Tag Archives: depression

A LINGERING SADNESS

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In the fall of 1973, my mother gathered my (then) 3 brothers together and said, “Since we cannot decide on what kind of car to get, do you think we could decide on what kind of baby?”  (Note – In August of 1972, my mother had married Mark Shriver, who then adopted  me and my 3 brothers.  We had had a VW bus since 1965 (actually, we were on our second one by then) and since we were now 6 people, the bus just wasn’t big enough anymore, and so the need for a new car.  I do not remember what my brothers wanted, but I thought we should get the metallic blue beetle.  Yeah, like that was big enough!  In the end, we got a Dodge Sportsman Van (long before minivans were around) and a Mercedes 450SL.  Clearly, the van was for the kids and the 450SL was for the adults.) I, of course, wanted a girl and my brothers wanted a boy.  As I would be almost 14 years old when the baby was born, I’m not really sure what good a sister would have done me.  Really, I wanted a girl so I could make her little dresses.  I got another brother.  Andrew Mark Shriver was born on 29 April 1974.

When he came home from the hospital, I couldn’t believe my eyes.  My mother had brought home a red baby!  I did not even like him until he was about 3 months old.  Then I fell in love.  He became ‘my baby.’  Although I was not his mother, I did have a huge influence on him, the main thing being I did not ‘allow’ him to have a southern accent.  Oh, no!  Since none of us had been born in Atlanta (me and my brothers in WV, my new father was born in NJ, and my mother in Missouri,) and none of us had southern accents, I decided he would not, could not, have one either.   When he started pre-school and came home saying things like, ‘ya’ll’ and ‘fixin” and ‘cut on the light,’ I knew I had to step in.  I am proud to say that I was quite successful.  So much so, that when he went away to college in Maine, when I went to his graduation, he introduced me to his friends as ‘she’s the reason I don’t have a southern accent.’  No one could believe that he had been born and spent his entire life in Georgia and did not speak like his mouth was full of cotton balls.

We went to the same private school: me, only for my senior year in 1977/78 and Andy, from 4th grade on.  Because there were so many years between us, and even Brian, who was closest in age to him was still 9 years older, most of his friends did not realize Andy had older siblings.  When people saw us together, they just assumed I was his mother, and were always surprised to find out I was his older sister.

In my mind, Andy had it all–he grew up in a family with 2 parents who were not divorced, he was, in essence, an only child, he had every advantage and he was a good kid.  He never did drugs or smoked (I do take credit for this since I told him if he ever smoked cigarettes, I would make him eat them, lit!) and he did well in school.  He went to college and actually graduated in 4 years, like you are supposed to.  After graduation, he went back to Atlanta and got a job.  He had lots of friends and seemed happy, seemed being the operative word.

Pretty much everyone in my immediate family suffers from either depression or has bipolar disorder.  I now know that I spent a good part of my life clinically depressed.  I am the only one who has every gotten help with it.  I have been in therapy various times through my life.  I took antidepressants, which were hateful, but they did what they were meant to do and got my chemicals back in balance.  I asked at the time whether I would ever have to take them again.  My doctor said maybe, but that there was no way to know for sure.  I have read and participated in all kinds of self-help seminars.  I have worked really hard to stick around, which is my way of saying I’ve worked really hard not to kill myself.  The same cannot be said for anyone else in my family.  Is it fun to deal with all the crap?  Ah, no, it’s not.  But there is something in me that makes me have to do it.  Just as after my attack.  Even my therapist said I had a choice to do it or not, but I never felt that I did.  I absolutely had to do it.

Andy was suffering from depression, but he never let anyone know.  He was also suffering from a completely ‘fixable’ heart condition.  Again, he never told anyone.  No one knew that he was, essentially, a ticking time bomb.  And that bomb went off on 14 June 2011.  He died from an aortic aneurism.  I will never forget the call I got telling me that he was dead.  How could this be?  He was 37 years old.  He was my ‘baby.’  And as it turned out, the only ‘baby’ I ever had.

Yesterday was, what should have been, his 40th birthday.  I spent the day feeling pretty crappy.  I was able to work, and while I was working, I could keep my mind off of him.  I worked until about 8:30p, and that’s when I realized that working had kept me from dwelling too much on his not being here.  I miss him more than I can say or even understand.

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WHY DOES IT TAKE SO LONG?

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Okay, it is just over 2 1/2 years since my encounter with cockroach boy, so why am I still struggling?  Don’t get me wrong, I am SO much better than I was and I know that I am a little better each day, but why does it take so, so, so long to feel ‘normal’ again?  Will I ever actually feel the way I used to?  Do I even want to?  All I know is I sometimes feel like I am just one unkind comment or one stupid injury away from the dark side.  The good thing is I do have the tools to get myself out of those places, and I am able to do it fairly quickly.  Still…

A few weeks ago, my car, Grazelda, bit me.  You may wonder how a car is able to bite someone.  Well, she is old (almost 18 years) and moves more slowly than she used to,  and one of those places that doesn’t move so well any more is the trunk.  I was going to yoga on the beach and was driving since I had to leave the island right after.  Because I did not need my purse on the beach and I didn’t want to leave it sitting on the seat of the car, I thought I’d put it in the trunk before I left so that no one would see me doing it and decide to break in and steal it.  So I walk around the back of the car, insert the key into the trunk and assume (and everyone knows that one should never assume anything) without really looking that the trunk is open.  In fact, it was not and I bashed my head on the trunk lock.  I thought, oh great.  I did not have time to go back in the house to deal with it or I would have been late to yoga.  When I got in the car and looked in the mirror there was no blood.  Five minutes later it was a different story.  It never gushed blood, but I still managed to get blood all over my new white jacket.

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I looked like I had squooshed a spider on my forehead and just left it there.  Luckily, it healed quickly and because I put vitamin E oil on it every day, there is not even a scar when the scab fell off a week later.  That day, though, I felt ‘off’ for the entire day.  I did not hit my head hard enough to give myself a concussion, but I definitely felt dizzy and light-headed.  I probably should not have done yoga, but I did.  I also felt like crying, not so much because it hurt, but for some other unknown reason.  My body was reacting in a way I did not quite understand.  It seemed to me to be overreacting.

I had acupuncture after yoga that morning, and Matt (Truhan,) my acupuncturist, explained it as, basically, muscle memory from my attack.  Because I hit my face/head on the pavement during my attack, there was something in my body that was remembering that incident and, I think now, because I was in shock that September day, I did not necessarily feel what was happening.  So when I hit my head on the trunk my body brought up those feelings.  What seemed at the time to me like an overreaction was just a memory from 2 1/2 years ago.  I took it easy and rested and by the next day, I felt much better.

And so I one back to my original question – WHY DOES IT TAKE SO LONG?  What I am slowly, but very slowly, figuring out is it takes as long as it takes.  There is really nothing I can do to hurry it along.  Now, though, when I open the trunk, I lean back as far as possible so that Grazelda cannot bite me again.

MY ACHILLES HEEL

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Everyone has one.  Mine just happens to be sugar.  In the grand scheme of things this, at first glance, may not seem such a bad one to have.  It’s not like I do drugs.  But the hold that sugar has on me is as strong as any drug would be.  I know that sugar is bad for me.  I do my best not to eat it.  I’ve even gone years without eating candy.  But I NEVER stop craving it.  Even as I am writing this I am popping jelly beans, one at a time, into my mouth.  They aren’t just any old jelly beans, either.  They are sweet tart jelly beans, only around for Easter.  (Thank goodness!)  As one friend said, it combines my favorite things: jelly beans and sweet tarts.  And to top it all off, they are pretty.

Last November I participated in a whole foods cleanse.  I successfully cut out sugar for an entire month.  The biggest ‘side effect’ was no more hot flashes.  You’d think that alone would be enough to stop me from eating, or drinking, sugar.  But no, it’s not.

This has been a lifelong addiction for me.  I remember as a little girl walking to the candy store to buy penny bubblegum, sweet tarts and  Sugar Daddys, those caramel suckers.  I used to see how many pieces of gum I could fit in my mouth at once.  I think my record was 10.  It’s not like you can really chew 10 pieces of bubblegum at one time, especially when you have a small mouth, as most children do.    It was such a waste of perfectly good gum.  My m.o., when I wasn’t stuffing my mouth full, was to put one piece at a time in my mouth, chew it until the flavor was gone, spit it out and continue until all my gum was gone. Then I’d go back to the store for more.

I am pretty sure it was 1968 when I had my first giant sweet tart.  Before that, sweet tarts only came in a package with little pieces in pink, yellow, purple and green.  My favorites were pink and yellow.  I didn’t really like the purple ones, but that never seemed to stop me from eating them.  Anyway, my first giant sweet tart was yellow, and my tongue bled from licking it.  It actually bled!  But did that stop me from eating it?  Hardly!  Eventually, I think my tongue developed calluses and I could eat as many as I wanted without a problem.

When I was on the swim team, most kids ate raw jello; that is, jello out of the box that was still in powder form.  I never cared for this.  It was not nearly sour enough for me.  That’s when I started eating powdered lemonade.  Of course, that was sour enough, but it caused my mouth to bleed if I ate too much.  Then I discovered Hawaiian Punch powder.  I did not just eat it from the packages that made, if you actually were to add water to it, 2 quarts of juice.  Oh, no, I would get the cans of it, and because putting in my hand to lick it up made my palms red, I started using a small plate.  That way I had clean hands.  Of course, my tongue was always red.  I seriously must have eaten well over 100 pounds of the stuff over the course of time.  I ate it well into my 20s and really only stopped because they stopped making it, and I could never find another brand that tasted as good to me.  At some point, too, I must have decided to stop eating so much sugar.

I do remember in my late 20s when I lived in Germany finding a really good candy that was similar to sweet tarts, but somehow better.  I thought I was gaining weight while there because of this candy.  Turned out it was the Bailey’s milkshakes I was having several times (or more) a week, but that’s another story.  Since I thought it was the candy, I decided to quit, to go cold turkey.  And I did it.  I didn’t eat candy for 3 or 4 years, and then one day I gave into my craving, and that was it.  By that time, sweet tarts had started putting blue candies in the rolls.  Those are definitely my favorite.  The bad thing about the rolls of sweet tarts was not being able to see exactly what number of which colors were in a particular roll, and there were never enough of the blue ones.  I would buy rolls, take all of them out, eat the blue ones first, then the pink, yellow, and maybe the green, and throw away the purple.  I was always bummed when there was only a couple of blues ones.  Then, for some weeks or even months, I’d cut back on my consumption.  It never lasted for long, though.

I really would like to be free of this addiction to sugar, in particular sweet tart jelly beans.  Luckily, as soon as Easter is gone, so will these tempting little pieces of sour joy.  It is so bad that just walking by the store that has them makes my mouth start to water.  I keep telling myself NO MORE.  And I’ll follow that directive for a day or two, and then I have to go to the store, and somehow those suckers jump into my grocery basket, and I continue to eat them.  If I was able to eat only a small handful each day, then maybe that would be okay.  But that’s not what happens.  I end up eating half the bag, which gives me a stomach ache, which makes me say that I’ll stop eating them.  Until the next day, when I wake up and my stomach doesn’t hurt anymore.  Grr….

I stopped eating sugar almost 4 years ago. I did really well for a long time.  It’s not like I never had processed sugar, but I was pretty good.  Even during Halloween and Easter I was okay as long as I stayed away from the aisles that carried my beloved sweet tarts.  I just didn’t go near them.  I was also in a relationship and I’ve come to realize lately that that made a huge difference for me.  I did not feel compelled to eat so much sugar because the pleasure centers that eating sugar stimulates were being filled through my relationship.  So I know exactly WHY I am eating it now and why I can’t seem to stop.  My intention, once I became aware of this, is to be gentle with myself.  I will continue to do my best to NOT eat it; and if, when, I do, I will not beat myself up.  I have every confidence in myself that one of these days I will just stop.  I’ve done it before and I will do it again.

SEX IS A FUNNY THING – PART 2

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As I said last time, sex after sexual assault is especially challenging.

I think I was very lucky to have been in a loving relationship when my assault happened.  I cannot imagine how much more difficult it would have been, on so many levels, had I been single.  Right after my attack, and for longer than I would have thought, I was afraid of everyone.  And I do mean every single person I encountered.  Men, women, boys, girls – anyone and everyone scared me.  My rational mind knew this was silly, but the irrational part was in control.  As I also said last week, I know, and knew at the time, that sexual assault of any kind, whether it be rape, attempted rape or any other variation, it not about sex.  It is about power or lack thereof.  Another aspect that a lot of women have to deal with is feeling dirty or ashamed of what happened to them.  I never felt either of those emotions.  I was very clear from the beginning that I had done nothing wrong, that I had nothing to be ashamed of.  That being said, I was still unable to have sex with my boyfriend for some time.

For at least the first few weeks, I am certain I wasn’t even willing to try.  Oh, I was fine with just being held and kissed, but beyond that, I was unable to even contemplate it.   I was never repulsed by him in any way.  And although, I was afraid of men in general, I was not afraid of my boyfriend.  My body and mind instinctively knew he was safe, that I was safe with him.  Still, ‘convincing’ my body that more than just cuddling was okay definitely took time.  Because I was in shock, and stayed there for 15 weeks, I could not cry.  Nor, it turned out, could I have an orgasm.   And when we did attempt to have sex, though my body responded to him, I was still ‘blocked.’  For a long time, every time we did make love, I would ‘leak’ 3 or 4 tears.  I called it leaking because it wasn’t real crying, and all that would ever come out were 2 or 3 or 4 tears.  I may not have been actually crying, but, clearly, it’s what I wanted to do.  It still was upsetting to my boyfriend.  I was not rejecting him, but I think he still felt that way.  I was doing my best to not let it happen, but it always did.  Looking back now, I am not even sure how long this went on.  At some point it stopped, but I do not remember when.  And as for the lack of orgasm, I am happy to say that that eventually came back as well.

What I can say now, too, is that after my attack, our sex life was never the same.  It seemed to never completely recover.  Oh, things worked like they were supposed to, but something fundamental was lost that September morning, and, unfortunately, we were never able to get it back.  It is only with hindsight that I am able to see this now.  I can’t really think too much about how much almost every aspect of my life has changed since my encounter with cockroach boy.  It pisses me off and I don’t want to live my life in a pissed off frame of mind.

So I choose love and joy and happiness.  Is it always easy?  Of course not.  There are times I’d like to go to the prison he is housed in and, well, you can just imagine what I might do.  Thankfully, those days are few and far between now.  I have many more good days than bad.  Though I am still dealing with a lot of physical issues that I attribute to my attack, those, too, are improving.  I have great faith that though my life may never be exactly as it was before, it is better.  I am better.

WHAT WERE YOU WEARING?

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Believe it or not, this was a question I was asked by more people than you might think.  Even more surprising to me was the fact that most of those asking that question were women.  In this day and age!  By women who knew better;  intelligent women; women who work out and know exactly what one would wear to walk; women who, as soon as they asked realized how inappropriate and blame-the-victim type of question it was apologized.   As if what I was wearing had anything to do with being attacked.  As far as I am concerned, if I want to walk down the street stark naked (not that I do), even that is NOT a reason for some cockroach-type person to attack me.  There simply is no excuse.

I have to admit that even today I do wonder if I had worn yoga pants, if that would have made a difference.  I am pretty certain it would have, at least to a degree,  in that my new yoga pants were a size small and fit kind of like a tight glove.  As easily, and quickly, as he removed my skort, because it was loose on me and offered no resistance, my yoga pants would have probably stayed in place when he tried to pull them down.  Would this have deterred his attack?  Would he have given up and run away?  My guess on this would be no.  I mean, he didn’t run away when I screamed or when I continued to fight him, so why would my clothes not coming off easily have stopped him in any way?

What I did not know at the time, but now do, is when he saw me the first time on Ocean Blvd, my goose was cooked, so to speak.  He zeroed in on me because I was his ‘type.’  The girl he assaulted (if this is the correct word to use) in the month before my attack was tall, thin and blonde.  The fact that she was more than 30 years younger than I didn’t seem to matter to him.  He went up behind her and pulled her bathing suit bottoms down, fondled her butt and ran away.  Luckily, she reported it to the police, though not right away, and somehow they were able to pick him up and charge him, in her case, with a misdemeanor.  This put him in the system, and so the police in Coronado were familiar with him.  After my attack, when I started saying what he looked like, the police knew exactly who it was.  This contributed to his being apprehended that same day.  As soon as they put the word out, they picked him up soon after.

So back to what I was wearing…I was wearing what is appropriate to do a 7-mile walk, in the early morning, 24 September on Coronado Island, California.  It was probably in the low to mid-60s that particular morning.  It was cool enough to need a jacket, but not too cold  that I needed to wear long pants.  Plus, walking as fast as I did always warmed me up rather quickly.  And so what?  Who cares what I was wearing?  This should never be the question out of anyone’s mouth.  Ever.  There is never, ever a reason or excuse for someone attacking someone else, with the intent to rape or do any other kind of bodily harm.  The fact that it still happens as often as it does, and usually goes unpunished and even unreported is extremely distressing to me.  Part of the reason I decided to do this blog was to help in my recovery and healing, and also to get people to talk about a very unpleasant subject.  Am I making a difference?  I do not know.  I hope so.  What I do know is writing about my experience at the time and what I continue to deal with today, 2 years and 5 months after the actual attack, is necessary.

For the record, I was wearing a black tennis skort (my favorite, ever,) a tight-fitting white top with a built-in shelf bra, an aqua zip-up jacket (also a favorite) and New Balance walking shoes.  Everything I was wearing that day was ‘donated’ to the crime lab, and I never saw any of it again.  As someone pointed out, I really wouldn’t have wanted any of it back, given what had happened while I was wearing it.  True.  And I still miss that black skort.

HONORING AND LISTENING TO MY BODY

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Finally, I had a good night’s sleep.  Because I have had a flold (since I had symptoms of both a cold and the flu, I decided it should be called a flold) and also had two weeks during which I had company staying with me, which meant I was staying up later than normal, when I would go to bed, I could not go to sleep.  Between coughing (is it possible to actually cough your lungs up?) and not getting to bed early enough, I would get a second wind.  When this happens I cannot go to sleep until very late.  My trick is to not look at the clock, even as I am lying there, not sleeping and though I do not know what time it is, I am still not sleeping. I, of course, still wake up early.  My ‘best’ sleep would happen between 5a and 7a.  I couldn’t work because I was weak and my back was killing me.  And my foot.  It was like my flold was in my back and my foot and in all my joints.  I couldn’t sit for very long, which meant I couldn’t really sew.  I tried to rest as much as possible.  That is also difficult when you have someone visiting.  Well, not so much visiting, as staying here while in San Diego going to doctor appointments.  The day Darlene was to arrive, I woke up sick.  I did not even realize I was sick until I coughed, and then I thought, “What?” and “Oh, crap.”  Of all the people who should NOT be around someone who is sick, it is someone who already has a compromised immune system.  Since there was no way to get ahold of her, I just had to await her arrival.   And since there was really no one else for her to stay with, she stayed with me, and I did my best not to breathe on her.  She was here for 3 nights and 4 days.  At the best of times I struggle with having someone in my house, though it is nothing personal.   Feeling as awful as I did, it was that much more difficult.  I did my best, though, and got through it.

I was still feeling terrible after a week and continued to take it easy.  I knew I was getting another visitor about a week after Darlene left and was hopeful I would be better by the time Kim arrived.  The week without house guests was no better as far as sleeping went.  I simply could not get to sleep.  One night, I thought I’d take a melatonin, and it did not really help.  Plus, it gave me weird, bad dreams.  So forget that.  The entire time I had been sick, I was, of course, NOT working out.  The first day, I did my planks and squats, but that was it.  No yoga, no walking, nothing.  Even going to the store was hard because my back hurt so much.  I decided I would just wait until I felt better before doing anything.

Kim arrived on Saturday night, and Sunday morning we did go to my regular beach yoga class.  I felt well enough, and I knew I was no longer contagious, so even if I coughed, no one was in danger of being infected.  Because I was feeling much better and because yoga had been a success on Sunday, I thought I’d go back to the gym Monday morning.  When my alarm went off at 5a, it was raining and I really did not fancy getting up in the cold rain and walking to the gym, so I went back to sleep.  I did manage to do my walk with my friend Mike yesterday morning.  We did 3 miles in 40 minutes.  Kim left last night and I thought I’d be good to go to the gym this morning.  Nope.  I was plenty well-rested, and like I said before, I actually like going to the gym; but clearly, there is something else going on in my body.  It just felt like I needed to stay in bed and pretend sleep instead of getting up and getting outside.

While I was still lying in bed I thought about what could be preventing me from doing what I say I want to be doing.  I don’t think it’s the dark.  I’m not afraid of it anymore, though I can’t say that I feel safe in it, not like I used to, before cockroach boy happened.  I don’t think that it’s because it’s cold out.  Okay, it’s not that cold (55 degrees) but it’s not that warm, either.  This morning I was awake and wanted to go, but I didn’t.  And I doubt I’ll go for a walk later in the morning because that’s just not what I do.  I’ll be working and not want to stop.  So what I decided is to simply honor my body.  As I am not 100% yet, why push it?  And because I have a real need to move my body, I just have to trust that when the time is right, I will be out there again.  My job is to not beat myself up because I need more time, and whether it is attack related, or just my body telling me to rest more, I need to listen to it.

HAS IT REALLY BEEN A YEAR?

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Time flies.  And it seems to fly faster the older we get.  Remember being a kid and the days just dragging by?  Unless, of course, you were waiting for the bell to ring at 3p on the last day of school before summer vacation started!  And the truth is, time flies, whether or not you are having fun.  Well, according to the calendar, it has been a year since my boyfriend of almost 2 years broke up with me and, more or less, broke my heart.  As my heart, and all the rest of me, was still recovering from my encounter with cockroach boy, it was particularly difficult to deal with.  What was very clear to me, almost immediately, was that he had, in fact, done the right thing.  Oh, it’s not that I wanted to be alone.  Actually, I hated it, and, truth be told, still do.  What was right about it was I would have eventually broken up with him.  It probably would have taken me years to realize this because we really did have a great relationship in a lot of ways.  Was it perfect?  No, but it certainly was perfect for me, and I suspect, for him, right up until it wasn’t anymore.  Because of all the intense therapy I had done, and all of the crap from my past that had been dealt with during that therapy, I had grown.  A lot!  So much, in fact, that I had outgrown him.  I truly was no longer the person I had been when we first met.  Is this a bad thing?  No, it’s not.  Do I wish this ‘change’ had never occurred?  A part of me does.  A larger part knows, though, that it was necessary for me to experience and go through what I did to move me along my path.

We were only six months into the relationship when my sexual assault happened.  At the time, I asked him, “Does this mean you aren’t going to like me anymore?”  He told me, “No.  You are precious to me.”  And I believed him, and that belief allowed me to focus on myself and my healing.  No one, least of all me, knew exactly how long that would take.  I probably thought it would take a few weeks or, maybe, a couple of months.  It never occurred to me that it would take as long as it did.  I went to therapy, every Monday, week after week after week, for 13  months, and I hated every minute of it, though I loved my therapist.   It was incredibly hard and physically painful for lot of it.  Through it all, though, I had this amazing, loving, supportive, incredibly encouraging boyfriend.  I cannot imagine how much more difficult it would have been had I not been in this relationship.

When I inquired it he thought the breakup was a delayed reaction to my attack, he said, “No.  Yes.  I don’t know.  All I do know is I’m exhausted from having to deal with it.”  Okay. Well, so was I.  Still am.  Because I am still dealing with it.  Certainly not in the same ways, but the effects are ever-present.  There are certain books I cannot read and movies I cannot see.  Although I am not afraid of it, I do not really walk in the dark anymore.  When a stranger approaches me, especially at night, I wonder if he is going to attack me.  When I get sick, yet again, I curse cockroach boy for the trauma my body has suffered and continues to suffer.  I live with the thought, in the back of my mind, that one day in the not-too-distant-future, he will get out of prison, and though I do not believe he will come after me, who knows what he’ll do?  I certainly never expected to be attacked in the first place. One of the things I do tell myself, and something that allows me to carry on from day-to-day, is because it happened once, there is just no way it could happen again.  Don’t know if this is actually true, but I HAVE to tell myself this or I’m not sure I could go on.  It feels like all of these things are a part of my being now.  Will they fade in time?  Will they go completely away?  I have no idea.  I hope so.

What I was then, and will continue to be is grateful to my ex for sticking around  the way he did.  I know it made all the difference in the world to have him stand beside me, to not walk away.  It wasn’t easy for him, and even though I knew it, at least to a degree, I wish I had been more aware of how it was effecting him.  Would that have made a difference in the end?  No way to know.   All I am really certain of is he was/is a good man, and I miss him.  Still.

 

TOO MUCH EMPATHY?

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Back in October when I went to see “Captain Phillips,” I wrote about the reaction I had of being (somewhat) traumatized by the events in the movie, even though I was never kidnapped.  What I am discovering now is certain books and movies are incredibly upsetting in ways I have never experienced before.  While I was in Atlanta for Christmas, I went to see “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.”  I, of course, knew about apartheid while I was growing up, and you’d think I’d remember how bad it really was in South Africa during that time.  I guess, though, that being so far away and so removed from it, it simply did not have any effect on my life.  When I lived in Europe in the late ’80s, a time when Americans were still not allowed to go to South Africa, there was an agency in Cape Town that wanted me to come to work.  Since I was in Spain, I could get around the fact that I was technically not permitted to go there.  In the end, though, when they found out that I was 29, it was decided that I was ‘too old’ and they withdrew their offer for me to go.  Anyway, I was plenty old enough to know what was going on.  What I did not know was the extent of just how bad it truly was.

The movie made that very clear.  I left feeling extremely sad, but not necessarily for the reasons one might expect.  Of course, what they, both the blacks and the whites, endured over the many years that apartheid was the law of the land was beyond horrendous.  In the past I would have felt sympathetic, and that would have been the end of it.  I would have felt bad, but, really what did it have to do with me?  Now, however, what happens, what I feel, on top of the sympathy and empathy is a sense of knowing exactly what the people who lived through that kind of trauma are going to go through emotionally, for possibly the rest of their lives.  And I also know that most, if not all, will not get the kind of therapy that is needed to heal from such trauma.  That breaks my heart.  Even writing about it is hard for me.  I have no way of knowing if this is something that will stay with me for the rest of my life or if it will fade over time.  I am hopeful it fades in time because it is a hard way to live.

The acute feelings that seeing (even in a movie) or reading about traumatic, tragic events brings up in me makes me think that my brain still has some healing to go through.  I do think it is mostly healed because I am able to focus and work, things I was unable to do while I was in the process of getting through it.  I am able to do most everything I did pre-attack.  And while there are worse things than being highly empathic, I always feel like I am on the verge of tears.  After the movie, on the way home, I tried to explain to my parents how I was feeling, without sobbing.  I guess what I am trying to say here is the kind of knowledge I now possess because of being sexually assaulted isn’t necessarily a good thing.  As hard as I work at being happy and putting it all behind me, I think there is an underlying sadness that hasn’t yet gone away.  These days it does not take much to push me over the edge.  So, I will continue to avoid certain books, or at least skip the parts I cannot bear to read, and I will not see some of the movies I might otherwise enjoy.

ONGOING ISSUES

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In November, there was an article in MORE Magazine called, “A Hidden Cause of Chronic Illness,” written by Alexia Jetter.  It was about the long-term effects of domestic abuse.  I was not, nor have I ever been physically abused by a partner, BUT the information was enlightening to me.  Ever since my attack I have had one physical thing after another come up.  At first it made sense, sort of, that this was happening.  While I was in therapy and was in quite a lot of physical pain, not to mention the psychological and emotional turmoil I was experiencing, it was at least understandable that I would have stuff come up.  And, really, for the most part, my body did remarkably well, considering all I was dealing with.  The truth is, until cockroach boy was sentenced to prison, I did not get sick.  Not even when my boyfriend did get sick (now I know it was my attack that caused this) and stayed that way for close to 2 months, and even with all the time I was spending with him then, I never got sick.  So when I did get sick after the court date (just a cold, but annoying nonetheless, especially because it was summer,) it made perfect sense that the entire 9 months before, my body was, essentially, keeping me where I needed to be to get myself healed.  And if you’ll remember, 5 days after my therapy was finished, my back went out and I spent 96 hours not being able to move at all.  Again, I realized that my body had been holding onto the physical trauma until I was through the emotional work and could then deal with another aspect of the entire process.  I got through that, and then about 2 months later, my boyfriend broke up with me, which resulted in more trauma, both emotional and physical.  In this case, my emotional sadness and heartache manifested itself into my foot, resulting in a neuroma in my right foot.

So I have spent the last 10 or so months having acupuncture to heal my foot.  Some people choose to have surgery to deal with this type of injury, but I opted for the alternative route.  Besides not wanting to pay for surgery, and already knowing how my body responds to surgery, there was no way I was putting myself through another traumatic experience when there was another option.  Being injured proved very challenging for me.  After my attack and the sharp decrease of my physical activity, I had had to learn how to, basically, walk again.  As I mentioned in the story of the day of my actual attack, I went from walking 60-90 miles a week to zero.  That was a huge loss.  My walking was not only my physical exercise, but it was also my praying/meditating/me time. Even after I was able to walk again on a somewhat regular basis, it was just not the same.  And then my injury occurred and I was once again sidelined.  I was still doing yoga, at least to the best of my ability, modified to allow me to practice in spite of my hurt foot.  But, at least for me, yoga will never be enough exercise for my body.  I started getting depressed again with the lack of ‘moving.’  Luckily, I realized what was going on and looked for other ways to move my body without walking.  I rode my bike to the store or uptown to the book store or library, activities I normally walked to do.  I joined the gym again, and rode my bike there, as well.  I sometimes just rode my (beach) bike around the island, though that was a more leisurely activity than anything else.  And I kept going to acupuncture each week.

After my attack, with the loss of my ability to exercise in the way I was used to, I gained ten pounds.  I was pretty much able to limit my weight gain (in that year and a half) by walking, in time, as much as was possible.  Then when Bill broke up with me almost a year ago, I gained ten more.  You have to understand that when I was attacked, I weighed 135 pounds, and at 5’10” that was thin.  So I eventually ended up at 155 (maybe even a little more, but as I do not have a scale, I am not exactly sure) which really isn’t too much for my height, but it is too much for me.  My clothes did not fit and I was not comfortable in my own body.  For me, exercise and moving my body is as necessary as food and water.  Without that outlet, I am not happy.  Something had to change.  I was still self-soothing and it was definitely taking a toll on me.  In the summer and fall it wasn’t so bad when my clothes did not fit; but once it got colder and I needed to be wearing something besides loose dresses or yoga pants, I had to make a choice to stop what was clearly not working and do something different.

What I did was a whole food cleanse with Elizabeth Hirsh and Charlette Preslar.  It was 14 days and it changed my attitude about food and my body.  I cannot say that I am exactly where I’d like to be, but I am more accepting of where I am.  Although the cleanse was not a weight loss program per se, I did lose some weight.  And I am happy to say that my jeans fit me again.  I learned a new way to eat, and though I am not 100% good, I definitely have incorporated the recipes we used on the cleanse.

Back to the article about the hidden and long-term  effects of domestic abuse…although I do not know of any studies that have been done about the hidden effects of sexual assault on our bodies, I KNOW this is the case.  Since my attack I have had more things happen and I been sick more than I have in the last 20 years.  I have no way of knowing if and when this will stop.  I am ever hopeful that, in time, these things will at least lessen.  It is very frustrating not knowing what else may come up.  All I can do is continue to put one foot in front of the other, literally and figuratively,  and believe that it is possible to completely heal.  Clearly, I am not there yet.

On 3 January this is what I wrote in my journal:  “Not sure why I am surprised that I am still healing from my attack.  Matt (this is my acupuncturist) pointed this out to me this morning. I guess I think I should be all better by now.  The mistake I seem to have made was in thinking I would be finished when my therapy was done.  Ha!  Joke’s on me, except it isn’t so funny.  I suppose the best thing I can do for myself and my state of mind/sanity is to just let go of all and any preconceived notions I’ve had or continue to have around how long or exactly the path my healing will take/is taking.  I keep thinking I’m done/it’s done and clearly this is not the case.  So, I’ll say again, I am not sure why any of this comes as a surprise.  It will take as long as it takes and no amount of wishing it were different seems to be working.  Well, rats!”

A NEW YEAR

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One of my resolutions for this New Year is to be better about posting on this site.  Once I finished with my story, with what I had written while going through the healing process, I was at a bit of a loss as to how I should proceed, and, clearly, since I have not posted since the middle of October, I am still having trouble with which direction to take.  Because of that, and because there is much more to share about the ongoing issues I am experiencing as a result of my attack, and there is a lot more to my larger story that I haven’t even touched on yet, it is my intention to post at least every other week.  And I’ve decided I need a specific day, and since it is Wednesday today, this first day of 2014, that will be my posting day.   I would love to say I’ll post every week, but I realize I need to get in the habit of actually writing (instead of just thinking about writing, which is what I’ve mostly been doing) before there is even a chance that I can do it more often.

Last year at this time I did a post about choosing a word for the next year.  Well, I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and because I did not want to pick TRUST again, though it would be appropriate, I went through my angel cards and 5, yes 5, cards more or less ‘spoke’ to me.  They are, in no particular order:                                                         

FAITH

                                                                   PATIENCE

GRATITUDE

FORGIVENESS

PEACE

      I guess this means that I have my work cut out for me this year.  And, really, that’s okay. because it means I am still here, still plugging away, doing my best to not let what happened to me determine the rest of my life.

       I wish everyone a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous New Year!!!