Yesterday was a difficult day. *gets the tissue box*
I went to see my therapist, and she asked me if I wanted to do some EMDR or if I wanted to talk about any "residue" from the last session. I said I did have residue, but not much so we could probably fit in both.
Basically I told her that I had sort of (possibly, maybe) had an epiphany about the "wholeness" issue I discussed with her, at the very beginning. I labelled that as an issue on the laundry list of things I wanted to "work on" or "get out of therapy", and the word wholeness to clearify relates mainly to my specific issues with identity and the confusion surrounding it.
I basically just repeated what I've already journaled about here, which is that I discovered that perhaps they aren't seperate identities or alter ego's, but instead it's more of an "external" vs. "internal" self that I'm noticing the stark contrast between. And I explained to her the external self is everything that meets the demands of the outside world, who people want me to be, who I have to be, to protect myself, for any particular reason. Etc. For well being ultimately. And then, the internal self is just, who I truly, genuinely am. At my core nature, undeniably so.
She had a hard time understanding the concept it seemed like, and she rephrased it back to me saying that in reference to the EMDR I was doing, I most likely had "integration" as a result of it, and that "of course" I had this inner and outer self going on, and a habit of doing it because, it was what I had to do to protect myself. It's only natural at that point to dissociate, because of what I went through. And she elaborated that, the trauma I've discussed with her thus far, she said is the equivalent for me- as the hurricane Dorian that just obliterated the bahamas. That's how, catastrophic, this trauma was. She kept describing it, she kept saying, "You've had, very, very severe, trauma. Daily, for a very, long time. Day in, and day out. Repeated, trauma at a very high, high level. What you went through was cataclismic. It affected everything."
And I just kind of said, "yeah." But I knew what she meant. Images ran through my mind of the months I spent in bed, and the videos I posted of Krystyna Yang experiencing PTSD symptoms and... it all started to come together. Though it's obvious, my symptoms and what they are related to, it just made it more concrete. The, high levels of anxiety I get just having a conversation. The aloofness I have all the time in social settings. The inability to concentrate. The depression, the time I went through feelings of, wanting to run away. Times I wanted to kill myself and wound up in a mental hospital, laying on the floor just, wishing I could be dead. All the shit I've gone through in the past few years just ran together in my mind like a river of water color paints and water and just, flowed before my visual in one large, concaucted drink. It ha a taste and it was the taste of cigarettes and loneliness, and alcohol. All the empty aired moments I spent, sitting on trees or hiding, behind the cafeteria at school, sitting in parking lots, tennis courts, empty patches in forests smoking weed and cigarettes and getting drunk. The evenigns I spent staring at the cieling too high to move, the vodka that numbed the pain, while I painted stupid shit on paper mache, making a mess on the floor of my room. The times as a young person, I wished I could be one with the walls. The same dissociation that plagued me then, still plagues me now and, I don't know how to run from it.
Today, I feel... a confrontation from the universe. A synchronisity within the moving pieces and parts of my life, as if the planets have aligned or the gears have shifted into just the right position to send off alarm bells. It is time to confront the buried shit inside me, that's filled up my person like a sinking ship, and filled now with gunk and bacteria, empty wine bottles float through the muck with stray eyeballs and dog hair. And it is a swamp too thick and too sickening to dream of desiring, my own worst nightmare, the frightening things that are painful, so painful you fear they will break you in half from feeling them. I feel like glass, porcelain china, that might shatter at the slightest touch.
What has brought me to this state was like I said a culmination, an alignement of sorts that began with that therapy session that day. The honesty and the truth that I've confronted myself with. She started to ramble a bit, about my parents and what they thought of my ex. And how, it must of been so difficult not having anyone to trust or to tell, about the things I was going through. That I had, squashed it down for so long. And then she segwayed into my parents, a bit. She was contrasting me and my parents and how different we are. And how, it makes sense they might not be very accepting and, put a lot of pressure on me to be perfect and I said yeah that's exactly how it is.
And you know, that's part of why I have the identity issues is, because I had to be "that" for, "them." you feel me. And then she tried to bring up the fact that, there were probably parts of my identity they really wouldn't accept at all, me being more liberal and open minded and them being more conservative. And she tried to bring up the fact that I was gay, but I just ignored it... and she asked me how they reacted to me being so different from them, like what were the repurcussions. And I felt a lot of emotion come up with that, and flashbacks of being homeless. And I said "ah I don't want to talk about it, but there was a time I was homeless." I knew by saying that she would want to delve into it but I knew emotionally I wasn't ready yet to sit there and ball my eyes out about it and feel the pain of that, time. It was too much. So I just said I didn't want to talk about it to make that clear. Just, another time.
She kind of got the hint that it was too heavy. And then she asked me, how they reacted to my drug use and I said my mom is unpredictable, there are a lot of ways they can respond to it. Sometimes it's military style punishment, other times it's threats of suicide and I have to clean up her emotions that I"m somehow responsible for, or she will rehab my ass, or, she will become cold and distant. More often than not. Sometimes she just gets angry and punishes me sadistically and flies off the handle essentially. My therapist focused on the cold and distant point a bit and said that must of been difficult for me to experience because I get so hopeful about finally establising a relationship or finally have hope things are going well or turning around, that she likes me, that, things will be ok and then the next minute it's "shoom, shut down." And she said that parents that do that are unhealthy and toxic, and have toxic shit of their own they should deal with.
And I said, "yeah she went through a lot, a lot of trauma growing up." I didn't tell her this but, my mom was repeadetly raped as a child, for years. Not just once or twice, it was just, countless countless times- by a family member. Most of her childhood. Her father was distant because he was always off doing military work, and when he was there he wasn't "really there" he like let her drink beer and that's about it. Very checked out, not, engaged etc. Forgot about her a lot. Very harsh though, critical, angry. And then the mother was a severe addict so, she was beyond checked out and, also had very very severe bpd as well as parapylgia, from severe cerebral palsy. In essence, incapacitated in many many ways because of this. Also her bpd violent behavior was so severe, that it had her and the rest of my mothers family estranged from her cousins aunts uncles, because they wanted nothing to do with the woman. And majority of the members of the family beleived that she was demon possessed because of how angry and insane she became, she punished others for not giving her what she thought she deserved, she manipulated people with her own emotions and had an etitlement to, other peoples time as if they, all owed her something. And the father was severely addicted to porn as well, which was the center of a lot of tumultous family fights. There was constant hostility, in the home. And they weren't well off. She recalled from her childhood, eating ketchup sandwiches. Her mom sewed her clothes because she couldn't afford to buy them. Etc. My mom came from very fucked up, unfortunate circumstances. Once her mom drove herself into a building, with the children in the car my mom included. Trying to kill herself and the kids. My mom had a severe back injury of the result of this, and had to have a spinal fusion surgery, in which she didn't wake up from for many many months. She was, in a coma. During this time they tied her body to a large revolving cage bed, and would move her around in circles, with her back open- to let it heal as it was supposed to or something like that. It sounds like something from a horror movie. When she finally did wake up, and her back was sewn shut, she was unable to walk, eat, etc. And lived in a ohspital for 1 year, while learning to do all of these things again- working her way up from pure paralysis. Ground zero. Not only was it extremely painful, but she missed socialization, school, etc. She said she recalled laying there many hours in the dark, unable to move, and would pretend she was playing the piano with her fingers. Or would read. It was a fridah kahlo esc situation. Just, hell. Her brother was abused so badly by her mother, she witnessed her mother try to kill her brother on multiple occassions, in quite dramatic- or traumatic I guess you should say- ways.
