Tags
Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Daddy, depression, desperation, estranged, fear, hopes, loveless, Mother, nostalgia, parent issues, Therapy, trauma, unacceptable
I fell deeper into that pit of despair a few weeks ago when my daughter reached out to me because her boyfriend had roughed her up. Previously, I had thought I had already hit the bottom of that pitiful pit. True to my inability to fully accept that it can always get worse (which I never seem able to let penetrate my mind), I’d enjoyed (for lack of a better word) the belief and feeling that at least I had hit the bottom of the misery pit. That provides some relief in itself. As I lie there on that cold hard scratchy floor from several different drops lower and lower over the years, I breathed a sigh of relief that although it was miserable and I was confused and terrorized from the various drops, I could breathe that I was, at last, on the actual bottom. There could be no more sudden shocks as that floor disintegrated and I fell another story or two or twelve down the pit.
What a false sense of desperate relief! More was to come as my daughter dangled the carrot of hope in my face…inches from my mouth…so close my mouth watered at the thought that I might actually get to taste this carrot of her love again.
As I scrambled, crawled, and begged for the dangling carrot of my daughters love and presence, I stumbled upon a thin part of the floor of my misery which broke it open. I tumbled further down the Rabbit Hole of despair and confused bewilderment.
For several days, I simply plotted my death. Desperate for the final solution to end this pain and prevent the possibility of more carrot dangling in the future, I had the answer, but not the sure-proof means and this is one thing in my life I simply cannot allow failure.
Without the means, I reached out for help. I started taking antidepressants again after nearly a year free of them and I went to a local domestic violence shelter that provides free counseling. It took some pleading and finagling to talk them out of calling an ambulance to have me scurried to the hospital and admitted, but I did it! In exchange, I agreed to try counseling (sigh….again).
Today will be my 2nd appointment. My task given at session #1 was to find the one trauma point from which to begin this trauma treatment: a pivotal point, if you will.
In terror as though my life depends on it (no pun intended), my brain has scrambled for a week trying to select the point from which to begin this process. It’s as though I have one bullet to hit the moving target.
Was it when my daddy went on vacation and only his dead body returned?
Was it when I was gang raped at 17? Or raped at gunpoint again later at 31?
Was it from the beginning, any number of soul-injustices and spirit-murders I endured at her hand in my first 26 years of life?
Was it when my ex abused me mentally, emotionally and physically while I carried our first child only to add more abuse after she was born? Or when he cheated over and over and then yelled at me for asking questions? Was it when he spit on me and our infant daughter when I asked him what a receipt was for when I was reconciling our checking account? Was it that moment I held her nursing and he looked me cold in the eye and said, “I’m on a downward spiral. You and Lexi can come along or get the fuck out?”
Was it the moment my beloved oldest child attacked me verbally after my dad died and fabricated the ugliest lies I could imagine to set me up for her plan with my ex and my mother to destroy me once and for all?
Was it when I lost the only man I’d ever loved other than my father and yet he strung me along for years afterward declaring his undying can’t-live-without-you-love until I’d believe him finally and then he’d take it back again?
Was it when I was molested by the janitor at my elementary school? Or when my babysitter Marcy molested me repeatedly a few years later, but I didn’t understand it was molestation because she was a female?
Was it when I trusted my ex enough to move our children across the country to make his life and relationship with his children easier only to watch him break their hearts in the very ways I thought I had protected them from?
Or when he stole our home and tried to make us homeless by threatening my dad not to help us to punish me for not accepting him breaking our children’s hearts every day? Was it when I listened to my children sob in depths I had never before had to sit helplessly and watch over this cruelty from their dad? My heart ripping and the first time I felt rage in my life?
Was it when I was 2 months pregnant with my youngest daughter and suffered a massive stroke and told I’d never walk or work a job again on my own or be able to raise my babies on our own? Being too ashamed to take a shit because I was mortified at the thought of someone having to wipe my ass for me at 28 years old? Or that the prognosis given at the time destroyed my every idea of being a momma as well as lynched my independence and autonomy?
Was it two years ago when I spent 40 thousand dollars in court pleading my ex for a visit with the children I had raised alone for 15 years only to be granted the right , fly across the country, and was told (in so many words) by my oldest and youngest to fuck off because they changed their mind when I brought up a promise Lexi had made to my dad, her papa, about piercing her face?
When was the pivotal point of trauma from which I haven’t returned or recovered?