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Lights on, but nobody’s home.

Filed Under: depression, dissociation, ptsd by Shadow Chaser — Leave a comment
July 20, 2010

Inside my head is dark and empty, and rather lonely. Sometimes I feel trapped. Like I’m locked inside a box. I’m an empty body going through the motions of life. Breathing in, breathing out, surviving day to day and waiting to wake up and regain consciousness. I’ve grown so accustomed to it over the years that I’m quite adept at seeming ‘all there’ and acting normal. Only those closest to me, who spend enough time with me, are able to catch glimpses of my vacant mind. It doesn’t take much for them to realize that the lights may be on, but nobody’s home.

It’s a rather frustrating state to be in. Always losing your train of thought. Trying to carry on conversations when you can hardly think straight. Being so out of it that you forget what you’re doing while you’re in the middle of doing it. Forgetting entire conversations… some that are rather important. I imagine it feels somewhat like being drugged, but having never been drugged, I’m not sure exactly what that is like.

So if I’m not ‘all there’ then ‘where’ am I?

That’s a good question. Generally, I’m hiding. I get horribly preoccupied by stuff. Bad memories, questions that will never be answered, worries about what both the present and the future hold for me.  Always bracing myself for what’s next and trying to push away the permeating dread that haunts me. This preoccupation is enough to make a person crazy. (Ha ha… get it? Crazy.) So I shut it off. I shut it all off. I go numb and just clear everything out. I make a conscious effort to deny my feelings and thoughts and shut them down. Why? Because I don’t have time to feel that way. I don’t have time to sit and ruminate and try to work through it all. I have work to do, I have a life to ‘live’. I have kids to raise. And this allows me to ‘function’. I get by. I get done the necessary things (sadly, not usually more than that), and life goes on.

I realize that this doesn’t sound like a good option or alternative or whatever. But it is what’s working for me right now. It helps me get out of bed each morning and deal with being with the kids all day every day. It keeps me from sitting in a corner or lying in bed all day long. Keeps me from having to face myself and my reality.

Sometimes I find myself wishing I were more present. More connected to my world and my life. But then I think about the moments I’ve had where I come dangerously close to just giving in and letting myself feel everything – it’s scary and overwhelming and I really have no desire to allow it at this point in my life. Perhaps if I could sneak off somewhere alone for a few months or so and let it all out and then come back… But I don’t see that happening. Life has no pause button, unfortunately.

I really should avoid typing blog posts in this manner.. Just sitting and typing it as it comes. It always seems to put out more than I really feel I should share and always seems to make people more ‘concerned’ than I think they need to be. I suppose part of that is because people read it and assume these are ‘new things’. But they’re things that have been bouncing around in my head for quite some time. Some most of my life, others mostly just over the past 2-3 years. But I should really also point out that they are not constant. I do get breaks from this box I live in inside my head. I do come up for air now and then so that I don’t drown in all the negativity and sadness and hurt. Sometimes it lasts a day or two, sometimes it lasts a week or two. But that darkness, that little box with all its shadows and ghosts, is still always there. Waiting in the back of my mind. Waiting for me to trip and fall back in.

Maybe I should start carrying a flashlight.

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Fighting against the tide.

Filed Under: depression, dissociation, marriage, ptsd by Shadow Chaser — 3 Comments
July 12, 2010

I can see that big dark pit. I see it getting closer. But as much as I fight and struggle, try to turn another direction, or pretend it’s not there, I can’t escape it. It’s unavoidable.

People often tend to think that a person gets depressed because they choose to dwell on sad and unhappy things. I think that’s one of the most frustrating misconceptions about depression. The idea that the depressed person is ultimately to blame for being depressed.

Sometimes it’s clear what triggers a depressive episode, sometimes they just sneak up on me. For both my (bipolar) husband and I, stress is a huge trigger. The heavier things get with day to day life, the deeper we sink and more overwhelmed we get. Being aware of it helps, but it doesn’t make it go away. It just makes it a little easier to hang on and ride it through. We make more effort to take breaks, get moving and get some exercise, talk it through so the feelings can be expressed and dealt with.

Other triggers for me can be big struggles with parenting, problems with PTSD triggers, or unresolved conflicts.

Talking helps. But it’s HARD for me to talk… often impossible. Writing is generally better, I can take my time and sort out my thoughts better so that I don’t end up sounding foolish, saying something inaccurate or misconstrued. Some things I just can’t manage to say out loud. Still.

Exercise helps. But it takes A LOT. I used to be convinced it didn’t help because I didn’t see any improvement with increased activity. But now I know that I just wasn’t working hard enough to benefit from it. Now I am, and that is great. But there are still times, when it does little and it needs to be a daily thing. There are still times I feel like I’m swimming up stream, struggling with every stroke to not let the tide, the current, sweep me away. But I’m nothing if not a fighter.

I still have secrets. I still have things that I don’t tell anyone. I still have secrets I’m keeping from myself. Little shadows hiding in the corners of my mind. I catch glimpses now and then, but not enough to be able to discern anything or understand what it is. I’m okay with that for now. It can be frustrating when they start pestering me, but really when it comes down to it, I’d rather they just keep to themselves and leave me alone.

My life is full right now. Full of things to keep me busy and distracted. It works very well about 80% of the time. But I still have moments where it all catches up to me. And over time, those moments get closer together, more frequent, and last longer until I find myself sinking into that big dark pit. I try to keep my path as clear of stumbling blocks as I can so that I don’t trip and fall in, but sometimes, I think, I trip on my own feet.

And then I have to find a way to climb out. Again.

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The God and father connection.

Filed Under: abuse, faith, family by Shadow Chaser — 6 Comments
May 28, 2010

I’ve heard it said before that our view of God often reflects our view of our fathers, especially if our upbringing involved faith. It never made much sense to me and I couldn’t imagine seeing my father and God in the same way. But I was going about it the wrong way. As I’ve grown older and gone through various stages and changes in my relationship with my father, I can now look back and see a clearer pattern of my views and how I relate to God and how they mirror my relationship with my father.

As a child, my father was someone we both feared and respected. I was assured that he loved me and wanted what was best for me and that I was important. These were the same attributes I was taught about God. But I still felt invisible and he still seemed unreachable and too important to be bothered with my problems. I knew about how he felt about me, which he showed when we were together, but I didn’t feel like I had a close personal relationship. I didn’t feel worthy of that. With my father or with God.

If we crossed my father, he did have quite a temper. He was not afraid to dish out what he felt was necessary punishment. I feared making him angry and was quite willing to be dishonest in order to avoid it. One has only to read some of the stories in the Old Testament to see how this can be transferred to how a person may view God. I did see the efforts my parents made at protecting me as a child, growing up with a violent brother. But they seemed to give up when they were not successful. I hate admitting it, but I did feel devalued.

As a teenager, my father did seem more accessible. But I did not have a friendship established with him from childhood. By that time in my life I felt like I brought my parents more frustration than joy. I had shut myself off from everyone. I didn’t discuss my troubles with my friends (aside from occasional, unavoidable situations) and I certainly wasn’t about to confide in my parents. I was rarely faced with something I felt I could not handle on my own; and in those instances, I always went to my mother.

After feeling devalued by every member of my family in some way, to some extent, why would I think any of them would have any interest in me and my problems? Why would I trust them? And if they had no interest, why would the high and mighty God of the universe?

God was distant. More accessible than he was as a child but still assumed as uninterested in me and my lowly struggles. I knew that certain things that happened in my early years were wrong, bad… dirty. I even remember asking God’s forgiveness for some. But others I would not acknowledge. I was too ashamed of who I was and what lurked in my personal history. In my teens, Christianity became a matter of behaving myself and following the rules and not a matter of relationship with Christ. I felt greatly misunderstood by my father and also by God. I felt that I needed to do all I could to impress and please in order to gain acceptance.

I first got a glimpse of who God really was after getting married. I was out on my own at last. Freed from my parents’ authority. I told my husband (before marriage) about my past: things that had happened to me, things I had done. After the initial shock, he still chose to accept me as I was and love me. That spoke volumes to me. I could be loved as I was without performing in order to earn it. But as problems came up in our relationship, I began to doubt that. And as I tried to figure out who God was, I had a growing sense of abandonment and loneliness lurking just below the surface.

When faced with the birth of our first child, my husband got serious about his relationship with God. Feeling lost and confused, I did my best to follow his lead. Over the years, my friendship with my father developed and grew… and so did my relationship with God.

But my past caught up with me a couple years ago. The growing confidence I had gained made me feel secure enough to be more open about who I was and what contributed to that. Then… BAM. Everything seemed to blow up. A series of explosions left my life in shambles. Problems in my head, problems in my marriage, and eventually problems with my family.

I felt betrayed by everyone I held dear. Over the past year or so, as things have grown more and more jumbled in my head, I have frequently found myself blaming the things that went wrong in my marriage for the deterioration of my faith. However, in the aftermath of that, I leaned heavily on my parents for support and felt my faith grow stronger. I felt hopeful and knew that no matter how things turned out, I would be okay because God had my back. In the midst of trying to find a way to the silence the ghosts of my childhood, I got careless. My parents got word of the secrets I was sharing and were understandably appalled. They wanted details that I was unable to give so that they could decide for themselves whether or not I was telling the truth. In the end, my father said I must have remembered things incorrectly and my mother blamed it on misperception. I swept it back under the rug, frightened by their anger and ashamed at the displeasure I had caused.

I was a disappointment to my family. I had done something terribly wrong. I was a disappointment to God. How could I not be? Going around hurting people that way. There’s a reason people don’t talk about such things. I’m trying to find a balance now. Trying to find a way to fit in my life. I’m faced again with a new version of myself and I’m trying to accept her, but I don’t like her very much at all.

I wish my past would fade and disappear again, the way it seems to have for my parents. Then I could go on denying it and live more peacefully with myself and what is left of my relationships with my family. But it keeps rearing its ugly little head. Those ghosts keep haunting me. And even the damage I did in my family is there to remind me. Damage I cannot repair because, no matter how tempting it is, I refuse apologize for turning on the lights.

So I’m left trying to figure out God again. Trying to learn to trust Him again. Perhaps this need to fully separate God and my father is a good thing that has come from an unpleasant situation. But it doesn’t make the loss of meaningful connection to my parents less painful. There will always be those shadows lurking of the things we are not to discuss.

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