Erase and Start Over

The resurfacing memories of a woman with PTSD.

Tag Archives: courage


by Leave a comment

Breathing Through PTSD

5372890384_abd8ed155c

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.


by Leave a comment

Teach Your Daughters Well

10911320_10205941561202479_2165417273412120977_o

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?


by Leave a comment

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.


by Leave a comment

Erase, Start Over – Second Time in Six Months

October was domestic violence awareness month, so I guess I’m a bit late for talking about my first husband. He so rarely crosses my mind anymore. It was so long ago, and I was so very young. But it’s a part of my journey, and there was one wonderful thing that came from it – my daughter, Demi. And Gigi, wherever you are, thank you for being there when I needed you. I hope life is treating you well.

Here’s the beginning of a tumultuous, sometimes violent relationship.

Summer 1983, I was 18

Luke_Skywalker_by_Aliora

I met Dell when I interviewed for a job selling magazines door-to-door. He was short, but had a wiry build, Luke Skywalker hair and cleft chin, and bright blue eyes that were always kidding around. He was seven years older than me, and I thought he was cute. I knew during the interview that it was an awful job and I would never make any real money, but they paid for travel and we’d be touring the country and staying in hotels, which seemed like luxury to me. I used to sell Girl Scout cookies door-to-door, so why not magazines? Plus, I didn’t want to dance anymore (I never called it stripping back then – I was a dancer, thank you very much). Selling magazines was way better than dancing.

So I quit the Pink Garter, told my worried roommate that she could sell my stereo for rent money if I wasn’t able to send it to her, and took off to Wichita with Dell and the magazine troupe. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Dell had a thing for me. How empowering it felt having this older man, one of the team leaders, flirt with me, choosing me over all the other pretty girls on the team. I ended up in his bed and then on the best door-to-door leads.

I spent my days sitting with stay-at-home moms and lonely elderly people, convincing them to buy magazines (often unsuccessfully). I spent my nights wandering cities I’d never seen before, hand-in-hand with this good-looking man (not boy!) who made me feel like the most special person in the world. He was so incredibly charming, putting his coat around my shoulders, helping me circumvent puddles, opening doors for me. My high-school boyfriends kinda treated me like a buddy. Teasing, punching my shoulder, asking me to wait on them when we made snacks at their houses. I had never seen anything wrong with that kind of friendly banter before, but with Dell I couldn’t help but think this was the difference between friendship and love. To treat me so nicely must mean he was in love with me, true love, right?

We made it all the way to Seattle when I realized that there was no way I would have that month’s rent, so I called my roommate to tell her to sell the stereo, and the phone went dead part way through because I didn’t have enough change for the payphone. It never occurred to me to call her back collect – who does that? I wasn’t going to be that rude. Besides, I was sure she understood that I would call her back when I could, and the stereo was worth nearly three times what I owed her, so no big deal.

Dell decided to quit, too. The boss gave us a bus ticket back to our homes, which is what the job guaranteed. Dell went to Wisconsin, promising to travel to K.C. within a day of getting to Madison.

I remember sitting in a bus transfer station in Wichita, smoking a clove cigarette. I had taken them up at the Garter because all the girls were smoking pot, and although it smelled kinda nice – like incense and a warm fireplace – I just couldn’t stand the idea of doing something illegal. God forbid I should get caught. I was pretty scared of any authority figure in those days. Anyway, I took up clove cigarettes because they smelled nice and I could fake smoking them pretty easy. The smoke just gathered in my mouth and I blew it out, without actually inhaling the nasty burning stuff.

So I’m sitting there with this cigarette, thinking I looked so cool and grown up (at 18 years old, out of high school all of eight weeks), when I see a woman in a suit directing a bunch of security guards to check out bathrooms and dark corners. I could hear her muttering something about being able to “smell it”. I looked at my cigarette, looked at her, and realized it would be better if I spoke up first than if they came over to check me out. I was completely mortified to have to stand before this woman and apologize for scaring her and her officers with my sweet-smelling cigarette. She looked down her nose at me, like I was a troublesome child, and walked away without saying a word, dismissing her guards as she went. I had clearly just wasted her time. I was pretty glad when the announcement came that my bus was loading.

When I arrived in the Kansas City depot, I called my roommate. Her boyfriend answered the phone and I asked if they could pick me up, and he said no, that I didn’t live with them anymore. Then she got on the phone and told me she had sold everything I owned and it still didn’t cover what I owed her.

I stood there with my bags at my feet, in that dingy bus station, grasping a greasy pay phone at 10 p.m. at night, horrified to hear that everything I owned was gone. I sputtered about my stereo, and how it should have been plenty. She said no one would buy it, so she was keeping it, and that as far as she was concerned, I had skipped out on the rent and was not welcome back. I asked her about all the stuff no one would buy, like my dresser drawer filled with years of my half-written stories. She said she threw away anything that didn’t sell. There was nothing left.

I hung up the phone, my mind racing. I had only been gone on this magazine gig for four weeks. How could I lose everything in four weeks? I looked around the bus station, thinking hard. No fare for a taxi. I couldn’t sleep here. There were no diners or fast food joints around, and I didn’t even have money for the vending machine that looked like it had hundred-year-old cupcakes in it. Who could help me?

I stepped out of the phone booth, pacing back and forth with my thoughts. It never crossed my mind to call my mother. She was a “you made the mess, you clean it up” person. My sisters were still in high school, no wheels between them. I thought of my various high school friends, but realized I had lost touch with most of them when I ran away from home. I saw them at school, sure, but I was always working, so I kinda dropped out of sight. My SCA friends were also my roommate’s friends – she probably bragged to them about selling all my stuff, just like she bragged that she had a dancer for a roommate. They would take her side. Maybe she did this to get back at me for not taking her advice and keeping the dancing job.

Then I remembered Gigi. I went back to the phone and made my first and last collect call in my life. I was relieved to hear her voice accepting the charges, and almost cried when she exclaimed “that bitch!” after I told her what my roommate had done. I hung up the phone knowing there was someone on my side, that I wouldn’t have to curl up in one of those hard, plastic bus station chairs for the night.

I was going to have to tell Dell that we didn’t have a place to stay. He was taking the bus from Madison to K.C. tomorrow. I let him down. I wished I could tell him just to stay in Madison, but he was doing well at the magazine job. He left that job for me. It wouldn’t be fair to tell him I’d changed my mind just because I was nervous to have him find out we had no place to live.

I gathered my last remaining belongings and sat down. One large suitcase of clothes. One smaller case with makeup, curlers and hairdryer. And my purse. And my keys. Good God – I didn’t think to ask if she had sold my car! Could she even do that without the keys? The big, empty bus station was cold this late at night. One of the overhead lights was flickering, and went dark. I wrapped my arms around myself tightly, holding the fear and tears as deep inside as I could. Gigi was coming. I had a place to sleep. The rest would have to wait until morning.


by Leave a comment

Stigma

stigma glen close

I have many more good days than bad days, now. Today is a little in-between. It was hard to write last night’s post. I do get frustrated with myself for having bad days at all, and to those who believe I lose credibility by telling this story, well, part of me agrees with you. It was nearly 40 years ago, for heaven’s sake. I’m perfectly safe, have been safe for decades. I’m a professional and a mother, with many responsibilities. I have other things to do with my time than relive memories I never knew I had. I don’t have time for numbness, staring into space, feeling fear rush through my veins for no reason, or getting persistent pokes from unwelcome memories at inconvenient times. I just want to shake myself and say “get over it, already!”

The most pernicious thing about stigma is that many of us with PTSD, or other mental health issues, actually buy into it. We stigmatize ourselves just as much as others do. I don’t need someone telling me to get over it because I tell myself that almost every day. When I came back to work and found no flowers, not even a welcome-back or get-well-soon card from my coworkers, I wasn’t surprised. I had been in a mental hospital for a month. No one gets flowers in today’s world for that.

If I had been in the hospital a month with a broken limb or appendicitis or something, I would have been welcomed back warmly. Instead, there was very little acknowledgement that I had been gone at all. Where I had been or why were questions that were studiously avoided. I have no idea what people did or didn’t know. I am grateful for the coworker that gave me a hug, and the other one who took me to lunch that day, but I don’t mind admitting that it would have made my return much easier if there were some daisies or something on my desk to let me know I had been missed, that people cared that I was okay. Instead, I felt like I had let me team down by being gone so long, so jumped into work like nothing had happened so I could pick up my slack. I kicked myself for being silly over a stupid thing like a get-well-card.

Logically, I know it’s not inappropriate to wish I had been more warmly welcomed back. I know that it’s normal  to struggle over these new memories. My emotions and unconscious acceptance of social stigma aside, with everything I’ve been through it would be no surprise if I were still in the hospital now, five months later. Think about it. I am a person who has known more violence in the first 25 years of my life than most people ever experience in a lifetime. I had come to terms with all that, had accepted it and moved on, and even helped others. Now to find out that on top of everything else, I had been raped as a child? And one of my sisters, too? And that my mother – probably due to her own struggles – allowed these things to happen, and was even present? That there may have been drugs involved?

I think it’s understandable for me to have felt that enough is enough. I’ve had more than my fair share, and last June I needed to stop the world and get off for a bit. The important thing is that I got back on the world, and relatively quickly, all things considered. Sure, it’ll be several more months before I’m completely back to normal, whatever that is, but I’m happy and working and taking care of my family and setting great future goals.

Growing up the way I did, it’s a miracle I’m not in jail, a junkie, an alcoholic, a prostitute, or dead. I beat the statistics. How many teenage runaways go to college and graduate with honors in just three years? How many children who grow up in households with 15 years of recurring, unpredictable violence are able to break the cycle and successfully raise smart, healthy, happy children of their own?

I want to be the best possible mother to my girls. I want to have mastery in my career and be a pillar of strength to the people in my life and my community. I did the right thing by checking myself into the hospital, so I could achieve those goals. I stand by that decision.

Of course I will continue to have good days and bad days for awhile. This is all still relatively new to me. Of course I should continue to reach out for help with my mental and emotional health, as much as I do for my physical health. That’s what a responsible person does.

One day, regular mental health checkups will be as normal and commonplace as regular physicals. One day, our healthcare system and insurance companies will realize that humanity is a sentient species, much more than just physical mammals, and our healthcare should reflect that.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep writing about my experience with PTSD both in and out of the hospital. Hopefully, this inside view will help people understand and accept that it is normal and expected that a human being will have mental health issues. Hopefully my story will help the movement to end the stigma. After all, silence is the enemy of change.