriend was “the one”. I hadn’t been out of high school a year before I was pregnant and married, in that order, and considered myself a success.

I was so proud of my firstborn daughter that I went back to my high school to show her off to my former teachers. They all cooed and smiled over my cherubic infant, except for Mr. Stewart, my English teacher. I walked into his empty classroom, he turned around from whatever he was doing, saw me standing there smiling with a baby in my arms, frowned, shook his head, and said, “You should have gone to college.” Then he turned away and went back to what he was doing. Not another look or word.

I stood there, surprised and mortified, then quietly left. I have never forgotten that moment, and I will be immensely grateful to Mr. Stewart for the rest of my life. In pondering his words, I realized that all he knew about me was my work in his class. I’m sure he knew I was an editor on the school paper and involved in Drama Club, but for the most part, his assessment of me was based on the papers I turned into him. He knew my work, and thought I was good enough to go to college.

No one had ever told me that before. I think he never said it because he assumed I would go. I had always been told I was too stupid to go to college and my parents refused to pay for it. No one told me I could apply for scholarships or loans. My high school GPA was 3.4, but I thought that’s just what students get who do their work.

I did well in school for two reasons: I was lucky enough to be born intelligent; and Mom taught me to be obedient, or else. A teacher was an authority figure to me. If the teacher said “do this”, I did it. But college? No. I was sure I wasn’t qualified, and definitely knew I couldn’t afford it with my salary at Taco Via.

I have done my greatest work when there has been no man in my life, when I fought the unconscious impulses of my upbringing that fiercely whispered I was not whole without a man. I earned a double-major with honors in just 35 months in between husband #1 and #2. I became a student leader statewide and a lobbyist during those years. I began a career as a legislative analyst, able to read, analyze, and write law when I was focused on me and my child and not on my looks, night life, or other means of seeking a man.

Imagine where I would be right now if I had gone to college straight out of high school. Imagine the career I would have if I had paid more attention early on to the talents I own that make my happy. Imagine the kind of marriage I could have if I had waited until I found my own place in the world, obtained my own healing, before seeking a life partner.

I know I am not a good role model for my daughters. I am certainly a better one than my own mother, but I have enough of a sense of my strengths and shortcomings to know I must allow other women to influence my girls, as well. First Lady Michelle Obama is a woman I greatly admire, and I speak of her in casual conversation with my girls. I talk about all of the women who have influenced me over the years, and the lessons I’ve learned from them.

I’ve also demonstrated change to my girls. I’ve been fearless in sharing my shortcomings, and showing them that it is possible to be better today than I was yesterday. Between me and Michelle Obama, and the trove of great female role models out there, I know my girls will find their place and much happiness. What more can a mother ask?


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Inpatient

Four Winds

June 3, 2014

I guess I should begin by telling you where I am, but first let me just say how ridiculous it is that I have to ask permission to have a Q-tip to clean the water out of my ears after a shower. They’ll give me this pen and leave me alone for an hour to journal my thoughts, but heaven forbid I should be left alone with a dangerous cotton swab. Between you and me, I’m guessing I could do way more damage to myself with a pen, but I’m just the patient. What do I know.

I’m in a loony bin.

Okay, okay, I know that’s not fair. The accommodations are far from a cuckoo’s nest. Not quite hotel-like, but more of an upscale college dorm. The rooms are clean, with wall-to-wall low-nap blue carpeting. The beds are comfortable enough. Everyone has the exact same simple pine furniture – a nightstand, bed, small bureau, and a desk with a chair. For a minute there, I thought I wasn’t allowed to have a trash can, either, but when I saw that my roommate had a trash can, I asked for one, too, figuring the person who empties them must have forgotten to put it back. There’s a bathroom with a shower in every two-person bedroom. I am thankful for that. Some dorms make you walk down the hall in a robe to shared showers. I was surprised to find that the shower is pretty roomy with a nicer shower head than what I have at home. At least I only have to share it with one other person.

All the rooms come off a long, carpeted hallway that has attractive pictures on the wall of simple scenes with flowers or fishing boats. It smells nice, here. There are scent-diffusers placed around some of the public areas. They told me it was some kind of aromatherapy. Pleasant. A light mix of eucalyptus and lavender.

The public places include a game room with a long table on one side that could seat eight, and some soft armchairs with small tables on the other. There were a couple bookshelves filled with games and books, and a flat screen TV on the wall. The windows were huge, looking into the center courtyard between all the buildings on the property. It’s summer, so the trees are all full and the flowers profuse.

There’s a small kitchen with a table that could seat four, a refrigerator filled with lemonade, yogurt, and tea, a coffee pot with all the necessary java makings, a sink and dishwasher, and cupboards filled with hand-me-down table service. There’s even ice cream and sherbet in the freezer.

There’s also a large common room filled with couches and armchairs that is mostly used for group therapy sessions, but they said that on the weekends people can watch movies or sing with a karaoke machine. The windows here open out onto a sunny patio with wrought-iron patio furniture including big green umbrellas for shade.

My first impression when I arrived yesterday was one of relief. This place is a thousand times better than that psychiatric emergency room I came from. Today, though, I know it’s all gilding. The pictures cannot be moved, not even to set it a little straighter. They are glued to the walls. Someone walks in to check on me every 15 minutes, all day and all night. They woke me up last night and told me I couldn’t pull the covers so closely around my head because the person with the flashlight needs to quickly see I’m okay and move on to the next patient.

All of my belongings – except my clothes – are behind a front desk, and I have to ask for my hairdryer or purse. I cannot use a razor unless there’s a staff-woman free who can watch me use it. I’m not allowed to use my cellphone. I must stand in line and wait my turn to use the landline on the wall or the one behind the folding glass doors for a bit more privacy. I’m not allowed to have visitors other than my immediate family, and then only once a week.

I’m required to follow the schedule on the whiteboard, attend each meeting no matter how much I wish to just be left alone to think. I have to ask permission to sit outside in the fresh air. I need permission to go for a walk, and can only go if there are enough other patients who want to go at the same time and there’s an available staff person to escort us. I have to stand in line for my morning and evening pills, and if I want to sit in my room until the line dies down, a staff person will come find me and tell me to get in line. They are nice enough about it, but some of the staff look at us like we are cats they are trying to herd.

I’m in a hospital, no question, and I can’t leave until they say I can.