Fitting title, as it's almost Halloween, and it has to do with nightmares. I've told a couple people (aka facebook) about my "daymare" problem. I don't see Mark til Wednesday, so I'll tell him then. For now, it may be therapeutic to get the images that haunt my mind OUT of my head and onto this plain white space.
Most of the things running through my head aren't necessarily about the perpetrators of my trauma, but about people and events surrounding that person. As Thanksgiving approaches (yeah I know it's far away, tell that to my PTSD), there is a lot of panic growing inside me. My family is wonderful. Thanksgiving has always been the best. Until the memories resurfaced, and the subconscious terror emerged in my dreams. Last year was the first year it was truly horrible, at least since the years that the trauma took place. For those who don't know, we have these family friends who have kids, and one of them sexually abused me for at least 3 years, starting when I was around 8 or 9. Last year, to get through it, I drank 2 bottles of wine and became this gregarious, insane tornado of insults and inappropriateness. Post-TK, I know that even though I never had a problem with drinking, I can't do it anymore, or it will rapidly replace the other behaviors I am trying to get rid of (self-harm, ED, etic). I also know who I am now, and that I don't need to resort to some crazy nutcase who has to be the center of attention no matter who gets thrown under the bus in the process. That's NOT the kind of attention I want. Not anymore, anyway. So there are 2 of my reliable fallback "coping skills" that I can't/won't use anymore. Not if I can help it. I don't even know if he'll be there, he wasn't last year and I got drunk and stupid, I don't know if I'll get through it if he is there.
So, daymare. I keep getting these flashes, these future predicting/catastrophizing flashes, where he comes in with his family, and everyone starts screaming at me, telling me I'm a liar and it never happened, while he stands in the back smirking. I think one of my biggest fears about opening up about my story is that someone won't believe me, and will invalidate the shit out of me by spreading it around, or screaming at me.
The other flashes are worse. I started having these ones while I was living at Mag, as my TK discharge date and my return to work date got closer. I keep having this image of my rapist coming into my shop. There's one flash where he just comes in and we make eye contact, and the rest of the flash includes me breaking down in the spa room, heaving, convulsing and sobbing, immobile on the floor, while all of my coworkers rush in and just stare at me on the floor. The other one, like my Thanksgiving flashes, includes the rapist coming in with an army of everyone who was at C's apartment that night (all of whom I can, unfortunately, still see in perfect detail in my head). They all come in screaming at me that I'm a liar, and I'm ruining other people's lives, and I made everything up for attention and they're going to sue me for defamation of character, or some legal term that they scream at me in my head.
I have to deal with intense anxiety now every day, before every shift, and the night before I work, which keeps me from sleep, and aids my nightmares when I sleep. So I can't stop wondering...what if he DOES come into my shop? I don't have a clue how to prepare for that possibility. I told Mark this fear once, I think when I was still on Pine...he said, "So what if you see him? Are you going to keep giving him power over you?" Obviously I went NO but the scared little girl in my head keeps screaming. I don't know how to take THAT kind of power back. It's not something I can cope with through exposure therapy, I just don't know. Even outside of the flashes, that thought terrifies me. :(
So that's what's going on in my head right now. Maybe my session on Wednesday will bring some insight. Fingers crossed.
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