Author: hopeforsanityblog

All mixed up.

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It’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog post.  Even tonight as I sit down to type this, I’m not clear on what I’m going to write about.

I’ve been focused on my children and my family for the last few months.  It’s been difficult to connect or find the energy to do much other than collapse on the couch to watch Netflix at the end of each busy day.  I have my children with me full time now.  Their father moved to another part of the country and they haven’t seen him since October.  He didn’t plan a visit for Christmas.

We are all of us coping with this abandonment in different ways.

For me, there has been an incredible amount of anger.

I don’t feel comfortable in the anger.  I don’t feel comfortable with how little patience I have and how quickly I snap at people or shut them out if they cross a line from support into offering advice.  I’ve isolated myself more than usual.

The anger is just barely covering a deep well of sadness and fear.  Sometimes I feel completely overwhelmed with the amount of trauma my small family has endured in the past few years.  I worry about the impact it will have on my children.  I worry about not having the right help for them.  I worry about not being patient enough.  I worry about being a solo parent, all the responsibility on me.  I worry about the lifelong impact of parental abandonment after years of emotional abuse and neglect.

I think about the research that has been done about adverse childhood experiences  (ACEs) in relation to trauma theory and the negative impact on health.  For those who might not be familiar with the research, here is a visual representation:

Three types of adversity that make for a tough childhood.

 

My kids have experienced emotional abuse and neglect and physical neglect at times.  I don’t know for certain about physical and sexual abuse.  I may never know.  They have a parent with a mental illness.  Their parents are divorced and their mother is a survivor of family violence.  There is a history of substance abuse on both sides of their family (though not with either parent).

I try not to think about it.  I try to think about the research on resilience which shows that if children have even one positive, consistent and stable adult in their life, it mitigates the impact of ACEs.   I try to believe.  I need to believe it is true in order to function on a daily basis, rather than fall into a pit of hopeless despair.

My older child was recently diagnosed with learning disabilities.  This did not come as a surprise to me.  For two years her father refused to consent for the testing to be re-done.  Earlier testing had been inconclusive for a number of reasons and it was recommended to be repeated.  He refused to agree.  He denied she had any learning issues and blamed me for instilling anxiety in both my children.

Yesterday, as I listened to the feedback from the psychologist.  I heard her saying again and again how different aspects of the test results, including some of the discrepancies between the recent and prior testing, could be linked to the impact of trauma on a developing brain.

Essentially, she was talking about the impact of ACEs on my child’s brain.

I felt numb.  What reaction is normal?  How can a caring parent just accept these things?  How to function and keep moving forward, filled with the knowledge that my kids have experienced trauma?

Intellectually, I know it isn’t my fault.  I know I’ve done the best I could.  But the dark voice inside tells me that it is my fault.  That I never should have had children.  That someone with a mental illness like mine should never have been a mother.  That I never should have had children with an abusive partner.  That I should have left him sooner.  That I should have stayed with him to protect the kids…

All the ways…all the blame.

I push it all down.   Try to keep busy.  Try to block out the thoughts and worries.  Turn on the TV.  Pick up my cell phone.  Browse the internet mindlessly for hours.

In the evening, I feel a sense of panic.  I’m a fraud.  I’m not capable.  I find myself thinking old thoughts, falling back into old thought patterns.  “I can escape my responsibilities by hurting myself”  and “It’s too hard.  I can’t do it. I’m a failure”  I think about self harm and suicide.  Then berate myself for how literally insane it is.  I can’t die.  I’m simultaneously gripped in a tight knot of constant fear and terror about dying and leaving my kids alone with their father, and desperate to escape from a life that often feels TOO painful to endure.   I think about suicide and actively wish I was not alive, while at the same time worrying about getting sick or having an accident, and the consequences on my children if I’m not here 100% of the time and 100% functional.

It’s exhausting.  I honestly want to sleep and watch TV, curled in warm blankets, for many days.  I want to escape from SO much responsibility.  But I can’t.  I get up each day, and I function.  I do ALL the things.  I keep going, because I have to.

My mind is a bit all over the place recently.  Instead of having a certain set of trauma memories and flashbacks which bother me consistently, I have been experiencing mixed up flashes of a whole spread of my traumatic experiences.  Memories popping into my mind, unexpectedly, and me pushing them back down again.

I started a new job, teaching a course at the university I went to during the years before my separation.  Going back to the campus brought back memories of those two years, when I was so unwell, cutting myself and ending up in the emergency room on a regular basis.  I received ECT the week I completed my last semester.  I felt depressed and trapped and I hadn’t yet made the connection to my abusive marriage.  During those years, it was still JUST ME.  I felt like I’d exhausted every treatment option and I was ready to give up.  I wrote a post-it note suicide notes to my children but then went to the hospital and had my injuries treated.  I felt like I was falling into pieces and not able to put them together again.  I never felt calm or safe.  I had nightmares and woke up screaming and trying to escape from imagined abusers.

My brain also dredged up memories and flashbacks of the undergraduate professor who sexually assaulted me in my apartment, less than a year after my graduation.  It happened in December.  I sat frozen on my couch while he touched me.  I didn’t fight back, I didn’t say no.  I just froze and disassociated, my eyes fixed on his black and gold scarf.  I was powerless to stop him. The only reason it ended was that at some point he noticed that I was completely gone and even he didn’t want to touch a statue.  It took what felt like hours before I could even speak to ask him to leave.  I remember crying, but as a statue would cry, tears moving over a frozen face.

In a way, I feel safer now that my ex-husband doesn’t live in the city.  But I still tense up when I see a car like his.  I still get jumpy at night sometimes, thinking I hear someone in the house.  I still get anxious about something happening to the kids, even a minor injury, that he might get angry about.  I am in equal parts afraid he will respond to my mandatory email updates about the children, and furious that he ignores me so completely.  I feel at the same time invisible and caged.   I feel trapped in a cage.

The cage of abuse and trauma.  I don’t know how to escape and I don’t know how to release my children from the cage either.  When abuse has gone on for so long, the abuser doesn’t even have to be in the same city, or have contact with you, to control you with the fear of what MIGHT happen.  The bars of the cage are memories, fears, and what ifs.  The fear alone is enough to modulate our behaviour, even with little or no contact from him.

I’m tired.  I get tired of hearing myself say that I’m tired.  But I’m tired.  I’m always tired.

Yes, there are good days and things to be thankful for.  This post isn’t ungrateful or dismissive of the blessings in my life.  It’s more to say that no matter how bright the joys and how wonderful the blessing, I still feel caged.  I still wonder how it can be possible to “live a normal life”  or “be healed” or “recovered”  after so much trauma.

I know it’s possible.  I know that ACEs aren’t a death sentence.  I know that our family has a lot of support, a lot of strengths and a lot of STRENGTH.

But some days PTSD makes it hard to be optimistic.  Is a bird in a cage optimistic about escaping?  Or in captivity do they gradually stop singing and lose their vibrancy?  A bird doesn’t belong in a cage.

And neither do I.

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Not my art.  Taken from Pinterest online

December 6th -National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women

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Another year has passed and we still have so much work to do to end gender based violence and violence against women.
Until the violence stops..

hopeforsanity

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On December 6, 1989,  fourteen female engineering students were murdered at school in Montreal.  They were murdered because they were women and their murders were extreme acts of gender based violence.

Just last week, on December 1, 2016, a Toronto doctor was murdered by her physician husband.  Someone posted something on facebook, commenting that this murderer must be “sick,” or “mentally ill,” and I was angry.

Violence against women, domestic violence, and gender based violence that escalates to femicide is not caused by seriously mentally ill men.  That’s a myth and it’s a dangerous one which overlooks the very real structural and societal causes of violence against women.  Causes such as patriarchy, rape culture, poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia and other types of oppression and inequality that impact women and gender non-conforming folks.  Mentally ill and other folks with disabilities are far more likely to be the victims of violent crime…

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All mental health care, all health care, needs to be TRAUMA INFORMED CARE.

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I’m feeling frustrated about the barriers to receiving high quality, publicly funded, trauma informed mental health care.  Especially the barriers faced by trans and gender non-conforming folks.

I know that I’m blessed to live in a country that has free universal health care, but we still have a two-tiered system.  Psychological care, social work and counseling that happens outside hospital settings is fee-for-service.  There are many barriers for those without finances or work place insurance in terms of accessing mental health care.  Based on my own experiences, I believe that medication alone should almost never be the first line of treatment for mental illness, and that medication should never be used without corresponding counseling of some type.   This does not mean that I’m anti-medication or anti-choice or even fully anti-psychiatry.  It just means that I see mental health as more than just a chemical imbalance in the brain.  It means that I know that supportive, validating counseling can be helpful in treating most illnesses.  I highly value feminist based counseling, intersectional approaches, peer support models and any type of counseling where the patient has a say in what happens and is treated like the expert in their own lives.

I’m personally quite negatively biased against cognitive behavioural therapy.  That does not mean that I don’t think it has a place, or that it can never be useful.  I believe it can be helpful with certain types of issues, such as OCD.   But CBT leaves a LOT to be desired in relation to trauma therapy.  It focuses too much on the individual thoughts, feelings and behaviours and too little on trauma, societal oppression and practical barriers.

When I was younger, and I first entered into the mental health care system, my parents found a clinic and doctors that supposedly were experts in the field of eating disorders.  Now, maybe they were good doctors, but I can say with absolute certainty that they were not trauma informed.  I don’t really remember every being asked exactly WHY I had developed anorexia, or if anything had happened to me.

I’m not an expert, by any means, but I know that young people rarely (if ever) develop eating disorders and self harm just on a whim, out of the blue.  Generally eating disorders are symptoms of a larger problem, generally eating behaviours are coping techniques to deal with something.

I was a smart teenager.  I knew to some extent why I wasn’t eating.  I had learned that it was an effective way to zone out, feel lighter, feel empty and take up less space.  I became addicted to that feeling of zoning out, it helped me cope with the sexual abuse I was experiencing.  It wasn’t about my looks, it wasn’t about losing weight and it wasn’t about existential angst (per se).   I’m not sure if anyone actually ever asked me why I wasn’t eating.  And after a certain amount of time had passed, it became irrelevant to everyone.  Nobody cared why, they only cared about me eating so I wouldn’t die.  I didn’t believe I could die.   I’m not sure I REALLY cared if I died. I think I did at that time, but I certainly didn’t care by the time I started taking anti-depressants.  I pretty much welcomed the idea of death and started to think about suicide at 17.

These psychologists I went to see worked from a CBT model.  I remember being 16 and sitting in the psychologist’s office while he drew diagrams of how thoughts impacted feelings which impacted behaviours which further influenced thoughts and feelings.  I quickly picked up on the pattern of it.  I realized that a very specific set of responses were the desired outcome.  I followed the pattern and started saying what he wanted to hear.  I didn’t internalize any of it.  It became a game to me, not a game to manipulate or hurt anyone, but a test to see if I said what was expected if I’d be allowed to go back to school and stop missing music class for the appointments (which to me appeared pointless).

Fairly soon after that, I became physically starved to the point my brain wasn’t really working rationally anymore.  The physical side effects of the disease confused my brain and the restricting and exercising became obsessive to the point of OCD.  The behaviour self perpetuated and I lost track of why I started doing it.  I lost track of what happened to me.  I lost track of the abuse.  I lost track of everything.  I felt panicky most of the time.  I was always cold.

When someone is that sick, no type of therapy is going to work.  Eating is the only treatment.  I went to an inpatient program, started the process of weight restoration and my mind gradually cleared.  I don’t remember being asked in treatment why I starved myself to the point of near death.  I think people were relieved that I was eating and that I returned to some level of semi-normalcy.   I was still thin.  I still had strange eating habits and anxiety around food.  I still avoided eating with most people.  But I was well enough to “pass” as recovered.

I began to recover some memories around the age of 18.  But they weren’t concrete at first.  They were flashbacks, physical reactions, nightmares.  I remember talking about it indirectly to my boyfriend at the end of high school.  Telling him that something had happened with my last boyfriend.  I don’t remember if I shared many details.  I think the idea was only slightly formed in my head.   I didn’t connect the dots and fully disclose until I was 20.

Then I was thrust into the psychiatric, medical model.  I was drugged and drugged and drugged more.  The worse I got, the more drugs were given.  I was medicated to the point I could barely stay awake during the day time. I felt foggy.  I gained weight.   I was diagnosed with PTSD, but I still didn’t receive trauma informed care.

I did an inpatient program for PTSD.  It helped a LOT.  I learned a lot.  But I couldn’t fully actualize the learning because I was on too much medication and I was in an abusive unhealthy relationship.  I knew by then that the trauma piece was at the centre of my struggles, but I didn’t fully comprehend that my current situation was a major factor.

All this to say, that my life story is a testament to the perils of practicing medicine without considering the impact of trauma on physical and mental health.

I’m so passionate about looking at the roots of why people cope in the ways they do.  What societal circumstances and traumas caused them to cope in the ways they do?

Now I’m a parent.  My children struggle with anxiety.  My younger child is transgender.  She has secrets.  There are things she won’t talk about to anyone.  She struggles with focusing sometimes.  I see a lot of signs of trauma and of the impacts of things she has lived through.  Experiencing transphobia in and of itself is trauma.  Being misgendered, people using her old name, being treated as less than a real girl, being told that her mom is crazy for “forcing her” to be a girl….I could go on, but it’s a lot.  A lot for a child.  Rejection by a parental figure is one of the clearest predictors of mental illness in trans children and youth.  Acceptance is the highest predictor of mental health.

Again.  It’s not rocket science.  Of course a child will feel safer if they are accepted.

Now I’m the one trying to find the doctors, trying to access the care, trying to get referrals, wait on lists, be taken seriously.  20 years later, I’m still fighting to find a mental health care provider who truly understands the impact of trauma on a child and who is willing to practice trans positive, trauma informed care.  I don’t want her forced into CBT.  I don’t want her to be medicated.  I want someone to help her feel safe enough to express what is on her mind.  I want someone to hear why SHE uses the coping she does.  I don’t want doctors to guess and assume.  I don’t want them to misdiagnose her as well as mis-gendering her.

She deserves to be heard.  I don’t want her to be writing a post like this in 20 years.

Kids will say what they think adults want to hear.  They may do it consciously, or unconsciously or for their own reasons.  They do it to please, to stay safe, to feel a sense of control and many other reasons.  It takes a special type of doctor or counselor to help a child feel safe enough to tell their truth.   Because after enough time hiding, even she will be confused about what her truth is.

Mental health care for children should be free.  The practitioners should be trauma informed.  There should be enough funding that kids can access the care they need without lengthy wait lists.  There should not be a two tiered system where those who can pay can access things those in poverty cannot.  Poverty is a risk factor as it is, without it also limiting access to care.  Ideally there should be a system that is easier to navigate, where parents don’t feel they are fighting and advocating to the point of exhaustion.

Mental health care is a right, not a privilege.

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Photo: https://makingmomentsmeaningful.blog/2017/04/13/trauma-informed-care-values-youth-worker-values/

The Minutia. Barriers after Leaving: A rant.

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I’ve written quite a few posts about the struggles of leaving an abusive relationship.  Those posts were mainly focused on the large barriers, things directly related to the abuse and fear.  Today (4 years, 2.5 months) after leaving, I’m still facing minute and incredibly frustrating barriers.  This is a rant about jumping through fucking ridiculous hoops.  Hoops that would be frustrating after any separation, but downright impossible and dangerous after leaving an abusive situation.

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Four years ago, when I physically separated from my ex-husband, my cell phone was registered on a bill that was in his name.  We had all our cable/tv/phone services under one bill which was in his name.  Thus, even though I was living in my own home, the bill and all the information about my cell usage was sent to him.  I wanted as much distance as possible from him.  I didn’t want him to know if I called my doctor or a crisis line, or which of my friends I was in regular contact with.  I called the cell phone company and, even though my name was an authorized contact on the file, they would not consent to transferring my cell phone to my own bill without his consent.   He was the account holder.  They required him to call in.  I asked him to make the call.  He ignored me.  I asked him again, he refused.  I called the company multiple times, I begged, I cried,  I explained that I needed to keep my cell number because I’d sent out job application and resumes.  I told them about the divorce, the abuse, and I cried again.  They absolutely WOULD NOT release the phone number and contract to me without his consent.

I contacted him and told him that if he didn’t release the phone to me by X date, I would return the phone to him and he would be responsible for paying it to the end of the contract.  That date came, he still had not cooperated.  I wiped the SIM card, dropped the phone off at his place and got myself a new phone.

I lost my address, my home phone number and my cell phone number.  I’m certain he would not have passed on any mail, or messages to me.  I have no idea what I might have missed in those months following the separation. My home phone had recorded voice messages from Marian, which I had saved.  When she died, I knew they were gone and I wouldn’t hear her voice again.  I had to re-do my resume, contact doctors, schools etc. and give them not only my new address but my new cell phone number too.

It was frustrating.  It didn’t seem logical.  I felt the power of his control over my life.  He knew I wanted to keep my phone number, so he refused to give it to me.  He would have had to pay out the end of the contract, but he was willing to take a financial hit just to punish me.

***

I need to renew my kids passports. I already delayed doing this for over a year, waiting to get custody, so I could put my address on the forms.  Ideally, they want both parents to sign the forms.  Do you think he would sign them? No.  Of course not!  He said that he forgot.  Then he started ignoring my emails.  So now I will have to bring the court order and divorce papers to the passport office and plead my case.  Maybe they will issue the passports, maybe they won’t.  But I will have to stand there and dredge up this embarrassing awful story about how we are separated, how he moved out of the city and I can’t contact him.  I will have to take my chances on whether or not the person working that day will process the forms with only one signature, or not.  And if they won’t?  Either we won’t be able to travel, or my lawyer will have to try to get him to sign.  But if he won’t sign?  Then what?  Go back to court, just to get a passport renewed.  Sigh.

***

About 18 months ago, I received extended health benefits through my place of employment.  I was so pleased and felt so good about being independent and self sufficient.  I was proud of my ability to work, after many years of being disabled by the violence and ensuring mental illness.

But my good feelings quickly diminished when I learned that I could not put my children’s health claims through my own insurance without claiming through his insurance first.  The rules are that the person whose birthday falls first in the year is the primary insurance, which made mine the secondary.  Since we were divorced, I was not an authorized contact on his insurance.  This meant that in order to submit extended health claims (psychologist, dentist etc) through my plan, I had to submit the claims through his plan first.  Which meant I needed his signature.

FUCK.

In 18 months, he was never once willing to coordinate the benefits.  All I needed was for him to submit the claims through his plan, then provide me with documentation about which portion was not covered.  I could then submit it through my  plan.  With the plans combined, most of the kids expenses would have been fully covered.

But he wouldn’t do it.  Absolutely just refused, ignored and at the same time, told the kids consistently that they didn’t need counseling.  He told them not to trust the counselor and that it was a waste of money, too expensive and it wouldn’t help because I was the crazy one.

So I wasn’t able to use the extended benefits.  I paid for my kids expenses on my own.  Legally we were supposed to be splitting the costs in proportion to our salaries, but that would require even more communication and the more he knew I wanted it, the less he would cooperate.

I’m extremely lucky, I’m in a position where I can pay for my kids extended health care.  But imagine how deep of an impact this would have on someone without a full time job.

The abuse, power and control can continue, financially and administratively for as long as the abuser wants.   There should be protections, that in cases of abuse, rules can be bent or made more flexible.  There should be recognition that continued contact with the abuser is mentally damaging to the survivor at best, and physically dangerous at worst.

***

Fast forward again, to today, years after leaving.   My children’s father quit his job and moved to another part of the country.  Thus his insurance is no longer active.

But I STILL haven’t been able to use my own insurance.  I went to the pharmacy yesterday and his insurance was still on file.

Today, I spent probably 30 minutes on the phone with the provincial drug benefit.  They said they can’t reactive the coverage for my kids, unless they have a letter from Dad’s insurance company saying the insurance was terminated.

FUCK.

There is no way in hell I could get that letter.  I’m not an authorized person on the file for his drug plan.  They won’t talk to me.  If I email him, to ask him, he will ignore me.  He’s in another part of the country.

The frustration is immense.  I wanted to burst into tears and hang up the phone.

Luckily, there is another option, the pharmacy can write a letter to the drug benefit company explaining that the coverage through Dad was terminated.  So I spent another 10 minutes on the phone with them.  I’m hoping it will be sorted out within 1-2 weeks.

These are “minor’ frustrations.  Administrative hoops.  But for a survivor of violence, these hoops are a continuation of the power and control wielded by the abuser.  These phone calls and details can trigger me, make me feel powerless, angry or hopeless.  And they are still continuing 4 years after separation.

No, survivors can’t JUST LEAVE!

I’m writing this, partially to vent, but  partially to share details about WHY leaving is so hard.  WHY people stay in abusive relationship.  WHY the impact lasts for so long.  It’s not just the major stuff.  It’s the giant toppling pile of minute barriers which unite to form a wall of frustration.

It takes a lot of strength to keep climbing the wall.

If you are a survivor, I believe you.  I’m sorry you have to go through this.

If you know a survivor.  Believe them.  Give them a hug and tell them you are sorry for what they are going through.  Offer a helping hand. Let them vent, even if it was “a long time ago.”

The impact of intimate partner violence is long lasting.  Today, November 15th, SHINE the light on violence against women.  We all need to be a part of the solution.  We all need to work to end domestic violence.

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Living Outside the Binary.

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There have been an enormous number of changes in my life over the past 3 months.  I haven’t been blogging as much, but I hope to create some new posts about those changes soon.

I’ve been reflecting a great deal recently on how much society wants to squish people into binary boxes and categories.  Either/or.  Society doesn’t promote the shades of grey, the spectrum, the people living at the intersections of multiple gradient scales and who do not fix neatly into categories.

It’s quite difficult at times, being a person who doesn’t identify with many binary categories.   I sometimes feel invisible, different, crazy, or like my identities are not real or valid.  In some situations, I don’t even feel safe or comfortable challenging the binary norms which are coercively placed on me.

In terms of sexual orientation,  I’m non-binary.  I identify as queer, which means I’m not exclusively heterosexual or gay.  I’m open to relationships and dating with people of any gender.  I don’t fit neatly into a box.

In terms of gender identity, I’m non-binary.  I identify as genderqueer, which means I do not feel exclusively like a man or woman, but something else.   A different place on a spectrum, and outside the realm of female or male

In terms of sexuality, I’m non-binary.  I identify as demisexual, which means I’m on the asexual spectrum.  Not entirely interested in sex, but not completely disinterested in it either.

In terms of my health/disability status, I’m non-binary.  I identify as having both physical and mental health disabilities.  But I don’t “look sick” and I am extremely “high functioning” despite the level of symptoms I experience daily.  I’m able to work, but I don’t always have the energy to do all the things.  Some days I feel pretty good and others I feel barely functional.

The reality is, I think a huge number of people identify as non-binary in some ways.  Maybe you haven’t explicitly thought of it this way, but very few people exist solely in all the normative, expected boxes and categories.  No person has just one single identity.  Life happens at the intersections of our identities.

I’ve experienced some level of not being believed or validated for my identities.  I’ve felt not queer enough to fit in with gay people, but not straight enough to exist comfortable in heteronormative spaces.   I feel too feminine to be non-binary.  I feel like I’m “lazy” if my symptoms cause me to struggle on a given day.  I feel like I SHOULD be something very specific and it’s definitely not what I am.

The worst part of it is how I don’t consistently believe and validate myself.  Internalized oppression is something I struggle with constantly.  I tell myself that I’m not “queer enough” or that I don’t “look non-binary enough.”  I tell myself that I’m not functioning well enough to be normal, but I’m way too “able” to identify as disabled.  I put myself down.  I tell myself I don’t belong. I tell myself that folks won’t believe me.  I tell myself that one day I’ll be found out, and that others think I’m a fake or a fraud, or lying to get attention or to gain an advantage.

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Internalized oppression leads me to gaslight myself.  Internalized oppression means I don’t often accept myself.  Some of the worst pressures to fix into the neat clean boxes of normal society comes from my own internal critic!

I don’t believe in binary systems.  I don’t believe the messages of ableism, homophobia, transphobia and patriarchy.   On one level I don’t believe them or believe in them, and yet I put so much pressure on myself to “pass” as “normal” when I don’t even know what normal means.

I don’t actually want to be normal.  I want to be myself.  I want to be accepted as the person I am.   On one hand, I love the fact that I’m diverse and have experiences that can exist on a rainbow spectrum, rather than in black and white boxes.  But at the same time, I feel pressure to confirm, to choose, to fit in, to pick sides.

I’m not going to fit neatly into boxes.  It’s not possible.  I would have to deny so many aspects of myself that I wouldn’t be me.  I would have to compromise my own deeply held truths, just to be fully seen by society as valid.  I reject that option.

Instead, I’m creating communities and groups of friends who do accept me as I am.  People who do see me as valid, just the way I am.  People who aren’t trying to place me into categories that don’t fit, like uncomfortable outgrown clothing.

The spectrum is beautiful.  I like to think this is part of the symbolism behind the rainbow pride flag.  We are all part of a spectrum, like the light spectrum which creates a beautiful rainbow. Without each individual colour, the spectrum would be incomplete and neither the bright light or the rainbow would exist.  Spectrums are all around us and within us.

Embrace the non-binary.  Embrace the intersections.  They are beautiful and valid.

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Me Too.

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#metoo

Why the fuck is anyone surprised?  Women, femmes and non-binary folks ALL experience sexual harassment and/or sexual assault.   Feminists and women have been talking about this for literally decades.  There have been a number of different twitter and social media campaigns which have gone viral in the past year or two alone.

Honestly, this was the first time it really got to me.  I was so triggered last night that I couldn’t sleep.  I was suddenly terrified that my ex would show up at my house and kill me.  This has been a fear of mine for years and it escalates during any times of transition and whenever media stories about women being murdered as a result of domestic violence hit the press.  I was lying there at midnight my heart racing, jumping at every sound.  My logical mind told me that I was safe, but my PTSD mind/body/heart was screaming that I was in danger.

And I was angry.

I’m angry because I have no faith that me tweeting or posting #metoo on social media will protect me.  Of course me too!  Of course!  I’ve been blamed for not telling anyone about being abused.  Then I was blamed for how I told people.  Then it seemed I was blamed for telling at all.  I wasn’t believed.  I wasn’t believed by SO many people and institutions.  Sometimes I feel blamed for not recovering more quickly, for being “cynical” or for struggling with PTSD.

Both of the times I experienced intimate partner violence, people could have known.  There were signs.  I was desperately sick.  In and out of hospital.  Trying to kill myself.  Self harming on a regular basis and starving myself.  It wasn’t a mystery that something was seriously wrong.

All the signs add up.  I had literally every possible coping mechanism and reaction to experiencing violence from disassociation, to depression, from shame to self hatred. When I finally talked about it, there was no logical reason to question my story.  But of course the stigma of mental illness clouded the picture.  Some people didn’t believe me because they thought I was mentally ill.  They were wrong.  I was mentally ill because #metoo.

Women, femme and non-binary people struggle with so many negative, and in many cases life long, impacts as a result of sexual assault and harassment.  In some ways, I feel like I’ve lost a good portion of my life.  It’s actually too painful to fully acknowledge and grieve the things (and parts of myself) I’ve lost as a direct result of violence.

I don’t want to keep talking about it.  I don’t even always want to tell the stories in this blog.

#metoo rubbed me the wrong way.

I want to see #ididit  or #ignoredit.  I want to see perpetrators get on social media and admit to the sexual assault and harassment they have done.  I want to see men, especially cis men, get online and talk about how they failed to intervene, how they participated in, and benefited from, rape culture.

Because make no mistake, #metoo, is about rape culture.  But it is time to stop placing the responsibility for changing rape culture on the survivors.  It’s time for men to step up and hold each other accountable.  It’s time for men to mentor young boys, teach them about consent culture and tell that that sexual assault and harassment is not cool, not okay and clearly illegal.    It’s time for criminal courts to sentence rapists to REAL punishments.  It’s time for police forces to actually take reports of sexual assault seriously, for officers to believe survivors and investigate the crimes competently and efficiently.  It’s time to take the work of ending gender based violence out of the sexual assault centres which support survivors, and into classrooms, homes, court rooms, and everywhere in our society.   Ending gender based violence is going to take an overhauling of the entire criminal justice, policing and education systems.

We need real accountability for perpetrators.  Women, feminists and sexual assault support workers have been doing this work for too long, unsupported by society.  We get labeled “radical” or “hostile” or experience other put downs.  We get further punished for speaking up against this violence within a society that profits from, and even praises violence against women.

We need to believe survivors.  We need to create safer spaces for those who can’t yet disclose to come forward when they are ready.  We need to create a safe place to land for survivors.   We need to create a consent culture and a society which fully supports survivors.

AND in parallel we need the help of MEN and the system (which was largely designed by white, affluent men) to hold perpetrators accountable.

One survivor is too many!  We shouldn’t need to scroll through pages and pages of folks posting #metoo to realize the magnitude of this problem.   We already know the magnitude, we need to stop pretending that we don’t.  We need an end to victim blaming and a realization that sexual assault and harassment is SO common and SO wide spread, that I don’t know a single woman or gender non-conforming person who couldn’t post #metoo if they had that option.

But they shouldn’t have to.

End gender based violence.   End violence against women.

Enough is enough.

Demisexuality. How did I not know about this?

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I was scrolling through my facebook feed earlier this week, reading articles, checking out the news of the day when I came across a term that I was not familiar with: demisexual.

I clicked on the article to learn more, and my mind was blown WIDE open.  I decided to write this blog post in case others out there were not aware of this orientation.

I always felt different from others around me in relation to sexuality.  In my early 30s I began to think that I might be asexual.  At that time, I thought that I might not ever have another sexual relationship and I was okay with that.  At that time, I was also in the process of leaving an abusive marriage, one that no longer had any real intimacy for me.

After leaving my ex, I discovered that I wasn’t asexual, I just preferred consensual sexual interactions!  But I still had reason to believe that I wasn’t “just like” other people I knew.  I rarely thought about sex, and I rarely felt sexual attraction to anyone of any gender.  Within the context of a relationship, when I felt safe and comfortable, I was able to enjoy sex, but I couldn’t relate to the concept of a “sex drive.”

There were other signs that I was different.  My co-workers sometimes shared stories about sex with their partners and I felt uncomfortable.  In fact, thinking about sexual acts generally filled me with a sense of disgust and abhorrence.  I didn’t have any desire to experiment or try new things.  I really felt that I COULD live without sex if I had to.  I yearned for cuddles and physical closeness, but I never felt a strong need for sex itself.

I learned this week that there is a term for my experience “demisexual” or “grey-asexual/grace.”

I shared what I’d read with a friend of mine, along with my great surprise and pleasure at discovering the term.  She told me “oh, I thought you knew! I thought that was how you identified!”  I laughed out loud, apparently this was obvious to other people! It made complete sense to me too, I just lacked any language to describe it, thus I thought I was the only one!

It turns out there is a whole community of folks who identify with the spectrum between sexual and asexual.  I just didn’t know about it!

I’m pretty happy.  I’m actually really okay with my orientation.

It makes sense now why I couldn’t understand casual sex and why poly relationships or open relationships didn’t appeal to me.  For me, sexual attraction only exists within the context of an intimate relationship and I rarely experience sexual attraction to anyone who is not my sexual partner.  I don’t have any interest in watching porn.  I don’t even want to think about porn.  And though I want to support my friends, I rarely enjoy listening to them talk about their own sex lives.

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I’m not a freak.  I’m just a demisexual!

Complex feelings.

/ hopeforsanityblog / 4 Comments

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I’m going to talk about something that people who have not experienced prolonged interpersonal abuse rarely understand, and people who have survived it immediately relate to.   The technical psychology term for it is “trauma bonding” but what it refers to, in simple terms, is the complex and multi-faceted feelings a victim has for their abuser.

It’s very hard for me to talk to people in my life about this.  Well meaning people who want to help and who actually care about me a lot, don’t understand this.  This is why it is so important to support survivors of violence by listening to them, validating them and meeting them where THEY are at.  Make sure you clearly understand where they are at, before you begin projecting what you think they should be feeling or where you think they should be at.   If you don’t listen closely, and validate the complexity of the situation, the survivor will shut down and stop sharing with you.  This is not about you.  It was never about you.  If you didn’t live through it, you don’t get a say in how the survivor “should” be feeling.

I’ve known my ex-partner for 17 years, 1 month and 25 days.  We’ve been in a type of relationship for more than half my life.  We were together for 13 years and have been separated/divorced for 4 years, 1.5 months.  Even though we separated we have been (in theory) sharing responsibility for our two children.  In that way, we were still bonded and in a relationship, even though it was at a distance, non-communicative and unproductive.  It was still a type of co-parenting situation, even if we didn’t actually make any real decisions together.

This represents a large portion of my life and a tangled web of complex emotions.

My ex-partner is moving to the other side of the country in 3 weeks.  He’s leaving.  The house we lived in has been sold.  An everything-must-go yard sale planned.  My kids have brought the majority of their possessions here.

And he hasn’t even communicated this with me directly.   Everything I know, I’ve learned through my children.  After over 17 years, he is leaving without even telling me, let alone consulting me or gathering input from me.  Without discussing how this might impact my children, or quite frankly me.

He’s never been one for consent.

Quite honestly, there have been many times over the past four years where I wished for this outcome.  I wished for him to move away, leave us be.  I wished to not be afraid every time I saw a car like his.  I wished to not worry about running into him at the grocery store.  I wished for him not to emotionally abuse the children and I wished not to have to pick up the pieces of that on a weekly basis.  I wished to never see him again.  I didn’t really wish harm on him, I just wished he would move away and let us heal.

I wished for it.  But I didn’t believe he would actually abandon his kids.  I didn’t actually believe he cared so very little about them, that after 4 years of fighting for custody, he would just walk away.

And because I wished for it, people expect me to be happy.  People are congratulating me.  People are thrilled and excited for me.   From the outside, this looks like a dream come true to them.

But honestly, it isn’t.  Not at all.  I’m going through a complex mix of grief, loss, abandonment, fear, anger, anxiety and confusion.  I’m having to face the fact that what I actually wanted is never, and was never, going to happen.

What I actually wanted, was for things to calm down.  I wanted to co-parent, cooperatively, but at a distance.  I wanted us to continue to raise these kids, in separate houses, but working together in their best interest.  I wanted a truce.  I wanted the abuse to end.  I wanted to leave, but I wanted to leave to stop the abuse, not to cut off all contact with him.  I wanted the right to stop the abuse, without sacrificing the entire relationship.  I thought the common bond of sharing children together would continue.  I thought I would be able to talk with him about issues directly related to the children.  I didn’t think we’d be friends, but I had hoped we could co-parent.  I wanted to have a choice.

I never signed up to be a solo parent.  This is not something I feel like celebrating.  I can’t celebrate because I’m grieving.

Truly this is not what I wanted.  I don’t hate him.  I don’t love him, I don’t think I ever did, but I don’t hate him.  I feel deeply sad and disappointed.  I am having trouble trusting and connecting with anyone.  I feel responsible.

And I understand completely that survivors have a complex relationship with their past abusers.  I understand it when people say that they still love the person who raped them.  I have so much compassion for people who have to parent with someone they don’t trust.  Abuse is not simple.  The feelings aren’t simple and survivors need the space to feel accepted for all their confused feelings.

It’s not their fault if they still care about their abuser.  It’s not their fault if they get confused and think it is their own fault.  It’s not their fault if they hope it will get better. It’s not their fault if they dream of reconciliation despite all evidence that the abuser can’t change.   Don’t be disappointed in them.  They can’t help it.  The psychology term for it is trauma bonding, but quite simply they are tormented by self-blame and confusion.

Gaslighting and the cycle of abuse means the survivor feels responsible.

In my case, the abuser has quite literally blamed every aspect of this process, including the abuse and his decision to move, on me.  He told the kids it is my fault he is leaving, because he has “nothing here.”

So, even though you can probably clearly see that it isn’t my fault, I feel responsible.

Even though I intellectually know that it isn’t my fault,  I still feel devastated.  Even though I know intellectually we are better off without his abuse, I’m still scared to be responsible for the kids on my own.

It’s okay to want someone gone, then mourn the overwhelming sense of abandonment.

It’s okay to have whatever feelings you have.  This isn’t a clear situation.  The abuse was designed to confuse you, and that confusion remains long after you leave.

But it’s pretty hard to open up, cry and receive comfort, when you don’t feel entitled to these feelings and when you feel you SHOULD be happy, because it’s what YOU wanted and what people expect.

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Slide credit: Soni McCarty, LMHC 

 

 

Vulnerability Hangover.

/ hopeforsanityblog / 1 Comment

I’ve been feeling generally better over the last month.  I cut my hair short and have been expressing my gender in more neutral and androgynous ways.  It feels lighter and more authentic.  I waited a long time to cut my hair and I don’t regret it.  It’s a pixie style cut and since I got it I’ve felt less self conscious and physically awkward.  I’ve had some days where I felt more confident, less hesitant and less full of self doubt.  It’s felt good.

Since getting custody of my children, after a four year long court battle, there have been slow positive changes.  My kids are happily settled into new schools.  I get to spend more time with them.  Their mental health is generally more stable.

It’s Fall, the leaves have started changing and the world around looks beautiful.

But today I woke up with an intense and familiar feeling: that I’m taking up too much space.  The desire to take up less space is tightly bound together with my battle with anorexia.  The feeling of wanting to disappear or be invisible means that I’m more comfortable when my weight is lower.  I feel internal pressure to be thin, thinner or eat less, not because I care so much what I look like, but because the sensation of taking up too much space becomes unbearable.  I don’t feel like I deserve to eat enough to take up my full amount of space. Restricting food and controlling weight symbolically feels like taking up less space.  I’m not sure how to describe the feeling.  Worthless? Shameful? Self critical?  Useless?  Annoying?

I could go on, but I think you get the point.  It feels awful.

Over time I’ve noticed that there is a pattern to the days I feel this intense desire to take up less space, hide or disappear.  Days when my body feels wrong, too big…too much!  These feelings are linked to trauma and abuse, to my boundaries being crossed and to me pushing myself, challenging myself to do more (i.e take up space).

I posted on facebook today about feeling like I was taking up too much space.  Someone I know referred to it as a “vulnerability hangover” and they were exactly right.

Yesterday, I took on a piece of very personal advocacy work.  I attended a mediation meeting with an organization that has not played a positive role in my family’s lives.  I was scared.  I felt alone.  I felt threatened and scared.  And yes, I felt incredibly vulnerable.  I’m not able to write very much about the meeting, because it was confidential.  But it lasted many hours and I left feeling disassociated and numb.  I wasn’t upset, but I wasn’t fully present either.   I didn’t really want to talk about it.  I just wanted to sleep.

I woke up this morning and I felt like I was taking up too much space.  I wanted to hide and disappear.  I felt like crying through most of the day.  I felt irritable and angry over tiny things.  I felt stupid and useless.  I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to do a good job at anything.  I was doubting my abilities.

The familiar feeling of not being important was racing through my head.  Feeling like nobody likes me, that people merely tolerate my annoying presence.  Like a buzzing fly which someone feels too guilty to swat dead.  I felt too big.  Too much.

It was incredibly helpful for this person, who I don’t even know that well, to point out that the strong feelings were likely related to how vulnerable I was yesterday.  How exposed I felt.

So, today I have a vulnerability hangover.  It feels awful.

But I’m hoping that the advocacy was worth it.  That it was more effective and healthier than staying silent.  I’m hoping it makes a difference in another family’s lives.

I spoke my truth.  It was risky and terrifying, but I did it.  I wanted to run away, but I didn’t.  I faced some fears and came out the other side in one piece.

Just hungover.

Transitions.

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I’ve been away from blogging for the past month.  It’s been a month of transitions, changes and surprises.  Negotiating the work-kid-life balance isn’t always easy and I’m often exhausted. Also, my computer broke and though I love my phone, it’s not convenient to write on!

I wanted to check in to let you know that I’m still here and I plan to get back into regular blog entries soon.

For those of you who have been following my blog (thank you!) or those who have read a few posts, I’m looking for feedback on what topics you’d like to hear more about.  What questions do you have for me?  Are there parts of my story or experience you’d be interested to read more about?  Favourite blog post themes?

I’d love for you to comment with your thoughts, requests or ideas.  Generally I write about what comes up for me in my day to day life.  I write about the memories that are near to the surface, or the life events that trouble or inspire me.

I hope your September transitions have been smooth ones.  Thank you for reading my blog and stay tuned for more new posts over the coming weeks!

Happy Fall!