DISCLAIMER: I DON’T EVEN OWN A GUN, AND EVEN IF I DID, I
HAVE NO DESIRE TO ACTUALLY KILL OR HURT ANYONE, INCLUDING MYSELF AND THE PEOPLE
WHO RAPED ME.
I had an “episode” last week that really scared me. I was
trying to accept that I might never be able to leave this shitty town. The
reason I was doing that is because if I can imagine the worst possible scenario
and determine if I can live with it, then all the other possible scenarios are
much less frightening.
The bad thing was that, this time, I was considering the
idea that I cannot live with the worst possible scenario, and my mind just kind
of took some loops and twirls, and I didn’t (or couldn’t) say anything for over
an hour. I was out with Jonny when it happened, and I am really glad he was
with me, because I don’t know if I would have been able to get myself home in
that state.
All I could do was just sit there and cry. Not the wracking,
heaving, gut-wrenching crying, but the kind where my face stays blank and the
tears simply fall from my eyes like drops of water leaking from a sink.
I was stuck in this mode of trying to reconcile how I would
be able to stay in this town, and the only thing I could come up with was
getting a gun and killing my mom and her rapist, pedophiliac, enabling
neighbors. That was the only solution I could come up with that made me feel
calmer.
It was a lot like right before I went into the hospital
(almost exactly five years ago! Time flies when you’re painstakingly reconstructing
your own sense of reality), when all I could do to keep my mind from breaking
completely was plan how I was going to kill my dad.
I started out writing about killing my dad – this was also
when I was still drinking (a LOT), and I would journal the graphic details of
what my dad’s blood would look like spreading in a puddle around his head after
I bashed his skull in with a baseball bat. It is a very fuzzy time, and I have
never re-read those journals, but I do remember focusing on the stain his blood
would leave on my cement driveway, and how it would have to be pressure-washed
to get rid of it, and how I was never going to pressure-wash it because I
wanted it to help me remember he was gone.
This obsessing about how I was going to kill my dad went on
and on and on, and eventually grew into a solid plan to kill my dad, and I
couldn’t help from actually planning to do it, because it was the only way my
mind would stop screaming. I mean, I was really, really drunk most of that time
period, but alcohol is no match for the screaming my mind can dole out.
So I kept obsessing and planning to go kill my dad.
I feel very fortunate that I was able to go to the hospital
instead of actually killing my dad, and he ended up kicking his own self off a
few years after that when his evil heart exploded. I am truly grateful that I have
a pic of my dead dad to remind me he is gone, instead of a blood stain on my
driveway…and hatch marks on my prison cell wall.
Needless to say, the obsessing about killing my dad was
ongoing and very intense and very real to me. This “episode” I experienced last
week, however, only lasted about an hour, and then I went into my
super-stressed-out-sleep mode, and when I woke up, I felt better.
The thing about this “episode” last week is that my brain
did not stay fixated on how I was going to kill these assholes, and how
peaceful it would feel once they were dead. My mind kept going back to my
husband and my kids, and how shitty it would be if I went on a murder spree to
make myself feel better, and then left them behind in the wake of madness and
violence. Seriously – that would be a tremendously shitty thing for me to do,
as a mom, a partner, and a person.
So I never got to the point in this latest episode when
killing people was going to become a real thing for me – it stayed on the side
of fantasy, and the reason I was just dripping tears out the whole time was
because the rest of me remained in reality, thinking about how shitty it would
be to bail on my husband and my kids by getting sent to prison for however
long.
I didn’t recognize this until after I had my
stress-overload-relief nap, when my head was cleared up again. When I did
realize it, I felt a lot more confident (and relief) in my ability to reason in
a manner that is most conducive to my own health, and to the welfare of my
husband and kids.
With my dad, I didn’t have that. At all. Hence, the mental
hospital, and the awesomeness of him dying on his own without my interference.
Side note: I had a hard time deciding whether or not I would
even write about this – I mean, the shit’s crazy. End side note.
I look back at the things that have changed, and the factors
in my life that are very different now than when I went in the hospital, and I
realized that I am probably going to be dealing with the effects of my
experiences for the rest of my life, but that those experiences can’t dictate
my actions any more, as long as I keep working to find a place I can feel safe,
physically and mentally.
I have reached a point where I am afraid I can no longer compensate
for my fears associated with this town. I have maintained a kind of plateau for
a while, where I have been able to work at getting my feet on the ground while
using coping techniques I learned in the hospital and in therapy and from other
people, but I have run out of time trying to move forward in my recovery while
still being here, where it all happened.
This trapped feeling is not good. When I am trapped, I check
out in my mind – I dissociate. Completely. The scariest part of completely
dissociating is that my body keeps on functioning separately from my brain, and
I am so scared of whatever evil is still a part of me would do if I have no way
of defending myself (or anyone else) against it.
That has always been one of my biggest fears, and I do get
kind of nervous about it still – about the idea that I could just snap and do
all kinds of weird and fucked up shit to all kinds of people without being
consciously aware of what was happening.
The thing is, I’ve never attacked anyone or stolen anything
or walked off a cliff or wandered down the street completely naked, while in a
complete state of dissociation. These are things I have always been worried
that I would do, but I haven’t done them.
Most of my dissociative states are not so completely removed
from what is happening around me than an actual complete dissociative state. I am
usually still with myself, though there are varying degrees of the level of
being “present” at those times. I don’t know of a time when I was dealing with
something life-threatening while completely dissociated.
My typical states of complete dissociation involve my simply
spacing out – this actually happens a lot, but not for any extended amount of
time (maybe ten minutes, at most). If I am driving, I will keep driving on
autopilot, and just keep going and going until I snap out of it. This typically
happens when I am on the interstate, or great lengths of highways or roads that
don’t have any stop signs or traffic lights.
Stop signs and traffic lights, for some reason, usually bring
me right back, but I have to look all around me and figure out where I am. This
is not such a problem when I stay in areas I am VERY familiar with. At worst, I
will come to a stop sign or traffic light, and have some sense that I am
supposed to turn or something, and I can’t remember if I’ve already turned or
not while I was totally zoned, and then I have to remember where it is that I am
going, and I can “re-route,” just like the GPS on my phone.
The GPS on my phone is SO much better at re-routing, though,
so I use it a lot when I am traveling more than a few miles from home, or to
places I haven’t driven to hundreds of times.
Anyway, total dissociation episodes have typically involved
things like sideswiping mailboxes, and coming to in the middle of a
conversation and I have no idea what I’ve been talking about (once I was
actually screaming at a group of my friends – scary), or I find myself putting
a box of cereal in the refrigerator or throwing out real dishes and other
things that are not trash.
I haven’t ever had a complete state of dissociation in which
I snapped and started killing people. Even planning to kill my dad involved
part of my conscious, present mind, which is why I was able to go to the
hospital instead of going to actually kill him. That was a close one, though.
I think what happened when I had my “episode” last week was
that I felt completely trapped, and tried to go back to my previous methods of
dealing with it in my mind. While it was really nice to imagine that all of
these horrendous people were dead, I felt much more burdened by the idea that I
would have to kill them myself in order to achieve that. Thinking about killing
them myself – as an independent thought – is not terribly disturbing – I am
pretty sure that this is something that all people think about sometimes. When it
gets entangled in my feeling trapped, though, it starts to feel more like a
necessity of survival, and that’s when it gets kind of fucked up.
I don’t know – I have been surviving in this shit hole for
my whole life. While the idea of having to remain here forever is devastating, I
know I can survive being here. It’s just what I do. I survive.
I want so much to LIVE, though, and that just isn’t going to
happen in this town.
