My Brain Goblins Ran Amok.

Ah, September, we meet again.

I don't really know how to explain it, but September and I are not really cool.  We're more... frienemies.  Stressing on the 'enemies' part of that word.  ;)

This year will be eight years - eight!) since my mental breakdown happened.  The last day I saw my little dog I had before I got Emily.  The ball that got rolling when I ended up moving back to Ohio.

I am a thought-hoarder.  For y'all who aren't familiar with the show 'Hoarders,' check out one episode. Just one.  Trust and believe, if you transpose whatever  the client on that episode's hoarding for thoughts, well, then you've got my brain pretty much right there on your screen.  I'm not even joking.

This year, I'm facing something I've taken a lot of time circling around, poking at it randomly with a stick, even attempted to set it ablaze a few times (only to have the fire put out by rains of depression and woe.  Gee thanks, brain.  Thanks a lot!  +grumble+).  This year, though... It's different in a few ways, but the one that I'm willing to discuss in this article...:




A Colleague in Creativity is writing a book that we mutually agreed that due to the content, I will not be editing.  Were I to do so, it would yank open things I'd rather bleach out of my head (but, alas...).  To help this sweet young lady out, I offered to send her a couple old journals I had from my own experiences with what her protagonist's facing and the author has really no direct experience with of her own.  Given the nature of the beast, as it were, I figured my journals would help.  Apparently, they're helping... a bit too well.  The stipulation I had is simple:  When she is done with them, she is under no circumstances to send them back to me.  She is to take them and dispose of them out back as far as she can get from her house.  Bury them, bury them deep.  Do not encase them in plastic.  Just dig a hole and put the damn things in there and bury them.

Not even going to hide this from you, as I write this I am having a nasty, nasty panic attack.  As I am writing this for you, I have been fighting through some pretty vivid flashbcks.

It isn't easy to sit here and share that darkness, but I am fighting because I don't have a choice.  I don't have any other option.  Honestly, our current POTUS scares the living hell out of me, and I would rather be locked in a room with his terrifying, narcissistic self for an hour than I would the person who is responsible for my present mental state for ten minutes.  That is how badly my head is destroyed because of my perpetrator.

Tomorrow, I will be facing him (metaphorically).  Really staring him down through something that is designed to help a person rather than harm them.  I am looking forward to this as much as I am wanting to scream and run the opposite direction and not look back.

As I type this, I am using the backspace key a lot.  I am talking to someone that I trust - and there aren't many people who have that kind of thing from me - and I am fighting as hard as I can.  Each time I tap a key, I hear ... his voice.  Telling me how 'horrible' I am.  I keep hearing his voice.  Telling me how this is entirely my fault.

I want nothing more than to go in with a cleaning crew into my head and scrub him out.  Every inch of my brain just scoured with wire brushes, sand blasters...

Right now, I am listening to my favourite playlist on my Spotify.  A song I love is playing - and I do not have the list on shuffle, I just opened it and clicked 'play' and let it go.  This song is playing.  It is one of my favourites... I honestly never really paid much attention to the words, but the chorus really resonates tonight.  It's from a scene on the docu-flick that I am obsessed with right now, it was on YouTube - the scene was - Ricky, Janis, Jerry and Bob were singing and jamming and this song, the chorus, they were singing in the clip...  I can't help but sit here and think, 'You guys... Are really helping me, and I know that at least one of y'all is long gone...'

Not even hiding right now, I'm losing my mind.  My heart is pounding.  My head is pounding.  My ears are ringing.  My breathing is too quick for my liking.  But I can't figure out how to settle down, so I am going to document everything and just let you all see what a panic attack looks like when triggered by something as innocent as reading an article that you think, 'Huh.  Yeah, this seems harmless.'

It is amazing to sit here and look back over the last eight years and think, 'Wow.  There's been a few hiccups in the road, but I've gotten pretty far.'  But tonight, is such a hiccup.  A hiccup I really wish I didn't have to work through. 
This article is to show you, too, that it doesn't take much for things to come charging out into the forefront, all it takes is a little tap and it sends things barging into what you thought were well-guarded areas.  All the careful construction of boundaries, crumpled in seconds.

I like to think my faith in my Jesus is pretty strong.  It's gotten a lot stronger than it used to be.  But right now, I feel so helpless and small.  To give these feelings a voice and an identity... to acknowledge them - it's hard to speak about those things and acknowledge they're there.  I don't like showing that 'weaker' side.  I am not 'tough as nails,' that would be my Grandmother.  :)  I get told all the time how 'strong' I am, but I do not see it.  I see myself as this terrified person huddled in a corner begging for a pause button to be tapped so I can catch my breath.

But this is not to be.

I feel tiny.

I feel helpless.

I don't feel hopeless, though.

Just terrified.

But I am ready to throw the gloves off and fight back as hard as I can.

I hear all the time how it wasn't my fault.  But then I hear him in my head almost at the heels of those kind words people say, screaming the opposite.

The journals I sent my Colleague in Creativity, they are long away from me.  I wish he was, too.  Last I had heard, he was in a city about two hours from me.  But, I did run into him a couple times at a store not too far from my apartment (within walking distance).  First time I saw him, we'd almost collided into each other.  It was raining pretty hard that night, I won't ever forget this.  He was bent forward trying to shake some of the water off his head and I had rounded a corner, I was on my phone talking to a friend of mine about my little nephew and some shenanigans he'd gotten into and having a laugh when my abuser and I almost collided.  Thankfully, I look different than the last time he'd seen me.  My hair was much longer at the time this happened, I had it cut back in May, but the last time he'd seen me, face-to-face, in the same room having an actual conversation with me, I was a bit heavier and my glasses were different.  Thankfully, the night we almost collided at the store, I was wearing a hat and he didn't notice me (if he did, he didn't say anything to me).

As long as I live in my current city, I will look over my shoulder.  As long as I live in this state, I will look over my shoulder.  Apparently, I cannot even enjoy opening a seemingly harmless e-mail without losing my mind, either.

This must stop.

It is not right.  It is not healthy to live like this.

I cannot keep doing this if I want to get better.  If I want to be able to enjoy life.

Right now, I am sitting here listening to music.  Trying to fight through the flashbacks.  I can see everything that happened that day just as clear as if it had JUST happened. I can smell the stale cigarette smoke (our roommate at the time was a heavy smoker).  I can hear Edgar (my dog I had at the time) running around and being himself.  Lord, how I miss that little dog.

For how hard I am trying to fight this, I can't help but feel so tiny and weak.  My faith keeps me grounded, but at the same time, this is just one of those things that challenges that faith pretty hard.  This is one of those 'proving' things that makes a person stay and fight or run away.  Right now, not even joking, I want to run away.  I want to run as far as I can get.  But, the more I think about it, I can't help but think, 'No.  Why should I be the one who has to run?  I didn't do anything.  He is.'

He used a pretty ugly situation to his advantage.  It was the 'perfect storm' of sorts, but he used it, almost surgically, how precise it all went down.

... a little while later ...
I am getting ready for bed.  I had a long conversation with an old friend from back home.  We've known each other since childhood, and this person is one of a rare handful that knows me almost better than I know my own self.  For this friendship, as I am with the other handful of friends I have that I call friend (I have like four actual friends, the rest are people I just ... know), well, it's truly something I am thankful for more than I can say.

I'm feeling a bit calmer.  I'm ready for tomorrow.  I am ready for that conversation that I'm facing.  I am going to breathe, and I am going to pray.  As my friend reminded me, I have the greatest weapon to fight back this issue with, and for how much as I think I have this, Heaven has it all the more.  And as I was reminded, too, God doesn't make mistakes, and Mama takes care of her children. 

Thank you, old friend, for those beautiful reminders amidst my storm.  I am grateful.