Tag Archives: trauma

Did you know you’re supposed to be able to feel your face?

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I shared with my partner today that I’m starting to be able to feel my face- the way it behaves on its own accord, all the little twitches and emotions that play across it that I don’t plan on.

It’s wild. This is new to me.

I’ve always felt like some gray blob of consciousness with a dim glow, trapped in the skin of me which is hollow and full of darkness.

I can know the factual truth about muscles and bones and organs. I can even have seen them, I once got a peek inside my chest when my surgeon showed me a process picture of my top surgery.

Doesn’t matter, I’m a stupid sad little gray blob trapped in a hollow body filled with expansive darkness.

Doesn’t make sense but it’s my self concept. Trust me, I’m in therapy, and it’s ON THE LIST.

I asked my partner if it’s normal to be able to feel your face. She (surely) lied back to me that it was.

I woke up today and did things that I needed to do outside the house of my own volition, and alone. I returned pop cans. I picked up meds. I bought toilet bowl cleaner. I made phone calls. I did chores to get ahead for when my partner got home. I took care of an unpleasant post office form. I did an email I’ve been dreading.

I need you to understand that this represents a nearly unimaginable level of energy for me. I MADE PHONE CALLS.

I have wanted to kill myself since I was in the second grade. I’ve gotten better and I’ve gotten worse and I’ve gotten lists of different diagnoses and I’ve gotten tons of medical trauma and I’ve been in institutions and I’ve been to rehabs and I’ve gotten CBT and IOP and ECT and REBT and DBT and trauma informed therapy and gestalt therapy and the one thing I never did was manage to get a real remission.

There’s little tingles, little pulls of strings, an occasional stab.

I didn’t realize how dissociative I was until systems started coming back online.

I’ve been on Auvelity for only 3 days and I’m starting to feel less hollow…

I’m anti-psychotic right now.

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I had a really good day hanging out with a friend and running errands in preparation for a planned on trip to the psychiatric urgent care. Once there, they wouldn’t help me. Apparently the CMH wouldn’t authorize treatment because in the past I had been authorized for Pivot and not shown up. I wracked my brain for when this might have happened and the only time I can figure is right after my car accident, when I wanted to go in because I could feel a spiral coming on and figured I could do a 2 for 1 on my Emergency Room time. The ER let me go with the instructions that Robert Brown Crisis(not Pivot but its sister) would call when a bed opened up. I missed a call from a number that was listed as Unknown, and they didn’t leave a message, leaving me no way to respond. They absolutely dropped the ball and now I come along months later and say to somebody that my suicidal thoughts are getting unmanageable and they say “Sorry, you miss appointments, you don’t deserve treatment.”

Can you imagine what that feels like?

When your depression already tells you that you are a drain on government resources and are better of dying? That it’s almost your civic duty to get off the damn disability payroll by offing yourself?

How many times do you offer someone treatment when they reach out? *

One time?

Three?

A dozen?

I’ve been hospitalized 21 times so far.

I’ve had CBT, DBT, ECT, REBT, IOP, month long rehab, gestalt therapy, and I’m working on family therapy and EMDR as well as digging into trauma. I could probably think of a couple more if I really tried. I’m a heavily therapized individual.

I remember one time in IOP(Intensive Outpatient, basically sobriety night classes) that he had been to rehab 27 times before it stuck. At that point I was a lot earlier in my career of crazy, and I thought to myself “how could you not give up?”

I know now.

You don’t have a choice.

You keep on marching, slogging, because a little taste of hope is all you need to get hooked.

I thought it would be convenient to die tonight.

My zines are printed and could be available at the funeral.

My friend had all the paperwork about how I was feeling and witnessed the whole thing.

It would’ve been a great headline for that brand spanking new psychiatric urgent care. Might help make some changes in the system.

I was ready to be a martyr for the mental health movement.

But you’re supposed to live for spite, you’re not supposed to die for it. Don’t punish yourself.

I jerked myself out of those thought loops. I thought to myself “You know better. You can choose to stop indulging in this.” And it was indulgent, it was mopey down the to core, I could practically feel my chin inside my chest.

I reminded myself of the good things in my life. Of the good things that I believe I may still have coming. Then I realized and complimented myself on having rerouted my Inner Critic/pity party so effectively. I’d also like to think that my activism will mean more if I’m alive.

Later that night I realized that maybe the reason I was having a good day for today despite enormous setbacks in a few arenas and a shoddy one other days despite them being relatively innocuous is that I didn’t take the antibiotics I was supposed to for my tooth. I’ve had full blown psychotic reactions from antibiotics before, but usually only the very strong single dose ones, and this was just a standard course of penicillin. Then I realized, slowly, shakily, with more of a sense of fear and power than I have ever felt before, I could account for at least three of my hospitalizations being very close to rounds of antibiotics. I have a variable now. Something to test. I can maybe get records from the offices of places that I’ve stayed, and from my primary care physician.

Also, my healthcare provider called and asked if I wanted to be a part of the Spectrum All of Us research program, and as a person who is transgender and on a lot of medications, I believe I’m scientifically valuable so I’m excited to have that appointment coming up. I’m going to share my hypothesis.

 

 

 

ECC84699-4E60-427A-8B86-78AFC0B584FA*Every time. Any time. It’s so scary to reach out and so much of the mental health system is like “oh, you have a problem?” WHAP! and when you are consistently punished for reaching out, you stop doing it. Remember that you’re dealing with people who are tender.

Growth Work

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I’m learning a lot about both making art and processing trauma. 

You have to trust the process above all else. 

It won’t look pretty at a lot of stages but you are doing the work and that’s what counts. 

It’s the layers of tiny details that build up to make a whole image. 

If your system doesn’t account for mistakes, your system is broken, not your work. 

At any moment you may see what you are working on and declare it beyond repair, but ultimately it is you who decides when you are finished so the only way for it to stay flawed is to stay unfinished. 

Don’t give up until the work is done. 

Did you think the work was done? Think again. There’s fresh ideas to be had. 

You will never be pleased and nor should you. The brilliance of growth is that it is unsatisfied. 

Pride in craftsmanship shows and people are drawn to the light of vulnerability. 194A6857-7BE9-4736-9E94-AEDC26DB9D60

PTSD

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I have PTSD
which does not stand for
Pretty Truly Sucky Drama or
Panicky Trifling Solution Denier or
Performing, Trying, Slowly Dying
but there are aspects
of those things in
every meltdown,
every flashback,
every nightmare,
as I recall the thick coagulation
and the fingers dragging loosely
and the furor
and the passion
and the way a man
turned into a little boy,
curled up in a hospital bed,
waiting for his stitches
no longer yelling
about the bitches
who didn’t love him
so he stabbed himself
once
twice
thrice
and now my brain pan
is stuck with the same scars
that laced up and down his arms,
isn’t that nice.

 

Before the Before

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Life turns around quick
because only one moment
separates people from
a “before” and an “after.”
Only one trauma,
one car accident,
one slip up
and your whole life
can change.
And life is a
series of moments
like this,
forks in the road
where decisions
were made
for us
and we have
to learn to cope.
This is where
empathy comes in,
and the more
you know empathy
before the “before,”
the softer you’ll land.

A bit of medical advice

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I feel like people grow up learning that doctors and dentists and such are authority figures, because as children we are small and they are adults and specialists and it breeds an unhealthy mental relationship. If you ever are belittled, or don’t feel safe or listened to by a medical professional, you need to advocate for yourself. You can get other referrals. You can fire them. They are not your superiors because they went to school for a long time. YOU are the expert on your symptoms. You are a goddamn grown human being with worth and value and they are too. You are EQUALS. Remember that. You are not inferior to someone with more education. Your sickness doesn’t affect your inherent worth and value and shouldn’t affect your treatment.

Kidnapped

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Coming out of depression isn’t like a fog lifting or a flower blooming. That’s entirely too romantic. It’s more like a bright light, but it’s only just spiking through, it’s mostly dark, you’re tied up. Rough. Burlap and rope tied around you, left alone to figure out your confinement and your freedom. Everything is rough and cold but it’s a real feeling. You take inventory, try and figure out where the pain is worst, try to piece it together with a memory stunted by sedative. Bones creak and scars are measured. Checkmarks go with traumas as you remember the things that you agreed to when you weren’t a qualified advocate for yourself. You’ll pay for those for the rest of your life. You were kidnapped by depression. It owns that part of you. It’ll always creak behind your thoughts. But today you’ll get to wonder if this chance at freedom is real.

Dreaming

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Dreams are very powerful for me. I have vivid, imaginative dreams, a woven tapestry of realities and falsehoods that make me question everything when I wake up. A drinking dream shatters me. Dreams catalyzed my coming out process. A dream is how I knew I was pregnant.

It’s not something I talk about often. But it’s niggling at my soul, a little catch in the back of my mind. It’s a hurt that’s coming back after being repressed, so that means it is time to process it.

Vulnerability is a risky dialectic of connection and rejection. I know that there is a chance that saying what I have to say will bring closeness and help to salve an old wound. There is also the chance that I will alienate people and start battles I don’t want to get into.

Ultimately, however, the decision comes down to whether there’s someone else out there that might read this and find some peace from it. And so I move forward.

In 2010 and 2011 I was going to school and living in Grand Rapids with my boyfriend at the time and one other girl. I was a shitty roommate to her and I regret that, since she and I had planned to move in together and my boyfriend just kinda never left.

One night I sat bolt upright on the goddamn futon, having had a dream that I was pregnant. I tried to remember when my last period was. I asked him, he didn’t know either. We hustled to a grocery store and got several pregnancy tests, and the first one came back positive almost instantly.

I couldn’t have a child. I am not meant for child rearing. Especially not as my life was. Especially not as my descent into alcoholism was going.

But I didn’t have health insurance. Or a spare $900.

So I turned to the internet.

I don’t recommend anyone try to induce a miscarriage or self abortion or whatever you want to call it. I combined three or four methods and hoped and prayed.

Vitamin C stings. Parsley tea smells like horse piss.

But it worked, over several days. I started to bleed. And bleed. And bleed.

I felt nothing but relief then.

It hurts now.

Sometimes I think about the child I might otherwise have had. Somehow I imagine a boy, and I’m pretty damn sure he’d have curly blonde hair. I wonder about the way things might have gone with my boyfriend/ex husband, who wanted children later on. I question whether I would have cleaned up my act, whether I could have saved a few years of the depression institutionalization yo-yo. I know this sort of thinking is useless though.

Not much can keep me safe from my own insecurities though. About what this makes me, whether I’m a good person. You can be pro-choice all the live-long day and still struggle with internalized hate. I feel so alone. I don’t know anyone else who’s done this, because no one talks about it. So I stay inside my head with all my thoughts, and they percolate into vile piles of self loathing, and little story lines for dreams.

I take a prescription medication now though, one that prevents dreaming. I also have an IUD.