Acute Phase

We begin at the beginning. There are two major events that happened when I was much younger than I am now. The first is much more sensitive and I plan to touch on it as lightly as possible. The second is much bigger and I recall it with much more detail, I will get into that one on my next post. As I write I do it so that others may understand me and post traumatic stress disorder itself, but more importantly to help me understand myself. The more I venture into the parts of my mind that are scariest to visit, the more I personally can understand what steered my decisions in my past and how to better control them in my future.

I believe I was in third grade at the time. My home had burned down, an event that I didn't really understand at the time and didn't have too large of an impact on me. My family relocated to another home in the same neighborhood. I still had my own room and lived close to my friends so I found the place to be agreeable. We had rhubarb growing in our backyard and I remember my mom telling me we could make pie out of it which I found to be very strange considering it looked like a vegetable. We didn't stay there long enough for me to find out what it was like. 

I was in my bedroom getting changed out of my school clothes, dancing and singing to Spice Girls on the amazing new boom box my parents had bought me. I didn't notice the level of volume until my dad burst in the door yelling at me to turn it down. Shocked by the sudden intrusion and embarrassed at my naked exposed state I grabbed a blanket and quickly covered myself before jumping at my stereo to turn it down. 

My father grabbed the blanket from me and told me I was too young to have anything I needed to worry about covering up. I was humiliated in so many ways. 

I quickly want to clear up any assumptions that my father had intentions of sexual abuse. This was not a common thing to have happen in our household. My father called me his princess and showed me the type of love that a father should. He struggles with his own mental illness battles and does the best he can. As a mother I know how easy it can be to have one bad day where you do something as a parent that you later come to regret and pray that those moments don't have a lasting impression on your children. It is unfortunate for me and my father that this incident did. 

For a long time after I felt a consistent fear anytime someone knocked on or opened my door. I changed my clothes as quickly as I possibly could and I kept my music just loud enough for me to be able to hear it. I wish I could say that in my life almost twenty years later this is something I have overcome but it is something I believe I will always carry.