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Thank Goodness we’re back.

I’m extremely upset right now, strongly triggered because My Person is looking through his mother’s old papers, and came across notes from when she stayed with us for 17 days in the spring of 1996.  This is upsetting to me because I don’t remember it at all.  I have literally no memories that this ever happened.  I assume this is because spring of 1996 was early on in my adventures with psychopharmacology, five years of trying different meds and having each one make me sicker in some weird nasty way, until I finally called it quits for good after a med drove me closer to attempting suicide than I ever got without medication.  I don’t remember the sequence of horror very well but I do remember being at work having diarrhoea from lithium around the end of February, then having to quit what was to be my last ever steady job not long thereafter.  I don’t remember how long I was on lithium.  It wasn’t very long.  I don’t remember what came after lithium.  I remember the flat where we lived in 1996.  We lived there for a year and a half, the last place we lived before we bought the house that we are now in the process of leaving.  I remember time I spent in that flat by myself, lots and lots of time.  I remember what I did with most of that time.  I remember people I talked to, places I went, television shows I watched.  I remember other people who visited and stayed with us there.  I remember a lot of good things from there, and I remember a lot of lying around feeling zonked and crappy.  I mean, specific memories of that, like how there was a cable station that replayed L.A. Law in the afternoons, and I watched it because I used to love that show when I lived in LA and worked at a law firm.  I remember how that station also replayed The Golden Girls and The Commish, and how I loved The Golder Girls and never watched The Commish, but often would have that station on very softly in the background because if I had it on softly enough that I couldn’t quite hear it I could lie on the couch and close my eyes and sort of try to hear it, and trying to hear it would enable me to relax my mind enough to doze.  I remember the eventually deeply painful email-based love affair I had that summer, and I remember the beginnings of my relationship with Other.  But I have absolutely no memory of Mom staying with us there, and that is really bugging me.  17 days!  I REMEMBER stuff like that!  I remember her staying with us after we bought the house.  I remember those trips back to the Midwest to stay with her for varying lengths of time, first for visits and holidays, later to take care of her when she was sick.

My Person says I was probably still working during that time.  Maybe he’s right.  If I wasn’t there during the days, that might help explain why I can’t remember spending 17 freaking days closely sharing a not-very-big flat with a woman who was no small presence.  But I’m still totally freaked out.  It’s way past my bedtime.  I can’t imagine going to lie in bed now, blind behind my sleep mask, ignoring the distressed feelings, hoping for sleep to come.  I don’t know what to do.  I suppose I should take something to make me sleep.  But I don’t want to.  I want to cry.  I want to cry out my moving stress, my house-selling stress, my grief for the holes in my brain.  I read that stupid article somewhere a few months ago about how tears release stress hormones and ever since then I can’t get it out of my head that what I need is to shed tears, real liquid hot tears to wash out all the bad chemicals.  But those tears, as ever, elude me.  I’m sort of angry at every therapy and self-help thing I have access to, just because none of them seem to be able to help me figure out how to release my tears.

Not Alone, dear, it's good to see you. I'm sorry things are hard.  Remember you have people here who care and understand and don't judge, and write whatever is helpful for you

Armee, san and rainy, thank you so much for your replies, for your understanding and support regarding all these difficult things I’m dealing with right now.  I’ve had the results from the stress test, and they said that it was fine and nothing unexpected was found.  I won’t get the results from the ultrasound until next week, but I guess I’m not really that worried.  The uncomfortable feelings in my chest have been joined in the last few days by a variety of other unpleasant physical symptoms that are so weird and random that I’m now feeling relatively emotionally comfortable assuming that this is all stress and that eventually it will pass if I can just continue to maintain some emotional equilibrium.

Once again, yesterday Other was supposed to be in town, and once again, the weather prevented it.  This time there was no scary story to go with it, thankfully, but I need his touch and it’s so painful and frustrating to expect it and then be denied.  It feels like being in distress as a child and having no one to turn to to seek comfort.  I want to cry but I can’t do it, which is also incredibly painful and frustrating.  I keep sort of almost crying, and the almost crying is almost comforting, but then totally not when I can’t actually do it.  I can whimper and blub, but that just makes me feel ugly and small and unwanted.  I need to cry real tears.  I read something somewhere a while back about how tear flow releases stress hormones.  Why can’t I just do it?

Last night I was texting with my mother, and got an example if I needed it of how she hurts me without even knowing she’s doing it.  We were talking about what we each believe or don’t believe regarding what happens after death, and in remarking that she wished she had a firm belief in an afterlife so she could see her husband again, she said “I think back on my life as interesting and happy, and if I had a chance to do my life over I would do it the same way.”  That’s really hard for me to hear, because in other conversations, she has talked about feeling that her attempts to please her husband and get her husband’s sons to like her often came at the expense myself and my brother.  When she said that, I didn’t take it particularly seriously, because my stepbrothers only spent a month every summer with us and any neglect that my brother and I suffered when they were around was pretty small potatoes compared to the execrable parenting we got from her the other eleven months of the year, but…She’d do it all over the same way?  What the everlovin’ blank blank blank?  I keep wanting to say “Oh, you’d do it all the same way again, would you?”  But that would be stupid and pointless.  She would backpedal and make excuses and say things that would just hurt and upset me even more.  I keep checking myself and reaffirming that I’m still less uncomfortable communicating with her than I am not communicating with her, but again I run up against the aggravating fact that there’s just no way to make her not a problem to me. 

This move is killing me. But major points to My Person, who is being wonderfully patient and cooperative with me as we both deal with the frustration of my current major physical limitations and he carries the whole operation on his strong and compassionately willing shoulders.

Trigger warning: Medical testing experience














I had some cardiac tests this morning following on from my exam and wearing a monitor for the past week. Horrifically unpleasant in a variety of petty ways that really added up. The usual troubles getting the IV in. A camera rig that restricted my breathing (especially distressing considering that recently breathing techniques have become the main way I self-soothe). An ultrasound that involved being gooped up and having to lie in awkward positions and hold and release my breaths as instructed by the tech while the weird spooky squelching sounds of my heartbeat rang out from a monitor near my head that I could sort of see. And lots of waiting around in a fairly crowded waiting room in between these things trying not to be paranoid about sitting too close to people. It really sucked, and wiped me right out. I kept thinking that surely it seemed worse than it really was but writing it out here makes me understand that it really was legitimately difficult and that's not just me being a whiner.

I've been texting with my mother probably too much lately. I've been feeling a little too safe with her, and I have to watch that. I have to remember that no matter how well we seem to be getting along or how genuinely objectively compassionate I feel towards her at times, she is fundamentally dangerous to me by her very nature whether she means to be or not. It's hard though because at the end of the day she IS my mother, and it's very difficult for me to stop myself from craving her attention like a sweet, sweet poison. That bloody woman. It's good that I'm calling myself out for this here, because these are facts of my existence of which I can't afford to lose sight.

Welcome to the forum, Sadboy  This is a good place, with people who understand and believe and care. I hope you find helpful things here.

Bella, you don't have to love them now, or ever love them if it doesn't happen that way, but you do have to learn to accept them and understand why they are there.  You might find some love for them in time.  I have parts that I still have no love for but accepting and understanding them helps me live with them, and helps me cope with them when I/they are hurting the way you describe so that it at least hurts less. 

Wishing you and your parts all the best.

I don't feel like I've come to terms with the beliefs and feelings I was gifted from N abuse.  It rises up and makes me feel unsafe in the world and with people.  I want to feel safe, but I don't. I want to feel I have power in the world but I don't.  I want to feel like I can recover from CPTSD but I'm not certain any more.

I heavily relate to this, Kizzie.  I feel this way a lot.  It's particularly hard when there are things that are external to use and completely beyond our power to do anything about except struggle to manage our reactions to.  Wishing you strength and fortitude for that struggle, and the hope that your helpless feeling eases soon. 

I was supposed to be with Other today but his flight last night was diverted because of the crazy weather in the Midwest and he couldn't make it here.  I was waiting and waiting and waiting to hear from him, and then just about the time that I realised that either he wasn't coming or he'd be arriving too late for me to go out, he called and told me in detail a harrowing tale of being unable to land the plane and starting to run out of fuel.  I know that telling me about it when stuff like that happens helps him calm down and shake it off, and usually the stories aren't as terrifying as that one, but I swear, that kind of story that makes me want to never get on a plane again, and makes me wish that my beloved wasn't an airline pilot.  I had trouble calming down to go to sleep and today all I want to do is cry because I so desperately need but can't have the comfort of being close to him.  I'm a mess right now, and I'm not allowed to be a mess, there's too much to do.  I'm sure I'm going to love the new house, but only if the move doesn't kill me    And God, I am so weak.  I wish I would stop WHINING.

 

Thinking of you, rainy 

alliematt, I just want to say that I hear you and I understand.  I have often experienced that too.  Even when you know that you won't do it and that you will somehow cope and keep going, the thoughts are still there and can feel like a tremendous burden.  I'm thinking of you and I hope you have some relief soon.

Sending you all the love and good thoughts, san 

What I do think is the case, is that I am better able to think back to past things that happened in my life, and that I realise that I was acting sometimes (actually many times) in a dissociated state of mind.  I am 'aware' of it, and now in my day to day life, I can even feel when different parts of me are driving my bus.  I am far less afraid of those parts, as I feel like I've been getting to know them, and trying to interact with them.

But I don't have interactive conversations yet.  I still fear doing that.  I just listen to them, and I reply to them, and try to reassure them, and sympathise with their feelings and thoughts.    I feel like they are beginning to trust me, and know that I'm looking out for them, and that I'm grateful to them for how they tried to protect me over the course of my life.

Hi, Hope.  I just wanted to tell you that it's good to read about your progress with your parts.  I've also spent much of my life in a dissociated or semi-dissociated state and I've been trying to get to know my parts as you describe here.  Interactions are limited because most of the time my parts really still don't seem to want to deal with me.  Earlier today I got a feeling of a happy little girl in me.  I tried to engage her but she ran and hid.  Still though, it's good to know that she's in there.  I've been trying to find her for years. 

Thank you as always for sharing your journey