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 shout 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.

The Funnel *graphic*

I’ll warn you now, this is going to probably be an overwhelmingly triggering post. Please be careful with yourself if you choose to move forward and read.

There are a lot of things that got the ball rolling for me needing to go inpatient, but the one that tips the ice-burg was my mother sending me an object in the mail from my childhood (and early adulthood) that she used to abuse/torture me with. It seems as though most parts inside have some experience with this object causing huge tsunami type waves of objection/anger/fear/sadness/fight or flight internally just thinking about it. I came to the realization that this small plastic object represented my mother and my relationship for what it was, it was the physical epitome of my abuse.

All it is, is a funnel. A small.yellow.plastic.funnel. is what my mother has used against my mind, body and soul and honestly, it makes me sick. This small object, costing less than a dollar created her empire of the step by step destruction of any boundary I ever had and there it was, sitting in my own home and striking down yet another boundary. I hear stories from people that say their parents had a special wooden spoon or paddle in which they would be threatened with but never actually hit with. In more extreme cases I hear about belts. In my story, the yellow funnel sat on the kitchen counter like a king on a throne, always there reminding me who was in charge. All my mother had to do was look in it’s general direction and I was immediately her slave. After the first time I was violated by it I would have fallen in line no matter what she wanted, she would have never had to use it on me again but she found great pleasure in possessing that much control over me. Eventually it became less of a punishment for me and more of a mind controlling action.

My mother would tie me to a chair, the same one each time, tape my head to the back, insert the funnel into my mouth and hold my nose forcing me to keep my mouth open. In the beginning she would put rotten milk and yogurt in the funnel but of course that progressed into the most vile substances you could ever imagine, and then worse than that. I was forced to consume things and to feel like the things inside of me, disgusting and trashy. I have developed so much shame around this, to admit the things I have eaten and this creates a lifetime of struggles with food and what I allow in and out of my body. Each time she put that funnel in my mouth she was showing me that I had control of nothing in my life, nothing at all. I was a child that had no boundaries.

I share this today because a small part of me is struggling so badly thinking they are as vile as what she put inside me. This little part is so hurt and so hostile I am hoping they can see this out there and know that we aren’t as bad as they perceive and that we are the same person after posting this as we were before.

Body Memories - Separate Entity

I have the blog “Discussing Dissociation” by Kathy Broady in my Google Reader, which I regularly check out. And let me just put it out there how I have struggled with this blog. The information on the site can be very helpful and thought provoking and I applaud her for putting so much time and effort into the forums and consultant services on other websites. If more people in the trauma therapy field contributed even a quarter of what she does the therapeutic community would be so much better off. That being said it also gives me a funny feeling that is most likely due to the many boundary violations I have gone through with therapists before Therapist. I often wonder why someone that spends their career on this issue continues to talk and write about it so much outside of work…on a regular basis. I wonder what it would feel like if Therapist had a blog out there talking to tons of people about these kinds of issues. I also wonder how dangerous some of the topics could be for those out there not in therapy and going through PTSD and DID. Some of the content is extremely overwhelming and even though the topics are extremely relevant to my own therapy I can’t step into it yet. Even with the disclaimers and such, I am sure there are people that stumble on to the blog and use it as therapy replacement.

I mean no disrespect for Kathy Broady, she has done and continues to do amazing things for survivors. She has a voice that most of us do not often use and the amount of education she gives to under-trained trauma therapists is invaluable. For me, I take what I find I can handle and tolerate and the rest I leave for a later time.

I totally digressed from the main point of this entry. (not unusual right?) In her most recent post, Ms. Broady talks about body memories and how cells store this traumatic material and as a part of decreasing dissociation, our bodies remember things. Some people argue the existence of cell memory and such; I will bow out of that discussion and simply say that regardless of the scientific validity of cell memory, I experience body memories and they are very difficult to handle and it can all be chalked up to the BASK model as well. Ms. Broady poses the following questions which I am choosing to explore here on my blog because unfortunately, Therapist and I have some serious conversations coming up this week and they don’t really allow for us to explore this topic.


"What is your body saying to you?

What does your body remember that your mind refuses to think about?

What does your body remember that you don’t want to hear?

What will it take for you to listen to your body?  Your body was there for the abuse too.  Maybe it knows more than you think it does."

It seems like all my body ever does is tell me things I don’t really want to think about, listen to or explore. Every time it expresses a need, impulse, feeling or even just me being aware of it feels like a traumatic offense. I am well aware that the ignorance I have of my body is a direct re-enactment of my childhood and that dealing with it can be a double-edged sword.

It all boils down to the relationship that I have with my body. As a child, because of the abuse that I was going through I had separated my body from me and categorized it as something that betrayed me. It seemed like it’s own entity, much like my mother. I felt as though my body was cooperating with her instead of me and I grew to hate it. I wanted to kill it when I felt hunger pains and demolish it when I needed to use the bathroom. It continued to express needs that would force me into submission with my mother. When my body reacted to my mothers touch I wanted to torture it because HOW could it do that to me? It was allowing my mother to win!

Nothing makes me more hostile than battling with my body. As a child this was much more complicated, but now as an adult this battle continues with my eating disorder. I want to control it the way I needed to as a child. I become livid at times when my body is hungry and fight with it constantly. Sometimes I punish my body with too much food or alcohol to make it suffer, and other times I will use diuretics and diet pills to force it to cooperate. My weight swings wildly up and down the scale depending on which battle I am going through. And honestly, nothing feels more victorious than winning one of those battles. As I have gone through treatment with my eating disorder the thoughts I have about acting out become confused and unsettled. I can go for longer periods of ED abstinence because I know the science behind the treatment. It is logical. However, this creates a great deal of shame and embarrassment for me because I am not really going through an ED, it’s not about the food and controlling my external world. It’s not about perfection or loosing weight.

So what is it about?  It’s about my mother and the control she had over my body. It’s about having needs and wanting to deny them. It’s about being human and desperately not wanting to be human. It’s about being small and vulnerable so I can force myself into a harmful situation to get what I deserve. It’s about not looking the way my mother enjoys me looking. And in the end, it’s about denying my existence the same way my mother did.

When my body tells me I am hungry it is telling me that I am alive and I need something to stay alive. Last time I checked, I was not the biggest fan of surviving and this is a painful reminder my body is still there. It’s humiliating! My body will remember what it felt like to starve and be desperate for any sustenance, forcing me to do crazy things to get a small portion of something, which is degrading. My mother has turned every single part of being a human being into something perverse. Needing to use the bathroom required some sort of sexual favor, sweating meant I was turned on, being hungry meant I needed something from her, being thirsty made her angry because I must be screwing someone else, sleeping made me vulnerable, being happy was a threat to her. Just existing made me her slave. My mother even took away my inhalers as a child because when I would struggle to breathe it made me too weak to fight her and I would allow anything to breathe again.

My body remembers all of this stuff. As an adult each time my body expresses something I feel anxiety, some times worse than other times but each time there is a small reminder. I suppress this stuff on a regular basis and refuse to cope with it. I don’t want to talk about it or remember it. So some times it seems that my body becomes mission oriented and overflows with memories. The body aches or awkward feelings become persistent until I have a full fledged flashback and do everything in my power to suppress it even more. In my head I try to rationalize this cycle, I tell myself that obviously it was so horrific then that I didn’t want to deal with it which is why I have DID. Since I have DID then I don’t need to deal with it now. It seems my body has a different opinion, one in which I am very resistant to.

I should probably feel some sort of compassion for my body but at this point I cannot because it is still separate from me. It still exists in my mind on my mothers team and not my own.

Summer Memories

A couple of nights ago my best friend and I were talking about summers in our pasts. I don’t remember what it was in reference to but I brought up our Fourth of July picnics, which I felt pretty bad about since this time of year is very difficult for my friend. For me though it is the one time of year that I really enjoyed myself. Almost every year we returned to Maryland for most of the summer and we had next-door neighbors (Gary and Barb) that were like second parents to me. Barb ran a home day-care and there were always tons of kids to play with and as I got older, tons of kids younger than me to take care of. I always had something to do if my friends or my cousin was not around.

Each year Gary & Barb had a 4th of July cookout under their deck. They had the best house for it because in the downstairs there was a pool table and the deck created a dry place in case it rained. Her three children would always bring their significant others and if they had kids, they’d be there too. A few other select neighbors would come and the food was always perfect. We usually had a few bushels of blue crabs, hotdogs and hamburgers which just like any American cookout, the men handled those. The women handled the side dishes and the desserts. It would start around 3 or 4 in the afternoon and we’d just hang out and chat and the guys would drink their canned American beers. We’d have flags all around and the horseshoe pits were always ready to go. We would eventually start picking crabs and having all the great food. Once it got dark we would caravan down to the fairgrounds, always parking on the main highway so we could leave as soon as they finished. We’d lay our blankets on a nearby hill and joke and laugh until it started. We would ooh and ahh until they were finished and then the Dad’s would always rush us back into our cars to leave so we could rush back home. Once we returned the neighbors down the street would start up their ice cream maker and have peach homemade ice-cream for everyone. The ladies would then pick the remainder of the crabs for crab cakes or crab soup. The younger crowd would play inside or occasionally we’d have sparklers to fool around with.

It all really was the typical American family cookout and everything was so perfect that in those moments I felt like a real person with a real family. My mother would be talkative and funny. She would pat me on the head as I whirled by her all sweaty with excitement. My Dad was social and he laughed a lot, never raising his voice. Most everyone would dote on me because generally I was the youngest…probably until I was 10 or 11 and for everyone to see, my family was a good family. We fit perfectly into the crowd with our blonde kids always dressed up and our two cars and a dog. My Dad would join the crowd bitching about the Redskins last season and how they better be good this year. No one smoked, no one got overly drunk and no one was excluded. Just like any neighbors do we talked about the ‘other’ neighbors that hadn’t cut their grass or had a messy back yard. My Dad and Gary talked about the nights they would do neighborhood watch patrol and the crap they’d come across which in reality was nothing more than a couple of teenagers walking down the street.

Each 4th of July was everything I wanted my childhood to be and it makes me feel so confused at how we could act so normal yet behind the walls things were so different. I feel really happy when I remember it but suddenly my stomach turns and I feel nauseous and anxious over it all. I would do anything to get those evenings back and feel that secure again.

Dollhouse

     First, I am really excited about the Body As Art project! I have a couple of submissions already and I am looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with. You can definitely submit more than one hand and there are no rules about it. It's your hand :-) You can check out the gallery under the Artwork tab to see what's going on. I would love to get enough submissions to create a small printed book, and everyone that would like one can get one...well, that is the plan at least.

Yesterday I was really struggling and I am not sure why. My day started unusually early as I had to be at work at 6:30AM and I am never good with radical schedule changes. But, I made it to work on time (early) and the day went by rather slowly and it was long. I was able to leave by 3PM and had the whole afternoon in front of me. Around 5PM I was getting edgy sitting at home and decided to go out and try to find some new art supplies, or a bookbag I need for my upcoming vacation and then when none of those made me happy I settled on an Office Supply store for a whiteboard. I came home with nothing because I was too angsty to spend money and I think I was just overtired setting me up for a bad mood.

While at my first stop "Hobby Lobby" I was walking the aisles looking for nothing in particular when I came across the dollhouse section. I saw this "My Family" set which was the EXACT set I had when I was little!!!! It was freakish! I had the same little girl with the pink dress and white shoes and the mother, I remember her very well. The little baby came in the same blanket with the pink bow which I remember discarding early on. I received this set 16 years ago and they are still making them the same. How weird is that??

Then I saw the SAME EXACT bathroom set I had in my dollhouse, right down to the pink floral decal on the bathtub. It was like taking a step back in time. I remember how the toilet seat actually moved up and down and was weirded out by it being wooden. Apparently most of the furniture I had in my little house is still being produced and you can buy it.

It got me thinking about my dollhouse. I remember it perfectly! My dad made it for me for Christmas. I remember coming down the stairs and it was sitting on a table with a giant red bow. HEAVEN. He painted the exterior walls white and the roof was grey, and the shutters were blue. The doors opened and closed and there were two porches. Inside he had painted a few rooms as well as added wallpaper to a few. I guess he ran out of time because the stairs were not finished...he actually never finished them. The house had 10 rooms and was almost as tall as me. I played out a lot of my childhood drama inside those rooms...runaways, abuse, teen pregnancy, divorce and deaths were all common themes. I played with it for the rest of my childhood until I was probably 13, when my parents made me pack it up and put it in the attic.

It's strange how these snippets come back, vividly and ellusively..