I can't remember what happened first *TRIGGER WARNING!!!*

*TRIGGER WARNING* I speak of being molested by my uncle. Do not read if this will trigger you!

I remember sitting on the bed, a twin bed, trying hard to pull my shirt down to hide my naked lower half. Uncle Terry was standing at the window, Tonya and one of her friends was peering in. I can’t make out the look on Tonya’s face. She knew, though, I think, she knew what happened to me. It was day time. The light from outside was pouring into the room. We were in the house on McGregor. So much happened there. I can recall so many other things but I can’t remember what happened before Tonya in the window, or Uncle Terry trying to close the curtains or me trying to pull my shirt down.

I can piece it together. I was four, we hadn’t been living there long. Terry came later. So, maybe I was five. No, I was around four because that was also the time I was going to school, kindergarten, half days, in the morning. That’s when I drew the picture of my naked father and naked uncle. I was too young to be there, they said, but they were more concerned as to why I drew those pictures. Then I didn’t go to that school anymore. Too young? That’s what my mother said later. The truth? I don’t know. I was probably taken out because they asked too many questions.

I was four. It was day. What time of day was it? Tonya was there. School must have been out. It couldn’t have been the weekend because my parents didn’t work weekends. Terry was suppose to watch us until our parents got home. I can remember four times he molested me. But this one time I can’t remember what happened before I remembered trying to pull my shirt down. Why can’t I remember that?? I can remember the day he walked in on me while I was using the restroom and I tried to pull my pants up because I knew seeing him that something bad... No, that’s not right. The rest room wasn’t the first time, me pulling my shirt down was the first time. That’s why I don’t remember. The day he walked in on me in the restroom I knew him being there was bad because it had happened before. I knew I didn’t want him in there because I knew what he would do.

He was standing by the window, trying to pull the curtain closed. Tonya was at the window with her friend and they were looking in. I can’t quite make out the expression on Tonya’s face. I can only see her face from the nose up. She is straining to look in. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and his belt was undone and his zipper and pants button was undone. It’s right there, what I’m not wanting to remember. They are holding it. They don’t want me to know. Maybe it belongs to someone who only has that memory left.

I can’t remember. I can’t remember what came before that.

The fight continues

I hate being agoraphobic, I just hate it! I used to live in California, in Southern California, in Santa Ana, then L.A., then Pasadena. I never stayed inside, I was always outside, going to the beach, to the mountains, to different shops, different experiences. I was active, I moved, I breathed in fresh air until my lungs felt full. I rarely stayed home, and when I did, I was very “social.” I chatted through mIRC, an internet relay chat program, and I met people through there and then met them in real life. I had friends, I did things. This trend followed me from California, Georgia, South Carolina, but the moment I hit Memphis, I slowly started to withdraw. In the passed year, I learned it was not Memphis that caused my sudden and severe withdraw from the world. 

I was on disability from 1991 to 2005, I hated being on disability, with it comes a stigma about being lazy. I am not lazy, anyone who knows me knows I am a very driven woman. My mind cannot sit still therefore neither can I. But when people learned I was on disability, they thought me instantly lazy because I didn’t “look sick.” And there lies the crux of most people’s idea behind mental illness. So, when, in 2004, I was able to go back to work, I felt as if I had won the lottery. I left the house 7 days a week, 5 days for work, the weekends were reserved for my wife and we would go to estate sales, the zoo, the park, to the lake, etc. We were active. Then I met friends, good friends, people I still talk to, people I still want to see. As I moved from job to job (because I get bored easily once I learn a job), I became more and more social. 

But then, in 2006, something started to change. I was working for St Jude, a very good company to work for, I loved the company, their philosophy, their ethics, the people I worked with, I was happy there. The first 5 months I worked there, I worked just like I always did, I went to work everyday without fail, even if I was sick. That is my work ethics, work… don’t go to a job and give half-ass and want the full benefit, no, that’s not how its suppose to work. That philosophy got lost in the world somewhere along the way, but I digress. I was promoted to a good position and something changed. I started calling in… a lot. There were just days I felt so sick that I couldn’t get out the front door. I thought it was the work, it was a very physical job, so physical I lost 25 pounds in the first two months I worked there. No, that wasn’t it. I thought it was the type of work, it was very emotional. No, that wasn’t it. I kept calling in and I started to feel worse and worse. I found a different job with a different company in 2007. But I still called in. My contract with that job ended and I went to a different job in 2008. And still, whatever was happening just got worse and worse and then the breakdown in 2010. 

Wow, for so long I thought my agoraphobia got worse in 2010 but no, after thinking on it it started in 2006. I heard once that, “do the thing you fear the most and the death of fear is certain.” I call bullshit because that is bullshit! I did the thing I feared the most everyday for six years and I got worse. I left my house, against everything my body was telling me and I got worse. I call shenanigans! And now, I am feeling over anxious because tomorrow, 25 1/2 hours from now, I have to go to therapy. I’m snappy because the way my panic attacks manifest is with irritation and sudden outbursts of anger. I am never violent but my patience are shortened and my ability to control my irritation is pretty much gone. So, to keep me from hurting my wife’s feelings, I have put myself in my office, closed the door, and I am writing it out until my Xanax kicks in. I don’t want to be this way anymore and I am so tired of being agoraphobic. I do like my new therapist though. When I told her the “do the you fear most” quote, she shook her head and disagreed with that statement altogether. I liked her immediately. Because that statement isn’t true, is it? 

People with agoraphobic don’t leave their house because we are too lazy, or too weak, or anti-social, or anything negative cruel people can think of to call us. No, we don’t leave the house because our fear is so monumental, so intense, so incredibly palpable it drives us into the ground. We experience fear on such a level, we actually suffer. Think about the one thing you fear, it can be anything, fear of spiders, fear of water, fear of whatever, now multiply that by 1,000 and then you will start to understand phobias. Agoraphobia is no different. We fear being outside because something in our minds and bodies tell us there is something out there to fear. 

As much as we hate living like this, it is so ingrained in us by the time it reaches this point, it will take years to correct. And just that thought alone is exhausting, let alone trying to fix it. 

But fix it… we must. The fight continues.

TRIGGER and SPOILER ALERT...... I was suppose to be someone else

************TRIGGER WARNING*****************

I was suppose to be someone else, I am sure of it. When I was born, I was on a trajectory for something good, maybe not great, but at least good. The suit of skin I was suppose to wear was poised and prepared specifically for me. And so I started down that road toward that good person with goodness in their future, I set out as confident and ready for whatever was about to come at me. But just as a pebble on the train tracks can derail a large train, at age five I was thrust into a different direction and I wasn’t able to find my way back to the good path. My suit of skin sat in the window dressing waiting for me but after many years it slowly decayed and faded. And who I was suppose to be no longer mattered until I remembered I was suppose to be someone else. 

It’s cruel to do that to anyone, to do that to a child. To do that to a living a thing is like the Dementors and their kiss. You will remain alive but there is almost no point, not missing the soul of the person you were meant to be. Getting knocked to your knees, getting the air pushed out of you, lying still in a curled ball on the ground almost makes you wish ... Almost.... Death would have taken you long ago. 

I often say I wouldn’t change a day because I like who I am now. 

Very few people know this about me, this is something I don’t share very often, it’s a burden I have always felt I should carry alone because the weight of it is enough to drag anyone to their knees. But my legs are strong by now, I have carried this with me so long now that if I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t know how to walk, or be. 

I often think about moving to another country, to be far away from here because no matter where I am in the states, my family will find me. But they are also dumb, and I don’t mean that fully as a hurtful statement, they are dumb. They never finished school nor have they tried to better themselves. They are stagnant in their ignorant revery and they don’t ever wish to change. They wouldn’t understand how to fill out the passport application nor would they put forth that kind of energy. Being that far from them would maybe, maybe, maybe give me the leg up, to become someone else that is closer to who I was suppose to be. Who they were suppose to be was ripped from them at a very young age. When people talk about cycles, that is exactly what it is, a cycle from one person to the next who will never be who they were suppose to be. 

So, here I am, memories pounding my mind like hail on a tin roof, just trying to hold myself together with two tired arms and hoping the onslaught ends soon. And hating my parents for taking away the person I was suppose to be.

I hate medication! So. Much!

I’m sick. I’m sick and tired. And I hate every second of this. I can’t see beyond right now when my eyelids burn to close, nor can I see beyond right now because my brain is soggy, or at least feels that way. For the passed twenty-two years I have ran through my life in the blur of Prozac and Paxil, Zoloft, and Depakote, and Lexapro, and Amitrityline, and Xanax, and now Buspar. My stomach aches and churns in the mixture of everything I take just to keep my skin from peeling apart and ripping me to shreds from what other people did to me. I was created into the person I am now because of actions and results, not because of hard work on my part. Though I can look back and say no I wouldn't change a day, I actually like myself, as strange as that may sound. But fuck them! Why did they take their perversions out on me? Maybe it was because I was so small, so petite, they thought I was weak. But I did survive that ordeal. So what! I can’t leave my house, I need tylenol pm to stay asleep, I don’t eat well, blah blah blah and so forth. I’m just sick and tired.

I started Buspar eight days ago and I have been so sick since. Nausea, vomiting, lethargy, inability to concentrate, dizziness, and general sickness. I hate pharmaceuticals. Far too many side effects that outweigh the benefits. And I know it’s still early but I haven’t noticed a difference and I haven’t noticed a decrease in my anxiety. I’m going to give it another 7 days and then if nothing has changed I’m stopping the medication. I don’t like how I feel. But I also don’t know what else to try. I have completely given up on going back to work outside my house. I know how that sounds, that I’m giving up, I’m not giving up. “Do the thing you fear the most and the death of fear is certain.” So the saying goes. So I did. I left the house everyday, every fucking day for 9 years and I had a breakdown. It only got worse and no one can tell me why. I tried, I tried so hard to keep it together because I wanted to be perfect for Melissa. I still do. I want to take care of her. I want to be well... For once. But I won’t be well. I know I can be managed, I know I can live a great life, and I know I can do whatever I want. 

I’m just having a down day. These come and go, just like major symptoms of my “mental illness.” This too shall pass but dammit if these side effects aren’t burning my ass! 

I'm agoraphobic

Realizations are scary... At best. I know academically that I am agoraphobic.But I am also he master of denial. Until this evening. 

Three years ago I had a breakdown. My mind was pushed to the ultimate boundaries of endurance and I finally snapped. And for ten years before that I lived in Memphis, TN. Unarguably one of the worst places to live in the United States, Memphis has a long enduring history of hate and anger and a strong cultivation of apathy. They strive for apathy here like animals strive for survival in the wild. It’s their instinct, it’s their culture, it’s their lineage, one they will never change. I hate it here. I would rather live with my abusers than live here. 

While doing the dishes this evening, I do what I always do and had an in depth internal dialogue about my situation and things I have observed about myself. I do this all the time. I self analyze. I dissect myself and try to filter out the bad. At times it is excruciating because I see certain parts of myself and know I cannot change them or filter them out. I try so hard to better myself all the time and tonight I realized I was doing something wrong.

As I mentioned before, I dislike Memphis. I have never hidden that fact. I also blamed a lot of my condition on the fact that Memphis is the root of all evil. I started working again in 2004 and I continued to work until I couldn’t anymore. And for the longest time, I blamed Memphis for this. I blamed Memphis for me not wanting to go outside, explaining to anyone who would listen that I was different before I came here, I used to go outside all the time in California, in El Paso, in Savannah, etc. I explained that I have held down jobs, I have spoken to people, I talked on the phone all the time. I would drive to the store without ever worrying about it. I would... I would... I would... But that wasn’t true either. In California I went outside because my then girlfriend wanted it that way, and then the girlfriend after that. I held down jobs during that time because I needed more money than I had. In El Paso I the same thing, in Savannah same thing. It was always for someone that I pushed myself beyond my endurance level and in the end of each of those, I suffered. 

So, when I first started noticing that I was slipping away emotionally, I did try to reach out to people and explain it was happening but I also kept blaming the job, the people I worked with, the type of work, the amount of work, the mentality of the people who grew up in Memphis and their incessant apathy, and having to commute with the piss poor drivers here. I blamed everything else. 

It wasn’t Memphis at all. I’m agoraphobic. At an early age I was conditioned to stay away from people. Every time I was close to people they harmed me in some way. When I started to stay away from people I felt ok. During my childhood and adolescence I learned to be alone and I felt safe. 

I’m agoraphobic. When I was leaving the house each and every day to go to work, I was pushing myself beyond what I could actually handle. And slowly I lost every ounce of strength I had to hold back the fear and anguish I felt. Each time I went to work, I got weaker and weaker until that day in August in 2010. Then all bets were off, the damn broke, and I fell to the ground in a heap of tears because it was all just way too much. And this evening when I finally saw that it was not Memphis at all, something clicked, it was like someone ran a pen up my spine and dotted the back of my head. I’m agoraphobic. I never wanted to believe I was that bad off. I never wanted to believe I still had years of work ahead of me to deal with what happened. I have spent 44 years not dealing with what happened. And now, my mind, in small bursts of remembering, is forcing me too. I had a major memory recently thanks to Dexter, the tv show. Long story. Some people haven’t seen the most recent episodes so I don’t want to spoil anything. Needless to say, there was a very triggering scene for me and since then my brain has been waging war with itself with releasing memories and fighting to keep them at bay. My defenses are faltering and acceptance is rearing its ugly head. 

I’m agoraphobic. I don’t have enough energy anymore to keep any of the crap at bay. In the past when I have been in therapy, I always reach a point just before I start talking about my childhood and then I stop going. I can’t do that anymore. There is nothing else to blame, nothing else to do but move forward and to do that I must, I must confront the crap.

Acceptance and All Things Brave

The day I finally reached acceptance of my system was like feeling the sun on my face. It was 1996 and I remember I went inside and stood in the doorway of their house and just watched them for a long time. They have a viewer in the middle of the living room, a huge screen where they can watch what is going on outside. They have a sectional couch facing the viewer. On the couch sat Cassi, Cathi, Mimi, Sara, and a handful of Littles. On the back of the couch sat Richi doing his nails and every once in a while interjecting into the conversation. I just watched them and it suddenly occurred to me what they went through. It wasn’t just about me having gone through some terrible times at the hands of my family and their friends, my system did too. They probably got the worst. I stood feeling these enormous emotions slowly start to overtake ma and I remember I started to shake. Soon, I was crying heavily. Soon after that, as they have done my entire life, my system came to me and lifted me up, taking me to the couch and cared for me until I regained my composure. 

I don’t have words to adequately explain my system, what they did, who they are, and what they did for me. Words almost fail me. If it wasn’t for them, I would surely be worse than I am.  

I will never know what it is like to form friendships and bonds after enduring war. I will never fully understand how people share those fundamentally, soul altering experiences when faced with gun fire and carnage. But I can, with 100% clarity, know the bond I have with my system after we endured ongoing onslaughts of repeated torture, rape, mutilation of body and mind, and seeing in their eyes how even the light of day is kept at fingers length. I know the pain of a survivor. I fully grasp and understand how life goes on but in mechanical motion. I know and see how the heart is wrung close to death at the painstaking awareness that people in this world wanted us dead. It is not a cavalier statement, people wanted us dead, erased from the earth, wiped clean of any knowledge to our existence. And when you are a child, fighting against those odds, who you were meant to be becomes moot because that person is gone. In their place is someone who will never fully trust, who is constantly on guard, who is wrought with scars, both external and internal. 

So, looking at my system as the forefront of all things brave, one can begin to fully understand why to me they are heroes. 

I've noticed two things

I did some serious refurbishing of my vitamin regiment. After many hours of research and refocusing my search words and what I expected and what I wanted to change, I came across a new vitamin (well, new to me) that promised to relieve the feelings of stress and anxiety. Now, as you know, I am skeptical to say the least. I have seen loads of vitamins and medications that promised to change my life with their herbal relief but few, with the exception of Niacin, have actually made good on that promise. But, seeing as how my life is currently lived with the confines of my four walls and my front porch, I needed to do something different. Hence, new vitamins. 

A lot of sites that deal with helping people with anxiety issues mentioned adrenal fatigue due to the constant high levels of stress and constant hypervigilance. What is hypervigilance? Well, vigilance is being alert, watchful, For people like me, that alertness and watchfulness takes on a whole different meaning. We are constantly... CONSTANTLY on alert, always watchful, with never a moment to relax. When the body is under that kind of stress, under that kind of constant vigilance, the body overproduces chemicals that makes the body constantly vigilant. And that, takes vigilance to hypervigilance. So, what happens to the body when this occurs?

When the body is under that much stress, overwhelming amounts of stress, the body produces large amounts of adrenaline, over and over and over, for days, for months, for years upon years. Eventually, those glands stay partially to constantly active, even when there is no danger around. Those glands can keep up that overproduction for a very long time until... well... they get tired, they get fatigued and then in some people, they stop working altogether. Luckily for me, they still work but they are fatigued. During the course of my research I came across a vitamin I had never heard of, ashwagandha. This vitamin has been known to treat adrenal fatigue but also has been known to treat depression and anxiety and greatly reduce stress. This basically means since the body is producing less adrenaline, the adrenal glands can rest. It also means that large amounts of adrenaline is no longer being pumped into the body making the stress and anxiety worse. This also means that the hypervigilance begins to ease up. Of course, I am a skeptic. But I have to try something. 

Day 3 on ashwagandha. I added 500mg of this vitamin to my regular regime that I have been on for one year solid. I take 6,000mg of niacin, 2,400mg of calcium and vitamin C, 5,000 IU of vitamin D3, 500mg of Magnesium, 1,000 mg of Fish Oil, 3,000mg Valerian Root at bed time, and a lot of water. I have been systematically cutting down on caffeine and cutting way back on coffee. I know what most people say when they hear the amount of each I am taking, "That's way too much! You are going to shut your liver down!" There has been no proof that those amounts cause damage. I have not felt my depression in over a year and I WILL NOT go back to living in that darkness. Besides that, I get a physical each year and my liver is fine. 

The ashwanadha is amazing! Truly amazing! The day after my first dose, I felt like I had taken a xanax. I was relaxed, almost to the point of not functioning but still able to concentrate. I did not have the cloudiness associated with xanax. The bad neighbors turned their car stereo up and I barely noticed. THAT was when I noticed a change. Usually I would have been on the phone immediately to the police but it barely phased me. I noticed it but I wasn't bothered. If that makes sense. I slept like a rock that night. I didn't move for 7 hours straight. That rarely happens but two nights in a row, I actually slept. I had bad dreams but I didn't react as I usually do. I woke up and was able to fall back to sleep immediately. My appetite is lowered but I am not stressing about that either. For 30 years, I have chosen to stay fat, to stay heavy because that is my safety blanket but I am not worrying that I may lose weight. And today, I left the house with my wife and I was fine. We had fun... let me say that again... we had fun. Now to give a short reason why that is important. I can go months without leaving the house and when I do, I am usually is a foul mood and I snap because of all the noise. I'm very unpleasant to be around when we are out of the house. So, to say that we had fun is not only an important step, it's a colossal achievement. 

Now that I have given the good points, there are a couple of downsides that I am hoping fades with time. First and most notable, I am in pain. One of the ingredients in ashawanda is lactic acid.  Lactic acid is the chemical that is produced by your muscles when they are used and it is also a by-product of milk. Why is this information important? Because it can settle in your muscles after a work out and cause soreness. See where this is going? So, i need to drink a shit ton of water to help my body flush the excess. And that is why i hurt. Because I am constantly putting it into my body before my body can fully flush it out, I have to increase the amount of water I drink in order to get to a balance so I can keep taking it and it will not cause as much soreness. 

Second this I noticed, it is hard for me to stir in the mornings. The ashwagandha causes such relaxation that it is or can be difficult to get up in the morning. But overall, I can honestly say I am liking the results of this. I will stay on the 500mg per day until the soreness goes away but if I keep getting results on this dosage, I will most likely stay on this level.