In an effort to be more authentic in my life, I am being more open with people about my struggles. My life journey has been fraught with many traumas and problems, in addition to some happy times. I was physically, verbally, psychologically, and emotionally abused as a child. My parents weren't horrible people. They were the product of their generation and their culture. My mother's family were not as demonstrative in affection. They tended to assume one knew of the love that was felt. And they would bottle up issues, and not talk about them with the source. Also, her family culture was to shame each other into doing something. My father was passed through orphanages, foster homes, relatives until landing into his abusive and neglectful biological mother's home. He enlisted in the Army for the Vietnam War because he was kicked out of his home at 18, and he returned with PTSD, which he didn't deal with until his own children were adults. There was a level of instability in my childhood home that made it unsafe for healthy emotional and psychological development. Suffice it to say, I was in fight or flight mode for most of my life.
Physical abuse and emotional abuse were common in my childhood home. Being spanked, slapped sometimes, pushed, the occasional light slam, and of course the psychological stuff. That would include being told I'm a slob/lazy/making excuses, gaslighting, threats of leaving the family from my mother, and the passive aggression/manipulation. There was no "safe haven" to escape to and center me. It was a very lonely time. Being told that I couldn't trust anyone outside the family, that no one would love/like me as much as the family, all while being abused at home. It really messed with my head. To whit, I sucked my thumb until I was 11 years old. Self-soothing with soft stuffed animals and sucking my thumb was my only outlet for release. And school wasn't a safe place either.
My earliest school memory is from kindergarten. I was being sexually assaulted by one classmate whilst another classmate held me down. I told a teacher, who stopped it from happening. But nothing ever came of it. There was no comforting by my parents. There was no therapy. Nothing. Instead, it was left to me to sort out and come to terms with being violated at school. I learned from that experience that most teachers are untrustworthy, that school is not a safe place, and that my parents didn't care enough to protect me. Throughout my entire primary and secondary education, there are maybe a handful of teachers that I felt I could trust. Every other teacher, while I'm sure they were good people, exhibited characteristics to people who had betrayed or hurt me in previous years. One of my middle school teachers happened upon my depression journal. It was a book where I wrote of my despair and longing for the release of death. She asked me about it, to which I obviously lied in response. And then she let it go. She never reported to the administrator, school guidance counselor or even my parents. Instead, it was ignored and the status remained quo. School years were lonely and scary for me. I didn't have the vocabulary, or the ability, to vocalize the twisted labyrinth that was my lived experience. The depression journal was my only tangible cry for help. I did some sports, but every time a coach yelled instructions or to motivate I would cringe and shut down a little bit more. I was eager to please but afraid of what failure would mean.
I was a member of a religious community that was small-ish. I didn't really have friends there either. There were people who knew me, but nobody that I would share confidences with. I didn't have anyone that I would get together with, make plans with... I wasn't one of the "cool" kids. I was too smart, knew all of the answers. I was too stuck up, though, in reality, I was afraid of most of the people I saw at church. I didn't think they were trustworthy because I saw their daily deceptions easily. And they had rejected me every time I made overtures of friendship in their general direction. I had thought that I could trust my adult leaders but was mistaken in that as well.
I attempted to die by suicide in spring of 1996. Years of bottling up my feelings, abuse, and major depression finally caught up, and I tried to die. I obviously was stopped. I was admitted to a teen psychological unit in a nearby hospital for treatment. While I was there, my church youth leader came to visit me. She stayed to talk with me for a while, and I believed that she was offering comfort to me. I later learned that she went back to church and gossipped about my mental health issues. She violated me. My trust was betrayed by someone who was supposed to protect me. She took from me the choice to disclose, all in the effort to be the person who knew salacious details of my problems. The worst part is that she didn't see that she had done anything wrong. A few months after her violating me, she and her husband moved back to Utah... They moved closer to her grandchildren, and her life continued as though nothing happened. The wreckage of my life was a blip on the radar. But I learned a valuable thing from Darla Fotheringham. I couldn't trust any of my ecclesiastical leaders with anything of value or an intimate nature to my life. My confidence would be betrayed, and the person who perpetuates the violation would face no consequences for the damage they did to me.
As a result of my traumatic experiences, I was my parents' least stable offspring. I barely finished my required coursework for high school. It wasn't because I lacked the intelligence. It was because I kept having flashbacks, panic attacks, and bipolar mood swings. Producing homework, taking tests, even being mentally present in classes was very difficult. I was diagnosed with a learning disability in middle school. ADHD, mixed with mental illness, made learning to learn an impossible task. I was miserable, unable to label WHY I was suffering so much. I spent so much energy pretending that everything was okay, perfecting the mask that I presented to everyone. I was exhausted at the end of the day. And nightmares made me afraid to sleep. I still didn't have the vocabulary to label my experiences. But in the future, I would.
I finally went to university when I was 31 years old. While I was there, I was sexually assaulted. Because I was attending a conservative religious school, in an extremely conservative town, I didn't press charges or even report being raped. I had known too many women who had reported sexual assault and their educations' put into jeopardy because they were blamed for being assaulted and the assailant seemed sorry anyway. I had waited too long for an education, so there was no way I would start over in a different university system. So instead, I kept it to myself again.
Flash forward to the present day. I am married to a military officer and want to get treatment for my mental health disorders. My psychiatrist didn't want to treat my ADHD without a current diagnosis. So I scheduled a testing session with my psychologist. As we went over the results, she was straight forward and didn't ease me into her diagnoses. I have ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, and PTSD. Actually, she was surprised that I hadn't been diagnosed with PTSD earlier. Apparently, multiple car wrecks, being sexually assaulted, physical/mental/verbal abuse, and ecclesiastical abuse DO result in psychological damage. And now I can better identify why I have had some of the reactions to different stimuli.
I am learning how to learn to trust people. I am learning how to identify a panic attack, versus it being a heart attack. My counselor made the suggestion of getting a service dog. Little did I know how expensive that would be. I created a gofundme campaign to crowdfund the cost of obtaining a service dog. I'm hoping that people will help me to feel safety.
I know that I may have given the impression of someone who has her life together. But that couldn't be further from the truth. I am a work in progress. Some days, everything seems to come together and there is stability. And some days, my goal is to remember to eat meals. Mental illness is a hidden disability. People with mental illnesses don't wear their disability in a visible manner like those who cannot walk or see. They are most often harassed for not having a tangible disability. The problem is, mental illness affects physical health, and sometimes the ability to be in public spaces. I have hope in the future. It is all that I can claim.
The weather is cloudy, with a chance of rain. There are small peekings of sunlight between clouds. Fog has rolled in but may burn off in the afternoon. All in all, this forecast is up for any interpretation.
The Tallgurrl
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