Topics

A mirror’s gaze is a difficult thing to hold…

It is a window to my inner world... a dive off of a cliff... there is that first step… there is little control over the rest.

… self loathing flows here…

If those witnesses to my inner carnage offer comfort… if they move to be closer… it seems they have missed who I really am.  The language I have used has failed me.

Viewing these reflections through my eye, I wonder how long they could endure what stares back.

Wading into contradictions...

When pain was the only comfort given from ones that should have offered a loving embrace, the spirits from this bottle of beast will serve to dull this longing for shelter.

When the longing is so familiar, it is a kind of comfort... feeling the absence of what should have  been is like a haunting echo..

When the emptiness is the most familiar feeling from primordial memories.

And it is little comfort…

… it is a yawning void pulling at me, until I become the void… this is where the beast lives… the child of rage… he is the absence of hope.

He has been too long lingering in darkness.

His language is a powerful, thrashing rampage that fades into a withering howl, that speaks of a longing for an intimacy… for comfort… a comfort he does not know how to accept.

And in seeing comfort denied again, he withdraws back into the darkness… rage spent.

Someday he will know I forgive him...

Everything is conspiring to keep me from writing about this…

…

Lately, I have wondered what I would be like if I could stop existing so much in the past.  I am always divided… two people.  I am moving through the world as my present self, but under constant attack by an inner child, so enraged and powerless, it overwhelms the sense of the world around me.

A large part of that child was left at the bottom of a lake… his urgent burning need for air… the terror of having to take that breath, and only pungent, silty water to answer the call.  Nothing else can exist in that moment.  A moment that will not pass… a moment from which I will not be released.  I am down there with him now, as I write this.  His inward facing rage pulls him under again, and again… and again...

I think of what I could accomplish, if I could just stay "in the now" without the effort of becoming present being so exhausting.  What must it be like to be normal?… always present?  Who would I be?

The chain of the anchor lead echoes a dull rattle-thud against the astro-turf-like carpet on the deck of the boat as the anchor plunges down… then… as the lead ends… silence.  There is a splash… bigger than an anchor… the child turns to look, but only bubbles.

Back to the present… the surface.  Why do I keep going back there… do I think I can save him this time?

… why do I keep coming back?

So I made my wife angry the other day.

I had been talking with a friend who was visiting and the topic of rough family members came up, so, of course, I get the floor with my extreme examples from childhood.  but, my wife is sick of this coming up... she feels the current family (the nice one) is suffering from the past abuses of the bad family every time these things are described.

In telling me she was putting her foot down, and letting me know, this time she is deadly serious... she displayed enough negativity that I started going into shutdown mode.

The worst abusers from my childhood were women (both physically and emotionally)... the men were basically drunk and zoned out of life.  The women were running the show... an doing so quite aggressively.

So, when my wife gets angry (which is rare), I don't take it well.  I tend to shrink inside and kind of hide out.  This is really not good, because I miss the opportunity to really listen to what she is saying, and some time, months later, I do something similar to make her angry again.  But, the next time she is more angry due to the fact that she already talked to me about it... and I don't recall it at all.

But, I turned this one around...

I felt myself shrinking back to my hiding place (mentally).  I told myself, "You are having a flashback... breath... stay present... listen..."

I wasn't saying much... could not think of what to say, but I was listening for a change.  She was convinced she was making no progress and did not back off.  We went to bed, and I could feel her tension... but I just did not have the words, besides, "I'm sorry."

The next day... out of the fog... I was able to tell her I was having a flashback when she was angry with me the night before.  But, I was able to stay present and really hear her.  I was struggling, so I really could not talk, but I felt like I won this internal battle... for once.

I told her I was sorry I had done the same thing again, but when I have these flashbacks I lose memory of important points surrounding the current event.

She seemed to take this in and told me I did seem different this time, and she was trying to figure out what I was thinking, and if I was getting it as she was fussing at me.  She appreciated that I told her what was going on in my head, even if it was the next day.

So, I finally went to a psychologist.

Turns out I have CPTSD, attachment disorder (RAD)... and some other alphabet soup diagnosis, which explains my emotions that seem to spiral out of control, why I overreact to even the hint of something that might be a threat, and why I have nightmares nearly every night.

It was a relief to put a name to this thing that has haunted me my entire life... but now I am not sure how to move forward. 

I have learned to deal with the flashbacks... including drawing out some things I purposefully "forgot" about my past... including accidentally causing my uncle's death when I was 5 years old.  I recalled that he died, but had suppressed the fact that I was there, and the role I played... and the blame laid on me by nearly all family members.  This does seem to explain why I never felt I fit in with any of my family.  But now I just feel numb about what I have recalled, and am not sure how to process it.

I have cut off contact with my childhood family, and have completely adopted my wife's family as my own.  This is both a comfort and a source of deep terror, as I would lose all family if she ever left me (a fear I may never get over).

My deepest fear is that I pass on my fears and disorders to my children, or alienate my wife with my inability to fully trust anyone.  We have been married for almost 24 years (my psychologist was very surprised I had not been through several failed marriages, given my background), and she has put up with a lot of my issues with trust and fear of catastrophes.

I'm hoping that writing about memories that seem to float into my daily life will help me to process what I have gone through.  But more than that I am hoping to learn to trust... something I have never really experienced.

In her I have found a vessel strong enough to hold the weight of my heart.

In her I have found a calm that withstands the thrashing rage of a child trapped in darkness.

In her the child sees hope... and in seeing hope, he lashes out at her.