Fuck. My. Feelings. Seriously, fuck that shit! (In other words, repressed memories suck.)

I realized that I needed to see a therapist. Apparently I can't just move on myself. I thought I could. Shit, I thought I actually was. But nope. Life can't possibly be that easy, can it?

I've been seeing this therapist via online video chat for a few weeks now. The first visit I decided I liked her. She made me laugh. She got me a little choked up with her bluntness. And man oh man, has she been through some shit in her life. She may not have been abused, but she's seen trauma for sure. She also had a head injury, and although she doesn't have seizures like I do, she fully understands how they can affect every aspect of your moods and personality, and the limitations they can cause.

My last session was a doozy though. I didn't expect to feel all the feels I did during, and for two entire days after. That bluntness that I initially liked about her is something I now have a love/hate relationship with. I know it's effective, but damn is it rough. She started asking me when the abuse started in the Relationship From Hell. Over the last couple years I've realized that although I used to believe it started a couple years in, the timeline in my mind was skewed. I think it actually started getting physical about 6 months into moving in with him. We talked about the progression from the gaslighting and stupid arguments, to the night he had me curled up in the fetal position under the dining room table, to the pushing and shoving, to the hitting, kicking, and stomping on my head. She asked when I thought the brain damage occurred and I told her about a few incidents that stick out, but it could honestly be from multiple blows to the head instead of just one specific incident. Usually I can talk about those things with no emotion. It's like I'm talking about something I saw instead of something I experienced. It's been nothing more than like when you tell someone about a movie you saw. I thought that meant I was strong. I thought it meant I had dealt with it and moved forward. HOLY SHIT WAS I WRONG.

The mind is a powerful thing. It only allows us to deal with what we're able to handle in any given moment. It will not throw more at us than we can process. I know that for years after I got away from my childhood abuser, I had nightmares and flashbacks, remembering more and more things until I felt confident that I finally had a good grasp on the hell I went through back then. It was rough, and I did have a counselor that helped me through some of it. But as much as you'd think that would cause horrible trauma (I mean I was reliving it again after all), I was still pretty much ok. Or maybe I'm just remembering it wrong, but that's neither here nor there right now.

I'm not sure how it really came up, but I started talking about the night the shit hit the fan. We talked about how when the police officers got there I was laughing and joking. At that point I was kind of in shock. I couldn't really remember how the night unfolded so I had a hard time telling them. They wanted me to write a statement, which ended up only being two or three sentences, while my son had to flip his paper over to write the details he remembered. I genuinely had no details to give that night. Even when one of the officers told me to look in the mirror at all of the bruises that were starting to form and took pictures of my face, neck, ribs, arms, I must have downplayed it in my mind because I didn't feel all that traumatized at the time. I think the relief of him being taken to jail for the night was enough to make me do what I always did when he took off drunk in his car after a fight or passed out and locked me out of our bedroom. It gave me a few hours of peace. Of course there was a part of me that was worried about him. I was also worried about what the repercussions were when he got home. But honestly, I was way more worried about him. It's sad, really. Why do we as victims worry that our abuser is suffering? I think that's a topic for another post, so let me continue with the little freak out my counselor's bluntness started me on.

Like I said, we were talking about the night the shit hit the fan. I told her I feel stupid for the way I was laughing and joking with the cops that night. If I were to watch someone else act like I did after such a horrific incident, I'd wonder what the hell was wrong with them. I'd think they were going completely off the rails. I think it was a combination of the shock I was in, relief that he was gone (even though I was concerned about him), and my own (unhealthy??) coping mechanism. I can laugh my way through anything. Of course that means I'm not fully dealing with it, and damn did she ever make me start dealing. Hard. If you've read my post about that night, you'll know he had me pinned to our bed with his hands around my throat. What you don't know is the truth about just how bad it was, because until two days ago, neither did I. I blocked it out, I'm sure as a form of self preservation. It was one of those things I apparently wasn't able to process until now. As I was telling her about him being on top of me and my son coming in and screaming at him to get off of me, me lunging for him to get him away from my son, and everything that ensued after, I started shaking. I had tears in my eyes. I remembered the real version of the story.

Whenever I talk about it, I tell people that he had me pinned to the bed with his hands around my throat. That's not wrong, but there's so much more to the story that I now know to be true. As I was telling her about it, she said four words that fucked me up. "You were being murdered." Holy shit. I've always said I could have died that night. I've said I'm lucky to be alive. I now know just how lucky I am though. I was being murdered. He was actually going to kill me. Now I remember details that were previously filed away in that part of my brain labeled "shit I'll deal with later." The truth is, I really did almost die that night. As I was laying on the bed with him on top of me, I remember trying to fight, at least at first. I tried hitting him, but his elbows were pinning my arms down while his hands were around my throat. I tried kicking or kneeing him, but he must have had his body pinning my legs down because I couldn't move them. I tried to scream, but you can't get much noise out when your airway is being restricted. Have you ever had a dream where you try to scream but no sound comes out? That's what I was experiencing in real life. But the real piece de resistance was the physical sensations I had forgotten about until that moment. As I was telling my therapist how I felt when I was pinned down, the truth hit me like a fucking sledgehammer. I was about to die. I mean I was right there. My body couldn't take any more. I remembered how my ears started ringing really bad. It was deafening. I remembered how badly my throat was burning, like I had just swallowed gasoline. I remembered how my vision started getting fuzzy and I began to develop tunnel vision, then things started to go black all around me. But the worst part is that I remembered the thoughts going through my head. I remembered how badly I was begging myself to fight, not to give in to the blackness surrounding me, while at the same time knowing deep down inside me that this was it. I knew I was dying. I remembered praying to God, asking Him to make sure my kids were ok. I asked Him to make sure my youngest got out of the house that night and to make sure there was someone there to take care of him when I was gone. Then I kept repeating, "I'm sorry," over and over again in my head. After that, I remember the darkness truly taking over, until my son came in and screamed at assholepieceofshitmotherfucker to get off of me. I don't know how I managed to jump up and grab him to get him away from my son. I had no physical strength left. I guess the power of a mother's love knows no bounds.

Our session ended shortly after that. I just kind of sat at my computer in shock. I was still shaking. My throat was burning. It felt like it was closing up. It wasn't a panic attack. It was like I was actually feeling the physical sensations I felt on that fateful night...sensations I had previously forgotten. I was angry. I was scared, almost feeling that fear again. No, scratch that. Not fear, but terror. Pure fucking terror. I looked around, a little disoriented. I knew I was in my kitchen, far away from that piece of shit, but I felt like he would walk into the room at any moment and attack me. I knew it was irrational and completely impossible, but in my mind it felt like a very real possibility. I went upstairs to wake my husband up. He works graveyard shift so he was in bed when my session was finished. He took one look at me and asked what was wrong. I started to tell him and the tears came. Not a lot, because in true Heather form, I SUCK at allowing myself to just let go and cry, but nonetheless, the tears were forming in my eyes. I was still trembling. I told him how I could feel the burning in my throat, the tightness that made it hard to swallow. And I was PISSED. I was pissed at my therapist for making me feel those things. I was pissed at assholepieceofshitmotherfucker for doing those things to me. I was pissed at myself for forgetting those things up until that point...and for allowing them to happen in the first place. Of course being in an abusive relationship, you do lose a lot of control over what happens to you, but the guilt is still there nonetheless.

The rest of that day and the next sucked. I was in this weird place where I didn't know if I wanted to cry, scream, sleep, get totally wasted and not think about it (or maybe let myself actually become that sad, crying drunk that I hate), or just sit on the couch in a sort of fugue state and feel nothing at all. I did try to drink a little, but I told my husband to limit me to 3 beers. Over the last couple of months I've been drinking more than I should and my off switch has disappeared. Once I start, I don't want to stop. And let me tell you, I can put away some beer...or liquor. But I know it's not helping me and holy shit are the hangovers ever getting bad these days. I'm getting too old for this shit. Anyways, I had a rough couple of days. Thankfully when I tried to drink, I really couldn't. In my head, even though I told him to limit me to 3 beers, I wanted to get wasted. But the power of the mind is strong. I knew I didn't truly want to drink that much even though I thought I did, so I just couldn't bring myself to over indulge. I guess that's a good thing, but I almost feel like I missed out on something. I am the queen of self medication and I couldn't even bring myself to do it.

I'm really hoping that today will be better. I'm usually in a pretty decent mood most mornings after I basically mainline mass quantities of caffeine and fully wake up. But when the mood changes, it changes quick. Crossing my fingers, toes, eyes, and whatever else I can manage to cross that today is a good day. I really don't want to have to use my AK.... (Get the reference there? Ice Cube. Sometimes I really crack myself up.)

rewritingmytruth.com

Where honesty meets recovery

letstalk@rewritingmytruth.com

Lynae

Writer • Healing Advocate

Rewriting the stories I once survived