Erase and Start Over

The resurfacing memories of a woman with PTSD.

Tag Archives: PTSD


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Thank You for Caring and Sharing

Jo, 1970

Jo, 1970, Simi Valley, CA. Two years after being taken from New York City and under a different name with a new birth certificate. Missing for 18 years. Listed with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Found in 1986.

I am touched by the very kind emails and posts I’ve received, encouraging me to keep writing and publish. When we think of PTSD, we usually think of soldiers recovering from the horrors of the battlefield. I can’t possibly imagine what they must be going through, although I have more of an inkling now than I did this time last year. To just thank them for their sacrifice seems so feeble and inadequate. On the other hand, we don’t thank our servicemen and women near enough. I don’t want my story to take away from the vital importance of raising awareness of PTSD in the military and the need for funds for research and their continuing care.

But there’s another population with PTSD. There are children who grow up knowing more violence and pain in their first 15 years of life than most people experience in a lifetime. Those children become adults who are remarkably strong and incredibly fragile at the same time. Too many of them do not get help, and never reach their full potential. This is a “pick yourself up by your own bootstraps” nation. We don’t talk about mental health issues. We deny there’s a problem. We grin and bear it. We keep a stiff upper lip. Shame on those who don’t.

These attitudes negatively affect government and private funding. The research is not near as far along as it could be, and new studies raise more questions than answers. Apparently, my children could be genetically affected by DNA affects that my PTSD may have done to my genes? Yeah, I’d kinda like to see another study clarifying what the heck that’s all about. There’s a few million of us who’d like to see more research. According to the National Center for PTSD,  about 5.2 million Americans have PTSD during the course of a given year.

But my story is not just about the sudden onset and resulting treatment of PTSD. It’s about child abuse. It’s about domestic violence. It’s about parental kidnapping, rape, and sexual assault and molestation of children. And it doesn’t include other common factors of trauma in children’s lives: gang violence, homelessness, and hunger. I grew up in middle-class privilege, and still experienced the kinds of violence that America thinks only happens in impoverished inner cities. Much as I want to raise awareness that childhood violence occurs in the suburbs, I absolutely don’t want to take away from the fact that we should be doing a better job of addressing it in cities, too. We should be doing a better job addressing it worldwide. It shouldn’t hurt to be a child.

I know who I’ve been. I don’t know who I’m becoming. I do know that I’m changing a little bit every day through this process of shocking realizations, acceptance, and healing. I do know that treatment for non-military PTSD is still filled with guesswork and trial and error. I know that not one professional has pointed me in the right direction, to the right type of treatment, and I have to kiss a lot of frogs to find what will work for me.

I’ve been involved in public policy for the last twenty years. It’s so ingrained in me that I cannot sit in a therapy session without thinking of the larger ramifications of treatment and public health. I met a reporter in the hospital, and he told me he was thinking the same thing. Whatever’s happening to us, we may as well have it happen for a reason.

My story is not uncommon. There are many of us trying to figure out where to go for help, keeping it secret from the workplace, and keeping a stiff upper lip while we search. I hope writing about it will encourage others to seek help; encourage people to call their legislators and demand increased funding for research and care; and raise the level of conversation in this country about the importance of addressing mental health. Perhaps, one day, an annual mental health checkup will be as common and expected as an annual physical. Maybe my book will help make these things happen. Maybe that reporter I met will write about it and make change. Something good has to come from all this. Cross fingers.

If you share any post, I hope you share this one. Thank you for taking the time to read it, and a special thank you to all of you who have sent me your kind words and prayers. I am truly touched.

                                                Warmly,

                                               Josephine Bautista


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1975

Saturday, May 31, 2014 5:00 p.m.

I could hear one of the girls in the shower across the hall from my room. The rhythm of the running water pattered me into a slightly wakeful state. I was aware of my bedroom, aware that I had been sleeping soundly, aware of the weight of my body on my stiff twin bed.

Someone was laughing. A few someones. Male. My mind was drifting back to 1975, and I was scrambling out of the pool. I tripped and fell, splat, on the concrete. They were laughing. Don’t look back, I thought. Run. I clambered up and ran, bare feet making wet splats toward the side of the house.

I opened my eyes. My bookshelf swam into view. It was dusty. I need to dust my bookshelf, I thought, shivering with cold as if I had just gotten out of a pool and walked into air conditioning. I didn’t move from my side, tightly curled and shivering, staring at that bookshelf.

I was there. I couldn’t deny it anymore. My sister, nine-year-old Meg, was naked on the diving board. It was night. I was in the pool. I’ve been remembering being in the pool. And now …there’s more: I climbed out of the pool. I was running. I was afraid. I tripped. Men were laughing.

I squeezed my eyes shut, blocking out the sound of the running shower, trying to return to that lucid state, to 1975. I could remember the pool. Liver-shaped. Small. It was night. I could see the pool light from under the water. I pushed up from the bottom, enjoying the buoyant feel as I broke the surface, blinking back the chlorine and taking a deep breath of fresh, cool night air.

Who was there?

Meg was on the diving board at the far end of the pool. I was on the right, by the house. I tried to turn the eyes in my memory to the left, but like a scratched DVD, the scene skipped to me tripping on the concrete. I remember picking myself up. Run. But I did turn at the sound of the laughter. My back was to the pool, and I turned slightly right. Not far enough to view all around that side of the pool and to the diving board, but just a little. My wet bangs hung in my eyes, but I could see her. Sitting in one of the black wrought-iron chairs, a wine bottle sitting on the matching round, black patio table.

It was Mom.

There was a knock on my door. No, I thought. I’m almost there.

The door opened and my firstborn peeked in. “Mom? You okay?”

Mom. My mom was wearing her faded pink terrycloth robe. I remember it had a pattern in the fabric, little raised square bumps. It was knee-length. She sat there with her legs crossed, bare legs under a short, pink wrap. She was smoking. She was saying something. I strained to hear it.

“Mom?”

My daughter’s voice pulled me reluctantly into the present. I nodded, accepting that the memory was gone, and started to sit up. My mouth was so dry, and my eyes were burning from the chlorine. No, wait – what was real? I shook my head as if to clear it. My daughter sat on the end of my bed, looking concerned. I tried to speak, but could only clear my throat.

“It’s okay,” I finally managed. “I think the road trip just took a lot out of me. I am so beat.”

She offered to drive her sister to her friend’s house. I had forgotten. That’s why she was in the shower. I accepted and we talked about dinner for the girls and how she had done her sister’s laundry so I could sleep. I assured her I’d be back to normal tomorrow, and smiled as she left, shutting the door behind her.

I sat looking ruefully at the door. The whole day was wasted. I failed my girls today. My stomach tightened. Then my throat. My eyes grew hot and misty. The room blurred, and I was back in 1975.

I was there. Meg was naked on the diving board. It was night. I was in the pool. I climbed out of the pool. I was running. I was afraid. I tripped. Men were laughing. And Mom was smoking a cigarette. She was saying, “Just say yes, daddy.” Whispering it, over and over.

Faintly, I heard the front door shut. I think the girls called out goodbyes and feel betters before the door shut. But the blood was pounding in my ears. I was there. Meg was there. Men were there. Mom was there. I was afraid.

The room was dark and I felt stiff and cold, sitting still so long. I reached tiredly for my phone. 11:02 p.m. I had just lost six hours.


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White Walls

Saturday, May 31, 2014  11:30 a.m.

“Mom?”

I snapped out of my reverie and looked up to see my youngest standing in my bedroom door.

“Hm? You need something? What time is it? You must be hungry.”

“No, I had cereal – I just wanted to know if you’re doing laundry today. I need jeans.”

I reached for my cell and was surprised to see the morning had flown by. My Kindle was in sleep mode. I must have spaced off after the show. I rubbed a hand tiredly over my face.

“Yes, of course. Give me a minute. Can you put your laundry by the front door and I’ll take it down? I just need another minute.”

She left the door standing open, and I could see my firstborn peeking in from down the hall. I smiled and called out a good morning, and she good-morninged me back and disappeared, apparently satisfied that I was fine.

Of course I was fine. Just tired. It was a long, cramped drive home yesterday. Anyone would be bone-weary tired after that. I sighed and looked around the room absently, running over the checklist in my head. I had forgotten to take my blood pressure medicine, so I washed it down with the cold dregs of my coffee, and got up to change into old clothes, my housecleaning day wear.

The girls had done a great job in the kitchen. I was afraid I’d come home to a sink full of dishes and piles of trash bags waiting to be taken out, but all was neat enough. There was leftover pizza in the fridge. A few days of junk food was to be expected. I added grocery-shopping to my list for the day, and then just froze, one hand on the closed door of the fridge, staring at the shopping list held up by a magnet, but not seeing it.

I couldn’t do it. I just knew, I could not leave the house that day. I couldn’t picture myself able to get into the car, much less drive it. I gripped the refrigerator door handle tighter, my nails digging into my skin. My heart starting pounding. My breath was shorter and quicker. I felt suddenly cold all over. I couldn’t do it. I almost wanted to whimper out loud, please don’t make me do it, but felt ridiculous in this unreasonable fear. What was wrong with me? It’s just grocery shopping.

I scolded myself into letting go of the door handle, but as I walked out of the kitchen, I turned back down the hall to my room instead of toward the laundry in the living room. I paused in my doorway, both hands on the frame, holding myself up. I called out to the girls that I was more tired than I thought, and would do laundry in a couple hours. I just need to nap a bit more.

I crawled into bed, shaking like a leaf, and eyes brimming over onto hot cheeks, pleading silently to the empty air – please don’t make me. Make me what? The walls slammed down on all sides, and I went limp, like a puppet with cut strings. My heart called for my sisters, and a welcome memory appeared of me and my sisters as adults all hugging each other and grieving together, one big huddle of sisters. Breathing easier, I fell asleep.


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Tumbling Downhill

At this point, I wasn’t stepping toward the hospital, I was tumbling uncontrollably downhill toward it.

TRIGGER WARNING

Saturday, May 31, 2014   2:00 a.m.

I woke up drenched in sweat, breathing heavily and my heart pounding as if I had been running a marathon. My jaw hurt, and I forced myself to stop clenching my teeth. My ears were ringing with screams, even though my small bedroom was dark and silent as the grave. I rolled onto my back, kicking off my sheets, and just lay there for a bit, letting the nightmare finish receding.

Another nightmare. Again. How many nightmares have I had? How many more will I have?

The ebbing fear was being replaced by rising anger. I pulled the spare pillow into my arms and squeezed it punishingly, my arms becoming boa constrictors, reveling in the pain of unaccustomed muscle strain. My throat was tightly holding back my voice, my limbs were consciously keeping me in my bed, but every other part of me wanted to stand up and scream into the blackness – she was raped! and Mom just watched!

But of course, I didn’t. It would wake my daughters. Thinking about them had a calming effect, and I could feel my anger relax into cynicism. Bad things happen to children all the time, and this news was forty years old. Can’t do anything about old news but set it aside and forget about it. Anger was a waste of time. Statute of limitations was long gone, and who would put a new widow in jail for something that happened so long ago? Certainly not Meg. If she were to press charges, she would have done it already. No, there was nothing that could be done. This was old news. Children were raped all the time, were probably raped today, even this very minute. There was absolutely nothing that I could do.

The pillow slid to the floor, and the tears came.

P.S.

In less than an hour, I cycled from fear to anger to helplessness to depression. Worse than that. I went from bone-crushing fear to violent anger to a puddle of helplessness to the bleakest depression. The difference? It was just as much in my body as it was in my mind and soul. Adrenaline, blood pressure, heart rate, muscle contraction, even sweat glands – dozens of physical responses to dozens of emotions were tumbling uncontrollably downhill together, and all I knew was that something wasn’t quite right with me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.


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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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That’ll Be Five Cents, Please

September 24, 2014  6:05 a.m.

I’m done. No more therapists. This last one was the last straw. I had complete control of the room, and she didn’t even know it. It was so easy to get her talking about any subject I chose, and sit back and watch the entertainment.

Not so entertaining when I had to give her my $20 co-pay after the dubious pleasure of listening to her talk for an hour.

I knew it wasn’t going to work the very first visit, when she mentioned being scared when a police officer came to her door looking for a juvenile who’d escaped custody. Her eyes got wide, her eyebrows lifted, and she went on and on about how normal it was to be surprised and nervous upon opening a door and seeing a cop standing there.

“Of course, I completely understand. Perfectly natural,” I told her, with my most sympathetic expression. She beamed at me, kept talking, and ended by saying she knew we’d get along just fine.

I handed her a twenty and rolled my eyes all the way to the car. Scared of a uniform? How would she react to be arrested? Or to be kidnapped, raped, beaten, and nearly strangled to death for that matter? She’d need therapy just for giving me therapy. This woman has about as much experience in PTSD treatment as I have in rocket science. Which is to say, zilch.

But none of them do. I have told my story to numerous therapists over the past twenty years. They are appalled, concerned, sympathetic, but clueless as to what to do about it. I’ll see a therapist for a couple months, then throw my hands up and swear I’ll never see another one.

Then, a couple years later, I’m back trying again. Like Charlie Brown making an appointment to see Lucy, who is as convincing as ever about that stupid football, and has no qualms about charging her nickel.

I’m sitting up in bed, typing this on an over-large laptop that I bought on Black Friday without doing my research first. I really hate Windows 8.

My coffee is getting cold. Black with a touch of stevia. I don’t want to get up and put it in the microwave, though. As soon as my daughters see me, they’ll ask me for something, and as much as I love them dearly, right now I just don’t want the pressure of even the tiniest responsibility. I’m done.

I’m too tired to keep typing. I think I’ll go back to sleep for twenty minutes, and then get ready for work.