Something's Coming

Wed. Sept 13^th,

Last night I went to the Divorce Recovery Workshop. I cried when the leader read the story about the wooden dolls who got stars or gray dots*. . .

I finally got the oil changed in the car! Yea! Yesterday I felt about 80% here and 20% apart. I told Dr. H about that and he said I had feelings or issues about to surface—and I was afraid of them—well, afraid of the pain—and it would be good to be prepared by [upping] the Paxil. He said I was still in the acute phase so don’t worry about having to increase the medication. . .

I sometimes feel I have seen some woman being beaten by a man. I also have those strange “dreams” of feeling someone is coming over to sit on my bed and who touches my arm and I am very scared & throw the covers over my head& try to scream but I never can go more than AAA! Then I wake up. I had one when I was pregnant w/ __ and alone in bed with Sandy, the dog, lying on the end of the bed. I had the same dream when I was poisoned by the Calan after the suicide attempt. I didn’t think the person was good (like coming to tuck me in) I though the person was evil.  I also feel like I “lost” someone when I was young. Did I fight with them and then they died? I just don’t know who I lost. But I always feel if people go away then they don’t love me anymore.  The leader last night said that a scar not only reminds us of pain but of being healed, too.

* “You are Special” by Max Lucado.

Dissociating. I wonder how many people live with this? I’ve done it my whole life; I think it’s partly responsible for creating an active imagination. I know for sure it is one of the few ways we survive the toughest things in our lives. When Mom and I took our vacation to Austin, TX one year, we had a discussion about dissociation. I was relieved that she felt it, too, because I was young and afraid of what I was experiencing: as if my life were a movie I was watching, and I wasn’t “present” in it to make decisions or do anything else. The episodes would last anywhere from a few minutes to over a day. I had one while we walked on the Riverwalk, and when I told my mother about it, she knew exactly what I meant. That was after I told her about the rape when I was 11.

Of course, knowing what I know now, I’m not relieved. I wish my mother had never gone through something bad enough to make her “break” like that. But I was a child.

Dissociation is often, often, often, often related to sexual abuse in childhood.  Often. Not all the time, but often enough that it is a HUGE red flag.

HUGE.

As in, if you feel this way, please talk to a psychologist. Now.

And my mom felt this way. And I felt this way. The dreams, the memories, the dissociating, the loss of someone. . .Mom, you lost yourself. The person you lost was you.  Could you have lost someone else? Of course, but this sense of loss, the low self-esteem, the sense of betrayal that eats you alive, and that sense of mourning your youngest childhood: red flags.

Mom, I don’t want to tell you that you were abused. I don’t. I don’t want to speculate on who could have perpetrated the abuse, if you experienced it. But if half a dozen councilors could look me in the eye and say, “Who molested you in your childhood,” long before I ever knew I had been molested, can I do the same to you?

Something was coming up, Mom, something you would have rather died than face. But did you have the courage to face it?

Next