I have spent my morning working on my planner and my bullet journal. I gave up on updating my food log because it's been at least two weeks since I wrote in there. (I was still calculating carbs and eating within my limits, I just wasn't writing anything down.) I am tired after washing a fuck ton of dishes. There's still a good number left but I have run out of counter space. I was debating if I was going to cook dinner tonight (hamburgers) in the stove but I think I'm going to fry them in a pan. It will take a little longer but I don't have room to put the big broiler pan in the sink to wash it.
I got some blogging done on one of my witchy blogs. I took care of some papers. I got the mail. I did some spinning stuff. So, I am getting things done and slowly getting caught up on things. I tell myself every day that today is going to be a productive day. Of late, that's been hard. Because of the depression and ptsd working together to kick my ass, I haven't been sleeping well and that makes me exhausted through the day.
Today, I haven't had any flashbacks. This is a good thing. I did have a memory come up but I wasn't left shaking and upset with it. I was darkly amused by it. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not. I mean, being beaten with a car antenna (even when you're wearing denim and snow gear) is pretty horrible. But I was amused by the fact that the beating was so much less effective because of the layers we were wearing when it happened. I've been writing about trauma stuff in my morning blogging on my writing blog (which is an extension of the morning pages that I am doing as part of the Artist's Way). It's made the blog a bit darker in content.
I still have not found a therapist to work with. Doing this free writing where stuff that is trauma related gets vomited out may be as close to actual therapy work as I get. I have three college ruled notebooks full of the stuff. I'm probably going to be filling up a fourth. I have no idea what I'm going to do with these notebooks. At the same time, I still am dealing with some weirdness inside my head that I don't know how to handle.
As I was writing, I had a different part of myself sort of riding shotgun and telling the story as I typed it down. It was weird. I didn't lose time. But this part of myself that I don't have much to do with just popped up and told me the story of the time my mother and grandmother were canning tomatoes and other stuff. I was in my single digits. I was playing in the far corner of the room and my mother scolded me to get out of the kitchen, despite the fact that I was safely out of the way. Her real problem was the fact that I wasn't supervising my brothers. I knew it, she knew it. I suspect my grandmother knew it too. After all, I was the eldest child.
It was weird to be in two headspaces at the same time. On the other hand, it was also familiar. I don't know if this means I am making progress on getting to know my interior selves or not. I found myself jumping from headspace to headspace today. It's part of the reason why I am tired right now. At the same time, I got a lot of stuff done. I don't know if that means I am a person with multiple personalities or not. I know that when I was in each different headspace, I remember different things.
I have a journal that I was writing in with these different parts of myself. I watched my handwriting change. I watched my tone of writing change. It wasn't a big deal but it was weird. I had people comment on my handwriting changing with my mental state. One person said that my signature looked like that of an entirely different person according to my mood. I don't know if that's normal.
I just know that it is noisy in my head. It's not hallucinations. Thank gods for that. It's more like I'm listening to other people's thoughts running through my head some times. Or, perhaps more accurately, it's like listening to a group of people in another room having a conversation that I can hear pieces of it. I can't see them. I can't tell how many people are there. But I can hear snippets of the conversation.
Today, the self-destructive one was quiet. There were no comments along the lines that I was a burden to my entire family. No comments that I should pull the pin on my marriage to spare my husband the misery of caring for me. And no comments that I should do everyone a favor and just walk away / die. I think that was because I actually got a full night of sleep last night.
Instead there was the List-maker who was busy helping me organize everything for this week and next. There was the Care-taker who helped me wash a ton of dishes with out getting caught up in panic over the idea that I'm going to do it wrong and either have to wash everything over again or be beaten in punishment. There are others in my head just doing their own thing. If I concentrate, I can tell what's going on. But I don't know how much of this is an over active imagination.
How can you tell when you have more than one personality?
roses
Monday, September 30, 2019
Monday, September 16, 2019
Fucking memories, what the hell?
You may be looking at the post immediately before this one and going 'wtf?' As I was washing dishes, the memory of A- cornering me hit me like a freight train. It's been a while since I have had a flashback like that. Most of them lately have been emotional. But not that one, nope. It was a full on, for a few seconds I wasn't here/now, I was back in that moment and I could see the tiled wall and the sink in front of me. For that moment, I could feel him looming at my back and hear him breathing. Then, it was just gone and I was standing there disoriented at the kitchen sink.
That's what a flashback is like. Usually, they're a lot uglier than that one. I had a therapist tell me that flashbacks happen when we're at a place that we're safe enough to process the experience. There's something profoundly ironic about this one. The incident that I was having a flashback to occurred during a time where I was in therapy and trying to resolve the problems I was having at the time with flashbacks and night terrors to an abusive relationship I was in. I don't know if this means I am going to start having flashbacks of N- now. I really fucking hope not. Because N- and my relationship was profoundly traumatic and I still am stumbling onto triggers of panic attacks today and it's been 26 years since that happened.
I don't know why I am listening to a playlist of music made up of singers and songwriters from the 70s. For my earlier years, I listened to that and those years were pretty horrific in turn due to things with my parents. My subconscious is up to something. I have spent the last several years intermittently writing about those years. It seems to be the only thing that I am not hitting a creative block on. I don't know what to do about that. I have lived through some horrible shit and I don't know why it is the only thing I can write coherently about right now (well for the last 2 years).
On the 11th, I was full of sadness and I thought it was just my bipolar and seasonal affective disorder acting up. Then, as I thought about it, I realized it was an emotional flashback to watching the towers fall and hearing the city scream in terror. It was an emotional flashback to watching friends deal with the fact that they had no idea if their loved ones were alive and if we were in danger.
I'm not sure what to do with these things. I don't know if writing them down is going to a damn bit of good. I don't know if it will make things harder. The walls of the dam are beginning to crumble again. I don't know what is going to come with the fall.
That's what a flashback is like. Usually, they're a lot uglier than that one. I had a therapist tell me that flashbacks happen when we're at a place that we're safe enough to process the experience. There's something profoundly ironic about this one. The incident that I was having a flashback to occurred during a time where I was in therapy and trying to resolve the problems I was having at the time with flashbacks and night terrors to an abusive relationship I was in. I don't know if this means I am going to start having flashbacks of N- now. I really fucking hope not. Because N- and my relationship was profoundly traumatic and I still am stumbling onto triggers of panic attacks today and it's been 26 years since that happened.
I don't know why I am listening to a playlist of music made up of singers and songwriters from the 70s. For my earlier years, I listened to that and those years were pretty horrific in turn due to things with my parents. My subconscious is up to something. I have spent the last several years intermittently writing about those years. It seems to be the only thing that I am not hitting a creative block on. I don't know what to do about that. I have lived through some horrible shit and I don't know why it is the only thing I can write coherently about right now (well for the last 2 years).
On the 11th, I was full of sadness and I thought it was just my bipolar and seasonal affective disorder acting up. Then, as I thought about it, I realized it was an emotional flashback to watching the towers fall and hearing the city scream in terror. It was an emotional flashback to watching friends deal with the fact that they had no idea if their loved ones were alive and if we were in danger.
I'm not sure what to do with these things. I don't know if writing them down is going to a damn bit of good. I don't know if it will make things harder. The walls of the dam are beginning to crumble again. I don't know what is going to come with the fall.
I'm racist but working on fixing that.
*Content Warning: Sexual Harassment*
I posted a thread about this on twitter. I'm going to post a blog post about it too because it is important and writing about this kind of shit helps me process it. I could just copy and paste my twitter thread but that requires effort.
I was 20-something and working in the campus cafe at college. It was a typical Friday evening. At the end of the shift, the other gals had left to go do stuff and I got the short straw (aka the dishes to wash). As I was standing at the sink, I had my back to the rest of the kitchen. Aside from myself the only other person there was the supervisor from the campus food services, who ran the cafe and such). A- was a big, latino guy. He was known around campus for his genial attitude and big smile. Among the staff of the cafe, he was known for trying to get 'friendly' with us girls.
So, I was standing at the sink, boxed in to a corner by the virtue of how the cafe was built. (I sincerely hope that feature was fixed.) A- walked up behind me and started 'talking sexy' at me. I am a survivor of sexual assault. I panicked. I reached into the sink and grabbed the first handle I touched. I thought it was a ladle given the size of it. I picked it up and turned around. As A-'s face went white, I realized I was holding a butcher's knife in my hand. I told A- to back off and leave me and my friends alone. I then dropped the knife into the sink and walked out of the cafe. I made a point of watching my back as I crossed the campus, pausing for a moment to pick up a hefty stick that had fallen from a tree just in case A- followed me. When I got to my dorm room, my roommate was surprised I was back early. She saw I was upset but I didn't talk about it. I was pretty sure if I did, I was going to lose my job with the cafe, which I needed to afford textbooks next semester.
Ever since that incident, I get scared around latino men. I had a therapist soothingly tell me that I was just experiencing anxiety. I had the same therapist tell me that all I had to do to get over it was to breathe deeply. (She tried, but she wasn't a good therapist.) It took a lot of soul searching and careful thought to realize that this was more than being triggered by a person having a physical resemblance to A-. It was all latino men that I had this response to. I felt terrible when I realized that my fear had turned me into a racist.
That was when I made the conscious decision to rewire my brain. I'm working very hard not letting that fear lead me forward. I'm working very hard to see each latino man that I meet as an individual person. I'm working very hard to learn about the rich culture of the latinx community. The latter is a bit challenging because I live in lily white rural WNY where there's a lot of racism on the sly. I can't blame my PTSD for my racism. It may have contributed to the development of it, but it stayed around because I didn't challenge the assumptions that all latino men were a threat to me.
It it hard. It takes a lot of conscious effort and working to remember that A- was an individual asshole. One asshole does not an entire community make. So, I admit I am a racist, but I'm working to fix that and to teach my children not to be ones. The latter is a little easier, to be honest.
I posted a thread about this on twitter. I'm going to post a blog post about it too because it is important and writing about this kind of shit helps me process it. I could just copy and paste my twitter thread but that requires effort.
I was 20-something and working in the campus cafe at college. It was a typical Friday evening. At the end of the shift, the other gals had left to go do stuff and I got the short straw (aka the dishes to wash). As I was standing at the sink, I had my back to the rest of the kitchen. Aside from myself the only other person there was the supervisor from the campus food services, who ran the cafe and such). A- was a big, latino guy. He was known around campus for his genial attitude and big smile. Among the staff of the cafe, he was known for trying to get 'friendly' with us girls.
So, I was standing at the sink, boxed in to a corner by the virtue of how the cafe was built. (I sincerely hope that feature was fixed.) A- walked up behind me and started 'talking sexy' at me. I am a survivor of sexual assault. I panicked. I reached into the sink and grabbed the first handle I touched. I thought it was a ladle given the size of it. I picked it up and turned around. As A-'s face went white, I realized I was holding a butcher's knife in my hand. I told A- to back off and leave me and my friends alone. I then dropped the knife into the sink and walked out of the cafe. I made a point of watching my back as I crossed the campus, pausing for a moment to pick up a hefty stick that had fallen from a tree just in case A- followed me. When I got to my dorm room, my roommate was surprised I was back early. She saw I was upset but I didn't talk about it. I was pretty sure if I did, I was going to lose my job with the cafe, which I needed to afford textbooks next semester.
Ever since that incident, I get scared around latino men. I had a therapist soothingly tell me that I was just experiencing anxiety. I had the same therapist tell me that all I had to do to get over it was to breathe deeply. (She tried, but she wasn't a good therapist.) It took a lot of soul searching and careful thought to realize that this was more than being triggered by a person having a physical resemblance to A-. It was all latino men that I had this response to. I felt terrible when I realized that my fear had turned me into a racist.
That was when I made the conscious decision to rewire my brain. I'm working very hard not letting that fear lead me forward. I'm working very hard to see each latino man that I meet as an individual person. I'm working very hard to learn about the rich culture of the latinx community. The latter is a bit challenging because I live in lily white rural WNY where there's a lot of racism on the sly. I can't blame my PTSD for my racism. It may have contributed to the development of it, but it stayed around because I didn't challenge the assumptions that all latino men were a threat to me.
It it hard. It takes a lot of conscious effort and working to remember that A- was an individual asshole. One asshole does not an entire community make. So, I admit I am a racist, but I'm working to fix that and to teach my children not to be ones. The latter is a little easier, to be honest.
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