The Shed.

I hate to admit it but I am typing this on a PC! ACK! Actually we purchased a new desktop and a new laptop this weekend and it's much faster than my poor 2003 G4 Powerbook. Since little man is sleeping away I decided to take a little time and blog for a bit. It's been two months since I have been in therapy and wow, that hit me like a ton of bricks today. Little E and I went to Federal Hill Park this morning and I was blown away by this fact while sitting there watching him go up and down the slide. Two whole months I have kept my shit together without therapy. That's pretty amazing coming from someone who used to spend 60% of the year inpatient. I give myself kuddos for that.

Last week I spoke to Therapist for a decently long time and enjoyed it. I felt like I was a kid at Christmas and it was nice. Not all of it was so sad and Therapist had a great opening story. I really miss hearing her talk like that. It was overall really helpful and it gave me the boost that I needed. It was kinda like the feeling when you wrap your favorite blanket over you and you're just comfy and happy. I really needed that! Almost a verbal hug if you will. I am thankful, so thankful for our conversation.

It is however, becoming increasingly difficult to stop my brain from processing trauma related matieral. I had a decent handle on it for the first month but currently I am struggling with a few overwhelming memories. I am unsure if I should be blogging about them or trying to process them on my own because of their content but at the same time it's not helping keeping it locked up inside. I suppose that putting it out there is no more harmful than keeping it in my head on constant repeat.

My mind continues to float back to the late fall in my childhood when I was probably around 11 or 12 years old. I can remember my backyard so intensely that it frightens me. The details of the trees and the way the light hit with different weather patterns, the smell of the moldy and wet ground, the sounds of the leaves and grass crunching below my feet. I can distinctly remember the smell of the chimney smoke in the neighborhood and how deadly quiet it would be on cold afternoons. I remember what it felt like to walk to edge of our property from our garage and taste the almost freedom from crossing the tree line to head deep into the woods away from the world. I also remember the anxiety I felt as I would pass our shed to the treeline, crossing so carefully in front of it as if the doors would open by themselves to yank me inside to the darkness. After the shed would be the wood pile where my father stored all our firewood for the season. It was just an open slate with a roof over it but it was exciting when he built it because I could climb on the top and hide up there on summer days. The sun would warm the top because the shingles were black, sometimes hot enough to make the backs of my legs red. I would lay up there with my towel and book and "tan". Once past the wood storage I would then pass my half of a treehouse. My father once decided he would built me a tree house that wasn't really in a tree. He constructed a frame that was speared into the ground. He connected the four posts with 2x4's and began to lay the flooring which only ever ended up being three 2x4's nailed to the frame. He never finished it and in the winter it stood there looking as naked and dead as I felt. It was like a monument to the childhood I never got yet tried so hard to gain. I remember sitting on those three little planks and pretending that my fort was finished. I would play up there for hours...no one ever thought to finish it for me.

Anyway, if I made it to the tree line uninterrupted I would get a wild feeling inside my stomach and I would take off running as fast as I could. My legs would burn and my ankles would give out often causing me to trip and jerk around against the trees. I am not sure why I felt as if I could run so freely after that point or what exactly I felt in those moments but I assume it's what a wild animal feels once it's freed from a trap. It's a sickening excitement mixed with fear and relief. I imagine my blood pressure to be very high and my heart would pump faster than it should. Maybe it was because it was so rare that I actually made it to the line that I became so excited...

Most often my mother would should from the deck at me before I could take off. It was such a dangerous trip for me to try to make undetected because her hang out was most often in the kitchen which had a huge bay window that faced our backyard. She would see me and stop me before I made it. I would hear the door slam shut and turn to see her putting her jacket and boots on. I always felt so damn stupid for being out there because it was just steps away from the shed, her favorite place to torture me. No one would hear me from there. It was almost an invitation for her to go ape shit on me but the times I did make it in to the woods were my favorite. I had a safe spot out there, a whole fort I had made on my own. I kept snacks out there so I could binge when I was starving and I had a few toys that hadn't been ruined by her yet. I also kept my journals out there...I wonder if they are still there?

The shed, oh that horrible shed. It matched the colors of our home which were a sickening cream and a deep brown. It reminded me of a Boston cream doughnut and I hate those kind of doughnuts. The doors were locked with a deadbolt and only my parents had access to the keys. Inside there were no working lights unless my mother brought the lantern with her and there was only one small window in the back at the top. The flooring was just large slats of wood that had never been swept or cleaned since we built the damn thing and they wore my badges of courage on them. Everywhere were splatter stains and most of them were a deep crimson color. It smelled of oil and grass clippings and sometimes reeked of a dead animal or two. On the walls were rusty nails with all kinds of items hung from them, mostly rusty chains or gardening tools..but in the back left corner is where one funnel always rested. On the back wall below the window was a workbench my father had built with a vice on either side. An old can filled with nails, screws and pencils stayed in the exact same spot on the right for my entire childhood. Did anyone ever use the pencils in there? Probably not. Under the workbench was my mothers tacky toolbox which is where she kept her 'secrets'. She kept her torture devices in there is what she really did, but she told Dad it was her secret box and she kept in that way with a huge lock on the front of it that bore her initials. K.G.M. Underneath was also a wooden chair that my Dad had made for me but my mother despised being in the house. So she moved it somewhere more useful. My Dad had a lot of talent in woodworking only I wished he didn't when he made that stupid chair. It was more sturdy than the Berlin Wall and the armrests were perfect for my mothers chains.

Hearing the sound of that chair and her toolbox being scraped across the plank floor still haunts me. As soon as I heard it I would look up at the little window and watch the particles in their air floating through the stream of light and imagined what it would be like to ride on one of them. Once I was fastened in she would close the doors to the shed, it would click shut and she'd turn on this tiny flashlight. It usually rested on one of the shelves to the left of me, casting shadows on the walls from the shelving. It was a small black flashlight that most people would keep in their car but it was metal like a police flashlight...sturdy. Terrible things happened in that shed, things that no one should ever have to think about and I despise my brain for remembering. I lost myself in there at times, and only now am I trying to get it back. So many of my flashbacks are from in there and what makes me nuts is that I can't see much in them because the light wasn't bright enough to make out anything but shadows. People tell me that I ALWAYS have my eyes shut in my flashbacks and I think to myself that it doesn't matter because even when they were open I couldn't hardly see. My BODY remembers everything. It's as if my body experienced it all and my eyes were left out of it. When it comes to memories in which I can actually see it's easier for me to connect with the moment and the little girl that experienced it because I can see myself. I usually remember what I was wearing or what my feet looked like and I know how small and vulnerable I was. I feel sadness for those moments. For these, it's difficult because not only was I fighting my mother I was fighting some invisible entity which my body felt. The mind/body connection just doesn't always happen for me.

This fall I am trying to experience the same sights, smells and sensations that the Maryland outdoors and weather has to offer in a less traumatic way. So far it's working decently. But I'll keep you updated.

Why I left...part 1 of many

I am really in my head today, mostly because yesterday I didn’t have a moment to myself and a lot went on. This may result in many posts that don’t have much to do with each other.

Therapist is presenting at a conference this coming week as she does every year, and this year our relationship is pretty much center stage. This is both a huge honor and a burden. I read her presentation yesterday and a few times today and I am struck by a portion where she speaks of learning I was moving home and how she still does not quite understand why or how the process happened. I feel like I need to dig around in this topic because I am not so sure I fully understand and I have to be honest that I think there are reasons that aren’t as simple as I tried to convince myself they were.

I never imagined that I would ever be the one to walk away. Never in our relationship was I able to consider this because it had become a fact in my life so long ago that no one is ever permanent and I MUST hang on to every little drop because it would go away and I would be left with nothing. The idea that nothing is permanent is something that was a part of my existence and I could not ever see myself as being strong enough to let go of anything I love. It was as true to me as I believe the sky to appear blue. And my God did I try to convince myself a million times that she was leaving. The first four years it was like a life and death situation every time the poor woman went on a vacation. I would be ill for weeks while knowing she was going to leave and then when she did I would be in a deep funk the first couple of days which would turn into a manic obsession to annihilate myself while I waited for our next appointment which I believed she would inevitably cancel because she would realize how much dread she felt at seeing me and it would be over. The more I wanted her around the more I feared she could feel my dependency and come to hate it. She never did.

I gave this woman a thousand reasons to dislike me, to feel burdened and overwhelmed by me and instead of her seeing any of that she found a thousand reasons to keep trying. It’s still absolutely amazing to me. So how did I come to this place where I am standing on my own and able to walk away, to carry her with me and continue my journey with her as a mere sideline coach instead of my guide? When did my obsession with avoiding her abandonment turn into the ability to move away and try life on my own two feet? Was it all my growth and ability to continue on? Or was there fear helping to motivate me? Was it a moment or a process in which this happened? All very good questions and I am afraid of the answers.

When I came home for Christmas last year I don’t remember a really strong pull to suddenly return for good. I remember missing my nephew terribly and wishing I was more a part of his life, I remember him calling me by name for the first time and it felt good. I also remember how much I wanted to return and how good it felt to go back to Atlanta to my own life. I suppose I also had a lot to look forward to during that time, a new relationship, an exciting concert I had waited ten years to see, work promotions and new friendships. I was ok because I had these people in my life there at the time that I felt were going to be supportive. This turned out not to be the case obviously. After all that we began to really work on past stuff in therapy and I think at times it felt so unbearable due to my loneliness and isolation.

I think I always felt that Atlanta was a temporary place for me, although I learned to appreciate the city and my new life there. I found places that felt comforting and I eventually relaxed into the routine of my life and job. I suppose though I needed more than I had there. I needed more of Therapist that was ethically ok and more expensive than I could afford. I needed longer sessions to process and more communication which was not feasible. Struggling through the material of my past was tough and I was so thankful to do the pieces of work that I did with Therapist but my fears of upcoming events were nagging at me and still do to some degree. With Therapists recent marriage I developed an intense fear of her becoming pregnant and not having the room for me that I so needed (and continue to need). I was terrified of having to watch her pregnancy and the changes that would happen even though we both hoped they wouldn’t. It became something that I couldn’t bear to even think about really. I guess in some ways I was also feeling like I would be the worst person on the planet to be around as she experienced one of the most wonderful things in life. I would inevitably feel my grief over my lost babies. I would resent her for having something I fear I may never have. I would be jealous that I could not participate in her pregnancy, like offer suggestions about baby products or whatever because it’s boundary less even though it’s the one thing I am really knowledgeable about. The whole thing wouldn’t be about me but I would make it about me and thus make her miserable. After all we’ve done together I felt like this is one thing that would make her hate being around me and it did help me to make my decision to leave. There, I said it. I know it is selfish and silly, but I had to factor that in to my process.

I knew I wouldn’t move further in my therapy with all those fears pressing on me and it felt more than wrong to make her choices in life my issues to work through. I considered how much I missed my family after my last summer vacation and how I felt as though I might be ready to be the Aunt, Sister and Friend I had moved to Atlanta to work on. I felt supported by my family after my last hospitalization and I remembered how much I wanted to go back to school and make a career change. I couldn’t do that in Atlanta while trying to support myself. In Atlanta I simply couldn’t have all that I wanted or needed, and here in Maryland it’s as close as it can be to that…minus Therapist.

Do I think I was ready to leave Therapist? Probably not. But I am doing it. I am doing ok too. It’s not the best but I am certainly not on a ledge or anything. It hurts me terribly to have hurt her. It makes me sick to think that she’s not really there anymore for me (in some ways) but I feel like maybe there is a chance that the ‘end’ of our relationship really isn’t the end. Maybe I won’t fade for her over time. I cannot wait to tell her when I graduate, marry, have a child…own a home. I want and need her to be a part of my life. And I hope that my absence in her life allows her some freedom too.

One of my dreams would be to write a book about our experience together because seriously, it’s just too good not to share. People out there should KNOW how powerful secure attachment is in trauma therapy. Therapists should feel freedom to share some of themselves with their clients and clients should feel hope that there is healing in all of this. I have a strong desire to speak to clinicians somehow and share with them how my Therapist helped me and how they can help their ‘hopeless’ cases. I am unsure of how I would ever have the opportunity to do that but I hope one day I can. Therapist taught me to not be ashamed of my past and lately I am realizing just how much she pounded that into my head because I am not ashamed of what happened to me. Yes I feel shame, but not at the circumstances. She taught me I am worthwhile and my past does not define me even though it’s what brought us together.

Anyway, more to come.

Seriously?

It's amazing how quickly my mother can infiltrate and get me up in arms. Why can't she just let me go?

I didn't get the memo

I admit that I am feeling pretty far away these days and I struggle with wanting to be connected or feeling ok with this state of being. I know it’s not helpful in the long term but considering my life currently I don’t see an immediate need to dive right into any hardcore feelings. I am feeling the holidays bearing down their weight on me and I am not happy about it. Today it actually felt like November because of the way the sun was hitting the almost bare trees and it is unseasonably warm but you can smell the cool, damp and rotting tree leaves. It’s the kind of day that you hope for in a few weeks when the winter wraps its claws around you and won’t let you come up for air. It’s the kind of day that sets my heart into a panic about what is to come and what it meant in the past. It’s a day that I would normally seek comfort from Therapist and beg her to tell me it was going to be ok. Instead I sit here in my room, blasting my iPod while Little E sleeps soundly in the other room and nurse the ache in my chest.

My brain is searching for something, anything to focus on to get this crap out of my head. Be thinner! Be Smarter! Be FASTER! Do not sit still, you must do something to MAKE IT STOP. There is nothing to ‘stop’, nothing to change, nothing to harm to displace the pain. There is only me, here, right now in this moment and I have no effing clue what I want or need. I think I may need to cry, or maybe take a walk when little man wakes up. What I want is a pill, a drug, a cut, a drama to get out of this. Or Therapist’s hand.

Seriously though, What the Fuck? I want to punch a wall right now. I want to scream for what my life has been up to this point. I am ANGRY! I am SAD! The floodgates have opened my friends and it hurts like nothing I ever imagined would. All that I have lost, all that was taken from me, all that I can never get back is sitting on my chest begging for attention and all I can do is sit here and cry. I guess someone has to…

Broken

“The broken locks were a warning you got inside my head
I tried my best to be guarded, I'm an open book instead
And I still see your reflection inside of my eyes
That are looking for purpose, they're still looking for life

I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing
With a broken heart that's still beating
In the pain (In the pain) there's the healing
In your name (In your name) I find meaning
So I'm holdin' on, (I'm still holdin')
I'm holdin' on, (I'm still holdin')
I'm holdin' on (I'm still holdin')
I'm barely holdin' on to you

I'm hanging on another day
Just to see what you will throw my way
And I'm hanging on to the words you say
You said that I would, would be ok”

-Life House  “Broken”

I always asked her if I was ok, if everything was going to be ok. This song hit me hard today as it’s the first time I have heard it. I am not sure how I missed it but I wish it had been around during the termination process. This is only a small portion of the song but it was very meaningful and the timing was sick…I was driving through a part of town I associate with her.