Recovery Updates : Vantage Point

As I get better and get back into having more regular days, I  have less and less time to think about my recovery. Usually when I forget, it pushes back to the surface, because I have more work to do. This week comes very intense. I’ve known big changes require a lot from us sometimes, but before now, I haven’t had the energy to deal with any of it.

I still get crazy tired and stressed at the end of the days, but at least I do things now. This week is still not too productive when it comes to work, but it’s very productive in terms of getting me in good, more positive working mindset…still very stressful, but much needed.

All I know is, at the beginning of that week I’m so stressed and exhausted that I really need a change. I need a new vantage point, I need something, to push me to get through the things that are hard to think about while getting on my feet. I find nothing at first.

Back in University

When I was teenager, and my wisdom teeth started growing, they grew completely horizontal, pushing the teeth next to them, so I didn’t even know. I understood the day when they were completely grown and pushing so much I had to go to bed with painkillers so I would be able to sleep. Until they took them, the damage on the teeth next to them was done and I had to have 1 nerve removed from one of them.

That’s the very same way, about 6 months after my rape the trauma settle under my skin, growing, eating away at me so unnoticeable, that I forgot it was there until year and a half later. By that time the suppressed feelings and memories had piled up and grown so much, I quite literally had a breakdown.

But at the time, for a while everything was really good.

Coping mechanisms: TV addictions and other disasters

  There is this moment today, when I have a panic attack, yet again. The panic comes from the fact, that the natural progression of taking few months to recover, is a lot of work past deadline, that I feel ashamed for not finishing. Either way, I am so panicked, that it’s absolutely besides me to be able to work well.

     But today, I choose differently. I take the evening off to relax, and leave the solving for the morning, when I have clear head.

Letting go

Tonight, after having a really productive day- something that has been rare lately- I finally feel strong enough to face one more post from this blog I had set to write, and very thoroughly avoided doing so. The post- or posts, depending on the length- about the 2 years that followed after the rape.

I type, without a rest for an hour, determined. Nothing can stop me now. I’m done hiding from my feeling, or from my past.

But at the end of the writing, this very familiar feeling overcomes me. The same feeling I have been having each time when I went over memories of THAT night.

I’m sweating, the blood rushing to my face, like I’m ashamed of something. My body is betraying me, no longer able to sustain the commands of my brain. This heavy, drowsy, sleepy feeling that makes my brain feel hazy overcomes me.

I have perfected the reactions of my body lately. I go over memories, to find the reason for how I feel, I clear it out, distract myself. I try to think reasonably and remember I’m in the present and I’m safe, with a lot of good options of the future.

But this feeling, this feeling I don’t know how to fight.

The only thing I usually do, it go to sleep, as it is usually the only thing I can do.

It almost scares me, the strength with which it swipes through my brain- what if I never get rid of it? What if something is really wrong with my brain? It’s not normal from my brain to shut down like I have drugged myself, I think. It scares me a lot more than any other aftermath of that night, because I have no clue how to control it.

How do I fight a feeling, if I can’t keep my brain awake enough to think and do so? Everything just becomes fuzzy and starts swimming in front of me, while I try to remember where I am and …I try, but the heavy feeling drowns me, and I no longer feel real. It’s just this huge wave of fog that goes through my brain, and feeling that I’m sleepy as if I have drank too much- only that I haven’t had anything more than a beer in months.

I let go of posting that post- my brain is too fuzzy to edit it anymore. I let go of trying to solve anything.

I simply, completely, and utterly, let go.

Until tomorrow.