Ending the Silence

My dear readers…I apologize. I have neglected you horribly. Blog reader Lisa recently sent up a flare reminding me that some of you really would like to read a new post, and so here I am, working to get back into the groove. So Lisa, this one is going out to you…hee! I just like saying that, it makes me sound like I have a radio show.

This first post will be serious, because I have decided to be brave and tell everyone why I have really been so quiet. I didn't plan on sharing this, but…gosh, I realized that I tell you guys about my breasts, so, why not this?

As all of you know, life can, at times, be a wee bit more difficult to get through than usual. That's where I'm at right now. But maybe, it's a more than a "wee bit" difficult.

You see, years ago, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). You know, the kind of disorder that sometimes develops in people who have been traumatized in war situations, natural disasters, or at the hands of individual human beings. For me, PTSD was the result of having a surprising number of Very Bad Things happen earlier in my life, things that I could not contain in my psyche at the time they happened.

My symptoms were not obvious until a long time after the traumatic events. In my twenties, I told myself repeatedly that I had survived everything just fine. I was the ultimate in "handling" things. Yet in my thirties, over a decade after the worst of it, I fell apart.

It started with the constant violent nightmares. Nightmares had been a staple of sleep for as long as I could remember, but now they were more graphic than ever and unrelenting in their frequency. Soon, I could barely sleep. I became anxious and afraid all the time. My concentration fragmented. I dissociated. Flashbacks (traumatic memories that feel like they are happening in the moment) began intruding into my waking life. I became overwhelmed with self-destructive thoughts, convinced this was all my fault. I felt out of control and vulnerable.

As someone who values efficiency, productivity, and composure, this was extremely distressing. I didn't know how to predict how I would be from one moment to the next. Would I remain calm and controlled, or would something unexpected trigger me into panic? Whatever my intellect knew to be true didn't matter once my emotional responses were engaged. My brain was flooded with stress hormones and I felt like I was living in hell.

At the time, I was lucky to have a gifted therapist who recognized what was happening to me and was able to guide my healing. It took a lot of work, but over time, I was able to stabilize. Those were a few very rocky years; I am grateful she stuck with me.

Once my symptoms were stabilized, I still had a lot of healing to do and I wanted to continue on. However, I wasn't able to do it all at once. For some crazy reason, it turns out that life does not stand in one spot while you get your act together. It keeps moving along with challenges that demand your attention now. And so, the deep work had to be set aside when my mother died, I trained for a new career, I nursed my beloved cat through terminal illness, I needed concentration to build a new business, and so on. I moved, I remodeled houses, I got cancer. Blah, blah, blah, LIFE.

During these years, sometimes something would happen to trigger my PTSD symptoms, but luckily my life would just be turned upside down for a matter of months, not years. That was improvement. I always knew there was more work to do and yet, there were times when I fantasized that maybe I had spontaneously healed. Because, after all, what I went through was not really all that bad.

Yeah.

I believe that the reason that I never broke down and cried over my cancer diagnosis was because cancer, at least at that time, was not the worst thing to happen to me. I knew in my gut that life could get much, much worse. And somehow, I felt like I was emotionally trained to endure what I'd have to go through in treatment. Stay composed, don't let them get to you, move on. Smile. It's what I do. And I did get through it, which just proves that I can handle anything. Right?

And then, a couple of months ago, the nightmares returned. Horrible, graphic, violent nightmares that left me awake and terrified. It felt demoralizing to go through this again. Shaken, I asked myself, why now? Don't I ever get to escape this? Can't I let this go? I felt myself starting to get lost.

And then I thought, wait. What if this time the nightmares are not just here to torment me? What if there is a process I am supposed to undergo, something larger and more meaningful at work?

And so, I opened up my psyche the experience. I connected to my Wiser Self and asked, what wisdom moves under this pain? Where can this lead me?

It was then that this crazy-ass Wiser Self chick showed me, in her lovely visual and engaging way, that this is an opportunity. This is my time to really heal. I am ready now to tell my story, to be seen, and to release my pain. I am ready to look at what really happened to me, all of it, and acknowledge it for what it was. It is time.

Which, by the way, is a great epiphany, only…it's a bit of an over-simplification of how things will go. Gotta love that optimistic Wiser Self, that gadabout healing soul! She doesn't live down in the trenches. She's right, it's time, but gosh, this is a process that takes commitment. Endurance. Vulnerability. But, hey, that's what I signed up for.

So, since then, I been spending my time writing my story. I have been making art…Big Art. I have intensified the therapeutic journey. I am living this process, every moment of the day.

Healing, I tell ya, I am all over your ass, baby. Hee.

But damn, as those of you with PTSD know, healing work intensifies the symptoms for a while -- it gets worse before it gets better. That's the nature of it. Memories get triggered and whatever you didn't let yourself feel the first time around (when it happened) well, you get to feel it now. You find out that all sorts of things that you believed about yourself were caused by trauma, not your truth. You start to question so many things. Comfort becomes elusive, even as it is all the more necessary.

Art, writing, my kitties, and my dear, supportive friends, all keep sane.

More than any other time in my life, I have hope about this process. Oh, not constantly – at times, this can trigger every self-destructive impulse I have. But overall, I believe I am moving toward an internal freedom that I have longed for, for so many years. I'm willing to take the messy path. I'm willing to make art that tells the truth. I'm willing to learn how not to blame myself for every bad thing that was done to me.

And now, I'm willing to return to my blog. Just be a little patient with me, friendly readers. I'm stitching myself back together, and it takes time. My sense of humor is subject to weather conditions and the phase of the moon. But, never fear, I still manage to crack myself up. More to come.

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