Written Whispers

Archive for the ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder’ Category

Sick Of Greedy People Deciding If I Can Get Help Or Not…

April 2nd, 2010

6

Received a bit of bad news at therapy today. Looks like my Medicaid (or the half ass version I’m privy too) expired and no one bothered to tell me. Not only does this mean I get to enjoy the tedious process of reapplying but any appointments I have during this ‘in between’ period are going to cost me personally. Not that they didn’t before but at least it was a small enough amount that I could chance trying to see someone.

You’d think they could have given me a call or something, eh? Nope. Not a single call, letter, smoke signal. Nothing. What a rip. I only absolutely needed it for one thing and now it’s not even good for that. *sigh*

To top it off the wonderful system that runs things in the mental health industry may have just decided I’m not broken enough to need help. Next week I have to go through a review/assessment to see if I still ‘need’ therapy. I’m not entirely sure what I think of that but it leaves a hollow feeling in my gut.

I kind of feel like my training wheels are being taken off too soon. I like going to therapy, I find it very helpful and a lot of the time it’s the only place I can talk about certain things. Things I’d never write about here…

Things I can’t talk about with friends and family and I don’t say that for lack of trying. I have tried with mixed results that leave me feeling worse despite their best efforts. I’ve tried getting these things out in an online chat group for people with the same problem… but it wasn’t the same. It didn’t leave me feeling any better, only distracted.

The worst part is that all these decisions- the cutting of my useless insurance, the dropping me from therapy are all related to money. It isn’t related to whether I need help or not. It’s related to if they can afford to pay people to deal with my paperwork, if they can pay someone to file my case, or if someone else (in my place) could pay them more than I can (difficult to explain). More so it’s also because the system (still both of them) is overloaded. There are too many people who need these resources simply because no one is helping them in the first place.

If we could help people when they need it instead of making them file three months worth of paperwork… that was me and I can’t tell you how bad certain things got in that time period not to mention with the stress of trying so futilely to get what I needed.

*sigh* I don’t want to type about this anymore. It all comes down to money in the end and that’s just sad.

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March 26th, 2010

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I’m So Tired

March 10th, 2010

4

Can’t sleep.

Nope. I’m lying.

I could sleep. It’d take me a couple of hours but I’d eventually get there.

The truth?

I’m afraid to go to sleep.

Sounds almost silly, doesn’t it? But it’s true. I had a few nightmares when I was younger but few were truly bad. Usually involving crocodiles and snakes or people I know being put into foster care. Now though, it seems as an adult my nightmares have grown along with me.

Pets, friends, and family dying. The smell of burning flesh. The boom in my ears as a car crashes and the leaden feeling in my limbs as I try to stop us from falling further back. Great towers all aflame falling onto people, the heat on my face. People happily allowing themselves to be electrocuted. Waking up to find my beloved unbreathing or my cat still on the floor. Finding myself trapped, alone, or being hunted.

I wake up wanting to cry and vomit. Often both.

So vivid. Always with just enough truth to pull the acid up from my stomach, sometimes revealing things I had forgotten, sometimes forcing my focus to thoughts I can’t think in the waking world, and always playing on my deepest fears:

I’m going to be alone. I’ll be betrayed. They’re leave. They’ll be taken. I have no control. I can’t feel love. My soul is dying.

It rips me apart and while I know I can survive it- have survived it for so long, I’m awfully tired of it being normal for me.

I’m tired of waking up every four hours or so- a compulsion I can’t control, to make sure everyone is still there and breathing, that I haven’t been left alone. I’m tired of having to make myself go to bed. I’m tired of laying there, unwilling to let my mind shut off even when I want it to because I know what comes next. I’m tired of finding myself caught up in another world far too real to my senses. I’m tired of feeling dread. I’m tired of jerking awake and forcing the contents of my stomach to still. I’m tired of laying there with a pounding heart afterwards and boycotting any form of sleep or idle thought for the rest of the day.

I’m tired of repeating it all the next night.

And the next.

I’m tired.

Letter To Myself

March 7th, 2010

2

Sliver of a thought: If you could write a letter to your inner child what would it say?

Dear Me,

It’s all wrong isn’t it? It feels wrong but they all act like it’s right… You’re scared aren’t you? It feels so scary but they act like it’s perfectly safe. You don’t want to sit next to her but she’ll yell if you don’t… if you inch to the edge of your seat because you’re afraid to be in her reach… if you clasp the seat belt because we missed another stop sign on a quiet street.

Little girls shouldn’t be playing pool with old men in bars on school nights. Little girls shouldn’t be stealing money to buy something to eat. Little girls shouldn’t be left home alone… or blamed for what happens to their parents… or what their parents do.

You’re alone but you’re not. The trees talk to you and the rain sings you to sleep. Darkness caresses your cheek in the lonely night as silence screams in vain that something is missing. Can you feel it? Can you hear it? Can’t you make it stop?

Yes, yes, and no.

But you’ll try. Someday when you get the power. Someday when you get a taste of love. Someday when the loneliness becomes too much and then the abandoned will do the abandoning.

It’s a cruel cycle hell bent on continuing. Not through you but in the very air you breath- a phantom of the past dancing in every step you take. You’re still scared and it’s still wrong but now that you know what love is… now that you know what life is, it will be alright.

Prayers get answered, little one. No one will know it better than you. Not right away but your life will be a practice of patience- silently bidding your time until the world sweeps you off your feet. You’ll remember all the times you curled up in bed and tried to be unborn and then you were reborn. You’ll remember all the times you wished for a family and then you were gifted with more than you dared to hope for. You’ll remember all the times you wished to tell your story…

And then you’ll read this letter and know another prayer is in the process of being answered.

Timelines

February 26th, 2010

6

[Is timeline one word or two? Two of three dictionaries say two words, Google seems to think it can go either way.]

So, my therapist asked me to write a timeline of my life- just to outline those greater events that stick out in my memory. I said sure, it sounded like a perfectly easy project to me.

Holy crap. I could not have been more wrong.

Without details my ‘timeline’ is roughly four pges long and as I look over it… hell, as I wrote it, I had to pause for a moment to really appreciate what’s been going on in my head lately.

A therapist once told me, some four or five years ago, that she was amazed there wasn’t more wrong with me. Looking at my list I find myself more and more inclined to agree.

There are times I don’t feel like an abused kid. I don’t focus on it every moment of my life and when I do I always have this perfectly logical voice in the back of my head saying it was nothing big, you survived it and others have been through worse. When I tell people about the things in my past I speak with that same voice- it happened, it’s over, and here I am today.

But all things are a coin.

Sometimes when I get caught up in one really strong memory or another I feel… so much. I’m small, the event big, and the universe suddenly has a lot to answer for. Then the memory ends and I’m at peace with it again.

Looking at my timeline though, it’s like I can see both sides at once. I can see that compared to others it wasn’t so bad, but more so- I can see how truly screwed up my whole life has been. It’s a frustrating feeling to know I’ve survived it but I don’t feel like I have either because I’m too far away from it mentally (dissociation) or because I’m trapped in the moment again (flash backs).

It’s unfair that my perception is so screwed up.

There are people I love… and I look at this list of events and can’t help noticing how many horrible things have been done to me. There are people I don’t like- at all… and I can’t help noticing how much it’s justified. There are categories of ‘wow, that sucks’ that I never put myself into… but I could very well fit if I tried.

I’m not explaining myself right. I’m already going through a little bit of eye opener on certain things and I’m really wishing this list didn’t help because it eats away at my heart. Overall though, despite the tears and brain junk going on I’m happy. I want the world to be clear to me, my world at least, no matter how brutal it is.