memories

13 years ago…my last admission at South Street

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FarewellSSH

Photo credit: http://www.lhsc.on.ca

For me, PTSD is extremely linked to anniversaries of dates.  January into February is a difficult time, with the memories of my last extended hospital stay in 2005 and my family law trial in 2016.  I often have flashbacks, memories and symptoms, and then notice the date and realize what is triggering them.

My last admission to South Street was in early January 2005.  I was there for about 5 weeks, my longest admission at that facility.  I was transferred in early February to the Regional Mental Health Care facility, the former London Psychiatric Hospital, where I stayed until sometime in March.  Since then, I’ve largely been free from in-patient admissions.

In my mind, I can walk through the buildings at South Street, especially the main building.  The large stone steps which led to the main entrance.  The single stall washroom off the lobby where I cut myself on a number of occasions, with sharps I brought back inside from walks.   The smell of institutional brown paper towel, and the cheap, strong soap found in hospitals everywhere still brings me back to South Street.  The smell of adhesive first aid tape and band aids, bring back the rusty smell of blood harden on towels during long emergency room waits.

Past the lobby was a small gift shop on the right side of the hall.  I would go down there to browse sometimes or to buy a magazine.   Just past the shop was a cafeteria.  It was more of a snack bar, I suppose they had meals there, but at that time I rarely ate more than a muffin or rice krispie square.  Being in the hospital was an excuse for Ana to get away with restricting more, when nobody was watching me eat or expecting me to do so.  I remember walking through the line style cafeteria.  I’m not sure what I bought, maybe cookies.   A little further, past the first set of elevators was a Tim Hortons kiosk.  It was small and didn’t carry a full selection of items.  It was open longer hours than the cafeteria, which shut at the end of the office hour work day.  I remember it being more dimly lit in the evenings.  There was a second set of elevators, the only ones which went all the way to the 7th and 8th floor: psychiatry.   If you kept walking to the rear of the building, there was a door to the “patio” which was where people went to smoke.   It was also the place where psych patients who had off unit privileges but not full privileges to leave the property, went to get fresh air.   The hallway split into a Y shape at this point.  To the left was the admitting department.  You could walk down a long hallway and exit there as well.

That last time I was admitted, I was a patient on the 7th floor.   There was an orderly who sat at a desk at the entrance to the inpatient unit, which was to the left side of the Y.  The stem of the Y had offices and the right hand side of the Y had other departments, like occupational therapy, and a patient dining room.   The hall was carpeted.   The carpet was dirty, even though it was vacuumed daily.   Patients and visitors had to sign in at the desk.   As a patient, passes off the unit were awarded in increments.  Maybe a 15 minute pass, lead to 30 minutes, led to 4 hours and then to an overnight pass.  Smokers were given 15 minute breaks at intervals throughout the day.  Visiting hours ended at 8pm and at that time the orderly went home and the door to the unit was locked.  Patients returning after 8pm had to ring a bell which alerted the nurses to let us in.  I remember coming back after an evening home, or out with my ex-husband.  The hospital was quiet, the main floor abandoned with the exception of security at the main entrance.  The elevator ride was quiet, the halls semi darkened.  It was easy to believe the building was haunted.  I would be buzzed back onto the unit, check in with the nurses to get my evening medication and then get ready for bed.

The rooms all had reinforced glass windows, many of them had metal grills covering them.  Some of them opened a tiny crack and others did not.   The hallway seemed impossibly long, with the nursing station 3/4 of the way towards the far end.  For all intents and purposes, it wasn’t all that safe.  The nurses were quite far away from most of the patient rooms.   They didn’t search us when we came back from passes.  It was quite easy to smuggle in anything.   On a different admission, I had a roommate who used cocaine and cut herself in our shared washroom. Another time, a patient who was supposed to be recovering from an eating disorder continually smuggled in laxatives which she took by the handful.   A third patient, being tube fed and struggling with bulimia would order large amounts of food and then purge.

It wasn’t exactly a safe place.

I spent a lot of time sleeping, resting and talking to other patients.  I filed out my menus and looked forward to the muffins and cereal at breakfast.   I ordered peanut butter and jam sandwiches for lunch.  The vegetarian and vegan options for dinner were largely inedible.  Sometimes I went home for dinner, sometimes I just didn’t eat.  The meals arrived at 8am, 12pm and 5pm on trays, covered with burgundy or dark blue coloured domes to keep the food hot.   There was a fridge with cheap Colt Ginger ale cans (regular and diet).   Sometimes I brought cereal from home.  I often went for a walk to the Tim Horton’s down the road where I would order caramel coffee cake and black coffee.   They don’t make that cake anymore, but you could order extra caramel sauce drizzled over it.

I coloured and read books.  I waited, sometimes what seemed like endlessly, for the doctor to arrive.  Sometimes the doctors checked in with you ever week day.   Sometimes they didn’t appear for days.  They appeared at unpredictable intervals.  Much of the time they spoke to us in our rooms, even in ward rooms with 4 beds, affording us little privacy.   If we were lucky we might get 15 minutes to talk to the Dr.    That last admission I had a very kind doctor.  He spoke to me in a private room.  It wasn’t his office, just a room for meeting with patients.  He believed me.  He talked about referring me to the mood disorders program at the RMHC.  He didn’t think I was borderline.   Sometimes there would be medical students or nursing students.  I liked them because they were allowed longer to talk to us.  It was lonely and there was little actual treatment in the hospital, aside from medication and medication adjustments.  The medical students gave each patient a physical exam within 24 hours of being admitted.  Even when I was in and out of South Street, I got the check up every time.  In reality, these 1st year medical students were just using us to practice doing physical exams.  But I didn’t mind.  I liked the attention and the chance to speak to someone.  The days were often long, and even the nurses were busy, assigned to multiple patients each shift.

Sometimes, if I was having a rough night, my nurse would bring me into a small room attached to the nursing station.  We would talk about how I was doing.  Mainly I talked about the urges I had to self harm.  Even in the hospital I generally harmed myself on an almost daily basis.   Looking back it’s hard to see exactly how I was helped by these admissions.  Once I even ended up needing stitches, while I was admitted.  I cut myself in the ground floor washroom, then went up to the 7th floor to confess.  A different medical student, maybe a psychiatry resident stitched it for me in my room.

In the sad, lonely state of mind I was in, there was something about the ritual of having my cuts sutured, that comforted me deeply.  I think it was a moment of literal relief to have something FIXED.  The inner trauma I was struggling with was coming back to the surface with frightening intensity.  I was in a new relationship that had rapidly become all consuming, emotionally and then sexually abusive.  I felt trapped.  I felt numb, depressed and hypomanic, agitated and anxious all at once.  I was in a frantic state which was triggered by SSRIs and other antidepressants.  I wasn’t thinking clearly for over 4 years.  I was afraid all the time, and yet I felt invincible in a way.  I knew only peripherally that my impulsive self harm and suicide attempts were extremely dangerous.  I both wanted to die, and felt like I was not at risk from the self harm.  I felt torn, tangled and pulled down, like I was drowning in trauma and suicidal thoughts.  I felt like a mechanical robot, and a wind up toy spinning out of control.

When I look back at myself during those 4 years, I barely recognize any aspects of my true self.  I was changed, and not in a positive way.

I was so young.  I was 20-24 years old.   I felt like a child, colouring, whining for help, begging for someone to SEE me.  I didn’t feel truly SEEN by anyone at that time.  I think I’d felt invisible and misunderstood for so long, that I actually was disappearing, even to myself.  I felt like I’d aged decades in a few short months.  I felt like a child trapped in the body of an older person.   My health was poor, due to medication side effects, self harm, self starvation and lack of structure and routine.  I became more and more socially isolated.  I lost connection with the “normal” world and I became a full time psych patient.  I filled out and inhabited the role of a sick person.  So much so that I no longer realized I was playing a role.  It became all I knew of ME.  I lost myself.   I lost myself in more ways that I can express in words.  I wanted to be rescued.  With all my heart I wanted to be rescued, but I learned to carefully shut people out.  I was also being isolated by my abusive partner.

That last winter in South Street, I was so suicidal I couldn’t leave the hospital alone.  I was perpetually compelled by thoughts of throwing myself in front of traffic on the busy road near the hospital.  I didn’t trust myself to walk anymore.  I knew all the train tracks that criss crossed the  neighbourhood, and all the shops which sold sharps I could use to harm myself.  I was a dead person walking.  I was more than half dead, I had more than one foot out the door of life.  I had 95% given up.

But somehow that last doctor who admitted me, he didn’t see my case as hopeless.  He didn’t see me as someone who was just “trying to get attention” or “manipulate the system”   I think he realized that it was possible the medication was making me worse.  I think he realized, and actually believed me that my next suicide attempt would be a completion.  He quietly talked to me, and quietly sent the referral to the specialist.  I didn’t have much hope, but I sensed that things were different.  Instead of lying to get myself discharged, I stayed there until the bed became available on the mood disorder unit.

5 weeks later, I was off all anti-depressants and on a new mood stabilizer.  The mood disorder specialist retrieved my life from the purgatory and hell of anti-depressant side effects, including medication induced hypomania.

Less than a year later, I was pregnant with my first child.

I never had another extended hospital admission.

South Street has been demolished for years now.  I visited the site last summer to see for myself that it was gone.

But South Street haunts my memories.  The images are so vivid, but in the faded colours of a worn down, dirty building.  Those years were brightly intense simultaneously to being muted and grey.

I expect they will be with me always.  But 13 years ago, I never imagined I would even get out alive.

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

Trusting my younger self.

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I’ve been reading through my journal from the first year of the relationship with my abusive ex-husband.  I’ve been reflecting on how I was gaslighted and how, in a way, I gaslighted myself.  I used the same coping techniques I did when I was abused at age 15. I found myself in another abusive relationship and I immediately began self harming, restricting food, and thinking about suicide.  As a distraction it worked, just as it had when I was a child.  I did what I needed to do to survive. I turned to creative (if self destructive) coping techniques that got me through very difficult situations.  But my inner self, my younger self did know something was wrong.  There was a part of me, healthy me, which was separate from “the voice” or “Ana.”  That part of me knew that my new relationship was deeply and integrally connected to my relapse and worsening psychiatric symptoms.  My wise younger inner self knew that I was in trouble, but she asked for help in ways that distracted and confused other people, even her own healthy self.

This is a concept that is often very difficult for those who have not survived abuse to understand.  It can be challenging to understand that the survivor will do whatever it takes to survive, even if those coping techniques may look like self destructive behaviours from the outside.  The survivor may feel she has limited or no options.  For various reasons she has been conditioned not to scream, tell, ask for help, run away, fight back etc…or maybe she tried those things and they didn’t work. So instead she turned to disassociation, self harm and eating disorders as a way to modulate and live with the abuse and all the symptoms of PTSD.

I was conditioned, maybe almost from birth, not to make a fuss.  I was conditioned, maybe almost from birth, to be a “good girl.”  I internalized this in a way that led me to blame myself for the abusive behaviours of others.  If I was being hurt it was because I wasn’t a “good girl” and if I wasn’t a “good girl,” then I must be a bad girl, maybe a very bad, shameful, dirty and disgusting girl.  Thus, Ana/”the voice” was born.  There was a part of me that split off and became self abusive and self critical.  A younger self, a part that never ages or matures.  A 15 year old frozen in time.

This is how I described “the voice” when I was 20 years old (ironically the description came right after mentioning intimacy with my ex):

February 21, 2001

“My body feels too big and uncomfortable right now.  I know it’s because I’ve been eating more normally and feeling hungry.  The sensation of hunger is not an easy one for me.  It is frightening. Like I feel afraid of losing control of myself. And yet I know that the E.D is out of control. It is a part of me that often deceives and betrays me. I know that in the end, though it feels comfortable, it cannot be trusted.  The voice which tells me not to eat, tells me to cut my skin, to smash my head against a wall, to step out in front of traffic all sorts of dangerous hurtful things.  It speaks to me in persuasive ways.  It is a part of me and yet foreign.  My ally and my enemy, my strength and my destruction. But after so many years it is the way I know.  A method of ridding myself of unwanted feelings”

When I was 20 I was able to recognize some of the signs of abusive behaviour in my ex. I was able to identify that I felt afraid.  But I didn’t draw the right conclusions from there. I blamed myself, I thought I needed to work on my depression, my recovery, get better at coping with anger etc.  My younger self tried to problem solve by changing herself, just as she had at age 15.  Just as she had for her entire life.

March 12, 2001  [written after being asked to swing dance with and dancing with a friend, a man I’d briefly dated]

“So the evening was going well until one crucial moment…asked me to dance.  I figured one dance wouldn’t hurt and I didn’t think [he] would mind…but [he] did get upset and left the room.  I followed after the song was over. [He] got angry at me saying that I couldn’t stand up for myself and say NO.  He totally misunderstood and overreacted.  I got terribly upset and started crying totally uncontrollably…I was so disappointed that my night was ruined.  I felt so much like hurting I became filled with intense suicidal thoughts. I hate feeling my independence threatened by a relationship. I want the freedom to choose who is in my life.  When [he] gets angry it just terrifies me and makes me want to hurt, with him is when I feel the strongest feelings”

My younger self clearly articulated that she felt uncomfortable with being controlled and with the jealous behaviour.  She clearly made a link between the angry jealous behaviour of her boyfriend and the suicidal and self harm impulses.  My younger self was wise on a deeper level, and yet she stayed with that man for 13 years.  It’s difficult to make sense of.  My adult self wants to travel back in time to that night, to go back to the dance with my friends, to tell him in no uncertain terms to F*#K OFF and leave me alone.  My adult self wants to protect that younger me, give her the strength to listen to her instincts and fight back rather than turning to a downward spiral of self destruction that would lead to 4 years in and out of psychiatric hospitals.

The next day, March 12, 2001 I was admitted to the hospital.  I wrote in my journal again, but made no link between the previous evening and my suicidal obsessive thoughts.  The self destruction worked as a distraction from his controlling behaviour.  The hospital was a place to get away from him.  The routine and the process of hospitalization was an escape.  I would feel safer in the hospital for a few hours or a few days, then I’d realize that the hospital wasn’t a solution and I’d want to be home.

I think what I really wanted was to be safe.  What I needed to be safe was to exit the abusive relationship in those early stages, when I still had the chance.

Because within a few short weeks I was already beginning to convince myself it was my depression and PTSD causing the issues in our relationship:

March 26, 2001

“The things that I thought were stable and unchanging have become uncomfortable. I can’t tell if it’s my depression pushing [him] away or actually me. It’s so hard to face that possibility. I want things between us to be simple again. I miss how easy we used to be together.  Now I feel distant from our relationship”

April 4, 2001

“I don’t feel as easy around [him] lately. Mind you I haven’t felt easy around anyone lately. I feel withdrawn, like I have built up the walls around me for protection from the storm.  But this is so ineffective because my storm is coming mainly from within. I don’t know how to protect myself from myself. I really am my own worst enemy”

Maybe I was never my own worst enemy.

Maybe the storm was never “mainly” from within.  Maybe I was confused and living with emotional abuse and gaslighting.  Maybe I bought into blaming myself as a coping technique, as a way to survive, and as a way to feel more in control of a scary situation.  I blamed myself and my mental illness rather than facing the reality that I was in an abusive relationship.  It was “easier” to seek help through psychiatry than it was to leave the relationship.

Looking back it all seems clear.  But my 20 year old self had less wisdom, less experience, less resources and less knowledge.  My 20 year old self did the best she could.  She did try to express herself, she just didn’t have the skills to listen to herself or to ask for the type of help she truly needed.  And those around her weren’t able to interpret her self destructive behaviours as, not a cry for attention or a manipulation, but a message.  A red flag waving, signalling that all was not well.  Help was needed, but psychiatry wasn’t the correct tool for the task.

Unfortunately, my younger self wouldn’t cross the threshold of a rape crisis centre for another 12 years.

South Street.

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Photo credits to the London Health Sciences Centre website documenting the decommissioning and destruction of South Street Hospital.

I’ve been thinking about South Street.   It’s been completely demolished now, destroyed and decommissioned but it’s still alive in my memory.

I haven’t written many posts about being in the hospital since I started this blog almost a year ago now.  Those were first posts, the first thoughts on my mind which I wanted to share.

I think people who have never spent time on a psych ward often have a dark curiosity about what they might be like.  I find myself filled with the same morbid curiosity as I search through pictures of the abandoned South Street hospital online.  How can a place where I survived so much just be demolished?  On one hand I’m glad it is gone.  It was a horrible place!  On the other hand, I feel like it should have stood there forever as a monument to the suffering and the intensity I felt there.

What were days like as a patient at South Street?

The days varied slightly depending on which unit I was on.  There was something comforting about the meals being delivered on neatly organized trays.  In the morning you could select your choices for the following day, marking them off on a paper slip.  The selection for vegetarians was rather poor.  The food in general was awful, but they would bring me a peanut butter and jam sandwich for lunch.  I wrote in my request beside the offered choices.   In the morning there were little boxes of cereal and tiny muffins.  Breakfast was always my favourite meal.   For your first day or two, your meals are delivered directly to your room.  After that you were encouraged to eat with the other patients in a small dining room which was unlocked at meal times for this purpose. I never ate there.  I carried my tray carefully back to my room where I ate alone.  The meals arrived like clockwork at 8AM, 12PM and 5PM.  You could order ginger ale as a snack or a treat, it arrived in a paper bag with your name.   I used to order Colt diet ginger ale, but I’d use the edge of the can to hurt myself, I never drank the pop.   Dinner was the worst meal.  There were a selection of about 4 different vegan dinners that came in plastic trays, preheated.   I would peel the plastic wrap off and sample them, sometimes eating very little.   The arrival of the trays marked the passage of time through the day and the long hours after dinner stretched out, especially if you didn’t have a visitor.

Medication times were another way to tell the time.  At first my nurse would come to my room to give me the selection of pills (at one time I was taking more than 11 pills a day).  After settling in, patients reported to the nursing station at set times to receive their pills.  Each pill came in a tiny sealed plastic bag, labelled with my name and patient number (I still have it memorized!).  The nurse would check my wristband carefully against the name on the plastic bags.  Then the nurse would rip them open carefully and tip the pills out into a small paper cup or into my hand.  I would get another small cup with water and the nurse would watch me swallow the pills.  Night time medication was always greatly anticipated as it marked the end of the day and the time at which it was acceptable to go to sleep for the night.  Realistically, on high doses of anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic medication I often slept during the day as well.   Floating in between high levels of anxiety and thoughts of self harm and suicide, and drugged, sluggish, words slurred together medication induced slumber.

There were no cell phones at that time, difficult to imagine!  There was a Bell payphone at the end of the hall in the TV lounge area.  There was a black leather chair you could sit in while you were on a call.  There was another payphone halfway down the hall, at the edge between the Y and Middlesex portions of the 7th floor (older and comparatively newer parts of the wing).  Talking on the phone to friends and family members was one way to pass the time.  Some patients also sat in the TV room watching whatever was on. I rarely sat there, preferring to stay in my room or in the room of a co-patient I had befriended.

If you were upset, you could ask to speak one on one with your nurse.  There was a small room attached to the nursing station where we could sit.   Sometimes the nurses would speak to me in my room.   The psychiatrist would visit once every few days.  These visits were highly anticipated.  Sometimes I would wait around the floor for hours, figuring that my Dr might check in on me.   Visits from the psychiatrist meant changes in medication, changes in privilege levels, and often discharge from the hospital.  The doctor generally just spoke to me in my room, even when the room was shared with 1-3 other people.  The level of privacy on the psych ward was very low, unless you were lucky enough to be moved to a private room.

Private rooms were highly coveted.  On the psych ward private rooms had nothing to do with the insurance coverage you had and everything to do with privileges.   When I arrived on the 7th floor I was generally in a ward room, 4 beds separated with curtains.  I didn’t mind this as long as I had one of the two beds by the window rather than one of the two beds by the door.   Patients who just arrived on the unit were placed in the ward rooms closer to the nursing station.  Aggressive or self destructive patients were placed in these rooms.  If I stayed longer, I would often be allowed to move further down the hall, further from the nursing station and closer to the exit (both literally and symbolically).   I loved the single rooms which had their own washrooms.  All the rooms had these chain link grills over the windows, but some of them did open a crack.   There were also double rooms, some of which did not have washrooms.  There was a shared shower room.  It had space for 3 people to shower or bathe at the same time, but the showers were separated by curtains.   Rumors circulated that people had completed suicide in these shower rooms and all the patients believed them.  There was also a laundry room where longer staying patients could wash their clothes.

The best part of staying at South Street was that I was generally allowed to come and go for brief periods on my own.  Sometimes I was allowed only on hospital ground, in which case I would go down to the patio at the back of the building.  This was a place where smokers could smoke and psych patients who were not allowed to leave could get some fresh air.  I would go down there with fellow patients sometimes and it was almost like an outing.  Smokers looked forward to the scheduled times we were allowed to leave the unit.

Other times I was allowed to go for short walks around the neighbourhood.   I used to walk down to the river by the hospital.  I’d walk around the streets in the area.  Sometimes I’d walk to Tim Horton’s and buy a piece of caramel coffee cake.  There was a walking path along the river to a small waterfall.  I know we sometimes though of jumping into it.  There were ducks which could be fed if you ordered extra bread with your meal.  Sometimes I walked alone, sometimes with visitors and sometimes with other patients.   I made some friends at South Street.  A few of them I still stay in touch with today.

Ironically enough, many of the patients were allowed to basically come and go as they pleased.  At night the door was locked and you needed permission from your psychiatrist to have a pass home for the evening or overnight.  Sometimes I had accompanied passes which meant my boyfriend had to sign me in and out.  Other times he would just drop me at the front entrance.   Ironically, though I was often admitted to the hospital for self harm and suicidal thoughts or attempts, I was still allowed freedom to leave the floor unaccompanied.   In reality I could have harmed myself pretty much anytime I wanted, even when in the hospital.  Sometimes I did, but other times I didn’t.

I often wonder exactly what made the hospital safer than being at home.   I think it was the thought, or the hope, or the desperate idea that it was safer which kept bringing me back there.  I was almost hypomanic and highly impulsive about self harm while I was taking anti-depressants.  I felt unsafe, I thought I’d be safer in the hospital, admitted myself then realized I felt trapped.  I was generally a voluntary patient, so I soon discharged myself and the cycle began again.  I never really felt safe anywhere.

Sometimes the hospital was a comfort.  The routines, the quiet, the break from real life.

Sometimes the hospital was terrifying, like when one of my roommates was cutting and snorting cocaine in our shared washroom.  Leaving blood and white powder traces for me to find.   Like when a patient who dressed in black and openly worshiped Satan was restrained by multiple security guards and wheeled down the hall on a gurney screaming.   Like when an old man came up behind me in the hall and placed his hands around my neck, whispering that he would kill me.  Like the blood stains on the 7th floor carpet, from where a man had been seriously injured trying to escape.

There was  tenuous grasp on order there, and we all knew it.   Sometimes people think of the psych ward as being filled with crazy people.   But in reality, I was neither more nor less crazy than the other people there.  I wasn’t psychotic, like some of them were, but I was destructive and depressed.  Everyone was there because they weren’t safe.  Our reasons were different, but the result was the same.  We all lined up for our pills.  We all ate our meals off plastic trays.  Some of us were allowed real cutlery and others only plastic.   The lines were drawn in terms of privileges, delineating various levels of “crazy.”  But in the end we were all there together.  We were all psych patients.  I see myself as being no different from the others.

Even today, over a decade later, there is a part of me that still holds that identity.  The identity of being on a psych ward, of being hospitalized against my will.  It did change me and it did shape me.  But it no longer defines me.

 

 

Firsts.

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<trigger warning for graphic descriptions of self harm and eating disorder>

I’ve been thinking a lot about the “firsts” of my mental illnesses.  We all have memories of the first time we did certain things or had certain experiences, but for people who have chronic mental health struggles over a number of years, not all “firsts” are positive memories to celebrate.

When I was experiencing my “firsts” of mental illness I was a teenager.  I was 15-17 years old and I didn’t have any idea that my experiences were those of specific mental illness, let alone what those mental illnesses might be.  I thought that I was going crazy.  I thought I was the only one.  I was afraid to tell others what I was experiencing internally.  Until I was diagnosed with PTSD when I was 20 years old, most of my “firsts” made little sense to me.

The first time I experienced what would become anorexia I was about 16 years old.  I’ve written about it in another blog post.  I was physically sick and hadn’t eaten for a few days.  I felt mostly better and wanted to go to school.  I remember my mother telling me I had to eat something if I was going to school.  I took a granola bar and started walking down the street to meet my boyfriend at the time and to catch the bus.  I remember feeling light, empty and powerful.  I remember feeling the sense of white, blank emptiness that I now associate with disassociation.  I felt like I could take on the world.  I felt like I could survive without food and that I’d actually be more powerful.  I loved that feeling and I chased after it in various forms for the next 20 years.  I believe this moment is the one I chose anorexia as a coping technique for the sexual and emotional abuse I was living with.  At that time I wouldn’t have identified it as an eating disorder, nor would I have identified my relationship as sexually and emotionally abusive.  It was just a feeling I had, of realizing that disassociation was more comfortable than pain.

I remember the first and one of the few times I tried (unsuccessfully) to purge after panicking about eating.  This I described in another blog post.  I remember crying and sitting shaking on the floor of the downtown public library.  My crime?  Eating a whole cookie rather than half of one.  I remember I had been reading books about eating disorders, secretly, trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

I remember my first panic attack.  I was in Grade 12, 17 years old and extremely ill from anorexia.  I was attending school despite the fact that my weight was well under 100 pounds at close to 5’9″.  I remember feeling driven.  I remember feeling an intensity of moving forward that wouldn’t allow me to slow down or calm down.  I had to keep “doing” and trying to be perfect at everything.  I had to follow all my rules or something terrible would happen.  I remember there was one day I had a math test.  I believe it was Grade 12 Calculus or some other horrible subject.  I had been doing well in school despite my illness.  But that day somehow my brain just wouldn’t work.  I remember sitting in the classroom, the desks were arranged in rows, one in front of the other with the blackboard at the front.  I remember all the numbers and letters swimming around on the paper.  I couldn’t breathe.  I couldn’t think of how to solve the problems because everything was spinning and I felt like I was being crushed.  I felt nauseous and I realized that I was about to cry.  I remember bolting out of the room and into a stall in the girls bathroom.  I remember sitting there crying, shaking and feeling terribly upset that I couldn’t do the test.  My thoughts were racing around and I just wanted to go home.  I remember another student from the class coming in to check on me (it was a male teacher).  I remember being somehow glad she was there even though I was embarrassed.  I made up some excuse about being sick and not being able to write the test.  I think I went home.  I wouldn’t have known at the time that it was a panic attack, but it was and it was probably related to extreme lack of nutrition and just pushing myself too hard on no fuel.

I remember the first time I cut myself as a coping technique for stress.  I was about 18 years old.  I had just started taking SSRI medication for depression and anxiety after about 2 years of fighting with my parents and my doctors.  I never wanted to take medication.  I think deeply and instinctively I must have known that my mental health problems were situational, but that knowledge was too terrifying to face, so I blocked it out.  The first time I engaged in cutting I  used a pair of scissors that I kept in my bedroom.  I used to make just one small cut.  I would do it once a week in the exact same place, just under where the band of my watch lay.  So I could hide it carefully.  It was ritualistic, very controlled.  I don’t remember exactly why I started doing this.  It became part of my routine as I gained weight and somewhat normalized my eating behaviour. I needed something else to help block out the memories of the abuse.

I remember the first time I considered suicide.  I was probably about 17 years old, but I might have been 18.  I remember being at a party at a friend’s house.  Radiohead OKComputer was playing in the background.  Music I always associate with the “saddest of the sad” times.  It was raining outside.  I remember sitting on the couch looking out the back sliding door.  It was dark outside, evening.  The rain was falling really hard and there was thunder and lighting. I felt like I was in a trance.  Looking back I realize this was also an example of disassociation.  I remember feeling incredibly alone and disconnected. I was AT the party but not part of it.  I remember being at home that evening.  My bathroom had green tiles.  Small square tiles with white grout.  I remember just sitting there staring at my razor.  Thinking about cutting myself, thinking about dying and ending my life by opening up my veins.  I just sat there for a long time thinking about it.  The images of the green tiles and the emptiness of that moment are burned into my memory.

I remember my first flashback.  I was 18.5 and with my first love, my first real connection after the abuse and the severe anorexia.  I remember we were in my bedroom and we were kissing.  It was consensual and I wanted to do it.  He was lying on top of me. I think he might have been about to unbutton a piece of my clothing or something like that.  Suddenly I was crying and shaking and it wasn’t him there.  It was my ex boyfriend, who had so many times taken off or unbuttoned my clothing when I’d clearly said now.  It was him on top of me and I was afraid.  I had no idea what a flashback was, I didn’t know I had PTSD.  I just had an intense physical reaction to what was happening.  My boyfriend stopped immediately.  I remember him leaving the room briefly to give me space.  I remember feeling scared and embarrassed.  I don’t really remember the explanation I gave to him.  Some of my memories are less clear, but I think over time I had told him that my last relationship had been difficult.  I don’t think I fully understood myself at that time that it had been abusive, and that this type of reaction was a normal one for survivors.

I remember the first time I cut myself deeply enough to need stitches.  I was 20.  I was at university.  I remember buying the craft knife at the university book store. I remember walking home.   There was  a bridge on the campus and for months I thought about jumping off it every day.  I knew that I was going to cut deeply.  It was planned and premeditated.  I remember disassociating and thinking only about the injuring.  I remember wanted to make sure it was deep enough to need stitches.  I remember walking to the hospital which was on the campus.  I walked across a field to get there.  It was May or June.  I remember the doctor stitching up the wound.  It was a medical student and I remember feeling afraid.  I remember the resident coming to check the work and commenting that the stitches were incorrectly done.  I remember wondering why the resident didn’t fix them, but I assumed that because the wound was self inflicted they thought I didn’t care about scars.  In the end that wound healed badly and caused me chronic pain until it was fixed about 7 years later by a plastic surgeon at that same hospital.   I remember feeling nothing.  I remember feeling nothing about the injury and having no emotional or physical reaction until the day I went to the health clinic to have the stitches removed. I fainted when the doctor took them out.  My body felt the trauma suddenly and all at once the disassociate wasn’t there.   From then on I always took my own stitches out so I could control the process and do it in a way that I would not feel as much pain.  The ritual of the whole thing was an important part of the process of disassociation for me.

It’s a sad list.  Really sad.  Because some of these firsts are clearly in my mind that pleasant memories I would like to remember.  The way that PTSD stores traumatic memories and erases positive ones is deeply frustrating.  Because the long term consequence of disassociation is memory loss, and rarely losing the memories I wish would disappear.

Picture was drawn in September 1999

 

 

 

Night Bears.

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Someone told me a story about her daughters, who woke up at night and looked for the “bears” that were scaring them, having misheard the word “nightmare” as “night bear.”  It was a sweet story and I loved the imagery.  I took to calling my PTSD nightmares, night bears.   It makes them less scary in a way, because I think of bears as being soft and cuddly rather than threatening.

Night bears are something I’ve struggled with since I was a small child.  I still remember some of my recurring childhood nightmares.  I remember a dream where I was Red Riding Hood, walking along a dark path between tall, thick, dark shrubs.  I heard sounds and I reached my hand through the hedge, only to find a giant, grey, terrifying wolf grabbing at my hand.  I would wake up terrified and frozen.  I tried to call out but my voice didn’t work. That paralyzed feeling happened often as I woke from dreams, I felt I couldn’t move or speak.  Eventually I would be fully awake and run into my parents room.

When I was a teenager I took some medication to prevent malaria while travelling.  I was 16 and it had a very negative impact on me.  I’ve always been sensitive to strange side effects from medication.  I began to have even more vivid dreams.  They were full of all the sensations.  I remember having a dream about being on a battlefield during World War Two.  I could actually smell the smoke from the fires burning around me, I could feel it in my nose.  The heat was burning and I woke up sweating.

As a teenager I also began to have precognitive, predictive dreams.  This may sound bizarre and ridiculous to you, it sounds strange to me too, but it happened.  I had a friend in high school who struggled with self harm and suicide attempts.  I would have vivid dreams about her.  When I arrived at school she wouldn’t be there.  I remember calling her house, frantically from the pay phone in the hall.  Every time I found that she was in the hospital after harming herself, often in similar ways to my dreams.

In my 20s and early 30s, I had another friend who I had a similar connection with.  I’ve written about her in some of my other posts “MJ.”   We lived in different cities, but the precognitive dreams were eerie.  She could never figure out how I knew she was in trouble, or in the hospital, before she even contacted me.  It happened so many times that we both began to trust in the strange premonitions I had about her.

Because of these experiences, when I have vivid dreams about death and violence I am often afraid.  I worry that something bad has happened to someone I care about. I worry that there will be bad news.  I worry that it’s a sign.  It’s a horrible feeling, and I try to reassure myself that precognitive dreams are not real and that my brain is just expressing stress and worry through images of violence.   I’m never 100% reassured though.

In the last few years of my marriage, I had vivid rape and sexual assault dreams.  I would wake up screaming, thrashing around in bed.  It would wake up my husband too and he would comfort me.  But I often felt confused and afraid.  The person who was abusing me, perhaps triggering the dreams, was the only one there to protect me from the nightmares.  I remember having one particularly bad dream in the months before I left him.

In the dream I was attacked by a man on the street.  I was trying to fight back and to scream but I was pinned to the ground.  There was a chain link fence beside me as I lay on the ground, on the side walk.  I was trapped under his weight as he raped me.  The only part of my body that I could move was my right hand.  I somehow grabbed a stick and frantically banged the chain link fence with it, trying to attract the attention of someone who could save me.  I remember waking up, my right arm hitting out in bed, strangled cries coming out of me.  I used to worry it would wake up my children in the other rooms.

As long as I can remember, nightmares have been a feature of my PTSD.  When I am under too much stress, the nightmares return.  They cycle through various themes over a period of days to weeks, and then they relent for a while.   I rarely have the dreams which are so intense I wake up shouting and fighting imaginary enemies anymore. I do still occasionally wake up in a sweat, from deep sleep to intense panic attack, then back to sleep again.

Recently, I’ve been having a lot of nightmares.  I think it is because of the stress of the court case and the triggers related to my marriage, the unfairness of the system and the stories I hear at work.

This week I’ve been dreaming about death, violence and natural disasters.  When I wake from the dreams I’m disoriented and confused.  When I’m alone it’s very difficult to feel safe and calm.  Sometimes I turn my cell phone on, just to ground myself in reality and remind myself that I’m not alone.  That I could call or text someone if I needed to.  I open the window, I listen to the wind and the leaves.  I cuddle my teddy bear.  I breathe and I let the semi-medicated, blurry sleepiness take me back into sleep.

Last night I was feeling unsettled and struggling.  I’d gone up to bed early but had some trouble relaxing.  I had the window slightly open as usual.  I woke up in a complete panic, startled awake by the house shaking from the strength of thunder and lightening nearby and wind howling through the window, rain pounding.   It was so intense that I was afraid.  I usually love storms.  But I hate being startled awake.  It’s a trigger to the abuse.

I was dreaming about being in a hotel by the beach.  There was a giant tsunami crashing onto the beach.  I was running from room to room in the hotel, as it filled up alarmingly quickly with water.  Somehow all the rooms were sealed and there were no windows to open.  There was not enough air and eventually no place to run.  It reminded me of the passengers trapped on the sinking Titanic, right at the end.

Last week I dreamed about being at the strip mall near my house, at dusk.  I was alone.  I found a severed head on the pavement, blood everywhere.  I was shocked to realize that the head was alive and speaking to me. I called 911 on my phone and ran over to the head, trying to comfort what was left of this person.   At the same time, my mind was screaming at me that it was impossible for a head to be alive without a body and that something supernatural or unnatural was happening.  I was calling out and calling out for help and then I woke up.

That same week I dreamed about an old man dying while I held him in my arms.  His face was hollow and his breath rattled as dying people’s do.  I woke up so sad, and the sadness stayed with me all day.

That’s the thing about PTSD nightmares.  They don’t just fade when I wake up.  Bad dreams fade, neutral dreams fade, but PTSD nightmares stay with me…sometimes for years after.  They can put me into a mood before I’m even out of bed in the morning.  They also make me feel exhausted, as if I’ve lived a whole day instead of sleeping through the night.

They are difficult to talk about.  I expect to hear “don’t worry, it was just a dream,” but they don’t feel like dreams to me.   These nightmares are resistant to medication, to therapy, to the power of positive thinking.   They have a life of their own and I can’t control them.  That also feels triggering.

To everyone who struggles with PTSD night bears.  I hope you have a restful sleep tonight.  I hope you have someone to comfort you when you wake up afraid and disoriented.  I hope you can comfort yourself too.  Nightmares aren’t “just dreams,”  they can be traumatic, draining and incredibly frustrating.

Don’t look at me.

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One of my clearest memories of the abuse with X, is also one of the memories which triggers the most flashbacks.

It’s the reason I don’t like to be looked at, why I sometimes wish I was invisible, why I have hated my body for 20 years, and linked to why I started down the road to anorexia.

It was evening, that time between the brightness of day and the deep darkness of night.  We were in his room, listening to music and…I don’t know what words to describe it with…if it had been consensual I would describe it as “fooling around” or “making out”  but in this case those words don’t have an accurate feel.  We were alone in his room, in the dark and he was abusing me.  Sarah McLaughlin was playing on the CD player “hold on, hold on to yourself, for this is going to hurt like hell…”

I remember the blinds were dark,  maybe navy blue, they were shut, but a small amount of light came in between the cracks.  The head of the bed was directly to the right of the window.  I remember the bedspread being navy as well.  There was a dark mood to the space.  So often when we were in his room, his family was home.  Technically if I had screamed, yelled, or run away, someone would have heard.  We were rarely completely alone.  But I felt so much shame, I blamed myself, I felt dirty and I felt like it was my fault.  It never really occurred to me to tell his parents, I felt they would blame me, or not believe me, that they would tell my parents, that somehow I’d be in trouble.  So I learned to disassociate, I stayed quiet, I did what he wanted.   Sometimes I said no, but I never fought back or physically resisted.  I learned quickly that my “no” meant nothing to him.

That evening, he wanted to look at me.  He made me take off my clothes, except my underwear which I always stubbornly refused to remove.  I was afraid to get pregnant and I somehow felt like keeping them on would protect me.

He made me stand across the room from him.  He lay, semi-reclined, on his bed, staring at me.  Just staring.  I felt like an object.  I felt like this one moment solidified the sense of shame that had been growing and building inside me, like dark twisty vines blocking out all the light of my once bright self esteem.  I crossed my arms across my chest, trying to hide myself from his prying eyes.  I felt his actions were motivated by lust. I didn’t feel loved or cared for.  I felt afraid and I felt ashamed.   I don’t know how long I stood there for, but it felt like an eternity before I was able to hide under the duvet again.  I don’t really remember what happened before or after.  I only remember those moments of exposure.

Years later, much more recently, I was dating someone.  The first time I took my clothes off, in my own room, safe and because I wanted to.  He looked at me, and I had flashbacks so intense that I almost passed out.  I had to sit down, suddenly on the bed.  The room was spinning, my heart was racing, I was so dizzy I felt blackness around the edges of my eyes.  And I was trembling, shaking really.    It took a few minutes of lying down for my body to return to a normal state.   This is what PTSD means to me.  The rapid trip between enjoying a sexual moment and being almost paralyzed with extreme physical symptoms.  The panic/flashback is often followed by tears, physical pain and nausea.  I sometimes have difficultly talking or expressing what is happening.

Because of this I have to take time to educate people who are going to be close to me. So they know what is needed to help in those moments when it’s difficult for me to help myself.  It’s important for others to realize that in the midst of a flashback I can’t consent, I can’t think, I can’t communicate clearly, and I need help getting grounded, or I need the space to do so myself.

I often wonder, if people who commit acts of sexual violence realize the impact they are having on the victim’s life.  I wonder, if abusers knew that years later mere reminders of the abuse could have such severe consequences.  I wonder if people would stop and reconsider pushing past “no.”  I wonder if all the law makers, judges, police and lawyers had to live with PTSD related to sexual violence for just one day, they would reconsider letting the majority of reported abusers walk free.

The abuse may only last a few moments, but the impacts can last a life time.

P.S.  Please feel free to share this blog if you are enjoying it!

Writer’s Block.

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I haven’t been blogging very much recently.

One reason is that I’m incredibly busy working full time and single parenting full time.

Another reason is that I have both so much to say and so little coherent to say.  I have all these ideas, memories, flashbacks, feelings and thoughts floating and swirling in my head, but haven’t been able to conceptualize a theme for a single blog post.

I started writing a post on Tuesday, which was the three year anniversary of my separation.  The day I told him I was leaving.

I never do well with anniversaries.  My PTSD gets worse, my flashbacks get worse, I think a lot about the past, my progress, where I have been and where I am going.  I am particularly impacted by holidays and anniversaries.  This is common for many people with PTSD because we don’t just remember things, we relive them.   Thus certain anniversaries of traumatic events are literally unforgettable.  I navigate my year around the anniversaries of various traumas, the deaths of my friends and family members, their birthdays, times when I was abused, anniversaries of meeting and leaving my abusers…it’s all stored in there.

The post I started was going to focus on how far I have come and the things that I have gained since leaving my ex-husband.  I was feeling particularly discouraged and demoralized after experiencing re-traumatization and further abuse from CAS and indirectly from my ex-husband.  I was beginning to feel like my entire life would be controlled and navigated by his abuse, until either he dies or I die.

But this week I feel a bit more hopeful.  Having a plan of action, even an imperfect plan helps ground me.  I wanted to write a bit about what I have gained through this three year, ongoing leaving process.  But even those thoughts weren’t properly formed and they were marred by intrusive thoughts and flashbacks.

I wasn’t sure if I should just write down a disjointed list of some of the flashbacks I’ve been having.  Because a disjointed post might accurately represent the way I’m experiencing life right now.  On the other hand, I really wanted to write something infused with gratitude.

In the middle, the blog post will meet here: a description of a flashback and why PTSD is so damn challenging, which will flow into some ways in which I am now better able to cope.

I want to describe the utter banality of some flashback triggers, because it illustrates how very unpredictable PTSD can be.   We all think of the obvious triggers, seeing the perpetrator, seeing people who look like the perpetrator, someone smells like the perpetrator, events remind you of the abuse etc.  But triggers can be literally anything.

Last week I was driving downtown and I saw a man walking down the street.  The man was unremarkable.  He was wearing a hospital bracelet on one arm and was gingerly holding his other arm which was wrapped in a clean, white gauze bandage.  He didn’t look unhappy or upset, he didn’t look like my abuser.  It was clear he was walking home from receiving treatment at the emergency room.  Nothing unusual, strange or threatening about it.

But I had an incredibly intense flashback which engaged all my senses.

I was back in time, I was leaving the hospital myself after receiving stitches for self harm.  I could feel the numbness in my arm from the local freezing.  I could smell the gauze and the tape they use at the hospital to secure the bandage.   I could feel the pain in my arm from where the stitches went in, as the freezing wears off and the swelling and bruising begins.  And I was overcome by an extremely intense urge to cut myself.  So intense that I felt dizzy.

Realize that all this took place in a matter of a few seconds.  The only trigger was seeing the man with the bandage and I had a complete physical and emotional reaction. Body memories, emotional feelings from the past and a motivation in the present to harm myself.

It’s quite incredible to me that this happened.  But this is what PTSD is.

And now the gratitude.

Living away from my ex-husband has given me the strength and motivation to resist those urges to destroy myself.

4-5 years ago if I had that strong an impulse to cut, I would have acted on it.  I would have used the flashback as an excuse…I had to do it….I would have given my power away to the urges.

Now, in recovery I can rationalize with the urges and I can ground myself and make an empowered choice not to harm myself severely.

I never could have made these shifts living in an abusive home.  I didn’t realize how unsafe I felt 24/7 until I moved to my new home and suddenly relaxed.

I have so much gratitude for being able to sleep at night without being assaulted.  I have gratitude for being able to make choices based on what is good for me.

I am so thankful for my ability to work.  Essentially, leaving my ex-husband allowed me to go from being psychiatrically disabled, to working full time in a demanding, challenging job, within a little over a year.

I love being employed.  I love having the privilege to help other women survivors.  I love being able to enter spaces where before I never would have been taken seriously, and be seen as a colleague and sometimes even an expert.   I occupy this mysterious space.  I am a psychiatric survivor and a service user while at the same time being a mental health service provider.   This is  a gift and a privilege that  I never forget.  Every single day that I work I am grateful for the opportunity to turn my negative experiences into a powerful way of finding meaning in the suffering I endured.  I find meaning in knowing that what I have survived has allowed me to help others with empathy, compassion, wisdom and joy.

Most people who know me now would have a hard time believing that 5 years ago I was unable to work, dependent, depressed, self destructive, suicidal and being abused.

Sometimes people who know me now forget.  They see me functioning and they forget that I struggle and constantly grapple with PTSD.  I function well with a very high level of symptoms and for that I am also grateful.

Ultimately, the last few months have been extremely difficult for me.  I’ve felt lost, depressed and hopeless at times.  But I have gained so much since leaving.  I have gained not just a career, but job that brings meaning to my life.  I have a safe home.  I am able to keep my children safe much of the time.  I am able to raise them with the values of social justice, equality and openness that I believe is right.

And even if this post is disjointed and unfocused, it is written, and for that I am thankful.

Photograph

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I have vivid memories from very young ages of freezing in response to stress.

I remember staying at my Nana’s house while my parents were away.  One time she got sick.  It was just her and I in the house together.  She was in the bathroom upstairs throwing up loudly. I was terrified and I hid under the dinning room table.  I remember just being frozen there and being afraid.  I don’t remember anything before or after.

Pretty much my whole life since then I’ve had a phobia and very strong panic reactions when I hear other people throwing up.  Even watching it on TV bothers me.  I did get over it to a certain extent when my kids were young, but it still makes me irrationally afraid.  Even though I know intellectually that there is nothing to be afraid of, a part of me is still that little child, hiding under the table, not understanding what was happening to her Nana, or if she was okay.

Another time I was visiting extended family.  I was about 5 years old.  My Aunt and Uncle were going through a separation and he was abusive.  I remember standing on the landing of their house.  I remember hearing yelling and standing there frozen and afraid.   As with the first memory, I don’t remember much before or after.  I don’t really remember their house, I only remember the landing of the staircase.

I went to a school in a fairly central part of town for Grade 1-4.  My first experience with sexual abuse happened at that school.  It was either spring of Grade 1 or fall of Grade 2.  I know because the grass was still green and I wasn’t wearing a coat.  My best friend S and I were playing imagination games together as we usually did at recess.  We used to imagine we were characters from books we’d read.  Her favourite was Anne of Green Gables.  At that time mine was Laura Ingells Wilder from the Little House series.   We had vivid imaginations and we became the characters from the books we read.

The school had a massive play yard with different sections.  Part of the yard was a large L shaped field, the furthest away from the school, pavement and climbers.  The yard monitors rarely strayed far from the pavement and climbers.   S and I were right at the edge of the yard, by the fence.  There was a small grassy hill there and on the other side of the fence was a place large enough to park a few cars.  We could see the main road just on the other side of that parking space.

S and I were playing, deep in our imagination that day.  I remember it being warm and sunny and there were dandelions outside.  Suddenly a car pulled up parallel to the chain link fence.  It was a four door sedan, I think it was burgandy or dark brown.  The door of the car opened and a man stepped out.   He was white and had dark curly hair.  I think he was wearing jeans.  The man walked up to the fence, about 4 metres down from where we were sitting on the grassy hill.  There was some weeds and tall grass on his side of the fence, the parking area was unused and mainly abandoned.

I didn’t fully understand what happened next until I was much older.  And I certainly had no idea what it meant.  What I do remember is that I was afraid and I froze.  I think we both froze.

The dark haired man undid his belt, unzipped his pants and started touching himself.   His eyes were fixed on us, staring at us with a strange look on his face.  It wasn’t a look I recognized, or one I liked.   This was a stranger, the type of stranger our parents had warned us about, but we didn’t know what to do other than wait silently.

When the man finished, he zipped up his pants, did up his belt and walked over to his car.  He looked at us the entire time.  The car was parked parallel to where we were playing.  He got into the car and he rolled down the window.  It was the 1980s and he had to crank it open.  The car started, but before he drove away he looked at us one last time.  His hands made the shape of a camera in front of his face, one finger clicking the imaginary button.  It felt like he had captured us.  Captured a part of us for himself, and I knew that it wasn’t right.  I felt dirty and afraid.

As soon as the car pulled away the spell was broken.  S and I ran back to the paved area and to safety.  I don’t remember what happened after.  I don’t remember ever speaking to her about what happened.

What happened next?  S went home and told her mother who called the school.  The school sent home a note saying to be alert for a suspicious person and the description was there.

To be honest I don’t remember talking about it to anyone.  I don’t remember anyone talking to me.  I don’t know if I did talk to someone and I just don’t remember, but I’m almost positive I didn’t tell my parents.

Even at the age of 6 or 7 I felt ashamed and I felt I had done something wrong.  Maybe we shouldn’t have been playing there, so far away from the other kids.  Maybe we would be the ones to get in trouble.

S and I talked about this a few years ago.  It turns out she wrote a story about it at one point in her adult life.  It comforted me to know that she still remembered and that it had impacted her too.

It feels strange to write about this now, something that happened nearly 30 years ago.  What I find interesting is that my tendency to freeze as a way of coping was formed early in my life.  When I was abused as a teenager and an adult I coped in the very same way.  The first time I actually fought back physically I was 33 years old.

I don’t know exactly what makes some people fight, some people flee and some people just freeze.  I don’t know what was different about S and I, that she went home and told her mother and I don’t remember telling anyone.   This was a pattern that continued later in my life as well.  I just didn’t tell.  I froze,  I blamed myself, and I stayed silent.

Part of writing this blog is about breaking that silence.  I want other people to know they are not alone.  That they didn’t do anything wrong, even if they didn’t fight back or ask for help.

We all did the best we could to survive.

Hold On, Hold Onto Yourself, for this is going to hurt like hell

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Summer of 1996.  The Woods.

Picture taken 20 years later.  Spring 2016.

This is one of the places X sexually abused me.  It’s one of the first places I remember actively disassociating.

I remember floating, slightly outside my body while he kissed and bit my neck, breasts and stomach.  Hard enough and long enough to leave marks.  I felt like he was marking his territory and his territory was all across my 15 year old body.  I remember feeling ashamed of those kiss marks, trying to hide them from my friends and parents.  I remember making a lame excuse when my parents noticed a red bruise-like mark on my neck one day that summer.

While he lifted up my shirt and I lay on my back on the large stone, his weight on top of me making it difficult for me to move; I floated.  I floated and I observed the trees around me.  I remember noticing a circle of trees with straight trunks around me and the rock.  I felt like it was a clearing, almost a circular chapel with the rock as an alter in the centre.  The trees around me comforted me, but I remember feeling disgusted and wishing that the kisses would stop.

I remember the feeling of the hard rock below me.  The rock was cool compared to X. I always associate X with the colour red, like fire burning away the blue ice I associated with the numbness of disassociation.

At the time I would never have considered the abuse by X as sexual assault, or even abuse.  But looking back I know I often said no, I set boundaries, I asked him not to ever do certain things and he ignored me.  Eventually I tired of saying no and I began to submit quietly, not really resisting, just trying to get it over with and minimize the impact on me.  It was during this time that I learned to please X as quickly as possible so that he would not spend much time touching my body.  I  learned that a way of exerting some small amount of control over the situation was to try to speed up the process and distract X.  When he was touching me I often just froze.  I didn’t move, I didn’t fight, I didn’t scream and I didn’t resist.  This still impacts my healthy sexuality now, 20 years later.

Fight. Flight. Freeze. Fawn

Disassociating is a normal coping reaction to experiencing violence.  Freezing.

Trying to please the abuser in order to minimize risk to self is a normal reaction.  Fawning.

Doing the best you could to survive is the best you could have done.

It’s easy to look back harshly on our young selves and say “You should have run, you should have left him, you should have told someone, you should have screaming…should…should…should”

But I believe if you could have done better, you would have done better.

If I could have done better I would have done better.  My younger self had reasons for not running, not leaving, not telling and not screaming.  I didn’t run because I disassociated. I didn’t leave because I was worried he would commit suicide.  I didn’t tell because I thought I would be in trouble and I thought people would think I was a slut for being sexual.  I didn’t scream because I was raised not to make a fuss, to be kind to others and because I believed I would be judged.

I’m sure you have valid reasons too and if you are reading this (and I’m still writing it!) you have survived which means your best was enough.  You are enough.