part 24

The longest crying jag of my life started the day before I went into the hospital. My plan was to just go there for a couple of days, maybe the weekend, and then be back at school on Monday, which is when the fall semester was starting.

Yeah. No.

I don’t really remember much about when I first got to the hospital except crying. Jonny had taken me, and after I checked in, they wouldn’t let him go any further. I felt like I died, like my sternum turned into lead and crushed my insides. Then they took me to the place where I was staying.

It was nice there. The first thing I noticed, though, was the resemblance to the set of “Girl Interrupted,” starring Winona Rider, Angelina Jolie and the late Brittany Murphy. The nurse’s station was in the center of the ‘unit,’ and there was a little kitchen place, and then a very pretty courtyard.


There was also a long hallway, where the bedrooms were, down one end away from the nurse’s station, and a large living room/TV room and a smaller den-type room on the other.

All I wanted to do was find where my bed was and melt into it and just feel safe so that I could finally sob uncontrollably. I was utterly and completely exhausted with holding it back, and I was also very tired of holding it back. I was really glad I got my room alone for the first couple of nights so that I could weep over my broken heart in private.

I cried nonstop for three days. I’m not exaggerating. Actually, it might have even been four. I saved my gut-wrenching bouts for whenever I could be alone, but I had become a calmly and consistently flowing fountain the rest of the time. I carried around a box of Kleenex to soak up my tears and my snot. It was really horrible, but at the same time very, very freeing.

I thought I would write more about the hospital – I mean, it was a pretty interesting place, and I went through a lot there. Now I feel like I’m just invading my own privacy, and I don’t want to write any more details about the hospital. So I won’t. Because it’s my blog. And I can write whatever I want.

Actually, I really do not “want” to write all of this. It’s difficult to get it out of my brain, difficult to find words that can describe the experiences, and difficult to see what happened to me in words typed so concretely on a computer screen.

I do “want” to continue to recover and live my life, and writing has been fantastic for that, especially because people read it. Thank you readers!!!

So anyway, back to the mental hospital.

As I mentioned before, I had planned on staying only a few days (you know, to cry), and then going about my life. I ended up staying longer than that, and continued all kinds of therapeutic stuff after I was done there.

The hospital taught me some very important things. Probably the number one thing it taught me was that I could compartmentalize the shit raging in my brain in order to function on a basic level. There was so much very distressing imagery going through my mind, and so it was appropriate and effective to imagine that all of the bad stuff was a video playing on a TV in my head, and I could watch when I felt ok doing so, and I could hit the eject button at any time.

One of the most overwhelming and frightening things about the flashbacks – really, just about being consciously aware of what had happened to me as a child – is that I felt like it was in charge of what I was thinking. I was not able to think much about anything else, and that really scared me. One reason it scared me was because I was vividly recalling my pain and suffering almost continuously, and I didn’t think my brain could handle it.

Another reason it was so scary was because it was difficult to remember that I was not a little girl anymore, but a grown up with a beautiful family and home and dog and all of that other normal stuff that comprised my life.

I don’t mean that I would actually think I was no longer where I was – that I was in the past or anything. It was more like while being aware of what was around me, some part of my mind and body was back there in the past reliving horror. I was terrified pretty constantly.

Even when I learned how to “eject” the “tape” in my mind so that I could keep from getting too upset, my body was still remembering things. I started to twitch, mostly in my face and arms and legs, almost all the time and I didn’t have much control over that.

It was very strange having my body react so separately from my mind. I had never really even considered that this could be so. But it was – and that scared me, too. It helped to learn that it was ok for my body to have its own experiences independently of my conscious mind. I would notice that I would be violently shaking, or that my limbs ached terribly, or that I had hives, and I could just be like, “ok, the body is going through some stuff,” and not have to immediately figure out something specific as to why it was freaking out, and then attach it to something I could consciously comprehend.

For the first few months after going into the hospital (this was where I quit drinking, too), I would get really, really bad tension headaches. I had previously experienced the same headaches about 24 to 48 hours after I had decided not to drink anymore. They went away about an hour after I started drinking again, so I called them my “sober headaches.”

Since I was no longer drinking, these headaches were free to start in the morning, and then by the time I went to bed, they would be migraine-size. Ibuprofen and Tylenol couldn’t even touch them, and I wasn’t interested in even trying to get some oxycodone or Xanax – what would be the point of going through the pain of detoxing and getting used to life if I just used another addictive substance to cover it up?

So what happened was, I just had to get through the headaches. At this point in time, everything was something I just had to get through.

It was so horrible. It was a nightmare. It was one giant brain-fuck after another, relentlessly. I don’t think words could describe just how intensely crippling it was, especially during those first few months.

Even worse than the flashbacks were the times I would slip back into the mode of thinking and believing and knowing that my dad did not do these things to me, and then suddenly remember that he did.

Disbelief, pain, nausea, tears, terror, betrayal and horror would encompass me every time I re-remembered what my dad had done.

It was like having a wave crash over me, and just when I was finally able to get my face out of the water to breathe in some air, another one would hit me. Over and over and over and over.

A lot (A LOT) of therapy and other recovery work eventually got me to the point where that hardly ever happens, but it has taken years.

When I first started being aware that my dad sexually abused me, I only had little snippets of what had happened. I got to a point with that information that allowed me to feel like I could just breathe in and out again.

And then I would remember something worse, like how he raped me. And when I got a hold on that information, I remembered that he took me to other people so they could rape me, too. And when I got a hold of that information, I remembered that I had become pregnant from him raping me, and had an abortion. Each one of these new components would hit me just as hard as the initial knowledge that he had somehow molested me.

The list of new memories and new atrocities still goes on. I still get new information in this fashion, but it is much less frequent and much less intense. Instead of rocking every part of me, it just punches me in the stomach a little bit.

It was a good two solid years of the jack-in-the-box remembering before I felt like I didn’t always have to be on guard, waiting to get walloped again. I had gradually become aware of my state of mind that preceded new memories and flashbacks. I learned that I could get myself to a safe place and go ahead and let the memories come, and then it would be through.

I also was able to gradually – GRADUALLY – accept that there was going to be more stuff, even worse stuff that I would be remembering at some point in time. At first, I had assumed that one thing was the last, worst thing, and then I would remember another worse thing.

I kept trying to put a bookend on the memories, to encompass these experiences within some realm of my control. I felt that if I could just go ahead and remember everything, then I could go ahead and work through everything, and then I could have a normal life.

I hoped and prayed to remember it all. I was like, “BRING IT, DAMMIT!” in my mind. Someone told me to be careful for what I prayed for, because I would get it. I scoffed at this notion because at that time, I could not imagine anything more painful and frustrating than knowing that there was still more shit to come, but not knowing when or how bad it would be.

I got what I prayed for, although it is still an ongoing process. Now I know there are definitely worse things than knowing there was more shit to come, but not knowing when or how bad it would be.

Now I just let the memories take their time, and allow them to surface when it is time for them to surface, and not try to force it to happen.

When I know I am going to be remembering something else soon, I just try to enjoy whatever peace I have been able to accumulate in my mind while I can, and that is what helps me get through the bad stuff.