I throw myself forward, gasping for air, desperately fighting to free myself. I manage to sit up, realizing that I am tangled up in the comforter and the sheet of the bed. It is pitch-dark in the bedroom; I can’t even make out the contour of the furniture. I desperately try to listen for whatever sound it was that woke me up, but my heart is pounding so hard it is difficult to hear anything. Clearly there must be someone in the house but I am too scared to turn the light on. It strikes me that if there was in fact an intruder, the dogs would have barked and alerted me, right? Would they? Did they? I try to focus and sweep my leg side to side under the covers to feel if the Boxer is there. He is and is sleeping curled up at the end of the bed. I reach for my glasses and my phone to see what time it is. 3:14 am. My breathing is starting to slow down and the prickly feeling in my arms starts to go away. Fight or flight mode will do that to you. Constrict your blood vessels and tense your muscles. I turn the light on and listen quietly. The only sounds are the dogs snoring and my pounding heartbeat.
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| Copyright Lars Studs |
About 2 decades ago my son and I almost died at the hands of the man who was supposed to love and cherish us till “death do us part.” The death part almost came true that early January morning. I will spare you the grim details of the assault, after all the physical wounds heal a lot faster than the emotional ones. Apart from a couple of ribs that dislocates on their own every now and then and arthritis in my cervical joints from having my neck almost broken – looking at me physically you would never know. Emotionally you would only know if you were someone very close to me. For the longest time I kept it to myself. I remember standing in the bathroom at the ER looking at the bruises on my neck. I zipped my jacket up as far as it could go trying to cover them. I was ashamed that it had happened to me. Heaven knows I should have been the last person to feel ashamed. Let me add that this was the only time it got physical. The verbal abuse had gone on for a long time. I left that morning with my son.
I thought I was safe once we were out and technically I was. The fear however stayed with me. We lived in an apartment building after we got out and I remember sitting in the dark hallway by the front door at night after having tucked my son in. I would hear the main door to the stairway open and close and I would be waiting to pair it with the sound of one of the apartment doors opening and closing. If I couldn’t it would mean someone was on the stairs, waiting. Sometimes the wind would blow the main door open and no one was in fact there. Those nights I didn’t sleep. Later I would sit on the bathroom floor, sobbing, begging to get my life back from before the fear dominated everything. The thing is there is no going back, only forward – which is really where you want to go anyway. It is just so overwhelming when you are still trying to heal and take care of a 1 year old at the same time. Life lost its innocence that morning; nothing ever looked the same after that. I thank God for my family and close friends that were there for us. Many are not that lucky.
The body remembers everything we go through. For the longest time right after the assault, I felt like I had a lump in my throat all the time. Clearly something had to be wrong all though the specialists all said there was nothing abnormal. Finally I told one of the doctors what had happened and he assured me that it would pass with time. The mind plays tricks on you when you have been strangulated. Till this day, I can’t wear anything even semi-tight around my neck. I struggle with tight spaces too, or any situation where I feel I can’t get out. Like being stuck mid-row at the movies, crowded restaurants, or being on a long flight overseas.
The therapists all told me that the fear would get better, but no one tells you that “better” still means having to find a new normal. Better doesn’t mean the way it used to be. All I heard was that I would eventually get my life back. And I have, just not the way I thought I would. I really struggled for a long time with the fact that I couldn’t control that part of my life. There is no controlling the mind to keep it from replaying events over and over in your head. Funny how there will be days where I can’t tell you what we had for dinner two nights ago, yet ever single detail of something that happened so long ago is forever etched in my brain. The way it smelled, the texture of the carpet...Memories that are readily available to make a nightmare real.
I have always been the type of person who buckles up; whining gets you nowhere. I don’t do pity parties and feeling sorry for myself was not an option. In many ways that has been what has saved me all those years. Then the PTSD started. The nightmares that would come creeping in night after night leaving me completely sleep deprived. Some weeks I got through on will power alone. I have pretty much raised my son on my own; relationships haven’t worked out for a multitude of reasons, and my family is far away. I had to find my strength, because there was never any other option. Life doesn’t ask you if you want to do this. One day I realized that PTSD was the roommate I never wanted. It was the roommate who was never moving out. I could either try to make friends and figure out what life together would look like – or I would be miserable for the rest of my life. I am happy to report that life actually is looking pretty good all things considered. My business is going well, my son is thriving, and I am at peace most of the time. I never thought I would get to this point on the days where everything looked bad. And even on the worst days I got up in the morning thinking “I can breathe, we are safe, and we’ve made it.” The worst day was already behind us.
Over the years I have learned that stress is a huge trigger for me. It is sort of ironic since being a self-employed, single mother, thousands of miles away from my family is not exactly the ideal stress-free set up. There are no taking sick days; if I don’t work the bills won’t get paid. There is no husband for back up, there is just me to get things taken care off. Breathing helps and I have adjusted my life to minimize the stress I can't control. Instead of getting stressed out over what is beyond my influence, I focus on where I have choices. For instance my son has always had the master suit. It has definitely made some people roll their eyes over the years, accompanied by mumbled comments about single mothers spoiling their sons. I never felt I owed them an explanation so I just smiled and said “it works for us.” You see the furnace is pretty much always placed right next to the master suit – when the furnace is running, you can’t hear the front door. If I can’t hear the front door, I can’t keep us safe. (Yes I realize that the immediate danger is over, but try telling that to my brain) Instead I sleep in a room where I can hear and then we have a couple of big dogs. It is not because I am spoiling my child. It is called being rational and getting sleep.
I always sit at the end of the row in the theater, at the movies, and have the aisle seat on flights. I have no problem telling whomever I go with that I don’t do well if I can’t get out. They don’t have to understand, they do however need to know. Panic isn’t pretty! My dentist knows I have problems with contact around my neck area and respects it. My doctor knows that something about the smell in their lab brings back memories, and she goes in there and gets me the paperwork to go somewhere else for my tests. Somewhere with windows and circulating air.
I ask a million questions at the doctor’s because procedures I can’t mentally prepare for makes me stress. Once you have been begging for someone to stop hurting you, to no avail, it changes the dynamics of a lot of other things. Could I get through it if I wasn’t open about my PTSD? Yes I could, because I have – but why wouldn’t I look out for myself and make it a good experience? God knows there have been plenty of lesser ones. I don’t need the added stress of worrying about handling everyday things, like a dentist visit, because of keeping it secret. That is one benefit of making peace with my life; I couldn’t care less what other people think.
I am tactfully open as I know most people don’t completely understand and I never expect them to. I never share detail, that part is no one's business but mine. I have sat through dinner parties where domestic violence has come up, most of the time in relations to some celebrity in the news, and I hear the opinions – and it is definitely not the time I tell them that they have no idea what they are talking about. People get uncomfortable when you call them out and some know everything about everything, even the things they know nothing about. I will never tell that I know what your life feels like, because I don’t. I also don’t have an opinion about how you live your life or why you make the decisions you do. I assume it is because those choices work for you. If not, I hope you find the strength to change them.
I don’t expect you to know what living with PTSD feels like. Unless you were next to me on the stairs that morning, realizing that your life was ending, how could you possibly know? I pray to God you never will.
Therapists will help you get tools to cope (EMDR, sound, talk therapy etc.), they are invaluable, but make no mistake, when the session is over you are still the one going home with PTSD. I have made peace with mine. I think being open is important and my son has grown up knowing we could talk about anything and everything. If a question made me uncomfortable then that was on me. He still got his answers and hopefully that has given him peace of mind. Most of us have been raised to keep things private but silence leads to isolation, and isn’t isolation part of what gets us stuck in an abusive situation in the first place? PTSD will make sure you are never alone and at the same time it can make you the loneliest person in a room full of people.
If you are in a situation where you need to get out, take that first step. Domestic violence can affect any of us. There is no discrimination between race, income, age or background. All though we like to tell ourselves that reassuring ourselves that it could never happen to us. Trust me, it can. Own that it happened/or is happening to you, never own the violence. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. Don’t take on burdens that aren’t yours to carry; you already have by living through it.
If you are living with PTSD, and struggling, it is time to break that silence. We are a lot of women out there dealing with the same. Let us share our stories, let us speak so loud that there is no more silence, no more guilt, no more fear. There is no shame in surviving.
