Neverland

I spent my day laying in the warm, overgrown grass in my backyard. Blackbird by Sarah McLachlan playing over and over in my ears. I stared at the tree branches above me and longed to slowly rise through them and fly away, soar up to the sky and never let my feet touch the ground again. My psychiatrist says it is normal to wish for ignorance but I have to push through the falsehoods and realities in my life that give me anxiety if I ever want to conquer them.

He motioned towards the tattoo on my collarbone, the one that says "You cannot conquer what you won't confront". He asked me why I got it. It was before my assault when I branded myself with this "pretty" quote. Of course it held some meaning to me back then but I didn't have nearly as much to conquer at the time. I didn't have so much to confront. 

I'm supposed to try to leave the house as often as possible. Even if I just drive to the grocery store parking lot for five minutes then come home but all I want to do is put my headphones in my ears blasting them so loud that I can't even hear my own thoughts. I want to close my eyes and fly away. I'm not looking for a place like France, Spain, Africa. I want to fly to Neverland, to Hogwarts, to Wonderland. Somewhere that has a different reality. Somewhere with tiny bottled drinks that can make me small enough that I can hide away. No matter how much I try there is no hiding, because what I wish to escape from is inside of me. 

I watched the movie Host recently and it was a beautiful comparison to my situation. I often feel as though I share my body with another being. My PTSD has a life of it's own. It makes my legs shake, my eyes water, my heart race, my skin sweat and I battle quietly inside my head with it pleading with it to find a new home. It makes me see and hear things that aren't really there, not anymore they aren't. It makes me irrational and angry and the combination leaves me lonely. 

It is hard to remember why I fight all of this. What future do I have right now? The days roll by so slowly, and I fear I have little to look forward to. Then every now and then I have a day where I wake up and for no explained reason I'm me again. The sun shines again, the coffee tastes amazing again and I feel like Tegan. It may last the whole day, it may last only an hour but I love the time I get with that girl every time she wakes up. It is like looking at yourself in the mirror except you are the reflection. You see yourself in a distant third person kind of way. That can happen when you talk about yourself so much I guess. 

If you haven't heard the song, you should. The link is below.

Goodnight Neverland...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8ac3tEltTU

No place like home

My house is noisy at night. The fish tank filter, water fountains, not to mention the hubby's snoring. Aside from all that the night is when I feel most alive. I guess three months after I quit bartending I still feel most like myself when the sun goes down. My medication has worn thin and it is easier for me to think.
After my last appointment with my psychologist I did some research on what he called "non-epileptic seizures" What I thought had been panic attacks were apparently something entirely different.
When my psychiatrist asked me to explain to him what a "panic episode" was like for me, he explained to me that usually when someone has a panic attack they can completely internalize it, you could look at them and have no idea that something horrible was going on inside them. My experience has been very different. It starts with flashbacks that lead to half-hour to hours long episodes in which I would become a tightly curled up shaking, sobbing,austing. 

mess of pain. It is usually followed my major disorientation, I would be completely unaware of how long the episode lasted, and it is completely exh
The worst one I can recall hit me when I was in the middle of the staircase in my house. I had started to feel that heavy weight on my chest that makes it hard to breath. The dizziness followed shortly and I hurried upstairs to my bedroom to get the number for the crisis line my victim advocate had given me. I was halfway down the stairs when I felt a physical blow to the chest and in a whirl of dreadful memories I lost all physical control of my body and collided down the stairs. 
I recall a brief moment of conscious thought during the episode that I reached out to my phone next to me and with all the means I had I texted a simple "sos" to my husband. He called me promptly but I was unable to give him any audible response to whatever he was saying and I did not understand a word of it. My mind couldn't connect his words to anything I could understand. I laid there shaking, crying for what felt like hours until I lost consciousness. My younger sister found me later, still at the bottom of the stairs. 
All I recall after that is a splitting headache and an incredible pain throughout my body. I realized passingly that there was blood on the floor that had spilled from a gash in my head. My hair still hasn't come all the way back in from where it was torn out upon my landing. 
I later put together that after Jordan couldn't get a coherent response out of me he called Danica thinking she could get to me more quickly. The "lifetime" that I laid there turned out to be about forty minutes. 
It was shortly after this incident that I finally decided to seek out professional help. 
Sometimes my husband looks at me with a grim face asking why I won't go to the store with him. What am I so afraid of? Nothing bad is going to happen. It is hard to put into words the fact that I carry the bad with me. It is a sort of disease that falls into occasional dormancy, that can awake at any moment without warning. It is bad enough to have something like that happen to you in your own home but can you imagine experiencing that in a public place, In a building full of strangers...staring...confused...scared of you not knowing that you are not the threat? I will fight my battles but for now, I will fight them within the walls of my own home.

Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow?

Predicting my days is like predicting the weather. Sunny? Chance of rain? Yesterday I woke up with allergies so bad I could barely see. I took my normal allergy medication that I took all season last year and within an hour I passed out. I woke up at 7 p.m. on my couch with my breakfast still in front of me. The only explanation I could come up with is that I had a bad medication interaction with my new anti depressant/anxiety medicine.
I was sad that I had missed an entire day, I had dressed and planned to spend it in my garden. The more depressing thought followed that when do I not lose an entire day? I've been awake since 8 a.m. and here we are at 3 p.m. All I have managed to do is unload and load the dishwasher. The rest of my day was spent streaming t.v. shows online and taking pills to drown my emotions for four hour periods.
I had a plan. I had a really good plan. I graduated from massage school in October and I had a great agreement with the Marriott hotel I was working at that allowed me to do as much in room massage as I liked, charging whatever I liked with minimal overhead. I could make in two days what I would normally make in a week. After I was sexually assaulted behind the bar by a strange man all comfort I had with being in a room with a stranger vanished and so did the hours of work I had put into creating that dream.
That is not the only thing I have lost in the last few months. I lost the sense of equality I had in my marriage when my husband was forced to take over my half of the bills. Even with the fact that he took this on without argument, it has caused a distance between us that is so painful. We were trying to have a baby. Six months we had been trying. I know I wasn't pregnant yet but I feel like I lost a child when we decided it would be wiser to wait until I get better.
I guess it would probably help if I had a timetable I could imagine. When I was in school I knew when my completion date was. When I was engaged I knew my wedding date. This endless timetable makes it so hard for me to imagine a future beyond it. When does it end? Does it ever really end? Do people ever recover to 100% after being here? Will my husband get his wife back? Will we ever have that child or will I always have to be on the medication that makes pregnancy an unsafe option for a baby?
I lost so much. So much that was right there at my fingertips. Dealing with the events of my past do not compare to the pain of everything in my future that slipped away. I've lost my sense of purpose. When do I get that back?