Erase and Start Over

The resurfacing memories of a woman with PTSD.

Tag Archives: nightmares


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Checking In – La Parte Dos

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TRIGGER WARNING

Monday  June 2, 2014 12:30 p.m.

I was trembling from the time I left my office, through the cell phone calls from my car trying to find help, to the time I pulled into the garage of the medical office park. I felt physically sick and lightheaded, and my emotions were swinging from anger to trepidation to relief and back. I was going to get to talk to someone and get this all out of me, and everything would be back to normal tomorrow. I locked up the car and headed to where I thought the entrance was for the Capital District Psychiatric Center. Every step was a struggle. I wanted to sit down in the middle of the road and just cry. But I made it to the building and, after a little confusion, found the right entrance. The door was locked, so I pressed the buzzer and waited, wishing there was a bench to sit on.

The unprepossessing entrance was opened by a wary face who only let me in as far as the vestibule, his eyes looking me up and down as if I could be hiding a weapon. I lifted my eyebrows, a bit surprised, and he explained that they had to be very careful about what went past those doors. He asked my purpose, and made sure I understood that if I admitted myself, I couldn’t leave until the doctors gave permission for me to leave.

I didn’t see a problem with that – I knew I wasn’t a danger to myself or anyone else, I just needed to talk to someone and I couldn’t wait six weeks for a regular therapist to be available. I was sure I’d be out in a few hours, so I signed the book and let him look through my purse, and then he unlocked the next door and let me in, locking the door behind me.

I had never been in an emergency room like this one. Being locked in made me apprehensive enough, but the place was dingy. An old box T.V. was attached up high in one corner. The wood and cloth chairs were bolted together and to the floor. There was only one wooden table with rounded corners, also bolted to the floor. The dull fabric looked stained. The glass door behind me had small lines running through it – some kind of security glass, I guess. It was cloudy with greasy fingerprints and smudges. I wouldn’t want to touch that door handle unless I was wearing gloves. There was another door to the left, locked with a small window at eye level, and a third door just like it straight in front of me. To the right was a reception area, with a staff person sitting behind more security glass. There was a long hallway to the right, with several gray metal doors with small windows.

Everything looked grubby, and there was an occasional waft of unwashed human bodies floating in the cold air-conditioned space. Curled up on a chair near the reception desk was a woman with unkempt hair, covered in a blanket up to her chin, sleeping. There was a litter of small brown paper bags on the chair next to her, and a half-eaten apple.

The staff person who admitted me regained my attention and took me through the door straight ahead. On the other side was a row of three closet-sized rooms, each with a table and a couple chairs. He gestured to one and explained that I would begin with some paperwork, and then there would be an initial intake interview. Then he left me alone with a pen and clipboard.

I pushed back my regret as I reached for the paperwork. Finally, something that made this place feel a little more like a legitimate hospital. Of course they’d get the money-part right. I filled in my insurance, took emergency contact numbers out of my cell phone, and was just finishing up the last form when a man and a woman walked in, smiling their welcomes.

I shook their hands and they walked me through the next steps. One was a social worker, the other a staff member trained in peer counseling and emergency aid. They were both kind and intelligent, so I relaxed a bit, ready to trust the process. The relief started to outweigh the trepidation.

When they asked why I was here, I gave them the short version first as background. I was abducted by a parent at 3; we were always on the run – went to 5 elementary schools; she beat the hell out of us with a metal cooking spoon and whatever else she got her hands on; I was a teenage runaway; I got pregnant and married at 19; that marriage ended with me in the hospital and him in jail; and my real father found me when I was 21; that I’d been having nightmares my whole life.

Then I told them what was new that brought me in here: that my step-father had died the week before, and I went to visit my estranged mother at my sisters’ request. That my sisters and I had gotten to talking, and that one sister revealed she had been raped – in our mother’s presence – when she was 9 years old. And after that I began having memories I had never had before. That I was afraid I might have been there when it happened. That I was so angry and had all these emotions I was struggling to control. I told them I just needed to talk to someone and get it all out because I felt completely wrong, like I would explode if I didn’t do something, anything.

They asked me if I had ever contemplated suicide, and I told them of course, just like anyone else, but I wouldn’t do it because I have two children I’m responsible for. That worried them at first, but once I explained that Demi was 29 and Daisy would be 16 in a few days, and that Demi and my ex-husband could take care of Daisy in my absence, then they were reassured. I did say that sometimes I thought that if I could just hang on for two more years, until Daisy went to college, then I could go away, perhaps forever. And that was partly why I was here, so I could make it the next two years, because the way I had been feeling and acting this past weekend, since Meg’s revelation, I wasn’t sure I could make it two weeks, much less two years.

As I’m writing this, I realize how dramatic that sounds, but when I was facing those two people, I didn’t want to hide anything. I wanted help, real help, so I quietly told them the truth. I tried not to cry, but I did reach for a tissue and did my best to keep my cheeks dry and speak calmly. I wished ruefully that someone else would take care of me for awhile. I have been taking care of someone else since I was six years old. I was just so tired, too tired to be a strong, normal, responsible person anymore.

They took plenty of notes but still managed to give me their full attention. They made me feel like they really heard me and they cared. I felt like I was finally going to get help. They said I would need to wait in the waiting room for a little bit, while they reached out to my primary care physician. They also took my purse and cell phone, apologizing and explaining that they would be locked up safe and that they couldn’t have those things in with other patients. They would try not to be too long and would come back to me with some next steps.

So I went back out to the waiting room, relieved and obedient. An hour later, I was a little impatient but amused. Just like a hospital, the wait is always longer than the doctor visit. I watched other patients come and go, some staying with me waiting. A couple of them spoke with me, freely telling me their stories. I have a neon sign on my forehead that says “I want to hear your life story” and often people obey that sign, even if all I want to do is crawl under a rock and deal with my own problems.

I was surprised to still be in that small room with people who were quietly rocking or walking and talking to themselves at 5 p.m., when they handed out brown paper bags of cheese sandwiches and applesauce. I asked if I could call my daughters at that point, because they were expecting me home from work soon. They let me get the numbers off my cell phone, but I had to wait while someone fetched it, then I had to keep my hands and cell phone inside the tiny window on the receptionist’s desk. No cells allowed for a single second in the waiting room. I used the landline provided for patients to call my girls and explain where I was. I promised I’d call them as soon as I knew anything further.

I went to use the bathroom and immediately knew I had made a mistake. No way did I belong in this place. This wasn’t a hospital, it was a minimum security prison. There was a shower in there with a torn black curtain and a floor that was too grimy for bare feet. There was toilet paper but no trash can and no paper towels and no mirror and – what was worse – no lock on the door. I went back to the receptionist to explain I was on my period but there was no trash can, and he told me I had to wrap my ladies things in toilet paper and put it in the cardboard box of trash under the TV in the waiting room, the worst place for privately throwing something away because the whole room was facing that direction. He handed me a tiny bar of soap, like what you’d get in a hotel, and a rough white washcloth he said I could use to dry my hands. He said to just leave it in the bathroom.

I was in that waiting room a total of seven hours before one of the intake staffers spoke to me again. By then, my anxiety was higher than it was when I had walked in.


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Knock, Knock, Knocking on …

TRIGGER WARNING

Looking back on that Sunday, June 1st, I don’t remember much, but I know the overwhelm took me. I didn’t give in to it – I know what giving in feels like. Giving in is when you come home with drive-thru nachos and microwavable kettle corn, turn on Netflix and binge watch for eight hours. Giving in is my mother with red wine swirling in her morning orange juice. Giving in to overwhelm is a conscious decision to put the world on hold and self-medicate for awhile. It’s a miracle that I prefer salt over alcohol in my worst state. I tell myself that whenever I take my blood pressure medicine. It could be worse.

No, on that particular Sunday the overwhelm took me, without my permission.

My girls say it seemed as though I had the flu pretty bad that day. My walk was unsteady whenever I got up for the bathroom or water, I had no appetite, I was alternating freezing cold and sweating hot, and I mostly slept.

I remember there were nightmares. I think I cycled through just about every recurring nightmare I’ve ever had and then some. My first husband’s fingers around my throat. My sisters screaming. Running and running but not able to get anywhere.

My waking moments were all memories:

Me, falling out of bed and getting my lip split on the corner of the nightstand. Getting stitches. I was 3.

Mom, sitting dejectedly on the end of the couch, cigarette smoke making rings around her tousled hair, her make-up-smeared eyes red and bleary. I had stayed home from school to make sure she didn’t carry out her threat to kill herself that day. I was 16.

Walking stiffly for a drink at the water fountain in the police station, my uniformed escort asking me why I was so formal, and me telling him I was not going to cry. I was 25.

Being slammed into the bathroom wall of the Pink Garter, a stranger’s lips forcibly taking mine. She had followed me in and had me pinned, her whole big, muscular body crushing me against the wall. I struggled and fought and was thankfully released to run when someone else walked in. I never thought a woman would ever do such a thing. I was 18.

Mom, kicking me as I lay curled up in a sleeping bag on the floor in my room. Kicking me again and again, screaming horrible insults at me. I was 15.

A door being slammed in my face. More stitches. I was 7.

Carrying a ringed pillow from class to class in junior high, telling everyone I had chipped my tailbone from a fall off my roller skates. I was 13.

Daddy #3’s finger in my face, threatening me literally into a corner, and Mom behind him telling me to just say yes, daddy. I was 17.

The videographer who offered to drive me home from an evening SCA event, pulling into the back of a grocery store and telling me he was in pain and only I could help him. He unzipped his pants. I convinced him that I was on my period. He said that’s okay, I could still help him and I wasn’t going home until I did. It was him or face a metal cooking spoon for missing my curfew. I was 14.

Walking six miles in the middle of the night, jumping into shadows any time a car came by, not knowing if my parents were after me. I carried a small bag of clothes and was headed to an older friend’s apartment. I didn’t know where I would go from there, but I was never, ever, going home again, not until I had made enough money to rescue my sisters. I was 17.

My sisters and I, all neatly dressed and sitting on the couch facing the CPS investigator. We told her we were fine, happy, that there was nothing wrong. No way were we going to let this stranger separate us girls from each other. I was 15.

Being slammed into the coat closet door and then rocked onto the living room carpet. Being straddled with his hips on my thighs and his knees on my hands and his hands around my throat, squeezing and squeezing until the black cloud came and I knew I was dying, knew I would never see my little girl or my sisters again. I was 25.

That’s but a handful of the memories I cycled through that day. And now I had four new memories:

1. Me in the pool, looking up at my naked, nine-year-old sister on the diving board.

2. Me, ten, running from the pool, tripping, hearing men’s laughter.

3. Mom, sitting in a pale pink wrap in the patio set by the pool, smoking and saying “just say yes daddy” over and over.

4. A man standing by the pool, between the diving board and the patio set. But that’s for tomorrow’s post.

One night, when I was 15, I knelt before my bedroom window, looking up at a full moon. The house was quiet. My youngest sister, Beth, silent in the next room. They had beat her hard that night. Her screams and sobs still rang in my ears today, but all was quiet and the house was dark at that moment in my memory. I remember kneeling there with my hands folded in prayer, appealing to the distant, peaceful orb that hung in the night as if that were God’s face, blurred by my powerless tears, and not the man in the moon.

Please, God. Please don’t let me wake up tomorrow. Please, take me to heaven tonight. Please. I can’t do this anymore.

That’s how I felt on June 1st, 2014. But in my despair that overwhelming Sunday, I knew then what I didn’t know for sure at 15. The morning was coming, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was going to wake up.


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The Reveal

TRIGGER WARNING

Friday May 30, 2014, around 1:30 in the morning.

Mom had gone to bed early with a bottle of something or other, her reward for not showing up drunk to the funeral, and to be fair, I probably would have done the same thing if I had lost a husband of 30 years. Her early withdrawal allowed the four of us sisters to relax and sit up talking late. We were all stressed and exhausted, and as much as I missed my sisters, I really needed to lay down, so I, too, eventually retreated to the guest bedroom at Mom’s that I was sharing with Meg. I remember being comfortably stretched out, reading my Kindle in the dark, waiting for Meg as she finished her bedtime routine in the guest bathroom.

It was a small room. The daybed with its trundle pulled out took up almost the whole space. There was cat hair everywhere. I had made the mistake of setting  my black dress down on the bed before putting it on, and ended up swiping off hair throughout the funeral. It wasn’t really a funeral – more of a wake. He had chosen to be cremated, so the vase was sitting on a table surrounded by pictures of him throughout his life. Over about four hours, a good hundred people came through to sign the guestbook and share their condolences with Mom. She bore up very well, and was visibly grateful for the many kindnesses expressed to her.

Meg came in and we lay in the dark talking some more. She told me she thought it was very brave for me to put aside my pain and anger to help Mom through this time. I admitted to her that I didn’t do it for her, but for my sisters. I would always be there for my sisters. Not that I had been – my roller-coaster life was more about my own survival and that of my kids than it was of being any help to my sisters, and I still carry a lot of guilt about that. I ran away from home, swearing to come back for them, and I never did.

I remember she and I talking about that guilt for a bit. Then we talked about how hard it was for me to reconcile the sad, fragile widow of today with the scary child-beater I remembered from decades past, and the snide, contemptuous termagant I had known throughout adulthood and as recently as four years ago.

Meg is a family therapist and lay minister. Her practice has been growing steadily. We talked about that, too. Then she told me about a therapy she had about ten years ago. I don’t remember what it was called at this moment, but basically it was body-based. The therapist has you focus on certain parts of your anatomy that are physically troubling you, with the idea that there is a memory “stored” there. Not really stored, but triggered or associated with that spot. Somatic! Yes, that’s the word.

Then she said there was something she wanted to tell me, a memory that had resurfaced through somatic therapy ten years ago, but that it was difficult to hear. I said “of course” and wondered aloud why she’d wait ten years to tell me something that was troubling her, and told her she can always talk to me. And she said this was different. Then she told me.

She remembered being about 9 years old and waking up from a bad dream. (This was in our home out in California, after Mom’s divorce from Daddy Two, whom we thought was Daddy One back then.) She got up feeling scared and went to go look for Mom, and found her in the back of the house by the pool. She wasn’t alone. She told my sister that they were skinny-dipping, and invited her to join them. So she took off her clothes and did.

When Meg said she remembered standing naked on the diving board, I felt myself suddenly feel cold all over, and I reached out across the space between our two beds to take her hand. We held hands over the empty space in the dark as she finished her story.

She remembers being at the side of the pool and someone pulling her up by the arms out of the water. She doesn’t remember any faces, but she remembers a penis being put in her mouth. They didn’t stop there. She remembers being raped. At 9 years old.

The room was dark and silent. I think I whispered her name once, but for the most part I just lay there, holding her hand and feeling what I am feeling now as I type this. Cold. Numb. Tears brimming but not spilling over. A tightness in my chest and difficulty breathing.

She asked me if I was okay, and I think I said something like “you’re the one that this happened to – are YOU okay?” And my concern tumbled out of me in dozens of choked words. We talked about her treatment, how she was able to handle dealing with Mom over the years, who else among the sisters knew at this point (Amy knew), that I thought she should definitely tell Beth, and why she was telling me now.

She said she wanted me to understand that if she could forgive Mom, then I could. That’s a big thing to forgive, but she did. She said she wanted me to try somatic therapy to see if it would help me get to the bottom of my anger toward Mom, so I could heal. And she asked if she could walk me through it right then.

No way. I withdrew my hand gently and told her that it had been a long day and I had a long drive back to New York ahead of me, and we should go to sleep. I told her how much I love her. I don’t remember if we hugged or not, but it wasn’t necessary. Us girls can hug with just words and feel the same. We are all very close, much more than sisters. Almost like survivors of a war camp.

I didn’t tell her that I felt weakened, that I just knew that if I tried to find memories associated with that bothersome area on the side of my abdomen right then, I was pretty sure I would do more than just cry. I don’t know what I would have done, but every instinct in my body was screaming – don’t think about it! Don’t touch it! Just don’t anything! So I shut down. You ever do that? It’s a mental shut down, but I can feel it. My body was just laying there, unmoving, but my senses could feel myself withdrawing as if I were shrinking to something smaller than my skin and bones. I shrank until there was nothing but my mind, then I shuttered that, too. Eventually, we fell asleep.

At this point, I could have sworn that I had never been sexually assaulted as a child. Looking back to this night, I think my body was remembering but my mind was still protecting me. Gosh, I’m tired. I need another cup of coffee.

P.S.

About ten years ago, the four of us girls had an intervention with Mom about her drinking and the abuse. That’s for a later blog, but I remember that she told us that her father had molested her every Wednesday when he came to visit her, and it had gone on for as long as she could remember. I wonder now if that time with Mom is what triggered Meg’s memories. I’ll have to ask her.


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The Beginning of Done

Today is the last day of National Suicide Prevention Month, making this post apropos. I’ve been fighting bouts of depression for years, just like any parent in America trying to keep their heads above water. It’s hard to keep up with multiple responsibilities at home, at work, to extended family, to friends and neighbors and nonprofits. Add the occasional surprise, like unexpected surgery or a sudden opportunity for your child that costs an arm and a leg. Not to mention the guilt around grabbing fast food for the family when you come home too beat or too late to cook.

Intermittent depression, pierced with rays of joy here and there, is just the American way of life, and most people don’t complain about it. They just keep swimming, and enjoying those infrequent stretches of rest on sunlit beaches. As do I, usually.  It’s just this year has been unusually hard.

It started in March. I was working long hours, barely seeing my family, eating crap, feeling the onset of menopause with hot flashes and other symptoms, and feeling like my boss was setting me up to fail at every budget meeting. Then my grandfather got sick, my stepfather was diagnosed with cancer, and my nightmares increased to almost daily.

I don’t only have the stresses of an overburdened American life. I also have the memories of a violent childhood and first marriage. Life has been one very long struggle and I’m pretty tired. In March I realized I was too tired to keep going.

I wrote the below a couple months later, and looking back at it, I can see the sparks that were going to head me to the hospital in June.

May 15, 2014

I just turned in my annual financial disclosure form to the NYS Legislative Ethics Commission. It’s due by May 15th every year. I dragged my feet on it. It’s long and complicated, and anyone who is a policymaker has to report from where and how much money we get throughout the year, to prove we aren’t taking bribes to pass legislation.

I cried as I handed it in. Far from showing kickbacks or unexplained windfalls, that 14-page public document shows the world that I have nothing. Almost every line is filled with “non-applicable” in my tight handwriting. I just turned 49 years old, and I have absolutely nothing to show for it. No property, no savings, no investment accounts, nothing. The lady was sweet and sympathetic, and not at all surprised to see a face of tears turning the form in. I’m guessing I’m not the first. She noted the front of the form which clearly stated ‘single with child’ and remarked that I needed to find myself a rich husband, or at least buy a lottery ticket. Then she stamped my form as received and handed me a receipt.

And you know what? I didn’t walk away in feminist outrage. I walked away, still in tears, thinking no wealthy man would want a middle-aged fat woman like me, and that my three-cent bank balance would not even get me a lottery ticket.

I’m tired of being outraged. I’m tired of being broke. I’m tired of doing meaningless work. I’m tired of fighting battles and – win or lose – living to fight again another day. I am life-battle weary. So very weary. If only I would get sick and have to be in a hospital for a month. Just one whole month of someone else taking care of me for awhile. I’m done.