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.