You carried the burden now just set it down
The weight of guilt and a tired soul
Too great a weight to carry on your own
Lucero – The Weight of Guilt
Just came off the road. First work trip of the year. A bit over 3200 miles, various hotel rooms, stays in the camper, a night with some old friends and a visit to the desert. It all came during a tough time and a lot of writing occurred in my journals but not so much made it here. I am trying to find the balance and what is and isn’t appropriate to share. I have been praised and reprimanded for my words here, I am trying hard to not disrespect anyone else’s boundaries or violate their privacy, while being open and honest about my own pain and experience, it’s a delicate act and I’m getting better at it. As always, this is about how things feel and land for me, I am in no way trying to diminish or devalue what anyone else experienced, that is their story to share or not. I am also not any sort of expert or trying to generalize the PTSD experience, I’ve read and learned enough to know just how unique they all are, and I know they are all equally debilitating and devastating, and each carries a set of very serious consequences. What you are about to read, is a compilation of 7-8 journal entries, things that have been rattling around my brain and finally found some light after a recent rejection and reprimand, I’ve done my best to make it make sense, here we go…
“Your past has a way of catching up with you…”
Random line from a TV show at 4 am in a fit of insomnia
Fuck, ain’t that the truth? Not only did my past catch up with me, it threw me on the ground, kicked my head in and then grabbed my present and my future, doused them in gasoline, threw the match and warmed itself on on the flames. In the end, what happened is all about the past, it had very little to do with events of that night or the days previous, they just pulled the final pebble from the failing dam, they unleashed the flood, and it sucks. One thing I am learning from books, podcasts, my therapists etc is that I need to learn to sit with my emotions, allow them the air to process from beginning to end, this means the good and the bad, the crushing sadness and loss get their day, along with the joys of the moment or the smile that certain memories bring to my face. I’m also learning I have layers of pain, and all are related but separate, and at any given moment, one can completely overwhelm the others. At some moments they are all here and in some moments it’s one or two, they don’t seem to ever fully go away yet, but I’m hopeful for that day. I don’t expect anyone else see’s it or considers it exactly the same way I do, laying it out helps me understand where the hurt comes from and how to try and address it.
PTSD/CPSTD ITSELF
I guess the easiest place to start is the pain of this condition(syndrome, injury, illness?)itself. So many destructive and painful parts of my past now make more sense, how events and responses (or lack of) have shaped my brain into this place where life has been a battlefield, it’s been me against me, the world against me, me needing to prove myself to everyone for as long as I can remember. The crushing and toxic shame I have inflicted on myself is the hardest hurdle to get over and get ahead of, it pops up when I’m not ready, when I don’t have the strength to manage or confront it and it devastates. It leads to a lack of self-love, confidence, self-deprecation, fear, stress, addiction, isolation, and self-rejection amongst other things. For me, these have all manifested as hyper-arousal/hyper-vigilance combined with a healthy dose of dissociation. If you know me, this probably manifested as anger, lashing out, defensiveness, aggression, alcoholism, addiction, extremism, bravado, lack of self-control and a lack of self-preservation – a desire or need to constantly explore the boundaries of personal risk on so many levels. For me, this has manifested as a variety of physical and psychological problems, currently, as my body untangles itself from the mess created in my brain, I am literally wasting away. I have lost 42 lbs in 85 days (unhealthy weight loss by any measure) sure part of this is removing alcohol and a few weeks of not being able to eat, but now it’s just my body readjusting to life without a substance it relied on, feeling the stress of working through the trauma and neglect and cranking out unhealthy levels of cortisol. Sure it was nice to lose the beer belly and watch my love handles fall off, but now I’m losing lean muscle mass in my upper body so quickly my skin hangs loos on my back. I am eating, I am exercising (keeping in mind how much stress my body is already under) but right now, the physical toll is real.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRISIS
Trauma occurs when attack or abandonment triggers a fight/flight response so intensely that the person cannot turn it off once the threat is over. He becomes stuck in an adrenalized state, his sympathetic nervous system is locked on and he cannot toggle into the relaxation function of the parasympathetic nervous system.”
COMPLEX PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving – Pete Walker
Probably the subject of most of my writing to date and the primary source of the pain, loss, grief and emptiness. The blackout and confusion give it a nice double edge, it cuts on the way in and on the way out. I still don’t know how to begin to forgive myself for what I did, for the hurt I caused. The silence of those I love whom I hurt makes it cut deeper, the questions I have for myself, of myself, the shame, embarrassment and disgust I have for myself are soul crushing. The hurt I feel for those I hurt, my incredible need to try and heal what I’ve done. I spend the majority of my time in therapy learning to understand and forgive myself, to work through this broken heart, to reconcile the loss of my friends, of my best friend, my future and myself. The flashbacks are real, they have various effects, from uncontrollable sobbing to mental shut downs and violent shivering and sweating. If you want more look around the blog, or read my poems, I think the pain of this experience illustrates best in my sponyaneous words.
REJECTION
I have tried to heal some damage in the community I exploded on. A few people have cautiously given me the chance to talk, albeit within some boundaries and rules, but most have either ignored/blocked/silenced me or angrily rejected me. Days, months, years of friendship dissolved and destroyed by a handful of minutes and hours. Who I was has been replaced by what I did. It’s easier to judge me, to execute me than it is to give me a chance to be the person you knew, to explain my hurt and my pain, to acknowledge and own what I have done, and to show how I am doing the work to remove these demons from my life, I am not caging them, I am letting them go. To be so broken, to need so much help, love and support and to not be given a second chance, let alone a chance to help people understand how what happened wasn’t me, isn’t me.
It’s incredibly hard to love a group of people, and one person in particular so much, and be so completely ostracized and rejected. It hurts, it makes me feel angry, and it makes me sad. It makes me question my self-worth, it makes me question the value of the work i’m doing. It makes me wonder if they ever cared for me the way I care for them? I can handle their anger. The lack of compassion and willingness to even talk is absolutely devastating. I know this line of thinking isn’t healthy either, but welcome to my wounded brain. For every step forward I seem to find a way to stumble three or four backwards.
SOCIAL
It’s been weird. We talk a lot these days about mental health awareness, stress injuries for first responders, veteran suicide and over all awareness. But the stigmas and the walls persist. I have been labeled and called things that horrify me. I have been accused of using this blog and social media as pleas for sympathy or as a campaign to to win those I’ve hurt back to my side. Someone said I was faking it all, many have told me it’s “All in my head” – really? No shit, genius! Of course it’s all in my head, that’s exactly the fucking problem.
I don’t seek or want sympathy, I’m not campaigning, and I am certainly not faking it all. I guess it’s easy to make these assumptions or conclusions when you aren’t willing to actually speak to me, or haven’t been around me. Those that have can see the changes and toll this has taken pretty quickly. I just found a way to let some of this out, to not let it sit in my head, where it becomes more toxic, it perpetuates the cycles I’ve been stuck in. The psychological and physical wasting away is as much a part of the healing process as the understanding and growth. I hurt a lot. I suffered greatly though most of my life. I was never given or learned tools to manage and process it, I put unfair expectations on myself for my ability to cope and manage, I turned to other means and ways. Unfortunately, it worked, it worked too well for too long and eventually it all came so tragically unglued.
