The walk
Got to run… Got to get away… Got to escape…
This is how my need to runaway always starts… those words, repeated over and over. Sometimes they creep up on me slowly; but sometimes, they hit like the freight train. On Sunday, they hit suddenly; although I should have been expecting them… Last week, an inundation of triggers, meant that by Friday, I was a dissociated mess. Through my own actions, and decisions, I set myself up on the road to self-destruction, and despite some last-minute reality checks, things became very messy…
On Sunday, I got that last little push that tipped me over the edge into a flip-book of flashbacks… So, the chant began… Got to run… Got to get away… Got to escape…
This has often been the beginnings of an incident of self-injury, which I know just causes pain to be piled on top of existing pain. I know the pull of self-injury well… it can be hypnotic and alluring… there’s a cold comfort in its familiarity. But, instead of following that path, I took the words literally and escaped by going for a walk.
Considering my social anxieties, I’m not quite sure why I decided to do this… and initially, it seemed a huge mistake. I walked past families preparing BBQ’s, causing flashbacks to summers of watching my father cooking at the family BBQ… past the barking dogs, which brought up images of the scars on my friends back from an attack by a stray Alsatian… It went on, with each new sight, smell and noise triggering a new flashback.
I walked faster, and faster… trying to outpace the thoughts and images in my head. But the chanting in my head got louder and louder… Got to run… Got to get away… Got to escape…
Negative talk started to drown out the chant… I shouldn’t have eaten so much over the past week… I didn’t do enough at work… I’m just an attention seeking nightmare…
It went on and on… until, the words of WPT cut through all the noise. He told me the story of a woman who heard some rattling behind her as she walked; so she walked faster, scared of the noise… She walked faster and faster, until she was running… all the while, the rattling noise became louder and louder. As she scrambled up a hill, she met someone who told her to turn around… The noise was that of the skeleton of her past, tied to her ankle. Until she turned, faced it, and cut it free; it would always be with her. **
This rather butchered part of a story, brought me back to reality… I realised that this is what I was so desperately trying to do… I was trying to outrun the skeletons in my closet. But, they were making their presence felt through flashbacks and anxiety. Because they exist within me, I’m never going to outrun them… or inflict enough damage through self-injury to drown them out for long. Until I turn to face them, and work through what happens in the present as a consequence of those skeletons; I’m never going to ease their hold over me…
The kicker is, that I know this. I know that my self-injury is just another way to try to run… but turning around to face those skeletons is terrifying. I’ve been able to do it at times, but never for long. I get scared, confused and overwhelmed. I can never seem to do it they way they say in the books, or even in the other blogs I read… It seems such an unobtainable goal. How can something summarised in one chapter of a book, be so difficult, and take so long to do?
Of course, my annoyance with not being able to achieve this thing called “healing” is yet another sign of my need to distract and have control…
So, the skeletons of my past keep rattling…
** As a note: I know my recounting of the story isn’t accurate, and I’m not sure of its title; but I think it might be one of the short stories in the book Women who run with Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés.
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Now playing: Missy Higgins – Ten Days
via FoxyTunes
PDF Who are the “creepy guys”?
“Creepy guys”… that’s how the men shown on a recent current affairs programme, were described by several of my co-workers (see promo article – Close Up shocked by ‘sexually explicit’ online chat with girl). Everyone around the table nodded in agreement… these guys were “creepy” and “disgusting”. Implicit within their words, was the fact that it was obvious that these men were “bad”, and that they would be able to spot them a mile off…
While looking one of them in the eye, I responded that those “creepy guys” could have been your husband, father, neighbour, school teacher, anyone… including being a woman, rather than a man.
Their denials were swift and vigorous… No, all of those men looked creepy. I don’t think they could get their heads around the possibility that an abuser could be a female, so that part of my response was ignored.
Then something happened… someone said that one of the men shown looked like he was a businessman. Another mentioned a recent case where a well-known comedian was convicted of child sexual abuse. My amazing cynical friend, who knows a little of my past, repeated my words to the others in a slightly different way… suddenly there were uncomfortable shifting in chairs as they realised the implications of what they had seen on the show, and were now realising… An abuser isn’t the “creepy guy” with a long coat hiding in the bushes, or online… No, an abuser could be your neighbour, friend, relative… anyone.
I work with educated people… about a quarter of our number have at least one masters degree, while the others hold at least one bachelor degree… yet, they have led fairly sheltered lives. When faced with anything outside of their comfort zone, they don’t cope. They have shown this time after time… so I don’t know why it surprised me today.
Actually, the only difference in the usual play of things, was that today, I spoke up. I gently questioned their beliefs, and they listened. I’m not naive enough to believe that I’ve changed their minds; but for a moment, I had them thinking.
I know it’s not much, but it’s something small that I could do to acknowledge my past. I grew up in a time when abuse was considered to be physical violence only – sexual or psychological abuse weren’t well-known, understood, or acknowledged. However, much like today, people considered that any abuse only happened to “those people over there…” as they point to a vague point in the horizon. It certainly didn’t happen in their house. Yet, my father was a well-known, and respected member of the community… as were the other men that my siblings and I, called “Uncle”. This helped the abuse that I was subjected to, fly under the radar. No one questioned why I came to my mother during a party in tears, I was just shooed back to bed with a drink of water; all the while, the party laughed about my “excitability”.
I can understand them not questioning… well, I try really hard to. We were a white middle class family, and that sort of thing didn’t happen in white middle class homes. I didn’t say why I was crying. I never said anything. I’d been told, in many ways, that telling was not an option. Societal expectations played a part in my silence… maybe, just maybe, by questioning my co-workers beliefs about “creepy guys”, it might make them consider things such as why a young girl would be crying at an adult party…
It’s not much, but it was something that I was capable of at that moment.
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Now playing: Tracy Chapman – I’m Ready
via FoxyTunes
Being
Everything we see, or experience leaves an impression on our being… is it positive or negative, and does it balance out over time?
As I’ve descended into the depths of suicidal ideation and intent over the last few months; these sorts of questions, have played on my mind. I questioned why I was here, what my purpose was, and how far I had fallen short of meeting any expectations – my own, and my perception of what others expected of me. I could say that I was caught in the thinking, but I wasn’t… I was still working, existing, and being “normal”. However, everything was very superficial, and in the moment. I had no concept of anything long-term, and all I felt was the confusing extremes of nothingness, or utter chaos.
Earlier this week, I had to go to Wellington for a conference. Not only was the conference in the city where my father lives, but it was going to force me to interact with a group of strangers for long periods of time without any downtime. This was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back; all of the emotions that I’d been bottling up from the different stressors over the last few months, came bubbling to the surface. In my rather typical fashion, I didn’t tell anyone what the problem was; instead, I descending into mute chaos, unable to even pin-point what was going on. All I knew, was that I had to go to Wellington, and that going to Wellington was going to be the place where I tried to destroy myself – either physically, or psychologically. There was so much rage at the thought of being in Wellington, that I was barely able to function.
Most people would have tried to avoid going to the conference. Most people would have tried to communicate with their therapist about what was causing the chaos, especially after asking for an emergency session because things were out of control. Not I. Nope. I sat there, almost mute. Allison tried to encourage me to talk. I shut down further. She tried different techniques to try to encourage me to open up, and I dismissed them. All I could do was scream internally, and not say a word until the very end of the session, when I mentioned that I wouldn’t be seeing her at the usual time because I was going to be in Wellington at a conference. A nice parting cry for help… too little, too late.
I went into the weekend, planning my own demise. It was going to be spectacular!
Possibly the only reason why those plans weren’t carried through, was that a friend I hadn’t talked to in a while contacted me. Thankfully, they know me well enough to understand my warped codes… my signals of distress… the warning signs that I was planning something very bad. They pushed through their own problems, and forced me to confront my own. They tried to be a voice of reason, when I wasn’t prepared to hear anyone, or anything. They listened to my rants about no one understanding… countering my rant with simple questions regarding how I was communicating. They know me all too well… I can walk out of a conversation sure that I had said A, B, and C; only to realise that I might have said A, B, and C… but it was buried amongst the rest of the alphabet in such a way that there is no way that anyone would be able to understand what I was really trying to say.
As part of this interaction, I wrote one of the most honest emails I’d written in a long time. I laid out how out of control things were, what had caused the chaos, and the reasons why I had been slowly withdrawing from everything for months. I tried to show how much I was failing at everything, and that I could see no reason to keep on going. I thought I laid it all out very nicely… my friends counter point was that I wasn’t a quitter, so why was I quitting now. It seemed a pretty weak argument. It didn’t change my plans for self-destruction. I flew to Wellington with everything set.
What I hadn’t counted on, was the quiet determination of my friend. There were texts to see how I was. Often arriving at a point when I was about to jump off the metaphorical cliff. Those seemingly simple acts kept that part of my brain that seems determined to heal, somewhere nearby.
I honestly don’t know how I made it through the conference. There were triggers everywhere… crowds, noise, alcohol, hotels… and one of the worst… a former team leader. A woman who seems to know exactly how to push my buttons in a way that will tear me apart without thought. This time around was no different. My colleagues and I met her outside our hotel, as she was waiting for someone to come and pick her up. She greeted us with a smile, and then said that she had recognised me because of the tattoo on my right shoulder-blade. As this tattoo is quite low, I said that I was surprised that she could see it… she said she could just see the top of it, and then grabbed my jacket and blouse, pulling them down to expose my back, and show everyone what she had seen. This invasion of my personal space was too much. I immediately dissociated, and lost the rest of the night… in one move, she had shown that my personal space was meaningless, and could be invaded at any moment without consent.
So now I sit, having made it through the conference in one piece, despite my best efforts. I’m left wondering where to next. I sent the email to my friend, to Allison as well. On Thursday we had a very difficult session. She admitted that she didn’t understand my code. I told her I was difficult, and that every other therapist I’ve seen has said the same thing. She read things in the email that she had no idea about. All I could do was mention how difficult I am to work with. I hide. I avoid. I cloak unbearable pain in pretty words and say them as if they were nothing. When she doesn’t understand, I take that to mean that the unbearable pain is indeed nothing. So, I withdraw even further.
Yes, I am difficult. I would hate to be the therapist that tries to help me heal. Part of me thinks that this is Allison’s way of easing me out the door. Another part of me thinks that the fear of that, is a good distraction from having to deal with the pain of what happened in Wellington, and what led up to it.
Time will tell. Time will tell if it really is worth the pain of being.
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Now playing: Counting Crows – Round Here
via FoxyTunes
Fragments
Fragments… just bits and pieces flying around inside my head.
That’s what the last week has been like. Nothing tangible to hold onto.
The only constant are feelings of disgust. I feel dirty, disgusting, sub-human… unclean. I don’t think the layers of filth can be, or will ever be, removed. It is part of me as surely as the colour of my eyes. It is a part of me, and I am a part of it.
I think I could handle it, if all of the fragments flying around my head were of horror. Horror has the ability to sweep you away in a dissociative haze of lost time. But when there are everyday scenes intermingled with the horror, it makes you pause. You pause and look. You turn the fragment around, inspecting it from all angles. You look into the heart of it, and only then do you see the horror. The unmitigated horror of seeing how brazen and normal the abuse was. In those everyday scenes, you see the range of emotions on the faces around you – discomfort, curiosity, embarrassment, and the knowing smiles. What they don’t know, is that they are being manipulated. This is part of their entrance exam into the Old Boys Club. They all pass. Even the ones who question the young girls presence in a place she shouldn’t be, with their joking protests quickly turning into silent observation.
It was the perfect scenario. There was no obvious abuse, but it was implied. Every person in the room probably knew that something was wrong, but there was nothing tangible that they could take to the authorities. It opened the door to silent consent, and they walked through. They became accessories; and in order to ease their own conscious, they will stay forever silent. They didn’t see anything, after all. Just a young girl with her father walking by the shower room. He might not have known that the team were in there. They’re both hearing impaired, after all.
It changed the way those men looked at me. Some of them turned away more quickly. Some saw through me more readily. Some smiled, and beckoned me over more often.
Then the memories of horror draw you into their grip. Grounding techniques are lost in the wave that overwhelms and batters your mind.
But still, you force the smile and talk inanities to the person asking about patron upload problems.
You pack up the box of horrors for another time. Stamp down the lid and push it backwards. You hope that you never have to look at the box again. But, you know you will. Not because of the memories in the box, but because of the emotions it evokes. There is anger at looking at the horror, and anger at looking away. In a world of no-wins, I walk the minefield of navigating the present, while trying to understand and heal from the past.
It’s all done in the hope of having a future. My father took me past the shower room in order to have a future that he wanted. I walked past that shower room because I had no concept of choice. Despite often losing my way, I do have choices now. I have choices based on experience, education and understanding. The only thing more soul-destroying than the abuse, is seeing how I seem to make choices which encourage, or perpetrate self-abuse.
I know that there should be a positive note to the end of this, but there isn’t. I sit here at work, looking at the huge pile of work that is expected of me. I feel the effects of the medical problems which I was told yesterday will require minor surgery. I feel the dissociation starting – the slight fuzziness at the back of my head which is creeping forward steadily. It’s difficult to find that positivity, when the layers of stress in the present, add to the layers of horror from the past. Your head becomes a maelstrom of emotions, and the only relief is dysfunctional coping.
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Now playing: Tracy Chapman – All that you have is your soul
via FoxyTunes
Reminders of the past
When I was growing up, my father’s anger dictated the mood within the house. The image of him sitting in his lounge chair, while the waves of silent anger came pouring off of him, is one of my consistent flashbacks. The fear I feel when seeing that image, is immense.
Closely associated with my father sitting in his lounge chair, is him watching the rugby games which seemed to be broadcast every weekend. During the broadcasts, everyone in the house had to be silent. The only spoken words were demands for more beer, or food.
Then there was the rugby club. Another of my constant flashbacks and a place associated with abuse, chaos and neglect.
All of the events associated with those flashbacks happened over 20 years ago. They seem so far away, and yet so close.
One of the things keeping them close is the Rugby World Cup that is underway in New Zealand. For more than a month, there have been daily reminders of rugby and it’s importance in the nations psyche – I wake up to rugby news on the radio; every third or fourth car has a different nations flags flying proudly from their windows; there are billboards on the side of the road; there is a supporters display covering half of a wall in the building that I work; rugby is prominently in the newspapers; it’s on every television channel (even the ones proudly advertising that they are NOT the home of rugby); it’s on the Internet… it.is.everywhere. I can’t avoid it… believe me, I’ve tried.
Last night New Zealand won a place in the World Cup final. Another week of heightened publicity before it’s all over. I honestly don’t think I can cope. I’ve become more withdrawn and stilted over the last few months. The chaos this event has caused has been added to the other stress I’m experiencing, and it’s become more and more of a mess inside my head.
The constant refrain in my head is that I don’t need anyone… that I don’t need help… that the only option is to run away. I know that thinking is dangerous, but it’s all I have.
My relationship with food
Of all the relationships in my life, my one with food is probably one of the most dysfunctional. It started from when I was a baby, when I was defined as a “fussy eater”. This warped over time into odd eating behaviours… when my mother used to get us ready for school, I remember we would have breakfast and a prepared lunch; but that only happened for the first couple of years of my schooling, and I was soon going to school without breakfast or lunch. I don’t remember ever feeling hungry during these times, but I do remember the embarrassment when it was raining and we had to eat our lunch in the classroom… I always pretended that I’d forgotten my lunch. It wasn’t that we were poor, and couldn’t afford food; I just didn’t know how to make lunch, and I wasn’t really interested. The couple of times that I did make my lunch, I recall looking at it as an oddity, and as if it was some sort of foreign thing that had arrived out of the blue. I never felt jealous of my friends who had lunches, only boredom as I waited for them to finish eating.
During my childhood, there were a couple of significant events involving food and my weight that strongly effected me:
- My father commented that “at least she’s not fat like her mother and sister”.
- My mother would compare myself and her friends daughters regarding our weight. One time she pushed in my loose t-shirt, to show that I didn’t have a “fat stomach”.
These events dehumanised me, and made me think that if I was overweight, then no one would want to touch me. That weight would act like a protective barrier against the world. This thinking became strong during my teens, and I gained weight… I no longer wanted people to touch me. But what I didn’t expect, was the teasing and self-hatred that my weight caused. This is what started the roller-coaster that my weight became – I would lose weight, and feel vulnerable to abuse; so gain weight, and feel disgusting and gross.
When I attended university, my weight issues came to a head. I couldn’t afford food, and there were stressors which meant that some of my other self-injurious behaviours became out of control. My weight dropped drastically. It was the first time that the doctors started weighing me as a way of monitoring what was going on. As I’d never owned any scales, this was the first time I’d been weighed since I was in school. I remember being horrified at my weight… it was much too high. I’ve never had an ideal weight in my mind, but what was being shown on the scale was way above what I thought it should be. I remember the doctor talking about nutrition, and how I was showing signs of deficiencies. I remember him talking about having to monitor my weight unless I got it back up to a healthy level. All I wanted, was to run and hide.
When I finished university, by weight went back to the roller-coaster, mainly dipping when I was going out with someone. In many ways, I considered eating to be an inconvenience. People seemed obsessed with it, and I couldn’t understand the obsession. At other times, I would be eating, and part way through a mouthful of food, become so disgusted with what was in my mouth that I didn’t know what to do with it. Sometimes I would have to go and get rid of it, sometimes I was frozen in disgust.
During my marriage, food was a control issue… everything else in my life was so out of control, that I had to have some control somewhere. The ex-husband was a big man, and a big eater. He liked to think that he was a chef, but in reality, he was a glorified kitchen hand. He preferred fatty, unhealthy foods. That, in combination with the memories surrounding the times when my father was a butcher, were the final straw for my brain, and I could no long touch uncooked food. It became difficult to touch any food, but uncooked meat, was especially difficult. The feel of it on my skin was stomach churning. This, combined with feeling that I didn’t deserve good nutrition, again led to more signs of malnutrition… oddly enough I was overweight at this time, but not eating food that had any nutritional value.
During the process of my divorce, the food issues ramped up again. I soon couldn’t eat at all. I was surviving on nutritional drinks, and trying to show a smiling face to the world.
Other forms of self-injury have co-existed with my food issues, and often if one of the other forms increases, then the food issues ease off. It’s seemed like some sort of warped trade-off. But now, it’s revolving solely around food.
Over the last few months, I’ve lost a fairly significant amount of weight. But oddly enough, even though I weigh myself every day, with the hope of losing weight, a part of me doesn’t connect the dots between losing weight, and losing dress sizes. So when I had to go and buy new clothing, there was a panic about going down in size… fears of the abuse starting again resurfaced, and ironically, drove a need for more food control.
I’ve never been diagnosed as having an eating disorder, so I feel a bit of a fake talking about this… but as someone recently told me, you don’t have to be diagnosed with something, in order to have a problem with it. I have a problem, I’m just not sure how bad it is.
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Now playing: Fauré: Cantique De Jean Racine, Op. 11
via FoxyTunes
Confessions of a confused child
I get confused, between the then and now.
It’s easy to fall back on the familiar, because that is all I know.
They say I’m trouble, but all I’m doing is following the rules.
They say the rules have changed.
I’ve been tricked like that before.
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Now playing: Chopin Nocturne Op.27 No.1
via FoxyTunes
Dreams of betrayal
I rarely remember my dreams, but there is one that I had approximately five years ago which I’ll always remember…
There are a group of young girls, dressed in white, escorted to a room by their mothers. One of the mothers is new to the ceremony, and is showing signs of nervousness.
Then the businessmen come in.
The girls are paraded in a circle in front of the men, while the mothers stand to the side, smiling encouragement to their daughters. The businessmen take their pick of the girls… one of them being the new girl. The businessmen and their chosen girls go to a hotel, where they are abused.
The mothers whose daughters were chosen, are smiling and congratulating each other… their daughters were good enough to be chosen. But the new mother is having second thoughts… she wants to go up and rescue her daughter, but the other mothers hold her back. Telling her of the honour and privilege it was for her daughter to be picked.
I don’t pretend to understand how to interpret dreams, but what I find interesting about this dream that it is focused on the mothers. In particular, the betrayal of mothers towards their daughters. They didn’t protect them, instead they actively facilitated their daughters abuse.
This is very much how parts of me feel towards my mother. This sense of betrayal is the reason why I had so much trouble going to Wellington. It’s not the city (I used to live here), but it’s the feelings induced by both of my parents being in the same city. In particular, a fear that the mother will offer us up for abuse.
My rational mind knows that this will not happen, but these fears are old fears. They’re not based on present day logic, but instead on the perceptions that I formed as a child. Perceptions based on what I wanted a mother to be, and do… one who protected and nourished. But in reality, she was so consumed with keeping on top of all of the obvious issues, that the ones which were even superficially hidden, were over-looked.
If I look at this knowledge within the context of the dream, she is the new mother to the group who wasn’t fully involved in the process of abuse. She tried to stop it, but was distracted by the screen of those around her. The imagery of both my mother, and the one in the dream, is that of weakness. Neither were observant, neither were thinking beyond the present moment, and they therefore found themselves in situations for which they were not capable of handling.
My mother never knowingly facilitated the abuse, but instead didn’t pick up on the signs. At one time my mother said that she suspected that something was going on with one of my sister’s boyfriends. But today, when I asked her, she said she had no idea about any of it. Instead, anything that might have been considered a sign, was explained away as being “who you were”.
There’s an emptiness in hearing this. It makes sense, in that I was trying my very best to be “perfect”. But it also hurts, in that I was not noticed in any real way… my cover story was all that people saw – or maybe all they wanted to see.
I drove for over six hours to reach Wellington. That was a long time to think about what was going to happen. There were thoughts of suicide, rather than facing the certainty of abuse that parts thought they were going to be exposed to… thoughts of being able to do this visit, just like all of the visits from the mother… thoughts of what has happened in the past, and how out of control the present has become.
At one point of the drive the messages about the mother not being able to protect me were being repeated over and over… I countered this with the thought that I am capable of protecting myself now. This was met with a sense of disbelief. It’s always comforting to know that I have such little faith in my own abilities… But realistically, I am capable of keeping myself safe from self injury. I’ve done so before, and I can do it again.
I’m told that healing is all about looking at the present feelings, understanding their origins, accepting them as valid, and using various coping mechanisms to help them be tolerated. Sounds easy, huh? So far, this weekend has proven it to be anything but easy.
One moment at a time…
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Now playing: Adele – Rolling In The Deep
via FoxyTunes
What if…
It’s 2011. That means that I can go to the city where the father lives. I can stay for the weekend, and I can leave without being hurt.
That is what the adult part of me knows. I know that he no longer wants to hurt me. I know that I can go to a big city and stay there without him finding out. I can go to the museums and the shops. I can celebrate my birthday with my mother. I can leave without him even being aware that I was there. It’s 2011, and I have the ability to stay safe.
So why is there that little voice inside me asking questions in a terrified voice? Asking whether the sister will tell him where we’re going to be. Asking whether the aunt knows, and will tell him. What if he comes into the city and sees us? What if he touches us again? What if the mother doesn’t protect us again? What if we can’t escape?
What if…
