Inside a Flashback

I just had a flashback. I stumbled upon a video that triggered me and off my mind went. I’m ok...I think. But I thought I would get up here and try and give you a little bit of insight as to what it feels like when someone with PTSD comes into contact with a trigger.

It’s hard to put into words. It’s kind of like having the wind knocked out of you. Everything in present time freezes and it feels like I’m suspended in time…in a moment of pain and fear. I’m trapped in the sensations of the past. For me, my body responds as if it’s happening right then. My heart pounds and I shake. My senses are engaged in something that isn’t happening anymore. I feel his touch and hear his voice and all I can do is try and name the things that are in the present. The fan…it makes noise and it blows on me…that’s real…focus on that and not on what he’s doing to me. And I zero in on the fan. Then I remember to count my breaths…in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, out, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, start again. And I keep counting and I fight the urge to claw the skin off my arms.

That’s kind of how it goes for a while until I can calm down enough to quit shaking. I know that when I am no longer shaking it’s safe to move. I feel like if I move before I quit shaking I’m going to fall apart and end up sobbing on the floor on the phone with my therapist or worse…cutting myself.

I’m ok now…I’m in the present moment but my emotions are still heightened. My heart is still pounding a little and I feel a little weak in my arms but I know that I’m ok now and that the past is in the past and isn’t happening to me right now.

So this is me sharing what it’s like to have a flashback…at least for me…everyone is different. Needless to say I will be up a while…no way I’m gonna go to sleep anytime soon after that. I need to calm it down a few more notches before I close my eyes. Goodnight everyone,

Love, Randi

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A Woman's Value

What do you see when you look at me?

The few extra pounds I never lost after baby number three?

Or perhaps the lines and wrinkles that have arrived with time?

Or the scars from the crash whose fault was all mine,

Bad decisions, too many drinks, a ditch and a tree.

And with each passing day I’m bound by the guilt, never to be free.

What about me? Do you notice my youthful body’s charms?

Pageants, recitals, and lessons with trainers, I bet I set off all of your alarms.

But late at night when the crickets sing their song,

I feel empty inside, like I don’t belong.

Tomorrow they will glare, jealous of the trophies in my arms,

But I don’t want to hurt them, I would rather do myself harm

How about me? Do you recognize my face?

I stand strong, never wavering, managing crisis, putting criminals in their place.

There’s no room for fear when you’re a woman in a man’s job.

Not even when they held me down, ripped my clothes, left me beaten, raped and robbed.

A secret abortion, my husband can’t know how much I’ve been disgraced.

I can’t tell anyone of this pain, horror and distaste.

Now I know you know me, we spoke the other day.

We were in the same checkout line, my kids were loud and wanted play.

I saw the glance you gave my haggard appearance,

What you don’t know about is all the interference.

I just lost my dad, my husband has no job and all I’ve done is pray,

But I won’t take your invitation to church, not with you looking at me that way.

Hi. I wonder, have we met?

I’m fresh out of college, haven’t even got my feet wet.

I fought so hard, the first in my family to get this far,

It's a lot of pressure and I'm not sure I can reach the bar.

I've thought about giving up, but everyone says I would live to regret,

So with a terrified heart I'll keep trying, get ready…get set…

We’ve all have been crumpled, stomped and drowned.

We’ve all been knocked so hard we couldn’t find the ground.

Our crowns may look worn, battered, chipped and beaten,

But they are crowns all the same, their appearance has not cheapen.

So lift your head, open your heart, His mercies are abound,

God says you’re His daughter and your value in Him is found.

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Hoping for an Escape

Fabric softener and old leather shoes,

Mixed up hangers and discarded books,

Forever lost socks and half empty bottles of liquor,

I find myself hidden amongst these things.

Somewhere between button-down fancy blue and colorful wool

I try to disappear.

Maybe the nightmares won’t follow me in here,

Maybe this time they will stay away.

But from the place where roses go to die,

Where the sun burns too bright and kills everything in sight,

Gut wrenching sobs escape my being.

Streams of spit, snot and tears soak my safe place.

But is it really safe inside here?

Because in the place where swords clang and guns bang,

No one is truly safe.

Because here in this place,

Where the wounded keep the red lake full,

And many will leave their souls behind

I have somehow gotten lost.

So while the moon burns bright,

I try and find my way,

Through the land of lost dreams and broken hearts,

I search for my escape.

And this is where you find me,

Stained and searching and hoping,

Hoping for an escape.

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Energy and Smiles

The urge to write is strong tonight. I’m full of energy and smiles as I sit here at my pink desk. My first class of graduate school was tonight and I really enjoyed it. There are only 5 of us in the cohort and I have already started forming relationships with the other 4 women in the group. We all come from different backgrounds. We all have different stories. But we are all there for the same reason…we want to make an impact in this world.

We started out class by talking about what really drove us to the profession and I sat amazed as they confessed everything from family problems growing up to sexual abuse in their past. I refrained from sharing. I’m still wary to let them know about my past…I don’t know why, I mean I’m sharing it with you guys. But none the less I was in awe of the women around me, so much strength, beauty and life in them, and I can’t wait to get to know them better.

I shared about the first time I was involuntarily committed. I told them about how that entire process traumatized me more than what I was going through and that it actually lead to me withholding a lot of things that were going on for a very long time. I left out that it has been less than a year since I finally started talking about some things. It’s been only a few months since I confessed to seeing demons and hearing voices. I was sitting there telling them that I thought if my introduction into counseling and medicine had been a little gentler then perhaps I wouldn’t have withheld for so long. I left out that even though I withheld for so long I have still been in a psychiatric facility 5 times….twice involuntary and thrice voluntary. (Although, I’m not sure if you can call it voluntary if you psychiatrist and therapist tell you that you are going and you can either get someone to drive you there or you can go for a ride with the police…needless to say I would rather go for a ride with a friend than with a cop.)

So tonight I am alive with excitement of the path that lay in front of me. Is it going to be hard? You bet it is! But I’m alive with determination! The same determination that got me through undergraduate school. I got kicked out of school, dropped out one semester, dropped a few courses another and spent one semester out because of the knee injury…but I made it. And I will make it through this. I’m a lot of things (sleep deprived being one of them) but I’m not a quitter.

Love, Randi

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God Snorts and Rolls His Eyes

My sleep schedule is so jacked up. I’m up into the wee hours of the night and then I’m sleeping until the afternoon...this isn’t good. With mental illness sleep is very important. You have to do your best to go to bed at the same time every night and rise in the morning at the same time. I suck at this. I’m not very consistent when it comes to my sleep. Honestly I’m all over the place, but part of it isn’t my fault right now. I have been guilty of messing myself up in the past, but this time a new medication and my insurance company screwed me over.

I started a new med a few weeks ago. When you first start taking it, it makes you extremely drowsy, but it goes away after a few weeks. My doctor told me to take it at least 12 hours before I need to get up…I didn’t do this the first night…I underestimated the power of that medication. I woke up the next morning around 8 and I was like, nope…this isn’t happening. I had never been so relaxed/drowsy in my life. Everything felt heavy…everything felt like sleep. Needless to say…I was out of it.

So that med messed me up for a little while, but I’m better now. But now my insurance company has screwed me over. I got that stupid Obamacare crap and Blue Cross and Blue Shield is dragging their butt to get me coverage. I was supposed to have all my stuff ready as of May 1^st…but I have nothing. They haven’t even withdrawn the money for the premium yet…I’m getting pissed. I have blood work that I need to get done, but I can’t because I have no insurance information. And what has really got me messed up is that I have ran out of my sleeping medication…which means I am not sleeping through the night…which means it takes twice as long for me to sleep enough to feel like I have slept enough. This is getting ridiculous.

So I told you all of that to say this. Sometimes our circumstances screw us over. Sometimes we underestimate the power of things in our lives. Sometimes we plan and plan and things still go wrong. I’m getting ready to move to Raleigh (hopefully) within the next month or so and I made the remark about how I had no idea what was going to happen. You see, I have an idea of where I want to move and everything, but apparently I plan and God snorts and rolls His eyes…that’s exactly what I said, and I mean it.

Sometimes I feel like I shouldn’t plan anything at all, because it seems that the harder I plan something the more God changes where I’m heading. I thought I was going to NC State to get my master in social work…nope, instead I’m in a cohort of people getting our masters in clinical mental health counseling through Montreat College. Like I said, I plan and God snorts and rolls His eyes.

So what do you do when things don’t go as you have planned? Sometimes you need a mourning period for the plan that you had set in front of you. I know I did when it came to the schooling situation. Sometimes we need to reevaluate…when one door closes we need to start looking for the door that God cracked open for us…and it may not be easy.

So my sleep schedule is jacked up. So I’ve ran out of sleeping pills. So I can’t get my blood work done. So I’m not going to State or ECU. So I may or may not get to live where I want in Raleigh. But I’m dealing with it all as it comes. I’m being patient with myself…so what if I have to sleep a lot to make up for the fact that I’m not getting good quality sleep without my meds. So what if I have to wait for freaking ever for the insurance company to get their ducks in a row. I’m gonna hold on tight for this ride and keep pushing forward and so should you. My point here is that we plan, and God snorts and rolls His eyes,

Love, Randi

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The Past is in the Past

A few weeks ago I took a group of girls to Raleigh with me. We had a great time and I was happy to make connections with some new people. On the ride home one of my passengers began to talk to me about her past. I found myself awestruck by how objective she was when speaking of the horrors that are in her past. I didn’t get to speak with her very much about my own history, but there were some startling similarities within the events of our pasts.

I said all of that to say this; objectivity is a struggle for me. Objectivity is when you are able to look at something in the past and not have that emotional stab in the stomach when it comes to mind. It is the ability to look at the past and recognize that it is in the past, that you are not experiencing those horrors right now and that the past is over and you are free from it. Sometimes people will say something and I’m right back in those moments of pain…I’m right there, as if it’s happening all over again, and it terrifies me. Sometimes it’s just a smell. I’ve always been very sensitive to smells and there are certain things that if I smell it I have to haul butt away or I will go into full blown panic mode.

But this remarkable young woman sat there and spoke with me quite candidly about her past, and to make her sound even more incredible; her past isn’t even as far away from her as mine is. I couldn’t help but feel a little ashamed of myself when she was telling me her story. I mean my horrors are more than a decade old now and I still have to fight to stay in the moment when a trigger is present. And to be even more transparent, I was a little jealous of her. I mean I go to therapy every week, and I’ve been doing it a while now, but I’m still not where she is.

And now I have to hear my own words: Not everyone handles things the same way. Sure she seems to be further along the road of healing than me, but I also have a mental illness…actually I have several…but we won’t go there. So the truth is that everyone doesn’t heal at the same pace. Some heal faster, some heal slower, and some seem to never really need to heal, as if they have some sort of super natural ability to give grace to those that hurt them.

But here’s the thing: Sometimes we all go a little hard on ourselves. Sometimes we are our own worse critics and I know a lot of us compare ourselves to others. We see our neighbor’s success and that little green-eyed monster rears its ugly head and we take the proverbial baseball bat and beat ourselves silly again. So it’s time for me to chew on a little bit of my own wisdom, and maybe you can get a taste of it too:

• Take it one day at a time. Don’t dwell on the uncertainties of tomorrow. Instead focus on the beauty of today.
• Stop comparing yourself to others. No one individual is the same as another, not even twins.
• Celebrate the small victories. Progress is progress, no matter how little or small, it’s still a step in the right direction.
• Swallow your fears. This is hard, because typically we have a ligament reason to be frightened, but if we want to move forward we have to face it head on. Oh, and this means your fear of success too. Because I think we all are kind of afraid to succeed.

So yeah, some shitty things have happened to me, but I am not my past. I am a child of the highest king, and so are you. So why don’t we act like it?

Love, Randi

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