Reclaim my spirit from each and every place I have ever left it

This is one of the hardest goals I have to make entries about. The more I know people here on 43T the harder it is, because I feel less anonymous.

Anyway, this came up a while ago when answering a question that had been posted about near death experiences. So, here is the story. ^{It is a long story, so maybe that will deter people from reading it, which would be ok with me!} My dad was a member of US Army Intelligence, and his job was to debrief POWs to make sure they hadn’t been brainwashed. It seems he used a lot of what he learned in the army as his guidebook for parenting.

Also, I grew up in Arizona, where it’s hot and lots of people have swimming pools. Our family had one. One day, I was in the swimming pool. Then my dad came into the pool too, with his big glass of beer. He always drank beer starting in the afternoon. He drank it in a big plastic cup, because he liked to put ice in it, and he liked to drink in the pool. Mustn’t take glass into the pool. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. I was just swimming. I went under the water, and when I tried to come back up, I couldn’t. This was very shocking. Then I realized my dad was putting his hand on my head so I couldn’t come up for air. I tried to swim away, but when I tried to come up again, it was the same thing. This kept happening and I was panicking, but then finally I just thought, “This is it. I am going to die now.”

When I surrendered to the idea that my dad was going to kill me and gave up trying, that was when he let me come up for air. He didn’t say anything at all. He was just sort of smirking. I didn’t feel anything at all. Everything around me seemed bigger, sounds and so on, and yet also far away from me, and I remember being aware of how easy it would be to die while the whole world just went on doing what it was doing and not noticing at all.

I am pretty sure something in me got lost at that moment. Even now, I can’t connect with any emotions around this event. It’s only very recently that I feel like I’m really getting it that this was not an okay thing for my dad to do.

I would like to be able to get that lost piece of me back. It seems like an impossible task. So I thought I would write about it under this goal because it seems like it might be a step in the right direction.

It’s been 10 days since I started the Big Amino Acid/Vitamin Programme for Brain Renewal. In addition to all the supplements (and it is A LOT!), I am also focusing on consuming at least 20 grams of protein in every meal and increasing my fat consumption (which typically had been only about 10-15% of my daily intake). Before starting, I was rapidly sinking into serious depression, which had frankly progressed to the suicidal ideation point. I did feel much better after just 24 hours, and that has been consistent over the past 10 days. I just saw my therapist, and he felt that my thinking was much more balanced and clear. I also am rarely experiencing food cravings, and when I do, it is for protein.

So, my plan is to continue on with this supplement/eating program and see what happens next!

I am really struggling lately with depression. The big kind, the kind that feels like it weighs 1000 pounds and you are dragging it on your back through every thing you try to do.

This depression has been with me my whole life. As far back as I can remember, back to toddler years, it’s been here. Sometimes it recedes into background noise, and other times, like now, it takes over.

My therapist gave me a book called The Mood Cure. This book talks about different ways that brain chemistry can get messed up and how to reset it using amino acid supplements. I am willing to try, but I am afraid to hope.

The events of last week definitely point out a huge hole in my spirit.

I can look back on that woman’s verbal attack and be fairly certain in my intellect that she was wrong, but still…there is a part of my mind that sides with her, even as I know that the tendency to do this is called “identifying with the aggressor,” and it is a predictable result of child abuse.

And then emotionally…well, emotionally, I just feel very bruised and sad. I talked to my therapist about it. There is just a lot of work for me to do. I need a way to protect myself when things like this occur. Because the world is not a warm, fuzzy place, but I am not going to hide from it any more…

I have no idea how to do this. I think these skills of self protection are ideally learned in childhood, and, of course, when you are battered repeatedly you learn the opposite, you learn to shut down and take it. Still, I believe it can be done, and I am going to find out how.

I started telling people about the things that were going on at home, behind closed doors. I tried to get someone to see behind the facade of normalcy and tried to get some help. I tried to get removed from my parent’s house, too. No one who heard (teachers, doctors, other kids’ parents) helped.

The response to this was that my parents took me to a succession of psychiatrists until they found someone who didn’t ask questions about what was happening at home and instead proclaimed that I was psychotic. Then he put me on huge doses of various medications and the next three years of my life were spent in a stupor, with my parents dragging me out of bed to sit between them while they drank each night so that they still had my body to triangulate through and frequent talk about how this was how I would be for the rest of my life.

There is still so much pain attached to having an adolescence that didn’t happen. So many lessons learned that need to be unlearned, lessons like “the world is a dangerous, uncaring place,” “trust no one,” and “there is something deeply wrong with me.”

I am really feeling the loss just lately. I want so much to find that girl and listen to her and give her a chance to learn the things about life that teenagers are supposed to learn. Wish I knew how to do it. I want to reclaim the spirit of that girl before she was pummeled into silence.

I am not a bad person if I lose patience with someone who is being unreasonable.

Last week, I lost patience at work with a woman who was being unreasonable. I ended up ending the discussion by saying, well, “we need to stop talking about this now because I’m getting too angry to discuss it any further.” Ever since that happened, my anxiety level has been high, and I have felt drenched in shame, too.

But today I am starting to see that I don’t have to be eternally patient with everyone all the time, especially people who are being unreasonable. I can say, “enough!” I am allowed to do that. This truth is exactly the opposite of what I learned as a child.

It’s just like what dogs do. When a dog has had enough, she growls or snaps or snarls, makes sure you know that this is it, and then moves on. The dog doesn’t sit and torment herself with worries over whether or not she is not a good enough dog to be alive on the earth because she set a boundary. A dog has a sense of what is enough. It is an essential part of her being. I can’t pinpoint when I lost that part of my spirit. Maybe it was lost at birth.

Regardless, I’m trying now to get it back.

stockholm syndrome

Recent media attention that’s been given to cases of animal cruelty and also cases of prisoner torture have left me feeling very unsettled. My body is all in knots, though I barely feel inside of it.

My dad was cruel to our dogs. Well, and to me, as well. He was an army intelligence guy during the Korean war. I listen to the talk on NPR about bad things going on in black cells and I hear them name the things “torture,” and my blood runs cold. It is so odd and unexpected, driving home from work, the car radio putting a name for the first time on what I lived through as a child. But when I was a child, I just thought that was how it was and didn’t know it wasn’t normal. It is the strangest freaking feeling.

I know about stockholm syndrome. I know what it means. It is freaky to know what it means and see it in yourself and not have the slightest clue how to fix it.

I discussed this with my therapist tonight. It seems obvious that the lost piece must be anger.

I think about a big man beating on a little dog and I know the thing I would feel is anger. . . but the anger isn’t there. There is just a numb spot.

It is crippling to go through life with a numb spot where your anger should be. I am going to find a way to get my anger back.

One night, when I was not so old, my dad was in a drunken rage. I would not have called it a rage ever, really, until just now, because rage was just how he was. And I didn’t know he was drunk, either, because drunk was also just how he was. It wasn’t something different so as you would notice it and try to give it a special name.

Back then it was just another night, though now I can see he was in a drunken rage. So he went into a rage and grabbed a garden hose and started beating the family beagle with the metal end of the hose and whenever the dog would growl or do something to defend himself, my dad would beat more. I was not so big, about up to my dad’s waist, and I was trying to make him stop, and it was as if I was not even there, but I kept trying.

What my dad did was the most despicable thing, and I know I should hate him for it, but I can’t find the hate. Funny thing, though, I always feel this disdain when I see a beagle dog, me who loves dogs so much.

Sigh. It is hard to find the broken pieces and bring them back. I think this is one right here. What to do with it, how to get it back, what exactly it is to be got back. . . and is it worth it? I do not know.

Two years ago today, my niece, my brother’s daughter, ended her life.

She lasted 14 years in that family.

Before her exit, she made a video of herself, nude, alone. She took a razor blade and sliced her body all over, sobbing about “razor blade kisses.” She apologized to the people who hurt her for hurting them so much.

I didn’t get to know her until a year after her death. I got to know her through internet traces and through a friendship that developed with the girl who’d been her best friend.

I regret that I didn’t know her for real. I regret I wasn’t there to help her make sense of her world. I could have helped her, because I understand the secrets of that family and am not afraid to speak them. But I couldn’t be there to know her. Because I understand the secrets of that family and am not afraid to speak them. And I had to save myself.

Rest in peace, dear Kelsey. Finally you can rest in peace.