Third Christmas without you.

It has been such a long, long time since I last wrote something in here. That is actually a good thing. I used to have to write the pain a lot more often. I was not going out as much. I was so, so, so f—ing terrified. So terrified. All the time.

Constant panic, sometimes more loud than others. It has been a while since I had a bad crisis. I still have loads of intrusive thoughts at times, but now they are just part of my life I guess, until maybe they are not. I am healthy. I made it a year without a job, which is not ideal and actually is a source of stress but, at the same time, I was terrified before of how I was going to survive life without the constant distraction of work.

In January I thought I was doing so well, I went off the pills. But I was not ready, and being unemployed and unable to sleep… it happened again. It was the last time I spiraled. I had insomnia for days again until the point of depersonalization. I had to take Klonopin again and I had lost the number of my psychiatrist and was terrified… again.

Just about a week or two after, I had this big trip planned to the Pacific and I could not fathom traveling alone in that state. And yet, I did. I did and it was the first time I did free diving. I did, and I met my best friend. I did, following my therapist’s advice and my psychiatrist’s advice and I taught myself that it is OK to do things while I am terrified (well, I am still always a tiny, tiny bit terrified).

I had failed somehow to heal, but I had learned to be more compassionate, so this time, I said, OK, I’ll take it as slowly as I need to. Four months ago, in August-September, I went on a second trip to the Pacific and I somehow started taking less medication. I never got back to 75 mg, knowing that now I am mentally and emotionally a bit stronger. I was on 50 mg and ended up cutting it down to 25 mg. There I am now, three months and a half later, and I am sleeping. Not perfectly, and not without struggle, but I sleep. And I do have intrusive thoughts and anxiety, but they do not keep me from living. It has been a long process. Two years and a half… but it is getting better. It definitely is.

Life is not “great” right now. Unemployed for a year yesterday, unable to do many of the things I want and feel I need to do because I do not have financial stability yet. And yet, I am a bit better. A bit, after all that time, and through a lot of effort, but it has been worth it. I surely have learned so many things in the process. Also have been bouldering for a year and a half, and it has become such an important part of my life.

Most people who meet me miss such a big part of the context… that my last two years have been about healing and everything, everything has been a part of that. There has been a lot of trying from my side. A lot of trying to be OK. A lot of doing whatever I need to do to be OK. And I’m proud, so proud of myself for getting myself here, where I am just a little bit better.

Small collapses: about wanting to always be OK and the ups and downs of healing

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I collapsed. I could not sleep well and was panicking about my lack of sleep, had repetitive thoughts and was nervous. Yesterday and today and I was not feeling like myself, and I considered going to a mental health institution to receive guidance. However, I imagined they would give me pills and I went off pills three months ago. I was sort of derealized this morning, could barely make out words and talk to my sister. Everything felt off. I tried to get through my bouldering class. My body felt heavy. I could barely pull myself up. I managed to get through the class, often thinking about going to the doctor.

It was in the car on the way back that I started dozing off and I felt my nervous system shutting down. When I came home, I collapsed. My stomach was hurting and all I could do was lie down. So I did, and then I felt like I’d have to stay there all night. I decided to do so. Told my friend that I could not make it today. I decided not to be OK, something several therapists have suggested I do. In reality, I did not have another choice. My body’s and mind’s demands became very clear all of a sudden.

Honestly, the whole thing was a relief and I realized I had been in survival mode since yesterday; not really myself.

The thing is, I want to be OK so badly, that I deny and reject the difficult feelings and emotions. I fear them, loathe them, refuse them, and all of this takes a lot of energy, and basically putting up this wall between me and reality. Hence the importance of allowing myself to feel “negative” emotions or sensations or to go through difficult moments with patience and lots and lots of compassion.

I have still so much to learn from myself and I still have so much healing to do, but I was in this illusion that I was OK. But just days ago I was reading that healing was a bumpy road. You think you are doing well, then you face the darkness again, and pull yourself out again. I forget this and I forget to have compassion.

The lesson today was to observe everything going inside and out and see my body, my nervous system and my mind naturally just go through all this. I got to evidence what I can do if I do not choose fear, but acceptance.

I wanted to do too much. Go on dates, go dancing, go to concerts, find a job, I started a master’s… just too much and this forced me to slow down and breathe. I am glad.

An odd 2023 beginning

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Back in October I wrote about plateauing. I felt I had improved as much as I could’ve with the pills. I started slowly taking less and less, until I stopped them completely the first days of January. This has been an odd year. With symptoms beings less activated or with me being stronger, I kind of forgot I was healing. I often forget what it is I come from; what my recent past is. Then, when I struggle, I can be really harsh on myself. It really helps to have a friendly voice remind me what I’ve been through. 2022 was completely about surviving. It a day-to-day year. I lived so much and did so many things, but all I remember is the hardship of healing. At least now, perhaps cause too little time has passed since.

Now it feels like I turned the page. And what a weird place I found myself in suddenly. I lost my job in the last weeks of last year and that has helped create this very weird moment I am in. Some would call it a rut. However, there are some nice lessons or observations this rut has left me with. This space, this page, this blog, or whatever it is, was meant a safe space for me to talk to myself about my healing process and come back to track it. However, I have not written in a long time. This post is one overdue.

This I have been learning from this rut:

1. I am not going to go insane without a job. My job helped me so much in 2022 to concentrate on something else that wasn’t my mental health journey and my healing. It is kind of nice to see that even without a job, I can stay afloat and face life and find other ways of healing. I was really scared of being jobless because of what it meant for my mental health. Yet, here I am, two months in, and I have been doing alright (OK, with intense ups and downs, and of course a bit more anxiety, but all things considered I think this has tested my strength and my capability to continue in this difficult journey towards feeling better).
2. I can try to meet people and be in relationships again, and it is going to be OK, even if there is pain, discomfort and anxiety. I started kind of dating someone for the first time since my troubled relationship and it has definitely been messy, but I think there has been consciousness of the process and I have been observant. I have tried my best, even if my best is still far from healthy. I am proud to be able to see when something is not working out and not to insist on keeping someone around. This year I feel everything is like a big experiment to see how life is after a year of healing. And, unlike reels and stories of people really thriving after hitting rock bottom, I am not thriving, I am just living, experimenting and trying things out. I get scared sometimes to be here, starting life again, at 34. I feel perhaps I am too old for this. But those are just the distracting voices and thoughts. I really, really want to be able to come back to the present and LIVE and find meaning again. That is really what I want this year: (1) to create meaning and (2) to live more in the present. I want to stop living in the shadow of what happened to me last year. However, I MUST BE UNDERSTANDING AND PATIENT. Perhaps I need more time, even if it’s been over a year, and that is OK.
3. I am still here and nobody, nobody knows upon seeing me what I’ve been through. Even if I have made some poor decisions and sometimes do not have the best coping mechanisms, I am still trying to heal and to feel myself. I think what I haven’t learned is how to take a break from all of this; from my healing process. The third thing I need to do this year is to enjoy; to allow myself to enjoy. I feel this bitterness inside of me sometimes, not as strong as when I was grieving, but definitely uncomfortable and I don’t like it at all. I don’t want to be bitter. I want to bring joy. Perhaps I want too much at the same time.
4. I have gained more trust in myself, however, I know a lot of this journey is taking risks and basically doing trial and error. My relationship with others, therapy, going on and off Zoloft, it is all a big attempt at healing and obviously it is not perfect. There are bad days and good days. The healing process WILL BE MESSY and that is okay.

p.s.: apart from bouldering, writing and actual therapy, I would add to the list of ideas of how to heal I made a while back RuPaul’s Drag Race. It definitely helps me in the sad days.

My inner child spoke to me today

Healing is such a weird journey. At the beginning of this healing journey, I tried to get in touch with my inner child; to hold her. Then came crisis, pills and, somehow, I started getting better in some sense, but I forgot about my inner child. I was watching this documentary where Jonah Hill interviews his therapist, Stutz, and he started talking about the shadow. I saw her again. This beautiful, fragile child, so full of love; so full of love. What have I told her? How have I made her feel? Weak, stupid, ridiculous, like a little freak probably. Every time I pretend to be someone else, I deny her. I’ve denied her out of fear and in this attempt to be a strong woman. I cast her aside and tell her that she makes me weak; that she must not be seen by anyone or else I will get hurt again. I do not understand how this small, thin child with dusty knees can keep so much love in her, after everything. And even though I hide from her, terrified of her gentleness, and shun her, she is the essence of me, what keeps me going.

Christmas came again – and we are still here, trying our best

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Last Christmas was my worst Christmas ever. Looking back, I cannot believe I went through so, so much. A year later I feel that my biggest accomplishment has been to survive it all, and to get better – even if I am not completely better.

Last night I went to get dinner with my family. It was lovely – I was having fun, laughing. The intrusive thoughts still come and go, but at least I am not afraid all the time anymore. My nervous system is calm – I can sleep, and I can sleep as much as I want to, without having to take any sleeping pills. Isn’t that wonderful?

I judge myself harshly, however. I think – how come I am still not completely healed? How come I still have intrusive thoughts? But then I look at the past days and months, and how I’ve been able to grow and learn and live my life and continue building on good and bad experiences – without terrible fear. It makes me feel so much better.

In April this year, when I went to the Pacific Coast to look for the shark whales, I was quite terrified still. Now I don’t even overthink when I have to travel – even after the traumatic event when lightning hit the airplane in August or September (I do get afraid once the plane starts moving ever since then), but every day life feels more “normal”, so to speak.

My big challenge is that I still have a hard time accepting the good and joyful moments – like I am still waiting for something bad to happen sometimes. I am not physically afraid all the time like before and I cannot remember the last time I had an actual panic attack, but there is this weird feeling when I think about the future, like I cannot really think about it with clarity.

What a f***ing year! I don’t think I have quite reached the point people always say I’m gonna get to where I feel grateful for what happened, for the trauma, but I do want to thank myself for keeping my strength and trying my best every single day in the last year.

I think I can actually have a kind of Merry Christmas!

How do I hug this monster?

I have been distracting myself for the last month or two, so this is my first Sunday at home, doing nothing – and it hit so hard. I’ve been having difficult days. I’ve been feeling down, I think from living a bit more chaotically the last weeks. In a way, it shows I am in a different part of my healing journey, but it also shows that I still have a long way to go. Suddenly without distractions, I started having an anxiety attack. My arms, my hands feel weird, in a bit of pain and weak all of a sudden.

I’ve been having more intrusive thoughts these past two days than in the previous weeks. I must be under some stress I am unaware of…what is this trying to tell me? I guess I am still in survival mode, after more than a year. I don’t really know how to get back to living. It is quite important, though, to have these moments; these challenging moments. To go through them, to hold myself through them, to keep learning I am safe with myself. I am safe with myself, but I don’t fully believe it. I have been escaping from something. Today, I can’t escape it. It is there; this shadow; this pain or anger – I feel it. I want to run away from it, but today I know I can’t. How do I face it? How do I hug this monster? How do I face this feeling? This desperation inside – and what is it? It is this fear – but fear of what? Why does it not reveal to myself? What is it that I am not ready to face?

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Lately I feel that I am living life through others. Everyone’s life seems to make sense, or so it seems to me. They have “something” going on. A family, a relationship, a career. But I don’t see my own life the same way. I see my life like a blur. I don’t think it has anything to do with me being single or not really having a network here in the city. I always have someone to talk to. I have a home, a job, hobbies, my love for movies, for art, for writing. I could travel and go to the movies alone. I think I’d love that. But it is just that none of it makes a lot of sense. I don’t have a “drama” of my own. Everyone around me, or almost everyone around me, seems to have some drama going on. A main story. Everyone is the protagonist of their story. We are in the center of our stories, and we want our stories to sound interesting. It is like everyday every person is trying to act out an interesting story for themselves and others.

But I, I have no story to tell right now. I am over the story of my abusive relationship and healing – I can see it is not really my present anymore, which is a really important part of healing, but it is like I can’t make sense of any story any more. I am story-less. What am I a protagonist of? I am just a secondary character in some of other people’s stories. I feel that way most days and in the different things I do. Like this secondary character whose life the audience doesn’t really care about. I’ve been feeling like this for a while, so sometimes I don’t even feel like I am there at all; anywhere.

When work ends, and I am done cooking or cleaning or talking to friends or giving my sister attention, sometimes I don’t even know what to think about. Well, I listen to music at times or watch movies, but when I think “about my life” like people think about their lives, a lot of the time there is nothing. I think this is because with my PTSD symptoms I could not really see far ahead in the future. That, and the fact that I don’t like to get attached to future versions of myself.

I used to want the things people want. Go to parties. Be busy all the time. Drink, travel, have sex, have fun. I’ve had quite a bit of that and now…it just doesn’t seem that interesting to me anymore, but what is? What is worth my time and my living? How can I take advantage of my invisibility?

We tend to stretch our current reality to past and future and think this is who we are and will be. In this sense, it feels like my life never happened. It is a very strange thing. Then we are having a wonderful day and we think “I love my life”. We can be the happiest and saddest person alive in one same day. These are but descriptors, adjectives. Ever.Fucking.Changing.

I was miserable at some point today. I still have quite a bit of pain in my body. Now I am listening to some blues why I pointlessly write this and talk to my internet friend who is basically my bestie right now and I feel…alright. This is life. This is what you learn in those 10-day buddhist meditation retreats. Everything changes. Everything is temporary. Even the knowledge that everything is temporary is temporary and we will tend to forget it under this illusion that we are something in particular. A persona, a personality, a character, this or that way. We are so many things. The things that have shaped us and continue to shape us are so many, they go far beyond our birth and are ongoing, never stop coming at us, images, words, memories, both in the mind, the image sort of memories, and of the body, in the shape of trauma.

In the end…we focus on the most trivial things. We have to hold onto the trivial things, to a story, to a narrative. Life is so scary if we don’t. It feels pointless, like looking into the black screen of a TV that’s off. But then, instead of facing the story, the narratives, the distractions, we face ourselves. There, that messy and vague reflection on the TV screen. That is who I am. Now. That’s the story.

I’m plateauing…now what?

I started bouldering less than two months ago. There is this term, that can really be applied to any circumstance of life, which is “to plateau”. I remembered it yesterday because it came up in a conversation with someone yesterday; someone who has been bouldering for 8 to 9 years and has, in his own words, plateaued (has stayed in the same level for some time, unable to make progress).

It occurred to me today that that is exactly where I feel in my healing process. For a while, I was slowly, painfully getting better. Now I have reached this weird plateau moment where I am not sure if I am still getting better everyday. My symptoms are still there, but they are just a small nuisance. This week I started taking less Zoloft by myself – first time I attempt to do that. Why? Because I get the feeling that I can’t get much more from the Zoloft, and I really don’t know what the next step is. I think I have literally done everything I could do; or at least everything I know I could do.

Work from Monday to Friday; improvising on the weekends. I have gotten quite used to the intrusive thoughts by now. I just let them be. However, the psychiatrist thinks they shouldn’t be there at all. Him saying that made me feel quite self-conscious. So they shouldn’t be there at all? What if I have managed to almost entirely change my relationship with them? Well, it will probably take some time – some more time for things to really change. This is not how I imagined it happening. I imagined that after hitting rock bottom everything would get better steadily and I would eventually be “better than before”. That is what they tell you, that you’ll be an improved version of yourself – but I think that is a big pressure. And now, now I feel disappointed in myself a bit because I am not that super improved version with a better life. I am still mostly living through others; I do not plan much for the future and other than working and bouldering, I don’t feel energy for a lot of other things. I am quite sure things will change, transform as they already have in the last year, but in this moment I really feel like I am on a huge plateau, without knowing where to turn, what comes next, how long I will be here.

I tried therapy, but that has not really worked. I did one EMDR session and I think it helped in that I can think about what happened with Marko and not feel my PTSD symptoms. But, after that, it felt a bit pointless, like stretching something for too long. So I am not sure I actually want to go to therapy. I mean, I do all the other things: I exercise, I cook, I focus on work, I try to make friends. I think that last part is the biggest challenge of them all; and a part that could potentially really help me grow; move further along in this process.

Looking back, I don’t think this was a Dark Night of the Soul or anything of the sort. I was not returning from Saturn. I just had very intense symptoms from what was an emotionally and psychologically abusive relationship that would have been too much for any mortal to manage. Sometimes I say “but it has been over a year now, why am I not over it?”. It has only been a year since I felt I was literally running for my life and stopped being able to even conceive of a future. It’ll take some more time. While I figure out what is next, I will try to breathe and accept the plateau phase.

A much needed reminder for myself

Healing sounds like…rest, meditation, laying in bed. Healing from trauma is not just breathing and resting and restoring. It takes so much energy to think about it all day, to be aware of your thoughts, to think about what is best for you, to try to listen to yourself, to exercise, get up, walk outside, remember to do a breathing exercise, try to eat well, try to write about it. It is like training, constantly training because you are not emotionally or mentally where you want to be… but you really want to get there. So you try and try and think about how you are doing it, whether you are doing it right, whether it will happen…and the thinking, and doubting, and starting all over again every day can be exhausting.

So healing can be quite exhausting. Then add to that the guilt because you are sleeping more, because you are tired and because you cannot fathom going outside and hanging out and being too social. And you wonder if it is bad that you want to be home but, they, you need to rest. You want to rest, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Lay back, there is absolutely nothing else you have to do. Lay back. Let go and rest. Forget about the healing for a minute. You will start again tomorrow. For now, forget about it. Such a relief.

The rambling trauma mind

I often have nightmares of the kind that appear during the day, while I am cooking or having dinner with my sister or anyone I love. I have managed not to feel guilty about it. Can anyone feel guilty about their nightmares? Is it different that I have them during the day. Oh, I have always been so afraid of death and now I am, too, afraid of my mind, as it can recreate death so well and remind me how easy, how accessible, how near death always is. I know the only real way to overcome my nightmares is to face death, like in a chess game, like in the Bergman movie. And maybe I need to write and to create art and to talk about my fears. I fear death and I fear violence and I fear evil and I fear darkness. I fear anything that could be “bad” in me and in the world, and I don’t know why. I do not accept duality.

I’ve wanted purity. I’ve wanted innocence. I cannot have it back. I have seen the depth of our violence. I cannot unsee it and now I feel like I have been stained, damaged, just by the knowledge that not even love can keep violence at bay. So much violence. All these fears manifest as random thoughts that happen to haunt me sometimes during the day. Immensity used to be soothing. The thought of space used to be soothing. Is it violent to resist death, to resist, to resist everything so much, in search of an easy existence? Is it violent to myself to want, to need, to always be good, to always be pure, to always be loving?

I am doing it again, crawling back, hiding under a shell, building walls around me. You can only be afraid of yourself, of your experience, of what you have to some point lived. I am afraid not to be loved, I guess, not to be seen. I am afraid of hurting others, all the time. Is it perhaps because I have been so deeply hurt, for no reason, that it is the last thing I want to do and be, and hence I am afraid of being the way I know beings can get to be. Cruel, cold… I guess I am a bit afraid of human beings. There is a lot to unpack there. But tomorrow…tomorrow I will wake up and breathe the morning and get up and change and go meet my coworkers and the day will pass, simply pass. I lied. I do feel guilty sometimes.