part 29

***TRIGGER WARNING***


I have been having very vivid and graphic flashbacks this past week. I mean, I guess flashbacks are always vivid, but for me they have mostly been … flashes. Very quick images in my head, or a sound, or a phrase, or a facial expression, or other things.

Lately, and especially this past week, I am having prolonged memories/flashbacks. After three and a half years of consistent flashbacks, I still really do not like them. However, I feel that the recent longer and more vivid and specific flashbacks are an indicator of my progress in getting better.

When I first started getting flashbacks, they were mostly still pictures in my head. They would bring me back to one single moment of one incident, and it felt like someone slapping the ever-living shit out of me. They were absolutely terrifying, primarily because I didn’t know what I was dealing with.

I mean, I knew I was dealing with flashbacks of abuse, but I did not know how bad the abuse had been, or how horrific specific events were. Apparently, dissociative amnesia is a very, very thorough condition.

I believe I mentioned before that I have been remembering in increments of escalating levels of trauma; once I figured out that was how it was happening, I became incredibly anxious all of the time, wondering, “what’s next?”

I began to group the flashbacks and memories together, and assign a major “theme” to each group. For example, when I first remembered that my dad had molested me, that was my only group to think about: “my dad molested me.”

But then I remembered he raped me, and that became a separate group: “my dad raped me.” And then I remembered he took me to other people to let them rape me and do other things to me, and that became a separate group: “my dad let other people molest and rape me.” The realization of the abortion was an especially difficult group to encounter: “my dad raped me and I got pregnant and had an abortion.”

Those are not all of the groups, but hopefully I am getting my point across.

After these groups are established, any following memories or flashbacks can be assigned to the applicable group. I can have a flashback, and if it can be placed in one of the already-created groups, then it is easier for me to accept.

I will have a flashback, or memory, or whatever, and I will think about what it was and how it could be categorized. If I had flashbacks about times my dad had molested me, then that was something I had already established as real, and I could accept those flashbacks and memories easier because they were just additional information about something I already knew happened: “my dad molested me.”

I really do hope I am making some sort of sense, because I have never tried to describe how this process works in my mind to anyone else (which seems strange, as I am very intimately familiar with it by this time).

During these years of remembering all of the things that had happened to me, I have been going to therapy and working really hard to get to a place where the acceptance of what was real and what happened to me would not knock me on my ass every time something new came up. I learned how to compartmentalize thoughts and memories and subjects into one of the groups.

In my head, each group is a giant box – some are smaller than others, but they are all giant. When something comes up for a particular group, I can throw it into the appropriate box. If the box is one I have been aware of for a longer time, I can usually just process that memory and it feels like a heavy pain that I allow to just flow right through me, and then it settles in its box.

If something comes up that is in one of the more recently discovered boxes, or in one of the biggest giant boxes, I have gotten to the point where I can stop and think about where I am at that moment. Am I in my car driving? Am I hanging out with my kids? Am I taking an exam at school? Am I around people I trust? Am I around people I do not trust?

I ask myself all of the questions so that I can assess whether or not it is an appropriate time to deal with the bigger giant box issues. If I am watching one of my kids in a program at their school, I can say, “okay, this one just has to go into the box for later, because I am focusing on how awesome my kid is and how I love being his mom, and this memory has no place in this moment in time.”

If I am in a group of people I am not very familiar with, and I remember a bigger giant box issue, I think to myself that I can just toss that one into the box without much consideration at all, because I do not feel safe in where I am at the present moment and I don’t even want to bother thinking about it right then.

Usually, I will be fairly continuously aware that there is a new piece of big information that I have sitting in that box, but it is not nearly as distressing as it would be out of the box and in the front of my mind.

Over the next few hours, or days, or weeks, or months, I will continue to assess my present surroundings and circumstances until that issue pops up during a time I can handle it. I can best handle the big issues in my room, sitting on my bed, or while I am in my car. I don’t know why these are the places I feel safest, but they are.

Once I am in the safe place, I can open the bigger giant box and look at what is new in there. I keep reminding myself that I am right here, right now. I look around and see my familiar surroundings. I check to see if there is anything happening in my life right now that may interfere with my ability to process the new information.

For example, am I going to the dentist that afternoon? If I am, I will just have to wait until after that and look in the box the next time I am in a safe space. This is because the dentist office is a very stressful place for me to be, and I don’t want to get overloaded by thinking of too many stressful things at one time.

When I have determined that I am in a safe space, that I am alone and no one will see me or interrupt my remembering, and that the parts of my day surrounding that moment are fairly easy to deal with, I can sit back and take it out of the box and take a big breath and look at it.

I will take that initial flash that got dumped immediately into the box and let it continue to unravel. I can see what happened in my mind, and feel what happened in my body, and hear what happened in my ears, all the while being aware that I am not at that place at that time.

I am safe and I am in the present. I am in a good state of mind. It is okay for those memories and realizations to surface.

And they do. And it is very painful to have these experiences, but I know they are not going leave the front of my mind if I don’t do this. And it doesn’t feel like they are going to kill me or rip out my soul.

I would like to point out that this has been a difficult process to learn. The flashbacks were so overwhelming at first that I did not think I could do anything to keep them away from me. I would be afraid something would come out while I was in the grocery store or something, and I would melt into a puddle of crazy onto the floor in front of dozens of people, and also probably with a security camera catching it all.

I would think about what these people would think, and of the security guards playing the tape over and over again, and of the police being called, and an ambulance coming and taking me away, and how was I going to pay for the place they take me, let alone pay for the ambulance ride?

It was just safer to stay home. I have done a lot of staying home. That is called “agoraphobia.”

Agoraphobia is just one of the ways these memories and realizations have interfered with or completely prevented me from living my life.

That’s why I have worked so hard to get better – it was shitty enough that all of these things happened to me in the first place, but I will be damned if I let them continue to harm and cripple me for the rest of my life.

And it really has been hard. And excruciatingly slow.

But while I have been getting these bigger giant box memories this past week – even a new giant box memory – I am able to go about my business.

Last night on my way home from school, I was letting the big memories come out and softening the blow by blasting LCD Sound System as loud as my little speakers would allow. I drove in the right lane and stopped focusing on how all of the other cars were in my way, and just drove at a calm pace that was comfortable for me.

The memories were really, really intense, and by the time I pulled into the driveway, I was exhausted. But I had also been working on a plan to get myself out of the misery and pain once I got home. I decided I would go inside and ask Jonny if he would take me to Target, because I like Jonny, and I like Target.

But then I did something I had never done before – when I told Jonny I had been having rough memories, I didn’t just leave it there like I have always done. I have always felt that all I need to do is say, “I’ve been having rough memories,” and everyone would stop and be sensitive and kind and loving and calm and quiet.

Last night it occurred to me that Jonny might not even know what “having rough memories” was like at all. So I told him.

Telling him how scary it is for me to remember stuff and how it affects me was only slightly less scary than what the memories were themselves.

But I did it. And we hung out for a bit, and then he took me to Target (I know they are a horrible corporation that supports values conflicting with what I believe to be right and just, but I mean just the smell of the place puts me at ease sooo quickly that I have a really tough time boycotting them).

I felt loved and safe. I told Jonny I felt loved and safe, and that I appreciated him being there for me. And I slept really, really well last night. And I feel not so afraid today.

So yeah, a lot of work and a lot of time, but my life is mine and I am learning to love it and enjoy it. I have been relieved to find that loving and enjoying my life are states of mind so rewarding that I can easily say all of the hard work has been totally worth it.