Messages

Thanks for all the replies.

I am still coming to grips with how crazy my entire late teens and early twenties were. I realized pretty quickly that the kidnapping was traumatic, and that the incidents with Sidney and Nancy were traumatic, but what was harder to accept was what the toxicity of my daily life did to me. Being young and trans and traumatized and flailing, and surrounded by others who were in the same boat, was so constantly stressful and terrifying, it's really hard to explain. Between the risks of violence from others and the suicidal urges we all struggled with, it just pretty much constantly felt like we were all gonna die. >.<

Update: a flare-up of my ulcerative colitis "rescued" me from having to go to work. So, sick day. Not fun dealing with my symptoms but it is good to have an excuse to rest.

Hi.

Very bad dream last night. Might be the worst I've had. Certainly the worst since the nightmares I had almost ten years ago right after the kidnapping had just happened.

When I woke up I freaked out on my boyfriend when he tried to hug and comfort me. Couldn't stand him touching me. Crying, hyperventilating,

I feel so lonely. I have a lot of self-destructive cravings right now for my old bad habits. But the worst I am actually going to do today is smoke a cigarette.

I have to go to work today, I have to function and act normal. And it just feels so stupid and incomprehensible right now. It's just like, wheee I'm a kidnapping and rape survivor who just had a gnarly vivid dream about rape and kidnapping, now I get to act normal and be a good customer service person for minimum wage.



Life feels like such a joke sometimes.  It's hard to know why I even bother. But I put a lot of work into being a healthy non-suicidal person who doesn't do drugs anymore, and I know that I usually actually like being alive, so I guess today I'll just grin and bear it.

Hi, lizardguy.

First of all you are definitely in the right place. You belong here.

Regarding bipolar-- therapists who don't know better often mistake PTSD and C-PTSD symptoms for bipolar! I almost got misdiagnosed with bipolar because I had a few hallucinations, but then my therapist found out that PTSD/C-PTSD can actually cause hallucinations by itself. (Even depression alone can have hallucinations as a feature.)

Regarding sleep problems-- that's also a huge part of PTSD/C-PTSD. Feeling keyed up and unable to sleep is very common.

Hi fellow song-writer!

Yes, I find writing and making music to be one of the best ways to process trauma.

Here's another one.

Le Tigre- Tell You Now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikjDgrSj1B0

I'll just tell you now
'cause I don't think you know
The things you tried to kill
I found a way to grow

I'll just tell you now
You may have made your mark
But I'm still here today
Knowing who you are

I'll just tell you now
I'll just tell you now
(Don't want to disappoint you)
You're not the City of God
(Or be one to annoy)
You can't strike me down
(But it won't go away now)
From your mountain top
(And here's the reasons why)
I'll just tell you now
(You took my intuition)
You're not the City of God
(My knowledge of the truth)
You can't shoot me down
(The love I had in this world)
From your mountain top
(I gave it all to you)
I'll just tell you now
I want to tell you now...

I'll just tell you now
'cause I don't think you know
The things you tried to kill
I found a way to grow

I'll just tell you now
(You took my intuition)
You're not the City of God
(My knowledge of the truth)
You can't shoot me down
(The love I had in this world)
From your mountain top
(I gave it all to you)

I want to tell you now...

Say this one packs a fight
Just crazy, out of my mind
Say sorry, yeah it's all right
Just give me back what you took that night
I want to tell you now
I say it full out
I want to get up in your face
And tear your thoughts right out
I want to tell you, tell you now
I'm gunna tell you, tell you how
You didn't change my mind
You didn't do a thing
'Cept made me hate myself
And made me fear everything
You thought I'd run and hide
And keep it all inside
How can you see me
And think it's all right?

I want to tell you now...

I hear you and relate to your post, especially the part about C-PTSD forcing you to experience something for far more time than the experience itself actually took! And body type being a trigger, absolutely.

Remembering the happy memories is also super awful and confusing, and I can relate to it as well. For me, it was something that partially went away with time, as I realized that the awfulness of my exes outweighed our happy times. But I also have allowed myself to look back and smile about some of the funny and happy moments that happened with my abusers. I mean, they weren't openly awful all the time-- that's why we were with them, right?

Finally, I just wanna say that "weird" triggers are actually normal, in my experience. I used to be triggered by tie-dye, because one of my exes had a penchant for it! I've met people who are triggered by overripe bananas, balloons, and all other types of weirdly specific things.

Hi!

Remembering dreams less in adulthood than you did in childhood is actually normal. So, it's not really a problem, unless you are feeling a sense of loss from not remembering your dreams.

But, if you decide you don't like it, and do want to remember, there are a lot of methods you can use.

(The rest of this post is only relevant if you decide you want to remember your dreams.)

So, I actually relate to your post a lot, in that I've had premonition dreams. Not to sound too hippy-dippy new age (I am from California, I can't help it, sorry) but it sounds like you actually have a lot of power in your dreaming that you could tap into, given the premonitions.

When I was a kid I used to be super into dreaming, and used techniques for remembering dreams and also for going lucid.

I am going to talk a little bit about both!

First, to remember dreams, if you decide you want to-- as you are falling asleep, tell yourself, "Tonight, I will remember my dreams." This affirmation may not work on the first night, but if you keep doing it you will most likely get results.

Keep a notebook/smartphone/something you can use to record dreams as soon as you wake up, since memories of dreams normally fade during the day.

Now, here's where it gets really cool.

Lucid dreaming sounds like science fiction, but it has actually been scientifically proven. And, if you master it, you can actually use it to gain control of scary dreams!

I'm going to link to a podcast which has all the information you need to get started with this, and also a personal story. Be warned-- the description of the recurrent nightmare in the podcast is pretty scary and triggering, but when the guy learns to go lucid and literally defeats his own nightmare, it's one of the coolest, most empowering things ever.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/218954-haunted-dreams/

If the podcast is too intense to listen to, I can come back and summarize the useful information without the scary content.

Hope this is helpful!

Thank you so much. Lots of great suggestions to try.

Hi,

I really don't know what to say aside from what it says in the topic. I'm basically lowkey to highkey dissociated all the time. I'm really sick of feeling like I am seeing my life through a fog, watching and listening to myself without feeling a sense of connection to my body, struggling to emotionally connect to loved ones, etc.

Any advice is appreciated.

It was actually a pleasure to read the part of your post where you came up with your own, wonderful solution! Great job.

The ability to have humor about my situation is something that only came after a long time. It helps me a lot, but sometimes people who don't have trauma are a bit freaked out to hear me making jokes and being sarcastic about ridiculously horrible things that happened to me. I guess people expect all trauma survivors to just break down sobbing every time we talk about our trauma, even if we've already cried about more than they will ever know.

Thank you so much.

We have a phrase in AA (sorry I can't help being a 12 stepper)-- "No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others." If I can give even one person some hope and inspiration than it's actually worth it to be to have this experience.

I am going to try to make this as non-triggering as possible, given that I need to describe some really disturbing events.

PREAMBLE: Childhood

I did not develop C-PTSD in childhood but I think a number of things in my childhood set me up to be vulnerable.

Day 1-- I am born a transgender male. The doctor says "it's a girl." Throughout my childhood, I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't feel like a girl. I don't connect to my body. I always feel awkward and strange.

I am bullied at school, but develop a sharp wit with which to defend myself. Still, I have basically no friends until middle school, when I fall in with some other misfits.

My parents are loving and very open-minded and accepted, but quite emotionally immature. Their marriage falls apart when I am 12, but they stay legally married and keep living with each other "for the kids." They both begin dating other people. At this point, my mother essentially became my child, dependent on me for emotional support.

I am sexually harassed in sixth grade by an adult male teacher. I get him fired for it.

In eighth grade I came out as bisexual and started dating a girl. It didn't really help with the bullying, as you might imagine, although nothing too terrible happened.

Around the time I am sixteen, my mother starts having some kind of psychotic break. One evening she threatens to * in front of me, my brother, and my girlfriend.

I drop out of high school in 10th grade and attempt to home school. Bad idea-- my mother never orders me the textbooks I need for my online classes and never sends in my grades. She is still in the depths of mental illness. I get my GED and begin attending community college. I break up with my girlfriend.

At seventeen, I discover a little thing called 'getting really drunk.'

PART ONE: THE KIDNAPPING

On my 18th birthday, I meet a man twice my age at the Burning Man festival. We hook up. I like him, he seems to like me.

We stay in touch. Myspace messages, long emails, super long phone-calls. He becomes the adult male support in my life, in place of my own father.

Eventually he convinces me to come away with him for a long weekend. I kind of know it's a bad idea deep down, but convince myself it will be fine.

So I go with him to a motel in a town far from my home and family. And immediately, he shows his true face.

While I was trapped with him in that motel room, he raped me repeatedly. He tortured me, hurting me deliberately for his own sexual satisfaction. He kept me literally chained to the bed every night. He humiliated me and forced me into every sex act you can imagine and probably some you can't. He drugged me. I don't know what he did then, but I can guess.

Of course I had intended to have sex with him, which is a part of why I was so shocked by him insisting on doing things I hated and didn't consent to. It was like the thrill for him was all in my misery. He couldn't just have consensual sex, it wasn't enough for him.

I was there for four days. At first I tried to resist or find a way to escape, but pretty quickly the only recourse for my mind was to develop Stockholm syndrome. I bonded with him. I felt like I loved him.

Eventually I persuaded him to take me home, saying my parents would be worried, they might call the police, etc. I didn't tell anyone how my weekend with him had gone for a long time, I smiled and acted like everything was fine even as I was repeatedly going to the hospital for a week afterwards, dealing with bleeding, infections, and finally, an STD from what he did to me. When the doctor asked me if the sex was consensual, I said "yes" because saying "no" was too frightening.

Eventually I did admit that I had been raped. I found a rape crisis center and they persuaded me to file a police report, seven months after the fact. Because it had been so long, the police couldn't do much unless they could get a confession out of the perpetrator. They had me call my rapist and kidnapper, while they tapped the phone. I tried to get him to admit to what he had done, but he was also a skilled pathological liar (and probably a sociopath). When the police called him afterwards, he completely charmed them and got them on his side. The detective on my case told me, and I quote, that I was "begging for it."

PART TWO: TRANSITION

I developed the symptoms of normal PTSD quickly. The insomnia, the nightmares, the hyper-vigilance, the despair. I started to drink more heavily and developed other addictions.

(In retrospect I have to admit I already had some symptoms that looked a * of a lot like C-PTSD too, in terms of personality changes, and my faith in the world being totally destroyed. But my captivity didn't qualify as "long term" so I dunno what's up with that. Maybe my childhood affected me more than I know? idek)

Around this time I decided I was going to transition to male. I had wanted to for awhile, but I had been convinced that if I came out as transgender, nobody would ever love me. At that point in my depression and PTSD, I literally did not care if nobody ever loved me or if I never had sex again. It's said that I believed those things about being transgender, and that I had to get to such a place of despair in order to live as myself.

I came out to my family, started dressing as male, and eventually started hormones. My mother and younger brother were accepting. My father took longer to come around. My older half-brother was the worst. One night, in a drunken rage, he confronted me, essentially mocked me for getting raped and for being trans, and then aggressively flashed me/exposed himself to me. He'd been behaving in a covertly incestuous way towards me for awhile, essentially doing what I would have called "flirting" if he hadn't been my brother. That was the night I realized he really did have some inappropriate feelings for me. I don't talk to my half brother anymore.

The way everyone was coping with my trauma and transition was not great. One day, I confessed to my mother that I had been feeling suicidal, and she literally followed me from room to room in the house screaming at me until I collapsed in a fetal position on the floor, sobbing and hyperventilating. My dad intervened, and I escaped to my ex-girlfriend's house for the weekend.

Around this time, when giving me a ride home, a family friend of my ex-girlfriend groped my thigh. It was really unsettling and weird.

The new pressures of being trans in a world that doesn't like trans people all that much were getting to me. I didn't fully "pass" as male yet, and every time someone referred to me as "she" or "ma'am," it hurt. It hurt even when they meant no harm and just didn't know any better.

Eventually I started to make other trans friends. That helped, but it also exposed me to all of their pains and traumas, which were, in many cases, worse than mine. Many of my new trans women friends experienced much more aggressive transphobia in their daily lives, too.

Sometimes in public I was mistaken for a trans woman, and experienced the "fun" things that come with that. Men have tried to hit on me, and then become violent and scary when realizing I am a guy. One man forcibly kissed me with tongue after threatening to kill me. These things still happen to me now and then, unfortunately. Most recent incident of this type was about a month ago.

I started dating a transfeminine person, and became engaged to them. (They used, and still use, the neutral pronoun "they.") They were wonderful, but the way people treated me, combined with the way people treated them, contributed steadily to ongoing trauma. My partner regularly received death threats on the internet, and was constantly mocked, groped, and even punched when going to work on the bus. People assumed they were a hooker, and became violent when they refused offers of money or drugs in return for sex.

Our circle of trans friends was as supportive as a group of hurting, suicidal young people can be, but it seemed like every week someone posted a suicide note on facebook and then someone had to rush out to save them. Completed suicides, as well as attempts, were common. Nobody I knew well completed suicide, though.

I was also getting involved in activism, mostly through online writing. I got mildly internet famous for that, which contributes to a later part of my story. Some of my friends were involved in more physical activism, though, i.e. protesting on the street. Some of my trans friends got arrested while doing that, and were subjected to horrible, bigoted treatment while in jail.

Meanwhile, my PTSD was getting worse and worse, my addictions were spiraling. It felt like both I and everyone I cared about were slowly dying.

PART THREE: SIDNEY AND NANCY

Enter the pair I like to call Sidney and Nancy, after Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. Those aren't their real names.

My partner and I had a polyamorous relationship. We meet a couple of young, punk trans women, and decided to date them as a couple.

Horrible idea, especially since Sidney and Nancy both turned out to be full-blown sociopaths. They were actually proud of that and openly referred to themselves as such.

Sidney and Nancy both had hard-luck stories. They were homeless, they worked as hookers to survive. It was easy to feel sorry for them and to be drawn into their dark world.

It's impossible to list all the things that happened in the six months or so that the four of us all dated each other at the same time. I think I have actually blacked a bunch of it out. I was essentially gang-raped by Sidney and Nancy once. Another time, Nancy raped me by herself. Still another time, Sidney made me perform a sex act with her in a public park.

Sidney liked to make jokes about killing my cat. Nancy liked to make jokes about killing me. They both constantly groped me, grabbed me, pushed me around, pulled my hair, and verbally put me down. They also abused each other even more severely. One time, Sidney stabbed Nancy in the arm. My partner had to take Nancy to the hospital to get stitches. That was enabling, of course.

They abused my partner, too. One time, Nancy even left scars on them with her abuse. They also abused our friends and family and pushed us away from all outside support. They became our world.

On top of it all, they were constantly spiraling from one crisis to another. Sidney did stupid and disgusting things like trolling the family of a dead cop by making a facebook page in which she had put a zombie filter on a photo of him. That little stunt got her house watched by the FBI for a bit! I wish I was kidding about any of that. Nancy was constantly having panic attacks and needing to be taken care of. No matter how many mental health issues I and my partner had, it was always "drop everything and help Nancy."

One night, during her work as a hooker, Nancy was raped by a client. We had to come pick her up. She lay on our living room floor for hours, not speaking. As terrible as Nancy was to me, and as much as I know she is an awful person, she didn't deserve that. No one deserves that. It was terrible to see. She was also the person I knew who got abused the worst when she was arrested at a protest. The cops put her in a solitary cell and invited the other cops to come and stare at the "tranny."

It was a giant mess. Things escalated more and more. But I was afraid to break up with them because I thought my partner wanted to keep dating them, and didn't want to break up with them too. Also, I did care about Sidney and Nancy, and feel bad for everything they went through.

Eventually, though, we did the right thing and broke up with them.

For a week after the break up, Sidney constantly told me she wanted to kill herself because I dumped her. Bizarrely, she tried to convince me to "beat her up." I told her I had no interest in that, and she said she deserved it. Immediately after that text I received a curt message from Nancy saying "Stop texting Sidney, you're making her suicidal." I never heard directly from them again. Eventually I wised up and blocked their numbers, and blocked them on all social media.

It wasn't over, though. About a year later, Nancy went on the internet and accused ME of being the abusive one. As I mentioned, I was mildly internet-famous at that point, so it created a huge stir. I got lovely messages from strangers telling me to kill myself. I was forced to go public with my story. Some people believed me, some didn't. To this day I still can't use my old pen name because of what happened. It basically destroyed my budding career as a writer.

PART FOUR: THE GUN

Not long after breaking up with Sidney and Nancy, my partner was walking down the street in a rough part of town. They encountered a group of men. One of them pulled out a gun, pointed it at my partner's head, and said, "Let's kill this tranny."

My partner ran. No shots were fired. They survived.

I cannot tell you how much that experience shook me up.

Around this time, I became engaged to my partner. Some transphobes on the internet found our engagement pictures and posted them on a blog, mocking them, mocking our love. More downsides to being internet-famous trans people.

It felt like the only good thing in my life was the least safe of all.

PART FIVE: CRAZY ROOMMATE

We needed new roommates, so we let another queer trans couple move in. At first it seemed OK, but eventually one of them had a psychotic break. They became manic and stayed up for four days without sleep. Then they became angry and started abusing their partner.

One night, they locked their partner out of their shared bedroom, without access to shoes, wallet, phone, or another else that would let them escape the house.

That was the night we decided we had to call the cops. A couple more friends came over, we discussed our options, and agreed that the psychotic roommate absolutely had to be taken to the psych ward for their safety and the safety of others.

The whole time, the psychotic roommate's partner was huddled up on the floor of my room, shaking and mumbling, "Am I the abusive one? Am I the abusive one?" I have rarely seen anyone look so broken.

So it was decided. Five queer anarchists called the police on another queer anarchist, and they took our roommate to the hospital. It was not a decision made lightly, and went against all of our moral codes, but there was nothing else we could do.

It turned out the psychosis had been caused by a life-threatening drug withdrawal syndrome, that the roommate probably would have died without medical attention, but they still didn't forgive us. They started trying to force us to move out of our apartment and leave it to them, and threatened us with lawyers for "lying to the police" (which we didn't). The abused partner of the psychotic roommate turned on us unexpectedly, too, after all we had done to shelter them from the abuse.

Eventually they finally moved out. It was an unexpected peaceful resolution to a month of being threatened with litigation and losing our home.

PART SIX: ROCK BOTTOM

I was on the verge of a breakdown myself. I was erratic, dissociated, sleep-deprived, and did strange things like running out of the house suddenly, with the intent of going downtown and finding hard drugs, forcing my partner to chase me down the street. I didn't realize it, but I had begun to be emotionally abusive to my partner as well, through my self-destructive behaviors and constant need for attention and care.

My addiction and suicidal behavior accelerated to the point where I, myself, ended up in a psych ward. It was the best thing that could have happened to me. Somehow being locked up in that awful place made me realize I had to start trying to turn my life around.

I got into recovery.

Unfortunately, it was not enough to fix all of my bad behaviors. My partner and I, through our shared trauma, had essentially turned into our own version of Sidney and Nancy. They did some abusive things to me, but I was far worse. My abuse of them wasn't physical, but emotional and psychological, and mostly it was unconscious. I was just desperately flailing, trying to keep them close to me, and all the while pushing them away.

One night, they broke up with me and asked me to move out.

Around this time, I had another friend who had become sick of my * tell me to just go ahead and kill myself "already." Needless to say, that wasn't a pleasant conversation.

I had failed everyone. I had become the abuser that Nancy had lied and said I was. I had lost my fiancee and my home.

Strangely, the realization that I had become the abusive thing I hated, motivated me to finally turn my life around. I finally saw that I wasn't a helpless victim-- that if I had the power to harm others then I must actually have the power to do good as well. I enrolled in a non-violence program for abusive men, and what they taught me helped me check and unlearn my toxic behaviors. I continued in my addiction recovery. I FINALLY got medicated for my PTSD. My therapist finally said he saw a positive change in me, after watching me flail and spiral for years. The only thing that mattered to me was to not be a bad person any more.

PART SEVEN: NOW

I am still not fully healed. I am still not perfect. But I am better than I ever expected I could be and have repaired more of my past than I had ever dreamed.

I was able to make full amends to my ex-fiancee in demonstrating that I had become a stable, trustworthy, kind and considerate person. We are really good friends now. We consider ourselves a "restorative justice success story." My ex-fiancee is now married to another one of my best friends, who also happens to be my boss at work. Sometimes, as often as possible really, my current boyfriend and I go hang out with the two of them to binge-watch Orphan Black.

When I got three years sober, my ex-fiancee gave me their three-year AA chip from when they had three years. It is the most precious thing I have ever received, symbolizing so much forgiveness, grace and healing that I can barely comprehend it.

I can sleep at night. I no longer use substances or other means to hurt myself. I have been clean from everything for more than four and a half years, and I sponsor others in recovery. I am no longer suicidal, and the people who know me no longer have to walk on eggshells to avoid triggering me. I have a job, a home, and a loving, non-violent relationship. People turn to ME for support now, rather than being taken emotionally hostage by my issues. Sex is fun now, rather than scary and triggering. It's everything I ever wanted, and more than I ever dreamed of having.

I probably haven't explained my experiences very well, and I have probably left some important things out. My lifestyle, my gender identity, and my politics might be hard for some of you to relate to, and I understand.

What is important to me today is to be a kind, stable, brave, trustworthy and supportive person. I do not wish to harm others. I do not seek out destructive people who will harm me, in order to endlessly relive my past traumas. I value integrity, honesty, empathy, forgiveness, and faith (although my faith might be different than yours).

I know that the only way I can live up to those values is through extensive self-care. In my case, the phrase "hurt people hurt people" was extremely true, and I was hurting so badly. I work my 12 steps diligently, I go to therapy, I make time for my art and music and writing, I spend time with the ones I love.

My relationship to my parents is much improved as well. While I still think of them as a bit immature, I am better able to have boundaries around parenting my mother, who is also much less erratic than she used to be. I am pretty sure my mother has untreated C-PTSD herself, her life story is full of trauma and loss. I approach her from a place of empathy. My dad now fully accepts me as his son, which is great but a bit awkward now that I find myself identifying more and more as androgynous rather than male or female.

Unfortunately, some things will never change. I am still trans, although it's frankly much safer to be trans now than when I came out almost ten years ago. I hope that trend continues. Most of my friends are still also trans, and still experience transphobic violence. But now that we are all in our late twenties and early thirties, and have done a lot more healing work on ourselves, we are far more resilient and less volatile than we used to be. We are much better prepared to protect and support each other.

I've written a novel already, so I'll leave it at that. Thank you anyone who read this entire thing.

Well, mine is from the book House of Leaves. I'm obsessed with that book and also with the companion album, Haunted. Both are really intense, cathartic, beautiful works of art that dig really deep into trauma.

The phrase "abcdefghijohnnyz" comes from a letter from the main character's mother. Something about it just seems to express this intense, desperate, overwhelming love. Like, replacing most of the letters of the alphabet with your child's name, as if it is just everything to you.