part 42

So still doing really well on the whole dead-dad front.

These are the things I have specifically found much easier and – gasp! – pleasant to do since I found out the bastard bit it:

-        Be awake

-        Fall asleep

-        Stay asleep

-        Wake up

-        Get dressed

-        Take a shower

-        Brush my teeth

-        Wear makeup

-        Clean stuff

-        Be affectionate with my husband and kids (that’s a HUGE one)

-        Homework

-        Help the kids with homework

-        Relax

-        Stop obsessively reading the news online

-        Smile

-        Laugh

-        Snuggle

-        Be around strangers

-        Talk to people I’m not totally comfortable with

-        Plan tasks and then do them

-        Eat

-        Breathe

-        Run errands

-        Mail the bills

-        Stand in front of a window at night and not be scared someone with malicious intentions is watching me

-        Be inside the house alone for more than two minutes without the front door locked

-        Write

-        Put my laundry away

-        Appreciate my husband for doing my laundry

-        Appreciate my husband in general

-        Have warm and positive feelings for others

-        Stop yelling (so much)

-        Just hang out and live

Some things on that list may seem trite, but they are all things I have struggled with every day, and sometimes every moment. I also know there are a lot more things that have gotten much easier since my dad died, but I don’t feel like thinking of any more to add to this list right now. However, I can say that I have never felt the simplicity of going about living life the way I have for the past two weeks.

It has REALLY been nice.

I used to fantasize about my dad being dead. It made the fact that he was alive a little easier to live with. I would wonder how I would find out that he died. I would wonder if I would be upset. I would wonder if I would go to his funeral. I would wonder if I could get away with peeing on his grave without getting arrested.

I have written his eulogy over and over and over in my head. I have delivered it over and over and over in my head as well. I have imagined what his grave stone would look like, and what we would have engraved there.

Sometimes I would think that I would not even go to his funeral – it would be all the way across the country, and it just wouldn’t be worth the hassle. Other times I imagined attending and delivering the eulogy (which would not have been very complimentary), and wondering if anyone else would show up. I thought maybe his wife and her daughter might show up, but I didn’t know if anyone else would.

Sometimes I would imagine what I would do if he had left me anything in his will. Would I want to have it? What if it was a giant chunk of money? What if it was something that he kept from when I was a baby, something that he could take out and look at every now and then and remember that I am his daughter?

I already knew that he didn’t have any money, and if he did, he probably would not leave it to me. I would have been more shocked if he had kept a memento of any love he ever had for me than I would have been if he’d made me the sole beneficiary of a million dollar life insurance policy.

Something like a memento would have been all it took for me to feel any pain about losing my dad. It would have given me a little glimmer of hope that he did love me, and that he kept loving me until he died. It would have shown me that some part of me was important to him.

That little glimmer of hope bound me to that man like melded steel for almost my entire life. No matter how shitty he was, or how evil he was, or how cold he was, I held onto that little glimmer of hope that he somehow, somewhere deep inside of him, felt love for me. If he had, it wouldn’t have mattered what he had ever done to me or anyone else - I would have loved him and mourned him and done all the other things most people do when their dad dies.

He didn’t leave any mementos, though. He didn’t even leave a will – nothing. And there was nothing real in my life with him that could have in any way fulfilled that hope of him loving me in some way – it simply does not exist.

But that is all it would have taken for me to be sad now that he is gone. I wonder if he knew that, or if he even cared. I wonder if parents realize how much they mean to their children, no matter what they have said or done or not said or not done. The love of a parent, completely regardless of any situation, is always a blessing to a child, completely regardless of that child’s age.

I know that no matter how much I fuck up, or do things that hurt my kids, I always know it is never too late to keep trying to do the best that I can. I know that my child will never one day turn from me with no love in his heart, and with no desire for me to love him back.

The reason I know that is because my dad is a monster, but I still love him, and I still wish he loved me, too.

Sometimes, before he was dead, I would close my eyes and try to believe he was already dead, just to see how it would feel. I could imagine it, but I could not fully let go of that constant fear long enough to even get a second of what peace or pain his death might bring to me.

I feel it now. It is amazing. It is like a fairytale, like there has been a cold, heavy, dark sheet of metal that some bad wizard guy put inside my skin when I was born, and it has been really tight around my rib cage and my heart for my whole life, and I have just always been wondering if I will ever be free – and now I’m free.

I mean, wow. WOW.

As it happened, I didn’t have to make any decisions about the funeral or eulogy or anything else. There was no funeral, there was no eulogy, there is no grave – there wasn’t even an obituary. Some people find that in itself to be tragic and terribly sad.

I just think that is what happens when you have been a monster for your whole life. I feel it is just like anything else that is obvious and predictable: if you have unprotected sex over and over again with a lot of different people, you will inevitably get some kind of disease; if you keep doing heroin, you are inevitably going to die of an overdose; if you keep banging your head against a wall all day long, you’re inevitably going to have a headache.

If you’ve been a monster for your whole life, no one will be sad when you’re gone.

part 41

Imagine walking to your car. Just as you reach for the handle to open the door, someone jumps out and beats the shit out of you. After that, they leave you alone and you go on home. The next day, you are pretty jumpy when you go to your car, but nothing bad happens.

The third day, you are still kind of jumpy, but not as much as the day before. You reach for your door handle and someone jumps out and beats the shit out of you. The same thing happens the next day.

Circumstances have mandated your actions, and you have no choice and no alternative but to approach your car in the same way every day after work. No matter how beaten up you already are, or how hard you try to make yourself prepared, that person keeps jumping out and beating the shit out of you.

Then the weekend comes – a reprieve from walking to your car after work. So are the beatings of the previous week gone from your mind? Probably not. Also, someone has beaten the shit out of you three times in the past week – you have some healing to do.

By Monday, you are feeling a bit stronger, but the idea of going to work is very stressful because of the idea of getting the shit beaten out of you again when you go to your car that afternoon. There is a chance it could happen again, and there is a chance it will never happen again. You are still in a lot of pain from the previous week's beatings and the idea of those injuries recurring, or of getting newer injuries in other places, is very close to unbearable.

You try to rationalize  - you don’t know for sure that someone is going to beat the shit out of you, so you decide to go to work. But there is a possibility that someone might beat the shit out of you, and so you un-decide to go to work. Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

This goes on for weeks, and then months. The beatings and the fear of the beatings and the uncertainty of when a beating might or might not happen have probably gotten you pretty frazzled.

Now imagine that state of fear and uncertainty and anxiety and terrible injuries not yet healed, and multiply how you feel by 50. That is what it was like for me 24/7 pretty much my entire life.

After the memories of my dad’s abuse and other things he did began to make their way to my conscious awareness, you could take that same feeling and multiply it by 250. That is how I have felt 24/7 for the last three and a half years.

I’ve learned to function, to go about daily tasks, and even to laugh and experience joy in the company of that constant terror. But it’s still there.

Ok, now imagine that the person who has been jumping out and beating the shit out of you has been arrested and won’t be leaving prison for years. How do you feel? Now multiply that feeling by about 1,000, and that is what I feel like now that my dad is dead.

As I’ve said over and over, there definitely could be another shoe waiting to drop and I will not feel so positive and relieved about my dad being dead. But there have been shoes dropping all over the place for my entire life, and an entire shit-storm of shoes has dropped just in the past few years.

Now that my dad is dead, even if more shoes drop, I know they will be like ballet slippers, and not big clunky steel-toed work boots.

I keep wondering why it is so important to me that other people are okay with how I have reacted to my dad’s death. I mean, I know what I’ve been through, I know what he has done to me and to other people, and I know relief at his death is a very appropriate response for me to have. But I still wish more people could understand that, and could share those good feelings with me.

When someone is grieving for a person who has died, especially a family member or close friend, the other people around them surround the griever with understanding and empathy. They celebrate the deceased’s life and mourn their passing.

I want to celebrate my dad’s passing, because I’ve been mourning my own life and the dad he never was for years. I want other people to understand what I feel like knowing he is dead. I want to be able to have people surrounding me, showering me with joy and good tidings. I want to see people I haven’t seen in at least a week and say, “hey! My dad’s dead!” and not have it be terribly awkward.

I want a thoughtful neighbor to bring me lasagna or homemade macaroni and cheese that I can put in the fridge until I’m ready to eat it and then all I have to do is put it in the oven on 350 for half an hour. I want flowers. I want cards. I want sweet and thoughtful posts on my Facebook page.

Actually, I don’t like lasagna or homemade macaroni and cheese. And I know people do stuff like that because of how hard it is to go about life when you’re in so much pain. I also know how hard it is to go about life when I’m in so much pain, and I am really not in pain right now. I do like cards and flowers and sweet and thoughtful comments posted on my Facebook page, though.

My dad’s death is huge for me. It has changed my world forever. It is one of those before-this-happened-things-were-one-way and after-that-happened-things-are-another-way type of events.

Since I found out my dad died (nine or ten days ago), I have been falling asleep and then sleeping soundly all night and then waking up in the morning and then getting out of bed, all with little or no effort! Leaving my house has been exciting! Doing math homework just feels like doing math homework, and not like the survival of the human species is depending on me to interpret and explain Einstein’s theory of relativity to a Kindergarten class!

I FEEL GOOD! I FEEL SAFE!

Tears come to my eyes when I think of how scared I have always been, and how often I have wished he would just die already, and about how many other people he may be hurting at any given time.

But I’m not so scared now, and he did just die already, and no matter what he has done to me or anyone else, he will never be able to do it again, EVER.

So anyway. Maybe the other shoe will drop, blah, blah, blah. I honestly don’t anticipate it happening. Regardless, I think I will just do my best to enjoy this moment and quit harping over what I think other people might think I should think.

J

part 40 (if it's not a tome yet, i guess i don't know what a tome is)

My dad taught me that he determined who I was. He was in charge of defining me. I wonder a lot why I was always so desperately drawn to him – I suppose because I was uneasy not knowing who I was at any given moment and I needed him to figure it out. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I work really, really hard every single day at knowing how to define myself, at least to the degree that I can have my feet on the ground on a consistent basis. In learning how to define myself, I lost my need for my dad.

It sounds callous. I keep wondering if I am just in shock. But then I start thinking about what and who he was to me. Was there really anything there that I could cherish or miss now that he’s dead? Everything I ever loved about him was all in my mind – the dad I had in my mind was not the person my dad actually was.

The person my dad actually was did not offer anything of himself beyond the willingness to be in charge of defining who I am.

I think about my dad and when I was growing up and about the feelings I felt for him. I hugged him and told him I loved him. I made him father’s day presents and birthday cards. I wrote notes to him when I was away, or when he was sick. I held his hand. I wore his old shirts. I missed him when he was gone.

Actually, I didn’t really miss him. I always missed my mom, but I seemed to do just fine when my dad was gone. This troubled me. When my mom was gone overnight – even just one night – I would cry and cry and cry and miss her with every ounce of who I am. But when my dad was gone? Even for weeks or months or in and out and between?  Nothing.

I remember lying in bed one night, maybe I was about 9 years old, when my dad was out of town, and it occurred to me that I didn’t feel so bad when he was gone. I tried to get really sad about him, and even shed some tears, but I just didn’t care that much that he wasn’t there. I felt guilty. I began to construct an affection for him commiserate with the adoration and love I had for him, or with the adoration and love I wanted him to believe I had for him – probably the adoration and love I wanted to believe I had for him, too.

If he adored me and loved me, then that would mean I was someone who could be loved and adored. Since I found out he died (the day before yesterday), I have been wondering who else that man was to me. I can’t think of anything.

I have really been trying, too. I keep going back to the moments that used to make my heart break over and over again, the moments in which I could define him as a loving father. I get a little pang of sadness, then I remember what motivated that moment or what followed or preceded it. I honestly cannot think of a time when my dad acted in any way altruistically. It was always about what he could get out of it.

The moments preceding and following those heartbreakers are now vivid recollections of abuse and violence. And then it’s back to, “thank god he’s dead,” and a whoosh of relief blows a big wad of anxiety out of my body (from my brain to my chest and then out the bottom of my feet, in case you were wondering).

He was like make-believe snakeskin. He and I were the only ones who thought it was real, and it was wrapped around me so tightly I could hardly breathe. And then I realized the snakeskin wasn’t real, so I shed my dad as a snake would shed its skin. And guess what? I’m not even a snake under all of that imaginary reptilian skin.

It seems so simple when I look at it that way. I guess stepping back and having a chance to look at where I am now in comparison to where I have been, and at the possibilities of where I could go, can be summed up that succinctly – my dad made me believe I could not be anything without him (which is an incredibly shitty thing to do to anyone, let alone your own child), and when I figured out it was not true, I left him behind.

That’s what I feel like when I think about my dad being dead. It makes sense to me, it seems logical. I know that there have been days and weeks and months and years of pain that I have struggled and scraped and scratched through to get here. But now I’m here.

It just so happens that I got here around the same time my dad dropped dead.

Every now and then, for a flittering of seconds, I think that maybe I was wrong – maybe my dad was not really the monster I had made of him in my mind, and now that he is dead, I will never be able to find out if it’s true or not. I had decided he couldn’t have any more chances with me, and now that he’s dead I’m wondering what might have happened if I had held out one more chance to him.

But I already know the answer to that: nothing. He would have never even cared to know that chance existed, and here I would be reaching out, offering another chance to the man who raped and tortured me over a period of fifteen years. How sick is that?

A friend of mine reminds me that I am not omnipotent. She reminds me of that when I talk with certainty about how my dad might be hurting other people. She might remind me here that not only do I lack omnipotence, I also do not have the ability to see what may have been in alternate realities that might one day be really real.

But none of those alternate realities has ever become really real, and I am still in a world where my dad did the things he did and I am the child he did them to. It doesn’t change. What has already happened doesn’t ever change. Ever. At all.

Of course I don’t know that the past will always remain the same – who am I to claim complete understanding of the physical and spiritual worlds?

But for me, right now, I know that the past will never change. And maybe tomorrow or next week I will crumble into a million pieces grieving him, but right now I’m still very relieved and happy that my dad is dead.

part 39

My dad is dead. He died two days ago, apparently of a heart attack.

When I first heard this news, I was very relieved. Then I was happy. Then I was relieved some more. I felt so safe, and I felt like my kids and husband were safe, too. I have been waiting for this day because I have always wanted to know what it would feel like to not have to be afraid of him.

It feels really, really good.

He’s dead. The bastard is dead.

I keep checking with myself to see if maybe I am just in shock or something. I had anticipated feeling good about him dying, but I keep wondering if I really am happy about it, or if perhaps I am in denial of my grief. I feel pretty confident that I am just really happy about it.

I’ve been grieving for that asshole for my entire life. I’ve been in therapy for years learning how to grieve for him and for the father he never was and for the innocence he took from me and for the love he never had for me. I feel pretty satisfied with the grieving I have already done, and am now just really, really glad he’s dead.

There have been a couple of things that have come up in relation to his death as far as other people who knew him are concerned. One of the things other people have felt is anger that he was never held responsible for the pain he has caused, and for the carnage he has wreaked in people’s lives. As much as I would have liked to see him judged in court or thrown in prison or stoned by the masses or whatever, I know that it would have been very painful and difficult for a lot of people to go through the legal process and everything else getting to that point would entail.

I can imagine how difficult it would have been for me to go through all of that, and I know I am not his only victim. I would not be the only person to be considered in that circumstance. But he’s dead now, so nobody has to even worry about it.

The other thing that has come up for other people is the fact that I will never be able to confront him now. I won’t be able to look him in the face and remind him of all of the horrible things he has done. I will never have the opportunity to see him react to how I have survived and how much stronger I am than he is – I won’t get that satisfaction.

As far as that goes, though, I don’t think I ever would have had that opportunity anyway. I haven’t spoken with him in years, and I don’t even know where he lives. Even if I was able to get in touch with him, I very seriously doubt he would have responded, or even acknowledged I was attempting to communicate with him.

Also, even if I did get in touch with him and he did acknowledge I was trying to communicate with him, the chances of him hurting me even more (emotionally, mentally, whatever) would be much greater than the chances of me getting any satisfaction from confronting him face to face.

He already knows what he did to me, and he always has. That is enough.

As far as the need to see him suffer, I wouldn’t be distressed if I knew that he has experienced a lot of pain, or if I was the cause of it. However, I don’t feel a loss having never seen him suffer – I don’t really care. He is gone, I am safe, my family is safe, and there really is not much more that I could ask for than that. He can rest in peace or rot in hell – it doesn’t matter to me.

What matters to me is that he is gone. I feel much lighter – it is nice. I’m glad he’s dead.

part 38

***TRIGGER WARNING***

I started my last post intending to write about my acceptance of what has happened to me, and of my acceptance of how what happened still manifests in my daily life.  I got a little bit diverted. So anyway: acceptance.

I guess what has been the most significant thing about accepting the past and accepting the permanent damage of my mind and body is that I can kind of stand to the side of all the chaos it has wreaked and just look at what happened to me.

When I look at what happened to me, the first thing I see is a very happy baby, a little girl who trusts her father implicitly. And then I see the father do things to the little girl that are so sick, and so injurious, and so heartbreaking that I can feel the weight of it in my chest like a rock.

Then I start to see what happened from my own point of view at that time. I remember what I felt and thought and was wearing and how things smelled. I remember the fear in my brain and the panic in my eyes. I didn’t know what was happening, but I did. I couldn’t think about what was happening. I couldn’t believe what was happening.

I remember being hurt – physically hurt. And my dad was there, and he was hurting me, but the pain was so overwhelming that I could not connect it to my dad. I could only see him as the person there who would save me from what was happening. He was my dad – he had to be the person who would save me from that pain and confusion. I could not comprehend any alternative than that of my dad saving me.

But at the same time, I was so angry at him – so HURT. It was easier for me to feel angry at him after he gave me to someone else to do stuff to me. What would that be called anyway? What is it called when a parent makes available complete physical control of a child to another adult for the sexual gratification of that other adult?

Anyway, maybe being molested and raped by someone who was not my dad, and while experiencing that in the complete absence of my dad, allowed me to see things more objectively. I remember thinking of those instances as betrayals of an entirely different nature than when he abused me himself. Those were times I could not be convinced that what he was allowing someone else to do to me was in any way okay.

He spent a lot of energy explaining why he did the things he did to me. There were reasons he abused me – he told me why it had to be that way with him, and how important it was that I allow all of it to happen and to not endanger anyone by telling. He told me these things over and over again.

But I would simply not believe that there could be any valid explanation at all for him letting other people do things to me. He did not pimp me out often – it may have only been two or three times. I wonder now if it was because I was so adamant about not accepting his reasons behind it. I don’t think he ever said, “Okay, you’re right – you don’t have to do that anymore.”

But I do remember feeling a distinct bit of power in my indignation. It was the same feeling of power I felt after I got pregnant as a result of him raping me when I was 15.

My dad integrated his reasons for abusing me into every aspect of my self-concept. It was destiny, it was loyalty, it was empathy, it was sacrifice, it was pure, it was necessary, it was the burden of my fate. I accepted these explanations – they were, after all, much easier to accept than the concept of my dad raping and torturing me just for his own jollies.

I believed it was all part of something bigger, that he and I were part of something bigger, something glorious and amazing.

When I did not accept my dad’s explanations for the things he would do to me, he would get really mad. Not screaming and yelling mad, but mad in the way that I would not be shocked to find his hand suddenly around my throat, reminding me of how weak I was. Questioning him was, in and of itself, blasphemy.

I knew he could and would kill me, and he knew I knew it. Simple as that.

But those two instances – the pimping me out instance and the getting me pregnant instance – were somehow different. They were years apart. I was probably around six or seven for the pimping out instance, and I was 15 when I had to have the abortion. But both times, I felt that sliver of power over him, like he went too far and we both knew it.

For whatever reason, I could swallow anything else he shoved down my throat – but not those two things.

When I first began therapy (this last round, about two years ago), I was asked to picture my child-self as separate and to tell her she was safe now. I couldn’t do it. I could imagine what I looked like as a child, and even pretend to pretend that I could be separate from my inner child, but I just did not understand the concept that who I am today could be a different person from who I was then. Logically, it made sense, but I could not see it, and I really did try to see it.

Last week at therapy I realized that my newfound acceptance and objectivity of what happened to me as a child means that I can separate the kid-me from the person I am now. I can stand to the side, or rise above, or see through, or whatever, and see my dad’s sickness and evil as clear as day. I can distance myself from the intricate and extensive brain tumor of his brainwashing far enough to see what is real.

In those moments when I was six or seven, and again when I was 15 – that’s what it felt like. It felt like I could see clearly how wrong it was, and I could see clearly that he knew it was wrong, too. I truly believe that he had himself brainwashed as much – if not more – than me. I don’t doubt that he could believe what he was doing to me was okay. Most of the time.

But sometimes the light just broke into those shadows and showed what was really there – what we both knew was really there.

It occurred to me a couple of days ago that my dad might have convinced himself that he could be vulnerable to me in some way. It would be a self-serving victimization type of vulnerability, but I think maybe in some way he might realize that he is not bigger or stronger than me. Maybe he thinks I betrayed him and did all kinds of horrible things to him once I got bigger and stronger. It would be a reasonable cop-out to many of his actions in the last few years we were in contact.

I don’t know. Regardless, it has also occurred to me that I am definitely bigger and stronger than he is, and that he has much more to fear – about me or anyone or anything else – than I have to fear about him.

I think this must be true, because when I look back at that little-girl me, who is not the strong and safe person I am today, and I see what he did to her, my heart breaks. But I also see perfectly what a miserable piece of shit he is. I feel how cowardly and ingenious and weak he is, and I don’t feel any need at all to remember that he is also my dad, a person I love.

I don’t feel guilty for seeing him for who he actually is. I feel just fine seeing him for who he actually is.

part 37

So I apparently have brain damage. I mean, it’s not a big shocker or anything, but really thinking about exactly what that means – and then accepting that – has been digging at me lately.

SIDE NOTE: ONCE AGAIN I MAY BE WRITING ABOUT SOMETHING I HAVE ALREADY WRITTEN ABOUT IN THIS BLOG. I DON’T REMEMBER. I’M OFFICIALLY NOT GOING TO STRESS ABOUT IT ANY MORE. AT ALL.

There is also going to be the addition of “complex” to the diagnostic criteria of post-traumatic stress disorder in the DSM-V. It seems as though the “complex” part of my PTSD is what has likely caused the brain damage.

The reason for the addition of “complex” to the PTSD thing is because there is a difference in the effects of being traumatized within one event and of being traumatized repeatedly over an extended amount of time, particularly if that trauma occurs as a young child.

There are all kinds of theories and explanations and descriptions of how trauma can change your brain. I have quite an aversion to the entire concept of neuropsychology, so I’m not going to go into any technical details. That’s what Wikipedia is for.

Anyway! Sometimes I catch myself standing in one place, staring off into space. My conscious and deliberate awareness gets interrupted. The process of going to get a snack or to take something to the post office or to brush my teeth gets a hiccup. It usually takes about ten seconds (sometimes less, sometimes more) for the present train of thought to reconnect to the previous train of thought that was interrupted by the hiccup, and to continue doing whatever it was I was doing.

Sometimes this happens when I am driving. That used to really scare the shit out of me, but then I figured out I just needed to allow that reconnection process to occur and then I know where I am and everything is okay. Well, usually it is okay. I never get into wrecks or anything like that, but I do sometimes miss important things like my exit off of the interstate.

Sometimes I miss that I am going the wrong way on the interstate, and once have actually ended up in Tennessee before figuring it out. Most of the time, though, this stuff happens close to home. I start out of my neighborhood by going toward the store when I meant to be going toward the gas station, and that is easily corrected by a U-turn or slight re-route.

This spacing out thing is apparently also related to the whole dissociation condition. I don’t know if it is another form of dissociating, or if it is just something that happens as a result of the same things dissociation happens as a result of.

Regardless, it can be frustrating, but it is one more thing I have been able to integrate into my life as just another of the extended side effects of the abuse I experienced.

As part of accepting that there is damage to my brain, I have accepted that it is most likely a result of trauma. I KNOW I’ve said this before, but I’m saying it again anyway: what may seem logical to those unaffected by trauma can often be distorted in a way that all of the information needed to come to a logical conclusion does not cohere all at the same time for someone who has been affected by trauma.

For example, I could see a plastic bag on a road, and then I could see a car drive over the bag, and then I could see the bag tossing and reeling after being run over by the car, and then I can see the bag settling again on the road. This is a sequence of events that can be logically integrated into one seamless event – a plastic bag gets run over by a car.

From the description of the seamless event, it is easy to make the connection that a bag getting run over by a car was likely somewhere a car would also be. There would probably not be a mental image of a bag on top of a skyscraper getting run over by a car; the image would most likely be that the bag was in the path of an area where cars usually frequent, like a road.

It may be easy to also automatically conclude from the description of the seamless event that the bag would get blown around after getting run over by the car. From there, the image of a plastic bag settling down on a roadway would follow.

If the bag getting run over by a car was a traumatic event for me (which, by the way, it is not – don’t forget this is just an example), the logical progression and anticipation and expectation of the sequence of the individual events would not necessarily integrate into that one seamless event. My conception of the event might start with the bag flying all around chaotically in the air. I may find myself being very upset by the bag flying around in the air, but not have anything to connect that with.

It’s just a bag. Flying around in the air. But the thought of the bag flying around in the air keeps popping into my head, and I feel physical and mental distress whenever that happens. I may start shaking, or get really nauseous or bitchy, or feel a sharp tightness in my chest, or all or none of those things in response to the image of that stupid bag flying around in the air.

Because the flying bag is all I can think about (it is an unwanted, intrusive thought), I am also constantly experiencing the negative stressors in response to that thought. Suddenly it is not a simple thing for me to walk out of my house and get the mail. How am I supposed to walk out of my house and get the mail when my mind and body are being completely occupied by this horrendous plastic bag?

Getting the mail becomes a huge task and a low priority at the same time, so I don’t get the mail. I just stay in my house, stuck on the damn bag. The more I try to not think about the bag, the more difficult it gets to think of anything else. Before all of my therapy and whatnot, I would spend a significant amount of time and energy trying to get that bag out of my head.

But now I know the bag is not going away until I let the memory of it play out in my mind. First I might recognize that the bag is flying over a hard surface. Then I might realize that there was a moving car involved. Then I may conclude that the hard surface is a road, and that the motion of the car has gotten this bag flying around in the air.

Then I might be able to comprehend that, theoretically, the bag was not always in motion and may not have become in motion without the car. Then I think about a time I have seen a bag flying around over a road in the vicinity of a moving car. That might be when I finally make all of the connections: a bag was in the road and a car ran over it and now the bag is flying around in the air.

It might take me a bit longer to realize that the bag will most likely settle down again once it gets blown out of the road, or cars are no longer driving on the road. This is a problem because I am still getting upset by the bag blowing around in the air above a road (in my head). How am I going to stop the distress that I am feeling?

Am I going to get shitfaced, and be all like, “fuck you, ya stupid bag – whoo hoo?” Am I going to get an extra thick pizza with extra cheese and eat the whole thing, and be all like, “this is the best pizza ever, and I am no longer feeling the distress about the bag because I am focusing on getting into the pleasure of eating the pizza?” Am I going to go strike up a superficial relationship with a guy I hardly know and have sex with him, and before I even get my clothes back on think about what kind of wonderful future me and the guy and our kids and grandkids are going to have, and be all like, “what bag?”

I’m not going to lie – these methods have served me well in the past. Not only do they help me stop thinking about the stupid bag, they are injecting my mind and body with some sort of pleasure, regardless of how temporary that pleasure may be or of how permanent the residual damage of that pleasure may be. But it doesn’t take long for me to realize (well, sometimes it does not take me long to realize) what a big fat drunken slut I have become, all because of that bag flying around in my head.

On top of all that, being a big fat drunken slut does nothing to improve the function of my brain. In fact, it makes it a lot worse.  And then I am also distressed over my inability to just get through a day, or even an hour, without imagining myself as the central character in a really cheesy slapstick made for TV movie.

I’m a fat drunken slut who can’t remember to bring her wallet to the gas station to pay for the gas that needs to go into the very empty gas tank, and also who bangs the shit out of her forehead on the door of the car when she goes to get back in it and then hopes and prays there is enough gas to get home and get her wallet and then get back to the gas station to fill up the tank and then gets a phone call as she pulls into the driveway and completely forgets about the empty gas tank until it’s time to pick up the kids from school and REALLY hopes and prays that the car has enough fumes to make it to the school AND to the gas station and for fuck’s sake don’t forget your goddamn wallet again.

What was I even talking about? Oh yeah – the stupid fucking bag flying around.

OH. MY. GOD.

It gets to be quite maddening, like torture that never ends because it is all in my head and my head follows me wherever I go.

I’m getting pretty distressed just thinking about it in such great detail. I’m actually nauseous. So I’m going to stop writing about it now.

Except to say that my life is not stuck in that hole anymore and things are pretty good – even with the brain damage.