altarflame | Entries tagged with epiphanies

Awhile before I went out of town this past weekend, I read a lot of stuff abouthow contraindicated isolation is for PTSD. I'd already been thinking about it a lot - as a stay at home mom and a writer, there's an inherent amount of isolation, you know? I talked about it with Grant, though, because we can both look back and see clear patterns that correlate - I was doing very well, being productive and fairly happy, when I was in school - even though I was WAY busier, and had MORE to do that could have been overwhelming. Productivity/happiness then took a clear nose dive after I got my AA, my friend Kristin (who I normally saw a LOT) moved away, and he started travelling constantly. It didn't feel like it was related, because I don't necessarily have a problem with being alone, in the moment. At all. I crave time alone and will purposely isolate myself, which is this whole danger sign of PTSD that you're supposed to watch out for, *sigh* I mean I am normally kind of on the line between intro- and extroverted, throughout my life, and get tired of almost any company eventually and need a break to recharge.

Except PTSD does this thing wherein being around others starts to seem harder and harder - NOT something that's ever been natural to me before - and it creates this downward spiral effect that leaves me burrowing deeper and deeper into solitude as days and then weeks pass, and I'm dissociating way too much. I wrote about this in January/February a bit - first complaining about being lonely and then, later, talking about how I had to admit to my sister and to Nancy that I'd been avoiding them on purpose and MAKE myself go see people again because I was becoming a miserable slug. To be fair, constant pain issues and lumps in my hands were not helping.

Back to more recent history - this past weekend, I was CONSTANTLY around people (and getting a great break from the kind of tedious drudgery that housekeeping can get to be, too). Lots of people. I had long good conversations with Tawanna and Terri from Dance Empire, but also with acquaintances from the studio, and waiters, and with total strangers. I spent a whole day with my mother (and she's trying hard...it wasn't nearly so sucky as it might normally have been), a few hours with Bobby, and briefly caught up with my brother and his girlfriend (Bob actually has a job and drives and shit, can you imagine?). I sat in crowds to watch performances and sat in small groups to rehash things and sat one on one with people. I texted a ton, with Grant and some others.

You would think there would be some inherent stress here - my mother normally weirds me out, Bobby and I have some historic animosity that can pop up, I haven't talked to my brother in months. I didn't get a fraction the sleep I usually would have, and spent way too much time driving. My mom's house was tiny, cramped and generally uncomfortable. Aaron was an over-stimulated SID flibbertigibbit half the time.

And YET...

I felt so good driving and getting home, Sunday night. Our freakin' van AC stopped working and Aaron slept the whole way and I was still happy as a clam the whole way. So sweet and lovely to just hug everyone and be back at my house, once we arrived. So awesome to get back to Grant, and our cats, and my bed. At first I thought this was just about the cramped sleeplessness I'd been dealing with, but the next day I felt SO CLEAR HEADED, so sure of myself and so able to do things that needed to be done. It was a really big deal, not compared to the weekend but compared to the four months prior. Big chunks of the last few YEARS prior. I was actually confused about it. I wanted my husband a whole lot, exactly as he is, and was so grateful for him, and generally had this comparative sort of ease, after Orlando and Lakeland (both of which I hate in different ways), like I love our house. I love our life. I love what we've built here - I chose all of this. Chose! Whereas I've spent so much of the past few months feeling TRAPPED as all hell.

I walked around wondering - am I bipolar? Am I crazy? WAS I crazy? Will this just pass soon? I felt like I used to feel with Jake or Elise on my back, cooking big breakfasts and lunches with kids on counters - you know, before PTSD when I was good at life and stay at home motherhood was in no way contraindicated... Grant was home Monday and I got a lot of texts from the Dance Studio and all week I've had a ton to do, with transferring to university. Still, I've been cooking and cleaning and guiding schoolwork and writing scholarship letters and getting up early like it's not even hard, hopping on my bike to take Isaac to school with a smile and, for emphasis here, I'm even on my period, and now that I'm not taking anti inflammatories that is sort of the seventh circle of hell, except not hellish at all while I'm snuggling with my beasty (Elise) and having crazy hot awesome sex every day <---O_o

I mean, WHAT? How is this happening?

I'm still talking to counselors (in the search for someone who takes our insurance and is right for us, I mean). I'm thinking, ok...am I in the biggest checkout from reality I've ever experienced? I am so not. Is this really just the result of me spending a couple of days around deeply depressed folks (mom and brother) and a lot of stage moms (there was some horrific critical scolding going on). Now I appreciate my easy peasy kids and like minded husband more? Do you really need a break to make you appreciate things, sometimes? When I got back from New York I was like, ugh, I don't want to be back in this pit of laundry and dishes and constant demands. Which is very similar to how I've felt after weekends away with Grant; ugh, no, let the break last longer!! I am not generally happy to get home, whether after an outing or a day or what have you :/ I deal with it, and there are good parts, but I never feel "ready to be home" these past years, when I'm back home.

I gradually worked my way around to thinking of how muddled and messed up I've been, though, PTSD-wise. I have been so ridiculously triggered for the past few months....so many doctors' appointments and ER visits and outpatient tests and even the ultrasound to get my IUD checked annually (my strings are really short and undetectable, so this happens when I go in for a pap). My nightmares and dread of sleeping were back full on, and my general uselessness in the day to day was getting ridiculous. I was on some kind of tense eggshells all the time, ready to burst into tears over any and everything and totally shutting out those closest to me - and that part, is new for me to recognize as part of this. So yeah..."engaging with the world" is generally one of the most important parts of PTSD treatment. And I don't normally do a whole lot of that. And maybe I really, really need to do a whole lot of that.

The point of this whole entry is that I went googling yesterday, for the first time, about PTSD and relationships, specifically. And it made me cry. During a week I am not crying or on any sort of hair trigger ;) During a really happy week, the first one I've had since probably New Years. I sent Grant a bunch of screencaps I'll post here, because, well. *sigh again* Yeah.

PTSD divorce rates are INSANE. It seems that almost nobody with PTSD manages to stay married :/ It makes me think back to how I was feeling just a week and a half ago, like I couldn't deal with not only Grant but anybody and just wanted to live alone, by myself, like man I can't wait for my kids to grow up so I can live totally alone...

I don't want to be totally alone. I don't want to have some fucked up mental illness that makes it impossible for me to maintain relationships.

I keep doing this thing, recently, where I go to people I know pretty well and just rant and ramble nonstop about Grant and our relationship and don't want to hear anything they tell me (and what they tell me varies wildly). I'm thinking back on those conversations now, remembering my own words, and just going, "Geez. GEEZ! So desperate to get away from this shit that is INSIDE OF YOU and you can't escape from."

There is this desperation to avoid triggers and the feelings they cause that can extend in all kinds of weird directions, like, the desire to avoid people who remind you of these things or push you to get help, just as an example. More than one person has recently asked me why I haven't been in counseling and it's like, um. Because I'm terrified of being back in counseling. I dropped out of emdr right as we got to the worst parts, in 2008. And it helped a lot, all the work we did do! But I don't want to go back there.

I'm going to. But I sure as hell don't want to. And so days can pass without me making calls and I'm relieved when I realize it's too late, again.

G always gets the worst of this kind of stuff because I'm not willing to do it to the kids. I get distant from the kids, sometimes, though I try to force it when it doesn't come naturally; but I vent my shit in other directions.

Every night I'm falling asleep in his arms...which I have also done over the past four months, in a more platonic and tensely confused sort of way...I'm thinking, wow, I am really fucking glad this man is not just done with me after all the shit I've put him through, all the complicated bs my brain is, all the ways I've hurt him to avoid hurting myself.

It's not just that simple - there are some real issues Grant and I have had that I can see objectively. It's really amazingly better and different when he can manage to not be super codependent and/or super workaholic, and of course he slips into old/natural patterns with that stuff in ways that can suck for me, at times. He's also been wildly improved since figuring out some dietary stuff a couple of years ago - that shit is like night and day. And our sex life started out kinda wack and we had to figure out how to make it better (although there is something really cool about sex that gets better and better rather than tapering away like the cliche goes). But I don't want my stupid fucking PTSD to make me blind to what is or is not good about us and ruin everything regardless! It makes it so much harder to deal with the normal levels or hurt and vulnerability that are just part of being in a relationship at all. It makes things he's gotten past seem so much more glaring and current, in my mind. I feel as though a huge part of what a successful marriage is, is a refusal to give up on one another, and I feel a little ashamed of how ready to duck out and just end it all I've been, at times, this past year...

I just wanted to archive and get out...this revelation. This relief that is also a whole new set of fears (HOW DO I KEEP THIS FROM HAPPENING AGAIN, FROM BEING CYCLICAL, HOW DO I SEPARATE IT FROM REAL ISSUES THE TWO OF US HAVE WHEN I AM TRIGGERED, BECAUSE I WILL BE?!). I'm putting a lot of energy into strategizing ways to "engage with the world," which is a huge part of PTSD treatment. I'll be back in school soon (summer semester even, I set it up at the last minute to not wait for fall), and counseling. And I'm fighting this new thing, now, this hesitance to say anything positive or nice to him? It's about vulnerability, but it's not how or who I typically am in this relationship and I'm trying to cut through it and beat it...

And that is big, because I do have to see this as a thing. I have PTSD. It's hard to even type it, even though I type about it all the time :/ But I do, and I'm not on any meds, and I have to at least DO THINGS - like counseling and "engaging with the world" - if I don't want it to ruin my whole life. Which, you know, I definitely don't. I like to think in my upswings that triggers are behind me, when that isn't really how this works :/

Tomorrow is my wedding anniversary, I realized yesterday. Seven years married, how time does fly... Ananda and Elise watched the very silly video Shaun was sweet enough to make, after our reception, and I thought about the parts I would do differently now, and the parts I love just the way they happened, and I thought, well. Maybe we can do a really badass vow renewal thing at 10 years that stamps approval on the past and starts everything fresh, at the same time.

I would really like that.

For now, I've got a babysitter lined up and I'm taking a shower before he gets home. It's the little things ;)

Ok, yi'zall, I am like, 500 pounds lighter and so freaking relieved, because I have had An Epiphany.

As previously stated, yes, my brother can be a pain in the ass. BUT. (Also previously stated) I've been feeling SO put upon, SO insanely irritated, SO emotional about all of this, way beyond the point he's actually a pain to. I've also been unable to open myself up and do much of anything for him, which sort of defeats the purpose of bringing him down at all.

It's my Mom. Totally and all my mom. I've been suffocating, drowning in the pressure of feeling like she's looking down on me and being so pissed and unforgiving if I enforce any consequences. I don't want to feel obligated and responsible for Bob because otherwise I'll be disowned and lose a parent.

When he actually told her we were going to kick him out, and she actually cried and yelled and then didn't contact me and ignored my sister's email, I got to a worst case scenario situation that somehow...gave me objectivity. Like, ok, THAT? That is not Bob's fault.

She's never thanked me. Not for tucking him in and stroking his hair as a baby, for watching him during all her shifts while he was a toddler. Never thanked me for taking him outside with me everytime I left to play, for meeting with his teacher and helping him with his homework in 6th grade, for playing checkers with him at Starbucks. I never got any gratitude for having him living with us for months at a time as a younger teen, for buying him new glasses, for helping him study for the GED.

What I have gotten, VERY CONSISTENTLY, is "Why did he break that while I was working? Weren't you even watching him?" and "Why did Grant get irritated with him for breaking his Dad's stuff and scaring your kids with his anger?" And a lot of "You don't understand him like I do, Tina" and "He needs me".

Well. Maybe he does. Maybe he did. She hasn't usually been available. He gets a substitute, halfway mom who is either, you know, 11, or has her own kids to deal with. And that has to be good enough, not because I suck that badly but because I am what he's got.

He told me, CRYING, yesterday, that he feels like she's done the same thing his Dad did - dissapear out of his life without looking back. I understand she's extremely preoccupied with MAJOR stuff... but she calls me all the time. She was emailing me for awhile there, saying "Bob's trying to call me again, can you just call and see what he needs?"

So yeah. I'm cutting that loose. I love my Mom, no matter what, but I'm gonna try HARD to not give two shits what she thinks of how I'm doing with Bob because, really? IT DOESN'T MATTER. He's a grown ass man which means she no longer has power which means, NOW IT'S MY TURN. As my sister has pointed out, anyone else who was in her position would walk on eggshells talking to me about him because there's just so much stuff I could say back to her about it. But I never do.

And I'm not going to start. I don't think she's aware I'm making new journal entries. I'm just going to quit giving a damn about her where Bob is concerned. Completely.

With that in mind, and knowing that we are unofficially "not talking" and with nothing else to lose in that arena...I broke down and really got a lot out of viggorlijah and gardenmama's comments and talked with Grant a lot and actually looked at this situation.

I've been very fixated on jobs for a lot of reasons. But, I've completely overlooked other areas of progress, as a result. LIKE, he's went from the first day Frank took him out where he would only ask if people were hiring, to the second day when he actually applied at places, albeit badly, to the third, when he shook managers hands and introduced himself politely and things. The truth is that I know on some level that it's setting him up for failure to demand things he's not capable of. And when you're talking about someone who types "bus" into the search engine and then combs through every result, confused, for half an hour afterward and who doesn't know the months or what "prefix" means on an app...the expectation should be that he continuously improve and keep trying with help, not that he go out on his own and land himself a job right away.

It wasn't quite like that (us expecting him to just land himself a job) - he has had the days with Frank, we did take him out shopping for appropriate clothes, I have helped him with apps here at the house. But I think the expectation for him to go out and do this independently, and immediately, was premature with him. Unrealistc. Totally logical for a normal 19 year old, but if he was a normal 19 year old he wouldn't BE living with me.

But what I really mean about progress is, non-job progress. He does a ton of chores around the house everyday - many WITHOUT BEING ASKED, which is brand spanking new for him. He's GREAT with the kids, all the time. And though he gets mad still sometimes, it's not nearly as often as it was 2 years ago, and I honestly can barely even imagine him moving onto destroying property or hitting oranges with bats to vent it, now, which he used to do routinely. DAILY. Now he just glowers and scowls for 20 minutes, when he's pissed.

Yesterday morning I thought about all this a lot and talked to Grant a lot and then we decided we'd go talk to him about it. We knocked on his door...and he wasn't there. Awhile later I found out it's because he actually put on his interview clothes, left the house, walked and went and applied to all the places he thought were too crappy before, in the plaza 5 blocks away. I told him I was proud of him and he was like...glowing and blushing, it's funny.

So we sat down on the deck swing and made him sit between us, which made him laugh uncomfortably because that basically means hip to hip to hip, and told him listen, we love you and we're just not going to let you fail. You're past your deadline and that means you're doing this OUR WAY now, like, you're sitting down to dinner with us and eating healthy food, you're going places with the family if you're gonna be a part of it, and you're gonna get a job, and you're gonna volunteer and we love you. And then we hugged him. And he got all teary eyed.

AND THEN.

He said we should pray about him getting a job and maybe if it works he'll come to church.

This is fucking momentous coming out of his mouth people, you cannot imagine.

So then he and A and A triple teamed the little kids while we went "last minute couple of things" Christmas shopping, including fleece for me to sew him a stocking to match the other huge, home-sewn fleece stockings. His is black with skulls. It's kind of awesome. I also got him bright, his-sized Spiderman underwear, also awesome. And some dark brown cords I hope can begin to branch him out from all black all the time. On sale at Target.

He came out to my friend Kristin's house, where I had a marshmallow-making date, and he played ping pong with her neighbor's kids and helped get an attachment off her pasta maker that was stuck on and carried everything out to the car for me.

I went in his room to get my sewing machine at 11 last night. HE WAS IN BED ASLEEP. It was the weirdest moment of my life.

I'm sure things will be hard and crappy sometimes. I don't think my epiphany = magic. I still have a lot to do and deal with every day. But I'm finding that shrugging it off and saying, "we have six kids" is not so bad. It's a hell of a lot better than an hour long WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO ABOUT BOB hash out everyday.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, it is Christmas Eve and I am obligated to contact my grandparents, and probably even my MOM. We'll see. Other than this I am not at all stressed about Christmas, like, the craft-presents that aren't done will get done someday, the mess isn't bothering anyone, we're having a good time chilling with the windows and doors open and good weather and Christ is born, Emmanual, God With Us.

Anyway yeah, viggorlijah and gardenmama, I really liked everything you had to say x a million.

Dude, I just realized there are chickens in my dining room. WTF. All cluckity clucking like they aren't INSIDE. I guess they're taking care of the breakfast crumbs, except, no really, gtfo.