InQuietHeart's Journal of Progress - 1st entry - From the bottom up

[InQuietHeart]

I finally hit bottom and was ready to reach for intelligent help when I ended up in jail. I had glommed on to a(nother) completely inappropriate relationship, wormed my way into moving in with him, and then acted shocked when he constantly tried to push me away. On the particular night in question, he was getting ready to go to on a date, and I was wild with abandonment fears. I was trying to reason with him, but he kept running around the living room with his hands over his ears. At last, to prevent him from leaving, I blocked the door. I had no idea that was illegal, or something I could be charged for. The only thing that kept the police from charging me with"kidnapping" was that there was a back door to the apartment, and he had the keys in his hand the whole time. The neighbor heard his cries for help (really?) and called the police. When the police arrived, they separated us and asked us what happened. He played the victim, I was straight up with my role in the drama. In the state of Arizona, if the police are called in to a domestic situation, at least one of the parties is going to jail. Since I was the one who had broken the law (huh, who knew?) I was elected. It was the only time I have ever been in trouble with the law in my life. I was 55 years old.

Fast forward 4 years. I am now in a safe place emotionally, with a good, supportive partner. I have begun to recover, using herbal supplements for adrenal exhaustion. The nightmares have stopped. I'm not nearly as combative. But I'm scared. I have the first new job that I've had in 3 years. It was a good one that I could hopefully keep for the next 4 years until I can begin drawing Social Security.

Throughout my life, after I divorced the perpetrator of 10 years of emtional and sexual abuse, gaslighting, and other wonderful things, I found I could only work for a year before becoming restless and moving on.  I never realized until I typed these words that it was largely due to feeling trapped in most any situation, just as I had felt in my marriage. "Common sense" would dictate that the farther I distanced myself from the perpetrator and had more positive experiences that the C-PTSD (as yet undiagnosed) would mitigate, but not so. As I aged, things seemed to get worse, my relationships with everyone, my abillity to hold a job. First it was a year, then 9 months, then 6 months. By the time I've taken this new job, I've been working there for about six weeks. I recognized immediately when I began the job that I had to get real help. I was tired of living in poverty, barely able to keep a roof over my head or food on the table.

My first doctor's appointment, the good and the bad.
1st bad: While I'm in the waiting room, I get a call from my employer insisting that I leave whatever I am doing and return to the office immediately because they have a "computer problem." Shocked, I reminded them that I had waited 6 weeks to get this appointment, and I wasn't leaving before it was accomplished. Right or wrong on my part? I don't know, but it certainly had a role in the eventual outcome of this employment.

2nd bad: While I was waiting for the doctor, I was given a psychological self-assessment form to fill out. I had finally realized via research that I was experiencing PTSD of some sort; I just wanted to get help with it. When the doctor came in, he grabbed the form out of my hand, glanced at it and said, "I can tell in 3 seconds that you don't have PTSD." Deflation, disappointment. not being believed. Again. Later I was able to understand where he was coming from. I was being seen at the VA Health Care Center. The doctors were dealing with vets with wartime PTSD. It has taken me a long time to realize, and I hope that doctor does, too, now, that simply because one's trauma is different or perhaps "less" than another's, the results are sometimes no less severe.

The good: The doctor did recognize that I was clinically/chronically depressed as well as having ADHD. (More on the ADHD aspects some other time). So he prescribed Wellbutrin for both, which seemed to be somewhat effective, although it didn't really kick in soon enough to save my job. My bosses took to goading me; it was a very dysfunctional organization for which I worked, and after a couple of other "incidents," we were fired (now I was not only responsible for ruining things for myself but for my partner as well). The demise of many of my employment situations stemmed from not being able to back down when I felt "wronged." This was one of those situations. Especially if those "wrongs" involved lies. My first husband had been a pathological liar who used that as part of his gaslighting technique, so whenever I was lied to by anyone, it would result in instant conflagration. I was also told by several people that I was a "control freak," so if things didn't go my way, or I wasn't allowed to do things in my own way, it was ever a point of contention and confrontation. I never learned how to do what I called "play the game" in an employment situation.

So when we found ourselves without employment, we retreated from Oregon (we had travelled 1200 miles to take the job) to a little hamlet in Northern California where we spent several months centering, gaining peace for ourselves, and figuring out the next move before returning to Arizona.