Cleaning

Sometimes I just get into a mood where I HAVE TO CLEAN OR THE WORLD WILL END.  Silly?  Yes.  Rational?  No.  Understandable? Probably.  I think it has a lot to do with still feeling dirty from being raped.  Being sexually abused and being raped are like two different things to me.  I don’t know how to explain it.

I know this OCD like cleaning thing is part of my PTSD.  It’s really hard on my body when I get into one of these moods.  I stripped and changed the linens on the bed.  Hung up a load of laundry.  Put another load in.  Swept up the big stuff.  Vacuumed the dust and little stuff.  Cleaned the litter box (note to self – need more litter).  Did the dishes.

I had almost no pain until I started this marathon.  Now my whole body aches and my specific trigger points are up to a five.  And I’m tired.  I feel like I ran 5 marathons.  Luckily I wrote my tests for next week this morning.  So it isn’t looming over my head.  What is looming over my head is the python course I was doing.  I did great on lessons 1 and 2.  Three just overwhelmed me.  I don’t know how much of it is the depression, the fibro fog or the meds (gabapentin makes me head do weird things).  I printed the lessons out because I feel like I can focus my attention better on paper than on a computer screen.  And then there’s the ever calling sirens of Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia.

So my plan is to take a hot shower and focus on stretching those muscles that are bothering me.  I’m going to take my evening meds and let them work their magic.  If there’s something good on TV, I’ll watch it.  If not, I throw a few show into a playlist in VLC and watch that.

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General Health & ETC

Aside from being crazy, I’m generally healthy, despite my weight (which is still going down).  Had a full checkup with blood work and all.  Kidneys and liver both checked out fine.  Thyroid is back in the normal range with medication.  Blood pressure and heart rate are fine.  No diabetes or anemia.  Cholesterol is slightly elevated, which I’ll be treating with diet and exercise.  Doctor feels no need for medication yet.  Some blood test showed evidence of inflammation in my body.  Well duh, tendonitis in my wrist.  Doctor agrees that’s probably it.

So all in all, I’m just crazy.  I haven’t been sleeping as well, despite medication.  Same with the anxiety.   Terrible nightmares where I’m being raped or tortured.  Afterwards when doctors try to help me (usually involving giving me something like IV benzos to help me calm down so they can treat the injuries) I beg them to stop.  Strangely enough, the doctor in the dream is usually “Ducky” from NCIS.  I have no idea why, outside of the fact I’ve been watching a lot of NCIS lately.

Two weeks ago, my shrink gave me some IV compazine to combat the nausea I was having.  I can definitely say having an IV placed at the base of your wrist, palm side is probably the most painful site.  For some reasons, the nice veins in my hands went diving for cover.  I was so tired and felt so sick and overwhelmed, I just lay there silently crying.  The following week the doc asked why I had been crying.  I explained and added that I was tired of feeling crazy and I was mad at my parents for contributing to my craziness (both genetically and environmentally).

It feels like I’m in a PTSD flare-up right now.  They physical pain in my wrist doesn’t help.  I think the touching, while helping on one level is making me more jumpy and anxious and flashbacky than usual.  I guess I’ll try to explain that to Dr. P when I see him on Monday.  It’s a good thing that he only gives me a week of meds at a time.  I’ve got some niggling suicidal and Si urges going on as well.

Holy crap.  I didn’t realize all this was going on until I started typing (sans splint, I’ll be a good girl and put it on as soon as I finish).  I don’t want to feel like this.  That’s different from 10 years ago.  Then I thought I deserved to suffer and be punished.  Now I just want to be happy.  And I want it to be real.  I don’t want it to be the forced happy mask I’ve been putting on at work.

And I guess I should clean up the apartment.  The general level of pain and exhaustion has led to a mess of a living space.  Doesn’t help that my washer is slightly unbalanced and it takes about 10x longer to do laundry than it should.

And damn it.  I’m not going to cry!  No.  Stop it Kathryn  Crap.  Not working.

 

TTYL

Nightmares

I had horrible nightmare the other night.  And it sent my whole mood into the toilet.  I’m still trying to climb out.  Childhood memories plus rape memories.  I haven’t had nightmares like this in a long time.  It scared me a lot because I haven’t had the bad ones like this in a long time.  And for the most part, I’ve been able to short of just shrug them off.  Yes they suck, but I don’t tend to let them get to me.  The worst part of the other night was they seemed to be constant.  I’d wake up from one and fall right back asleep into another one.  I felt like I was dreaming all night.

Well, time to feed the kitties.  I’m watching Ivory claim the computer time as her own.  She’s rubbing her face all over it.  Oh well.  I must remember that I am nothing more than their servents.

Trauma chart

Last week, my therapist had me work on a chart trying to sort out the impact of trauma in my life. It asks about a traumatic event during childhood, adolescence and adulthood. You then describe the event, life before the event, life after the event and the overall impact of the event.

Because nothing really terrible has happened to me as an adult, I decided to focus on childhood and adolescence. For each age range, I picked one specific class of event because it was too difficult to focus on specific events. That’s a project for the future.

It was quite difficult to do the chart. It was hard to find the words to describe the impact. I focused mainly on behaviors rather than emotions.

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So the event class I picked for childhood was being molested in the shower. I wrote about it previously. But the basic sequence of events was my father would give me a shower because I had a hard time washing my hair. While in the shower, he would fondle me and would penetrate me with his fingers. On more than one occasion, he stripped and joined me in the shower.

I have so few memories of growing up and he started showering me like that when I was about 4 or 5. So describing life before the event is nearly impossible. I think my mother gave me a bath. But I don’t really remember.

I got my hair cut when I was 10 and then my father stopped showering me, but life really didn’t change all that much. The abuse continued in my bedroom as before. I hated my life. I had suicidal thoughts. I was still withdrawn.

The eventual impact was a general fear and avoidance of the shower. Even taking a bath is difficult as it’s still the same location. I really hate having my hair washed by anyone. I do it myself before getting a hair cut. In general, I really hate anyone touching my head.

 

The event class I chose for adolescence was my relationship with James. As I wrote before, he was my boyfriend in high school. He was physically and emotionally abusive and he raped me more times than I care to remember. Before that relationship, I wanted to have a long term relationship. Marriage and kids were still viable options for the future. My trust in men hadn’t been totally shattered.

After the relationship ended, I didn’t rebound emotionally. I was still depressed, and the depression deepened. I had done small things to hurt myself in the past, but I started hitting myself to the point of causing bruises.

The biggest impact of being in that relationship is the loss of hope for ever having any sort of meaningful intimate relationship. For me, men are people to be feared (as irrational as that may be). I hate being a woman. I hate my sexuality. I do my best to repress it.

 

Note: If anyone is interested, I scanned the original chart to .pdf. Email me or leave a comment if you’re interested in it. The image above was made using Nvu. However, WordPress.com didn’t want to play nice with a table so I just took a screen shot and cropped it.

James, continued

I’ve been working up the courage and the strength to continue writing about what my relationship with James was like. It’s not something that is at all easy for me to talk about. I still find myself very embarrassed for letting myself stay in a situation like that. But I guess I didn’t see it for what it really was.

So the last thing I talked about was the first time that he raped me. It was the summer between our sophomore and junior years. I wish I could say it only happened once. But it didn’t.

I’m not sure why he did it. I guess because he could. I wish I could say that I fought back, but I didn’t. I loved him. But that didn’t mean I wanted to sleep with him. I told him no. I know now that should have been enough. But at the time, I guess I thought that what he was doing was okay. I had no idea of what a normal relationship looked like.

He continued with the physical abuse through out our junior year. I lost count that winter of how many times he raped me.

There’s a bit more to the story, but it’s freaking me out a bit too much right now.

The only thing that saved me was that his family moved to California at the end of our junior year. I honestly believe I’d either be dead or still with him today if it weren’t for him moving. And believe me when I say, I there are many days when I wish he had killed me, or I had gone through with my plans on killing myself.

At that point in time I didn’t have email (imagine that…) so his attempts to contact me were via written letter. I answered a few. But eventually they stopped coming. I guess he found another love on the west coast.

More about James

So I’m going to try and finish what I started last night.  Please bare with me if it gets scattered.

I dated James for 3 years.  The  relationship started out ok.  Then the yelling started.  That escalated into the physical violence.

Around the middle our of sophomore year, he wanted me to start sleeping with him.  I was raised Catholic (in a very conservative parish too).  I don’t believe in having a sexual relationship before marriage (which is probably why I’ll never have one, but that’s for another post).  I told him no.  And he was fine with that for a while.

But all his friends wanted to know why we weren’t sleeping together.   In a way it was an insult to him.  He was this big man and I didn’t want to sleep with him.

So the summer between our  sophomore and junior years he raped me for the first time.

It was a hot July day.  He asked again if I would sleep with him (after not asking for a couple months).  I said no.  And he got angry.  He pushed me onto the couch.  And he started to undress me.  I told him not to do that.  I begged him.  I told him I loved him and I wanted to wait.  But he did it anyway.

The only thing I really remember is the pain and me begging him to stop.
When  he finished, I went home and took a shower.  I felt so dirty and disgusting.  And then I sat in my room and thought about killing myself.  I came so close that day.  I had that bottle of pills in my hand.  I took about 4 of them and then I stopped.  I have no idea why.  In all honesty, I wish I had killed myself that day.

And here’s where I have to stop.  I need to get some fresh air and try to compose myself.  I’m shaking and I can barely breathe.