Meursault's Journal

[Fen Starshimmer]

Just found your journal Meursault and been reading through your posts - carefully to avoid getting triggered. I'm having a good day, so took a chance. Want to say you are normal and not "screwed up". The things that have happened to you are not normal; all those people who hurt you, threatened violence and death (OMG  ), have serious psychological issues or disorders.

I also believe many therapists and doctors in the psychiatry profession are not empathic, and are in it for the power kicks, having control over another. They're not really suited to the job when it comes to CPTSD. I'm so sorry you have experienced invalidation from hospital professionals. It's too common I'm afraid. I sincerely believe there is widespread ignorance about trauma. It's absurd how clueless they are, when there is so much info available! It's seems to be across the pond as well as in the UK. There's a great focus on drugging and suppressing emotions, which as you rightly say are there to be processed and released. We are not born with CPTSD-wired brains and bodies. I could get political about the issue, but I don't think this is the right place.

Anyway, just want you to know that you aren't alone 

I'll check in again soon to see how things are going.  Please keep in touch. (Legal stuff is always stressful, you will get through it).

[meursault]

Thanks for posting and saying that.

I'm just mentally thrashing around now, and I don't think it'll likely get better until after this legal stuff is over.  I'm sorry for all the emotional dumping I'm doing right now....

I am feelng really terrible, and like the whole world thinks I'm just some broken monster who should be killed.  Kinda the legal system is now doing what my Mom always said i deserved.  I think I'm in a constant emotional flashback state with the re-creation of that.

I've been having a hard time with feeling like I'm just dismissed as a pathology.  That never really bugged me before since I think the medical model of mental illness is way off base, but that last "email" therapist sent me (as she has to by law) a list of other therapists she thinks would be good.  She sent this list of these really industrial-strength forensic pathology clinical psychologists.  It was almost like a final baseball bat shot to the knees...

My good therapist has been good helping me see that email-therapist is very inexperienced.  I actually had invoice #19....  She had really good instincts generally I think, but I don't think she had ever been around c-PTSD...

So, I had called a mobile crisis service on the weekend, and they were all reasonable and reassuring until I gave them my name and the woman told me she was pulling up my file.  As soon as she did, she told me they were too busy and someone would call me in the morning.  I told good therapist that today.  I've often worried there's been a diagnosis along the way of BPD.  Good therapist can't diagnose, but she tells me she thinks that doesn't fit and I just have a lot of trauma and attachment damage.  Old therapist (who used to be a cop) said he's seen almost five thousand clients over the years and he says it doesn't fit.  Last two times I was in psych ward, I asked, and was told by psychiatrists that I didn't, but who knows.  From that call this weekend, good therapist told me today that she has suspected someone has diagnosed me with it, and that REALLY made her think it.  No private therapists I've seen think it fits, apparently I present differently.  And I've never been diagnosed it when in psych ward, so I don't know.

Feeling like getting answers, I called mental health centre that has my records and asked how I get them.  It was all good until I gave my name, and then they started stonewalling.  They weren't sure, the person I should talk to wasn't available etc.  I ended up going down there and a receptionist was very helpful and helped me fill out the record request and had it in their system before anyone was the wiser.  I hadn't even left the building and I was called by a senior staff.  I turned around and came back and she talked with me, letting me know that it takes a long time and not many people do this.  Ultimately, she told me it would likely be thirty days and I left.  I got my records from years ago once and it was a bit of an eye opener.  Lots of factual information that was rewritten *not quite right* so it changed the whole meaning etc  Things like when I said I was depressed for four years before being on anti-depressants for last two years, it would be written as "hasn't been on anti-depressants for two years"  stuff like that.

I hope I get this sooner.

Anyhow, feeling pretty hopeless and unlovable and alone.  I was a wreck at therapists today, and didn't find it very calming or soothing.  She was supportive as always, but I was kind of mad about everything today.  How I've spent all these years waiting, all these years with those extra restrictions, trapped in basically house arrest every night because that girl got mad at me and had the tactical police unit come looking for guns at my place.  Just how EASILY she has been able to control my life EVERY DAY for years just by making a phone call.  How ANYONE for ANY REASON can completely ruin and turn my life upside down at ANY TIME, and since I have a legal charge over my head, I am utterly powerless.  I told her today that it's like my awareness is a playing card snapping away in a bicycle spoke.  I think that's a very accurate description.

I spend every night just sitting at home, frozen and trapped, feeling like the whole world has decied I'm a monster who shouldn't be allowed to have any life, and especially be able to go out and meet women and maybe find love or connection or intimacy or affection.  It's just hour after hour every night for years, and I'm not even convicted of anything.  I'm not even a human any more.

And my lawyer concedes that my constitutional rights have been violated in several ways with all this.  He says that it "sort of" matters, but that sort of thing can be conceded by the judge, but still he can decide to ignore it.  It's like for me, and only for me, constitutional rights are suspended, they are simply suggestions.  I've read about all sorts of murderers, rapists, child molesters etc getting their stuff thrown out, but not me, yet my waiting has been SO MUCH longer.  I look at that Brock Turner guy.  He has received an order of magnitude less punishment convicted of that than I have for simply having three beers in my apartment when the tactical unit came.  And it's just years and years and years.

My heart has been pounding so hard and loudly for the last two days I can't sleep.  It's pounding so hard my cell phone went walking off my chest last night.  Having some chest pains, and I'm kinda hoping it all just ends.  It's pounding so hard I have my TV cranked to hear it over the pounding in my ears.  This can't be healthy!

Sorry for all the complaining.  I hope if I make it through these next couple of weeks my brain stops being a cat thrashing around in the bathtub! 

I'm doing poorly, but I'm also feeling strong for still weathering this.  Maybe something I say or do might help someone else through their bad patches too.  Cheers, everyone.

Meursault

[sanmagic7]

keep at it, meursault.  can't write much, but want you to know i think of you even when i don't have the energy to write.  one foot in front of the other.  and, yeah, you are strong and determined to have gotten through all this so far.  soon, dear meursault, soon.

[meursault]

In a move of self-preservation, I went to this drop-in counselling place today.  It's supposed to be a one time kind of thing, but the woman told me to come back on Monday as well, and gave me the information for accessing a closed acupuncture program they have.

I saw an instructor and a student.  The student was stunningly good looking.  She was pretty uncomfortable and nervous at first, but by the end, it was clear she liked talking to me, and was pretty open and spontaneous and wasn't disgusted or nauseated by my presence.  My first impulse was that I was making her skin crawl, but I think she was just a nervous student.  That was really what made me feel better about it, that a woman I thought attractive found me equally human to her.  She actually said a bunch of really positive things about me.  Both she and the instructor found me and my situation very interesting.  I was in for about an hour and a half.  They both told me that they don't think there is anything wrong with me that makes me unlovable.  I kind of believe them that they think that, but I don't understand it.  The instructor kind of delved about how I managed to form such a close bond with my therapist, and I kept talking about what SHE did, how SHE was, and she had to keep re-iterating that she wanted to know what *I* did to create that bond.  I'm still a bit confused about that, but what it came down to, was that I decided to try to trust her, and then I spent months slowly revealing myself in tiny bits, evaluating how she responded, until I had found that closeness.  I consciously and actively CHOSE to trust her.  I went in every week thinking "get closer to her or it will disappear".  My brain feels very muddled about this.  These words just seem empty and meaningless, but true too.

I didn't talk about my Mom at all, that was a bit too personal, but I was talking about how terrified of women I usually am and  trapped by these legal conditions and hence so lonely for connection, and the student pointed out how open and conversant I was with them.  I said that it would be different in the real world, I found her quite attractive, and that if I met her elsewhere I would be terrified of her, super awkward, and my mind would be completely empty of any ability to talk.  Neither of them found that unacceptable or terrible for me to say.

I don't understand what people see, but I've been told many times talking to people the last few years that they think I'm a really kind person, very intelligent, and that I don't deserve what the legal system is doing to me.  I kind of wish I could see what I look like, because it seems like such a weird thing that people keep pointing that out.

On the whole what I benefited most from was that there was an attractive woman who was comfortable around me, and actually found things about me likeable.  This sense of just being some hideous subhuman thing, cut off from humanity is terrible.  And I didn't get that sense from her.  I don't think I will manage to cope at all with jail or house arrest on that point alone if it comes to it.

I hope the positive sense I got from that lasts at least a day, before all the stress of this stuff I'm dealing with breaks me down again.

I think that's one thing I've been learning from the last year or so.  What helps me heal is in talking with people.  I have to open up and "show them" me, and be aware if I am feeling acceptance, being liked to some degree, and cared for.  And rightly or wrongly, I find women more trustable, despite my history.  It's not even rational, emotionally I m more ME.  And even more, women of roughly my age, which avoids a lot of the power dynamics and sense of authority of older therapists which makes me resistant.  That means that I likely do best with therapists I find either at least somewhat attractive, and/or would actually want to know personally.

And I only get actual lasting value if I have that last bit of emotional openness that I "relax my heart" sort of thing.  I think I'd be getting so much value from the work I do therapeutically this last year and a half if I didn't have this threat constantly over me all day every day, and had a future that wasn't just caged in some way.  I think what I've done with my therapist this last year would have put me in a place in my healing that I'm not likely to actually be at for another ten or fifteen years if I get any jail time or house arrest at all.  There will be so many years recovering from that first...  And then what?  I'm sixty, and just trying to find some love and meaning in a healthy way for the first time in my life.

Meursault

[Fen Starshimmer]

Mersault, Dropping by to see how it's going. I can tell by your writing that you are a sensitive and intelligent person, and don't let anyone make you believe otherwise.
I wish I could sweep away all those trapped feelings with a magic wand. I've had some experience with that. My T has been re-programming my sub-conscious so that I now feel comfortable in my little flat. I've stopped going to places that trigger fight or flight reactions. CPTSD means we've got to be really gentle with ourselves, get down those stress hormones. Please be gentle yourself Mersault, as best you can.

Here thinking of you.

Hugs 

[meursault]

A weird time to do it, but I went on a date last night.  I messaged this woman who's a friend of a friend on FB who said "I'm bored and want to meet new people"  so I messaged her and we've been texting back and forth for a few days.  We went for coffee yesterday and hit it off really well.  I think we were both pretty nervous.  We went for a walk after and I was trying to work up the courage to hold her hand but didn't.  I was really hoping for a hug and a kiss too, but that didn't happen.  Just the hug.  I wasn't pressuring her at all for anything.  She has already asked me for lunch again and floated the idea of going to her company xmas as her date. 

After I saw her off on the bus, five minutes later she texted me saying "Thank you for restoring my faith in mankind".  I'm not sure what I did, but that felt pretty good.

I think I needed this pretty badly.  I've just been feeling so hopeless and worthless and unlovable and disgusting.  I feel like I'm a human being, and I'm feeling like I'm now coping a bit better for my trial.  But I'm still feeling like I'm almost exploding with terror and panic over it...

Anyhow, I just wanted to do a bit of an update.

Meursault

[Three Roses]

 

[Fen Starshimmer]

Fantastic news Mersault!    You deserve it.

After I saw her off on the bus, five minutes later she texted me saying "Thank you for restoring my faith in mankind".  I'm not sure what I did, but that felt pretty good.

Wow... you're some guy. I knew it! 

[sanmagic7]

i think i know what you did to encourage that sort of response - you were you.  nothing more, nothing less.  you didn't rush things, just let things flow.  you were your own kind, caring, interested and interesting self.  so very glad for you.  as long as it's helpful, i'm all for it!

[meursault]

I hope people send me some good vibes today and tomorrow.  I'm off to battle dragons in a couple of hours.

I'm so completely terrified.

Meursault

[sanmagic7]

all the good vibes i can muster are on their way!!!  take care of you and hope it all goes well.  we're in your corner.

[Three Roses]

I am and will be raining down positive thoughts on you, like a monsoon! Standing with you

[radical]

Absolutely!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[meursault]

Hi everyone....

Well, that was.... I don't know.  Lots happened and nothing happened.  I go back in a couple of weeks....

I don't know what to say about it all, except I managed to make it this long and I didn't fall to pieces this week.  I am feeling fairly strong and proud of myself.  IT's so scary though....  Lots of family stuff too, which is unpleasant to say the least!

A couple of weeks ago my lawyer said: "try to stay positive over the next couple of weeks." and I said: "That's like pushing me out of a plane and saying 'try not to hit the ground too hard'."

I had lots of friends who contacted me to offer support.

Anyhow, just thought I'd check in here. 

Meursault

[Three Roses]

Thank you for checking in! I was a bit concerned when there was no post from you.

You are strong and I'm glad to hear you saying it and feeling proud! You deserve it. Can't wait til this is over for you. Yay!