I have never thought of myself as someone who had Trauma™. If I go back far enough having been forced in, around, and through therapy as a kid – I had disdain for Mental Illness as a whole – it wasn’t as real as they say it is. While at the time I think I was speaking truth in the truly younger ages – by the time I was 13 I was just reiterating platitudes shoved down my throat by caregivers and any sort of authority in my life. I needed help.
It is time to come clean, 33 years into life: I am not well. Through exceptional diversion tactics have tricked myself and others into only seeing the “success”. In fact at this point when someone encourages, implores and brags about my successful life and career it takes all my restraint to not push them away and just yell out:
“Success? Look what I have sacrificed and lost – the pains I have put myself through to amount to no more than a small sum of money in a bank account”
I’ve missed the birth and growth of a whole generation of family, the better twilight years of elders of that same family. Friends have come and gone, some have even passed on – contact totally lost and finding out years later. Birthdays, Funerals, Celebrations, Weddings – to the point where I downplayed my own enjoyment of festivities because when I was working I didn’t need to feel anything. Emotions, even good ones, were an issue. If I felt good and I settled back to “normal” it would show even the faintest inkling of how dark and empty my “normal” was.
Why now? I have clearly had a good run on being able to hide behind this façade of this great leader, hardworking, never faltering persona that I built for myself.
In the past 5 years I have had a lot of things happen in a concurrent timeline that really had me thinking about something “more”. I was working too much, lost family, lost friends, lost a very long relationship (“The one”), got sick – contended with death, the pandemic had me questioning my career as a whole. Things cascaded every 6 to 12 months back to back and I never got to recover or process the former before being thrust into the latter. I did seek therapy for the whole death/dying thing. I used it like a band-aid and did not look to delve deeper than I needed to get back to work.
In the past 12 weeks now I have gone through and been thrust back into every single one of these same circumstances and everything inside me… broke. Not only was I reeling and feeling the pressure of the things actively going through my mind at the present but everything from the past just attacked me all at once. I became physically sick, no energy, feverish, bed ridden. Finding myself staring off into space, not even recognizing my own name with people talking to me right in front of me. I have cried more in the last month than my previous 25 years combined.
I am not sure that repressed memories are a real thing or one of those made up for TV things (a google search makes it seem dubious at best) – I remember sitting there crying: wondering why, what did I do to myself, where did this all come from, where can I go?
Like getting hit by lighting – I still vividly remember the sharpest pain in my head I have ever felt, crumbling to my knees and all these past events flood past me things I know have happened to me. Things I have chosen, consciously, to disregard as inconsequential because that is and was my ultimate coping strategy at the time:
Just forget about it, you have to be a rock, you need to be strong, what you feel is nothing – look at what other people are going through. If you are vulnerable how can you possibly support others.
In my minimal amount of defense it was something that was figuratively and literally beaten into me but still… what in the ever-living fuck was I thinking? Even not having any other experiences to draw upon – HOW could I think that this was healthy. If someone approached me and said this is how they were feeling – I’d be left sad and confused that they could think like that – face your problems head on, I’ll come with you – we can get you through this together. It was good enough for others. I was not allowed to do that: I was raised to be robot not allowed to be anything but obedient, smiling and excellent. In my adult years I even would go so far as thinking it would be GRAND to get robotic replacements like Robo-Cop or something so I wouldn’t get tired so I could always work and be ready to go – to achieve, to be successful.
Now here I stand 33 years into life. Trying to figure it all out – finally – for the first time.
I’m not currently working – something that goes against every fiber of my being. I am seeing a therapist, sometimes even twice a week. I signed up for an Intensive Outpatient Psychotherapy group thing (I just signed up – I don’t know what I am even doing in it yet).
These last 12 weeks have been some of the worst experiences of my life. Some of the heaviest emotions I have ever felt. I lost my sense of identity, lost the focus of my life, questioning everything that I have ever done and left to wonder if all this was just some serious amount of escapism.
The only thing I am certain of – right now – is I am going to get a handle on this. I feel so late to the party but better late than never – the party is still going strong.
If you are going to be anxious anyway... 