Haunted by Intrusive Memories

“I fucked you so good you’re going to walk funny tomorrow.” – Abusive Ex.

Sigh.  It’s 2:45 a.m.

Group Therapy – Commitment #1

My therapist recommended several months ago that I go to a local counseling center for sexual abuse/rape victims and get involved in their group therapy.  While it was not easy, I contacted the center and completed their intake which consisted of four individual visits with one of their counselors last February.  I actually had started to hope that they forgot about me when I received a call that a new group was starting; I had my first group session last week.

I have no real idea what this group will make me feel let alone if it will help me.  Last week was just basically laying out the group rules, making introductions, and completing an icebreaker.  The amount of anxiety I experienced sitting there really astonished me.  Just being in that room with the other women and knowing what we all have in common is hard enough; I don’t want to know what’s going to come up when we really start talking.  I guess that’s the point though, right?  Like my therapist says, “The only way out is through.”

Each week we will be asked to make a commitment for the following week.  We were told that people who honor their commitments do better with their recovery, but I’m not sure if that is anecdotal or if there is some empirical proof.  I suppose it doesn’t matter.  It’s part of the process and I need to try to engage.  One of the suggested commitments was to write a paragraph about what safety means and since we could do whatever we wanted with that paragraph I figured I would put it here.

Safety is an abstract concept that I’m not sure I understand.  I realize now that any sense of safety I’ve ever had was exterior to me.  I’ve hung my hopes of safety on my grandmother and my husband.  The problem with that is when my grandma died I fell to pieces and I live in terror that something might happen to my husband.  Basically, even my safety isn’t safe.  My own head certainly isn’t safe because I never know what insane memory is going to float up next.  It’s the mental equivalent of the proverbial other shoe.  I lay in bed and something drops.  I try to read and something drops.  I zone out in the car and a song comes on and something drops.  Always dropping, more and more sex, more and more control, more and more screaming, more and more shame.  Today I poked the bear and I’m wearing the guilt of that now and it feels like insomnia.  How’s that for a tangent?

Safety is the idea that I could live my life alone if necessary and thrive, that I would be able to continue as me without an US if my husband died or left.  I’m not sure that I could because everything safe is wrapped up in US.  Safe feels like his hug.  It smells like him and sounds like his voice when my head is on his chest.  That’s the only place I’m really home.  I understand intellectually that I must expand safety to include something interior to me, but frankly I have no idea how that would work.  Suggestions are welcome.  Commitment complete.

Another Restless Night…

Triggers and insomnia… It’s another night where I just can’t sleep.  Lately I feel like I cannot escape my triggers.  Every time I start to relax and get into a better mental space something jumps out of nowhere and sends me over the edge.  This doesn’t feel random because my triggers are fairly specific.  My main triggers are music, but only very specific songs and albums that aren’t very popular anymore so I don’t usually hear them.  The last few days have been particularly bad.

Today on my Facebook feed a friend quoted a line from “Anna Begins” by the Counting Crows in her status.  It was so unexpected it took my breath away.  I was instantly transported back to the blue room with the white ceiling and I was swirling and floating away.  Pulling myself out of that kind of trapped dissociation is really difficult especially because lately that is when the memories roll out in waves.  They crash into me, knock me over, spin me around, and throw me to shore feeling battered and angry.  I suppose I should just be grateful I haven’t drowned.

He had a stereo in his room with a three disc CD changer.  Whenever we were in the room it was on and the discs cycled over and over.  One disc was August and Everything After, by the Counting Crows, the second was Candlebox, and either there wasn’t a third disc or I have completely repressed it.  I feel like I need to plainly say that we were never in his room unless we were having sex.  He was not allowed to have girls in his room, so we were only up there when his parents weren’t home.  Unfortunately that was pretty often.

Saturday nights were the worst.  His parents played cards with a group of friends and left for the night at about 8:30.  They didn’t usually come home until after 2:00.  My parents never expected me home before about 12:30 so that left about three and a half hours (we had to get dressed and he had to drive me home) where he expected me to prove that I loved him.  Why I stayed, why I tolerated it, why it all happened is such a very long and exhausting story – one half remembered, but coming back more and more lately.  I’ll get around to telling it, swear to God.  Mostly I was just very young, very scared, very vulnerable, and really looking for someone to love me.  I remember wondering why people called it making love when it was so terrifying and empty.

If anyone is reading this, do you have triggers?  Do you mind sharing?  Have you managed to conquer them?  How?  I’d really appreciate some perspective on this.

Everything to Everyone

When I look back it started off sweet enough, but now I’m 35 it’s 1:34 a.m. and I can’t sleep with my husband.  I play games on Facebook as I wait until my eyes get heavy enough to let sleep in and shut down my spinning, out of control, finally remembering brain and my body that hurts, hurts, hurts all the time.  If I believed in a god I might cry out to him for some relief or some justice.  Does relief feel like justice?  I wish I knew.

I’m getting ahead of myself, but that’s not unusual.  I never turn off.  I never relax.  I am a coiled spring on what remains of a state of the art machine.  I burned the candle at both ends.  I lived for other people.  I was rode hard and put away wet.  Can I throw any other bullshit lines out to describe it?  Sure can.  I was “Everything to Everyone.”  Thanks Everclear.

For being so smart I sure feel like a fool.  It all started in 1994.  Well, I was born in 1979 so you could say it started then, but everything sure went to shit when I started high school.  The cast of characters I met there could not have been more cliché and don’t deserve much of a place in this story other than to note that they drove me to date someone other.  Someone not from our school.  Someone who wasn’t a football player.  Someone I thought of for a long time as an escape.  An escape from the mean girls and jocks and my parents and perfection!  None of that lasted very long – he ended up as conniving as those girls, as demanding as those jocks, as moody as my father and perfection?  Oh yeah, that was expected too.  Change your shirt, you look like a slut.

I have PTSD, but the only war I’ve ever fought was psychological.  My father yelled, my boyfriend fucked, and I dissociated.   Remembering is hell.

Every potential title of this blog that I Googled yielded porn except for this one.  How fucked is that?  It’s now 2:49 a.m.  Welcome to my head.

Edited to add (1/23/14): shared on https://recoverybloggers.wordpress.com/