Part 20 (is it a tome yet?)

So. “2007: The Year of My Dad.”

Have you ever seen a movie or something on TV where someone is having a really bad dream, and then right before something really super bad is going to happen in the dream, there is kind of a quick tunnel-zoom thing that ends on the person’s very scared – but safely in bed – face? That’s pretty much all I’ve got as far as being able to describe what it feels like to wake up mid-panic-attack, so if you don’t what I’m talking about, you’ll just have to use your imagination.

The first time this happened to me was around the middle of 2007. I had spent the first half of the year going to school and drinking a lot and going out to the bar and socializing with other people who drank all the time and things of this nature. This is the time when my drinking began to consistently go from fun to embarrassing – even shameful.

My ability to just relax and have a drink had shriveled up long before this time, but I did my damnedest to bring it back. I had quit doing illegal drugs years before, and I could not bring myself to consider that as an alternative to drinking. After all, my drug days were certainly no better than what I was experiencing in 2007.

And I needed something to make it better, not worse.

I had accumulated quite a bit of guilt as a parent by this time, too. Even when I was not drinking, I was constantly and desperately searching for something to make my brain not feel the way it was feeling. As a result, time spent with my kids was not what I would consider “quality.”

In hindsight (the 20/20 kind), I had never really been able to be a mom in the way I thought I should be. I was never really able to have emotional interaction with my kids, or with anyone else for that matter. I felt very loving toward my kids – I have always felt this way, and I did my best to be a good mom.

However, my relationship with my kids now just feels more real – like I am actually able to fully participate in their lives, mentally, physically and emotionally. I have always loved my kids – a lot – but I have been finding myself just enjoying being with the people they are growing up to be. No matter how obnoxious they can be, they never cease to be simultaneously, absolutely delightful.

I’m sure this has a lot to do with the fact that they are growing up – my youngest is 8 years old, so I don’t have any babies in my house anymore. I’m sure it also has a lot to do with me growing up, too. Basically, my relationship with my kids is just one of the things I can be aware of today, and aware of how wonderful it is.

Focusing on gifts like my relationship with my kids is what makes all of the shit worth it. It has been something that has occurred slowly, and I am not a big fan of delayed gratification. However, from day one of this process, I have been able to stop and look back at how I was when I first went in to the hospital and see that things are better.

I have actually had to do that a lot – stop and look back at where I was yesterday, or last year, or an hour ago, or whenever, and compare it to where I am now in order to get some perspective on the benefits of going through this hellish bowl of shit that is recovery from child sexual abuse and from alcoholism and from addiction and on and on and on.

Because how I felt at any given moment, especially for the first couple of years of recovery, was crushing. It is easy to drown in that kind of pain, and I often thought that I might.

But I didn’t.

One evening after school, or therapy, or a meeting, or something like that, I pulled into the driveway and got out of my car and just stood there – I could not figure out what to do next. I was stuck right there, completely overwhelmed by pain and by grief and by just being aware of what is actually going on around me at every fucking second.

Being present in the world is exhausting. Having avoided doing so for much of my life, beginning the process of living was horrible. It required removing of all of those protective layers – dissociating, anger, alcohol, food, drugs, paying way too much attention to other people’s lives – there are a lot of ways to buffer myself from real life.

And I had to strip all those ways off.

It felt like ripping a callous off of my hand – that skin had gotten thicker and harder and darker, and if I touched it, I could feel less and less sensation through it. It was tough and dead and it kept me from constantly feeling pain on that particular spot on my hand.

In continuing with this analogy, I will have to say that the callous got too big and thick for me to even feel anything or do anything with my hand. The only way to get around that was by ripping the whole thing off, down to the newest and thinnest layers of skin possible before actually removing chunks of living flesh.

And then the callous is gone – and my hand hurts like a motherfucker.

I have also compared this experience to what it must feel like to have all of my skin burned off, and then go out and walk around in the sun and wind and germs without anything protecting my body or my mind. Actually, this was the exact sensation I was experiencing when I pulled into the driveway that night and couldn’t move.

It just hurt so bad – so, so bad – and I was completely and utterly exhausted. My internal dialogue was something like this: “I…I…I don’t…I can’t…I don’t…I…I…eh…I…” – paralyzed. I couldn’t even form a complete recognizable thought that made any sense at all. The only thing I could feel was the real fucking world and everything that was in it and how it was all trying to consume me at once and I had no way of stopping it.

The ways I had stopped it before were no longer available to me – it is true that I could have very easily gone about one mile down the street to the liquor store and got a bottle of anything and jumped into it – and may be that could do the trick. But I knew it would only do the trick for a few hours, at the most, and I would probably just end up crying and drinking into a very brief reprieve of oblivion.

And I had already been through so, so, so much – all of the things I started out intending to write about in this post. I could not bear the thought of doing it all again, and I could not bear the thought of throwing away everything and everyone I loved and who loved me in order to check out for a few hours.

So I was just stuck there, on the driveway.

And then I remembered something that I told other people all the time – just keep putting one foot in front of the other. For some reason, I was miraculously able to apply that simple and healthy logic to myself. I thought, “Oh.” Seriously, that’s what I thought: “oh.” And then I put one foot in front of the other, and then I did it again, and again, and again, until I was all the way in my house.

And then I was home, safe and sound. And that day could end by my going to sleep in my bed. And then that would be another day I had gotten through.

Just getting through the days has really been the toughest thing to do – no matter how hard I try, I cannot make the healing that only comes with the passage of time speed up. Utter helplessness on the whole time front – time is my nemesis. But I have learned to do other things to make the time pass less painfully, and eventually, pass even joyfully.

And look at that – I have yet again avoided talking about what it was like to be where I was after I started remembering that my dad sexually abused me, and before I was safe in the hospital learning how to deal with it.

I guess I just needed to remind myself of how I got through it, of how I still get through it, and of just some of the beauty I am able to breathe in and out every day I am alive as a result of fighting for my own recovery.

part 19

2006 was the “year of the rape.” That second flashback that I didn’t want to talk about in my last post was about when I was raped by …I guess you could say “an acquaintance” – when I was 15. I spoke of this in one of my first posts – I don’t want to go over it again, but if you can’t remember what I am talking about and want to be refreshed, here is a link to that previous post:
http://rayannsbadassbullshit.blogspot.com/2010/05/laying-it-all-out-there-part-3.html

So anyway, that second flashback about “that really shitty thing that guy did to me that time when I was 15” was confusing for me, because I had not considered what he had done as “rape.” I knew that he had hurt me, I knew that I was very angry about it, and I knew that he carried some culpability because I had told him “no” over and over again. Even I, in my naïve delusions, could not deny that if someone says “no” over and over again, it means the other person shouldn’t do whatever it is they are doing.

But I still had not considered it “rape,” not for a single second – and then I had this flashback and started going to therapy. Before I got to an actual therapist, I did an intake interview, or an assessment, or whatever, and in the process repeated the story of the flashbacks a number of times. Each of these times the person asking me questions about it referred to that incident as “the rape.” I may have corrected one of them once or twice – I explained it was more of an “assault,” but by the time I got to an actual therapist and SHE called it a rape, I brought up my confusion.

I told the therapist that people I had spoken with kept referring to the incident as a “rape,” as she also did, and I wanted to know what that was about. Did she think what happened to me was rape?

Yes. Yes, she did.

That really knocked me on my ass. I went from considering this incident as …well, an “incident,” for fifteen years, and now all of a sudden I am a victim of rape. It was horrifying. I really didn’t accept what the therapist had said was rape, and I looked up the definition of rape in the dictionary and then I looked up how it is defined in the law – in several different states.

According to these reference materials I considered valid, what happened to me was, in fact, “rape.” According to various mental health professionals, what happened to me was also, in fact, “rape.”

Oh my god – just flat on my ass.

I don’t know if I can accurately convey how it felt. It was a feeling I experienced repeatedly over the next few years. It is kind of like walking along, minding your own business, and then all of sudden your blood is replaced with cement. It just felt so HEAVY. I could not even consider how I felt about feeling this way, because I was completely knocked on my ass.

There was a lot of confusion and anger in the following days and weeks and months, and then finally, for an entire year – hence the categorization of the year 2006 as the “year of the rape.”

At first, I was just very stunned at the idea that I had been raped – fifteen years after it actually happened. I had to redefine myself as someone this had happened to. Before that, I was someone who could only imagine the horror of rape, and be very empathetic to those who had been victimized in such a way. But then, all of a sudden, I was someone who had been raped.

It may seem like I am going over and over the same points in this description of my experience, but that is how it was in my brain. Just around and around and around, searching for ways to make it not so.

During 2006, I experienced a lot of the symptoms a rape victim experiences. I was very, very, very angry; I had an instant distrust of any male, no matter who it was or how long I had known them; for months, it was very difficult for me to think of anything other than the rape and everything that went with it. I wanted desperately to point my car toward the ocean and not stop till I got there – just run away. I wanted so badly to run away. I didn’t know what running away would accomplish exactly, but that is what my brain and my body were telling me to do.

I am having a hard time writing this post. I am shaking and nauseous and my whole body is tense. Recognizing how I am physically feeling, though, in response to the subject matter, is actually a good thing. Knowing that I am right here, right now, and that no one is going to hurt me right here and right now, and being aware of the sounds of construction equipment and a train whistle in distance – all of that lets me know that I am “grounded.”

It is a very therapeutic word, but a very important one. I have a dissociative disorder, which often accompanies Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Maybe I have tried to explain it before – I don’t remember. Some words often used to describe a state of dissociation are: disconnected, separate, surreal, apart, away, distanced. I’m sure anyone could recognize a pattern emerging in those words – they basically mean that even though a person is physically present somewhere, they are not necessarily mentally connected to what is going on around them.

I don’t like the words or phrases that attempt to describe a dissociative state. They do not convey what it feels like. Some of you may have already seen the five minute film I did – it’s called “dissociation.” I felt really good about that short film because it was the first time I felt like I was able to communicate what it felt like to be in my head. I cannot stress enough that for a long time these feelings are CONSTANT, and very difficult to get around in order to go about the ordinary tasks people do every day to take care of themselves.

I am much better today, after A LOT of therapy, but I still have flashbacks every now and then – just had some pretty vivid ones yesterday. However, when I was first experiencing what it felt like to be a rape victim – in 2006 – I had no idea how much worse it would get long before it got better.

The word “rape” repeated over and over in my head, regardless of what I was doing. I went from being able to tell myself I was consciously having a drink (and another and another) every night to a state of mind in which my body moved itself to get the vodka and make the drink and drink it and do it all over again, every night, until I had cried myself to utter exhaustion and could sleep, or just pass out. Actually, it was both of those things – crying and passing out - every night. EVERY NIGHT. For MONTHS. (I have been told that people live like this for decades, completely at the mercy of alcohol, or whatever else is helping them to get as far away as possible from what is real.)

Dealing with the rape was a hellish nightmare. Once I was able to basically function on some level of normalcy (a process that took months), I took a break from therapy. It was exhausting, and I was all therapy –ed out. I went about six months of no therapy, just resting up, because I knew that the rape was not all that was going to emerge in my brain and my body and my very being.

There was still that first flash back that I had not addressed in any way – the one involving my dad. There was still my dad. Although up to this point he would come up occasionally in therapy, I had very effectively taken that can of worms and put it up on a shelf. Doing so allowed me to deal with the rape and to process that trauma and I guess to practice what it felt like to live in hell before I actually became a long-term resident.

2007 was the “year of my dad.”

Part 18

About a year before I first starting remembering that my dad sexually abused me, I joined a research study that was looking at forms of therapy for fear of public speaking. I think I joined the study either during or right after my first semester at Georgia State.

I was terrified of speaking in public. I was also terrified of dancing in public, and of singing in public. I was frustrated at how this fear interfered with my ability to do well on assignments and presentations, and prevented me from just kicking back and having fun at a wedding or a karaoke bar.

I had not always been so afraid of public speaking. I remember giving book reports and speeches and stuff in elementary school, and even as a freshman in high school. While I did not particularly like it, I was definitely not terrified to the point of immobility.

The first time I really, seriously bombed a speech was when I was a sophomore in high school. It was in history class. It was really strange – I had not expected to feel that scared about getting in front of a group of people I had known for pretty much my entire life.

However, when I did get up there to do my speech, I started shaking and couldn’t get my breath and could hardly stand to see the faces of the people looking at me. I didn’t really know what I thought was going to happen, but it was really bad, whatever it was.

The speech was supposed to be three minutes (or something like that), and I had practiced doing it really slowly and clearly so that it would go it would last the minimum time. When I got up to actually deliver it, I pretty much just huffed it out all in one breath.

I remember the people in my class seemed to be embarrassed for me, and the teacher looked at me strangely, too. But no one said anything and I just sat down and waited for enough seconds to pass for me to feel like I could breathe again. It sucked.

I was absolutely terrified of any public speaking after that. I also would not sing, even in small groups – not even “Happy Birthday,” except for when I was by myself in my car and the volume on the stereo was turned up really loud. Then I would sing like my life depended on it.

I eventually got to the point where I would sing when one of a select few people were in the car with me, like my kid or my mom. It was awesome – still is; singing my guts out speeding down the interstate…ahhhh.

But not so much in front of other people.

It has just occurred to me that the events I experienced at that age (around 15 years old) were likely contributing factors to my intense anxiety about public speaking – and about a lot of other things. Making these kinds of connections between what happened to me and the various ways my life was inhibited reminds me of how much I have been through. It also reminds me that what happened to me was really, truly, horrendous.

It may seem obvious to some that what happened to me was horrendous, but it has taken me a long time to even accept what happened, let alone make a logical assessment of it. It was especially difficult when I first started remembering these things and did not have any way to put them into any kind of context.

The public speaking study really helped me a lot – I use what I learned there every day, and am much more comfortable speaking in public. However, at the last session of the public speaking therapy, I was supposed to sing a song in front of the other people in the group. I guess it was kind of my graduation thing.

I decided to sing “Itsy bitsy spider,” because I have always sung that a lot to my kids when they were babies. I sang it the one time, and then the facilitator asked me to sing it over and over again for a whole minute (maybe it was two minutes – I don’t remember). I couldn’t do it – I just froze.

The facilitator could plainly see that I was having trouble, and she asked me if I was ok. She wanted me to say out loud what I was feeling, but I couldn’t even do that. She asked me if I was afraid, and some other things, and then asked me if I felt humiliated.

The word “humiliated” triggered my first flashback, right there in front of the group. It was only for a second, but what happened in my mind was that I was five and in the back yard and my dad had a campfire going and our neighbor was there. My dad wanted me to sing for the neighbor while he (my dad) played his guitar.

That’s it. That’s all it was. It scared the ever-living shit out of me.

I ran out of the room and into the bathroom because I had started crying and couldn’t stop, and for some reason am incredibly sensitive about crying in front of other people (yeah, yeah, analyze THAT). I was able to calm down a bit in the bathroom, then returned to the group.

It was awkward and weird.

At that time, I was still drinking. I went home and jumped into a bottle of vodka.

Within a few days, I had another flashback, this time at home - I don’t want to talk about it. But after that I knew I needed help. I’m a psychology major, for fuck’s sake – I knew flashbacks didn’t just happen for no reason. I also knew they usually happened as a result of really bad things that happened to a person in the past – distant past, recent past, any part of the past.

As terrified as I was about what could be buried in my brain, having the flashbacks was the first time I could connect my current self to bad things from the past. There are soooooo many other things that are sooooo obviously triggered from my past. For example, I really do not like it when someone grabs either one of my wrists. It could just be one of the kids, even when they were little, and it really bothers me.

Before all of this though, I attributed the whole wrist thing to carpel tunnel and weak bones. I just thought my wrists were jacked. That is how I dealt with stuff like that – there was quite a bit of it, in retrospect.

Anyway, the flashbacks were something I was unable to explain as anything other than trauma. I didn’t really know what trauma, just that it was bad. And so I couldn’t deny it anymore. I needed help. Mental help.

I didn’t have any insurance, and so previously had written off counseling as not a high enough priority to spend money on. As a student, though, I had access to counseling services at the university, and didn’t have to pay for it.

Between the flashbacks and the resources so readily available to me, it was evident that it was time to start. Start what, exactly, I didn’t really know. I just knew that it was going to suck. Really, really bad.

And it really, really has.

Right now, today, I am doing really, really well- but that first flashback – and my willingness to address it - was the beginning of a long and tortuous process that I will probably be going through for the rest of my life.

Part 17

Even before I started remembering the sexual abuse, I had in my mind this idea that my dad was a really big jerk who, at the very least, psychologically abused me. I knew that I had “issues” concerning him, and that one day I would probably have to deal with them.

At that time, it had been a few years since I had last spoken with him. I struggled with my desire to reinstate communication with him – it was so much easier to not have any contact with him, but before all of the memories, I still really yearned for that relationship with him that had never really existed anywhere other than my in mind. I wanted my dad.

The last time I saw my dad was about this time of year, I think in 2003. I was working at the bookstore in the café, and he was in town with his wife and her daughter. I don’t know why he was there. I seriously doubt it was just to visit with me.

Anyway, Jonah was a baby and Wes was about 8. We all went out to dinner with him – Me, Jonny and the kids. His wife and her daughter were there, too. My dad seemed very excited about and interested in Wesley. I don’t remember him ever actually acknowledging that I had another son.

It was weird seeing him interact with Wes – it really stirred up a lot of feelings I had as a child, of what it felt like to glow in that warmth. My dad could be the warmest person in the whole world, or at least make you believe he was. My reaction to the way he was with Wes was a mixture of pride and fear. I was proud of my son, that my dad could love him like that, but I was also very guarded about their contact.

I don’t even know if I was aware of that at the time, but I remember the feeling clearly, and I can identify it now as fear and protectiveness for my son.

Anyway, we had dinner that night. It might have been the next day that he was leaving to go back to New Jersey, which is where he lived at the time with his new family. He stopped by to say goodbye – I wasn’t expecting him, but my brother was at my house, too – I think he was expecting my dad to stop by there. I’m not really sure.

Regardless, I was irritated because I had just gotten Jonah to go down for a nap and I was running late for work.

When my dad rang the doorbell, the dog started barking like crazy, and I was afraid she would wake Jonah. I opened the door a crack and told my dad I couldn’t let him in because of the dog and the sleeping baby, but if he would just wait, I would be done getting ready for work in a few minutes.

I went upstairs to finish getting ready, and I could hear people in the back yard. I could hear my brother and Wesley and Jonny, and maybe I assumed my dad was out there, too, because my brother’s voice sounds a lot like his.

After I got ready to go, I went out back to tell my dad goodbye. He was already gone. I was crushed.

I tried to keep the tears from falling out of my eyes, but a couple slipped out anyway. Jonny asked if I was okay, and I told him I was just really surprised that my dad would just leave like that – it really shocked me.

In retrospect, I don’t know why I would be so shocked when he did things like that. I mean, he is really a tremendous jerk. But still, I was very stung.

I tried to keep my tears under control and went to work, but when I got there I couldn’t stop crying. I let the manager know I needed a few minutes, and I went and sat out behind the building and smoked cigarettes and cried. I didn’t know what to do – it was just so heavy, that pain.

After a few minutes, the manager came out there to see if I was ok. I don’t remember what she said, but she hung out with me for a little bit, and I felt a lot better after that. I went to work and did what I do really well – just kept going.

In the days following, I considered calling my dad and letting him know how hurt I was by the way he left. I knew, though, that he wouldn’t give a flying fuck, and so I didn’t even want to make the effort. But a friend of mine told me that it wasn’t about him, it was about me and I should call him if it would make me feel better.

That was a very enlightening proposition, so I considered it awhile, and then called him.

I asked him why he left my house like that. He said he couldn’t believe that I would treat him that way in front of “his girls.” He was telling me that I treated him so badly by asking him to wait outside for me at my house that he was embarrassed in front of his new wife and daughter.

I couldn’t believe it – again, why I kept getting so shocked by his shitty behavior is beyond me, but that’s what happened.

I remember distinctly having the thought that he used to call my mom and my sister and I “his girls,” and then I got really mad and asked him how “his girls” would feel if they knew the things he had done to his own flesh and blood.

The things I was talking about were the things still in my conscious memory – the way he treated us as kids, the things he had done to us not so long before that in the midst of his divorce from my mom. Just being an overall jerk.

But he didn’t know that’s all I was talking about.

I don’t remember who hung up on whom, but by that time, we were both done with that conversation.

He called a few weeks later to see what he should send Wes for his birthday (which he had never done before), and that brief, awkward and cold conversation was the last one I’ve had with him.

He never sent Wes a present. I mean, I hadn’t been holding out any hopes for that and hadn’t told Wes he was going to be getting something from my dad, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. Just another testimony to his epic shittiness as a person, a father, and a grandfather.

I found out years later that he had called my sister soon after that, and that although he’d had no contact with her in a couple of years, all he wanted to know was exactly what I had told people about his visit and our conversation.

I found it strange at the time, but knowing consciously what I know now, it makes me smile to think he may have been afraid that I was telling people about all of those things he did to me.

I am feeling pretty good right now knowing that even though he is still out there living his life, we both know what he has done, and it is so incredibly empowering for me to be telling it all to the world now.

Blogs and the internet are awesome.