part 49

So, yeah these most recent memories have been really bad. I am finally able to sleep again after two weeks of waking up in the middle of the night feeling all twinge-y and like my muscles were trying to push themselves out of my body through my pores.

I didn’t even think about that twinge-y stuff happening in relation to the recent memories until I mentioned it in therapy, and my therapist (wonderful, brilliant woman – for realsies) suggested that the memories and the not sleeping could be associated. I think she is right, especially after I tried a new method of making the twinge-ing subside.

I started having these twinge-y episodes when I was a young teenager (as opposed to being an old teenager). I woke up in the middle of the night with my whole body feeling like it had to be ready to experience something intense, but not knowing what it was. It was very distressing then, and it is very distressing now. It is a very distressing feeling at any time.

My first thought upon waking up with this feeling is that I need to stretch my muscles with some sort of urgency, but each time I try to stretch my muscles out, they spring right back into that state of tension. And then I can’t stay awake and I can’t go to sleep. It is madness.

I have only had the twinge-y episodes really badly (that I am aware of) maybe four or five times since that first time when I was a kid. I had not figured out a way to resolve them – get them to stop – and think I eventually would just pass out from exhaustion.

Then when they started again this last time, they were driving me so crazy that I stopped thinking of how I could make them stop and started thinking of a way to get past them. I thought about how when I try to keep the flashbacks and memories from surfacing they get more urgent and more frightening. When I allow myself to just let them happen, those intrusive thoughts subside greatly, and I am able to move on with regular thoughts (like picking up the kids from school and stuff like that).

So I was going crazy in the middle of the night and I decided to see what would happen if I just quit fighting the twinge-ing and saw what happened. What happened is my whole body tensed up and started shaking. Not shaking like my hands shake a lot, but shaking like being on a rollercoaster. Oh my god it was awful.

But it only lasted a couple of minutes (which was a really long time to shake like that), and then I fell right to sleep.

I don’t remember having any specific memories in my mind that time, but my body apparently was going through a lot.

The next time I was woken up by the twinge-y things, it took me a minute or two to remember that I can let the body memories come out, and then they would stop. My very first instinct is to fight the twinge-y feelings back, and it is kind of scary just letting them happen.

It is also really annoying – it is just all around a very uncomfortable sensation. I hate it.

Anyway, this next time I was woken up by these things, I tried to just let them work themselves out, and I did feel a little better, but they kept happening and I was up half the night.

The thing about letting them happen is that it is physically and emotionally exhausting, and while the physical part kind of goes on by itself, I just get so tired emotionally that I am hardly conscious, but they still happen.

Another thing about letting them happen is that I am terribly self-conscious about it. I cannot handle the idea of anyone seeing me go through this, or even being aware of it while it is happening. For some reason that is more terrifying that anything else.

Since I sleep in the same bed as Jonny, and the twinge-y things kept happening, I started going back to trying to stretch and fight them so I didn’t wake him up with all of the violent shaking. This did not go over well, and anticipating another night of tortuous twinge-ing, I was beginning to be afraid of even going to sleep at all. Between the twinge-ing waking me up and the fear of going to sleep at all, I have pretty much not been able to sleep.

Not sleeping for one night makes my body very tired, but not being able to sleep the night after that, and then the night after that, it really affects my mind as well.

I am proud to say that during this last bout of sleeplessness, I have been able to stay grounded. I was still able to breathe in the beautiful air and look at the beautiful sky and know they were beautiful. I wasn’t completely consumed with distress as I am used to being when I get too tired.

After about two weeks of this, though, I just didn’t know what to do. One night I got woken up by the twinges at about three in the morning. I got my laptop and went downstairs and lay down on the couch and played solitaire. When the twinges would get really bad, I would stop playing solitaire and let the shaking happen.

It was horrible. Really, really horrible.

It hurt my heart on some level I had not been aware of before then.

When I was going in for my C-section with Jonah, I got the epidural and then they laid me on my back and strapped my arms down straight out to my sides, like I was lying on a cross. I began feeling this very bad feeling up my left arm and pressing on my heart. It was felt very heavy and dull and painful all over my whole chest and head. I wanted to ask the nurse to do something, but I was shocked at how much the feeling affected my ability to do anything at all.

I was finally able to alert a nurse that I was not doing well – I didn’t think I was going to die, but I believed (and still do) that the way I was feeling was what it feels like when a body is dying.

Anyway, the nurse fiddled with something and I suddenly felt about a thousand times better, and went on to have my baby.

But that dying feeling stayed with me.

At that time, I had not yet begun the process of remembering the things I had blocked out about my dad. I remember distinctly thinking, “wow, that must be what it feels like to have a heart attack.” I did a note-to-self in my head and tucked that feeling away with the association to death and heart attacks so that if I ever felt it again I would be able to recognize it immediately and be sure to work hard to get medical attention.

So that dying feeling is what those violent shakes a few nights ago on the couch felt like. I felt like a freak – my whole body was spazzing out, like the way someone having a seizure is portrayed in a movie. I was very aware of what was happening and it was like a dam broke in my mind and let all the bad pictures come into my head.

All of my carefully constructed filters of the past were temporarily disabled, and it was all just THERE. Oh my god – it really was horrible.

When the shaking and the KNOWING got to the point that I felt like something very important (I don’t know what, just that it is important) was going to break inside of me, I would start to focus on playing solitaire again. It was weird going back and forth between something so mundane and something so intense and frightening.

But it worked. After maybe an hour or so of these twinge-shake-solitaire cycles, I felt exhaustion in my body that was so comforting. It felt like all of that energy that was trapped in me was finally let out. The dam got plugged back up, the filters re-enabled, and I went to sleep.

Since then I have been woken up by the twinge-y thing once, but was able to fall back asleep before I even knew it.

I have had about three nights of solid sleep since then – it has been nice.

It is huge relief to know that I will most likely be able to get a regular reprieve from being conscious again tonight. Sleeping is awesome. I feel much better today.

part 48

I have been having some very intense memories since my dad died. They don’t feel like flashbacks, but I do feel what was happening in the past in my whole body now. It’s kind of like when my ears are blocked by a change in air pressure, and then finally release after hours of listening to the world as though submerged in water.

Once on a long flight – I don’t remember where I had been or where I was going - maybe when I was in my late teens or early twenties, I was seated next to a very old man. My ears had gotten blocked up almost immediately after takeoff, and I couldn’t really hear anything. As the flight progressed, my ears felt like they were going to explode.

The very old man I was seated next to was talking up a storm. I was able to interact with him for a bit at the beginning of the flight, but I eventually could not hear what he was saying at all. I didn’t tell him, though – he looked like he was having a really nice time talking, so I just did the nod-and-smile thing back at him.

The whole time I was watching the man talk, I was wondering in the back of my mind if my ears were actually going to explode. It was very surreal. Even though I could see just fine, and feel just fine, and smell just fine, the inability to hear turned everything askew in my mind. Also, it wasn’t a quiet, silent type of not being able to hear, it was much more of a loud, rushing, buzzing type sound.

It was pretty disconcerting – I started to get really claustrophobic on the plane and I had to keep telling myself that I just had to wait. There was nothing I could do. I was pulling on my ears and yawning and chewing gum, and the old guy just kept talking, and I just kept pretending to listen. I think he probably was what kept me calm at that moment.

I was starting to feel a little bit dazed, like I was on drugs or something. It was like my mind was separating from what was happening on the plane because the thing with my ears was too overwhelming for my entire consciousness to deal with at one time. Just as I started to feel like my head was bobbling around on my neck, I felt this sudden relief as one of my ears cleared.

I am reminded of what it felt like to be on the brink of unconsciousness when my dad would choke me. All I would be aware of was the pain under my jaw and ears from his huge hand squeezing my neck so hard that my body was practically dangling in the air below his fist. I would look at his face – he was always so calm, and his face looked like he was trying to settle down a frightened bird by soothing it in his hand and making it feel safe.

If you have ever held a small animal in your hands, you may have noticed that it takes a moment for the animal to realize that just because your hands are around it, it does not mean that it is being crushed to death or even being harmed (not physically anyway – I don’t know much about the psychology of baby bunnies or birds or hamsters when they are involuntarily restrained).

My dad’s face looked like that was what he was trying to do  - be soothing in his own expression and the stillness of his body  - but he was actually about to kill his daughter instead of calm a frightened animal. I would feel the pressure in my head from my blood, and the pressure of his hand on my esophagus. I was always surprised at how it didn’t really hurt.

The only pain in those moments when I knew he was finally just going to kill me was that weight on my esophagus. And then I would start to not be able to hear anything, like when my ears were full of trapped air. And then I would start to see spots and things, like I was watching a television screen gradually become more and more filled with static.

And then he would let go.

Sometimes I would cry, and sometimes I would not. As I got older, I would be less heartbroken at the idea that he was hurting me like that, and instead become angrier and angrier.

When he would take his hand off my neck, and when that one ear finally cleared, it was as much a feeling of shock as it was relief. Being shocked and relieved so intensely at the same time is very strange. That’s what these latest memories have felt like.

Except I wasn’t aware of the pressure in my brain before the release of the memory until the release was actually happening.

That has happened with my ears before, too – they will suddenly clear, and it feels so nice, but I hadn’t noticed they were blocked up to begin with until after they weren’t blocked up anymore.

The memories don’t feel nice like when my ears clear, though. They feel like the cold chill that goes through me a few seconds after I have been badly startled. It feels like being fully consciously aware that I could breathe and swallow and see and hear again, but simultaneously being just as aware of how my dad seemed very serene as he almost killed me – again.

Sometimes calling him “dad” seems too normal to be applied to my dad. I don’t know him as anyone else, though.

The only dad I’ve ever known had me convinced that I was about to die – literally at his hand - at least ten times during my life. That is what “dad” means to me.

When I think I about it too much, about it being my dad who had me convinced that he was the way I would die – on multiple occasions - it just becomes so irrevocably incongruent that the only thing I can do is just remind myself that it actually happened, that it is not happening now, and try to strike some sort of balance between the two without actually concluding anything.

That’s hard to do. But it’s getting easier.

And my dad is still dead, so that helps me feel better, too.

part 47 (holy shit - someone pay me to publish this already)

I haven’t written in a while – that is actually why I am writing now. I feel like I need to write something. Everything in my life though, has been very peaceful lately. That is something I am really enjoying simply experiencing rather than analyzing.

There are a lot of things still up in the air concerning my dad, things completely beyond my control and how his past could affect my future. I do feel anxious about it, but it is not consuming me. Not being consumed with fear and violence and disgust and shame sure does leave a lot of room for other things.

Being able to laugh and smile and brush my teeth and make my bed and hang out with my family and pay bills and do homework and go to the store and tie up the loose ends of daily life is an amazing experience. I have always thought of myself just having a really hard time getting these things done, but as I wrote in my last post, I am coming to accept that I was not able to do them – I did not possess the capacity to successfully participate in the mundane. I’m definitely learning how to now, though.

I didn’t realize how satisfying the mundane can be. It is all the more satisfying since I am able to realize what a blessing it is to simply be where I am in my life right now.

I watch other people. I see people interacting with each other, and reacting to the things around them, and how it seems as though many of them find no challenge in grocery shopping or going to the bank. Their lives seem to be a consistently flowing stream. The activities and experiences are all moving along together with their minds.

I am starting to feel what that is like, and I wonder if those people know how amazing it is to be able to live as a consistently flowing stream. Do people not realize the beauty of peace and balance until something throws it all out of whack, or is it as obvious to everyone else as it is to me?

Do people who have never had peace and balance know they can find it? I never considered myself as someone who would find peace or balance anywhere in my life. I just tried to accept that I was weird and difficult to approach and misunderstood and that sometimes that is just how people are. It was so lonely, but I tried to just accept it and move on.

Where did I get such a sense of doomed resolution so early in life? Probably from my dad. He’s dead now, though, so the idea that I have recognized yet one more way his abuse has stained my life is not something that makes me terribly angry or afraid. It just feels like this: sigh.

And then it feels like this: “wow – the weather and my brain are so peaceful today! I am going to sit among all of that peace and just feel how good it feels to feel good.”

Huh.

Okay, well, being peaceful is kind of boring to write about. I am going to continue to enjoy this beautiful, peaceful day, and maybe do some math homework (which is remarkably no longer horrifically unpeaceful).

Laters!