How I Got PTSD

HOW I GOT PTSD

It has occurred to me that I have never explained on this blog how I got this infernal disorder. I went into this as briefly as possible in my book, but have never fully delved into it on my blog.

So (deep breath) here goes. It is a little strange…. Prepare yourself.

I grew up in a house that was haunted. It's still there today, there is another family living there and I suspect it is still haunted. Back in the 70's, it was like living in a portal to hell. My parents never knew if the original owner's wife went crazy in the house because it was haunted or if her loosing her marbles was what brought the activity into the house. I guess we will never know, but she spent the rest of her years in an institution. I can see why.

Either way, the house was full of violent and demonic activity from as long as I can remember. When I was a little girl, it seemed kind of fun to me because these things were quite entertaining. It was like I had a lot of very strange playmates in my room. They would spin my toys around and make little lights appear. My toys would dance and walk across the room. At first, I wasn't afraid because it was so much fun to play with these "friends".

That only lasted a couple of years and by the time I was about 5 or 6, my "friends" would turn on a dime and scare the bejeeze out of me quite frequently. They would throw my things against the wall and tear them up. They would wake me up in the middle of the night just being generally eerie and creepy. I remember them trying to get me to leave the house and go down to the lake. Infested with Moccasins and gators, I am so glad I declined those nightly requests. Besides, I was terrified to leave the house without my mother at that age. I remember seeing my brother, who was a baby, being picked up by……thin air… and thrown against the wall.

After awhile, my house became the least safest place on earth for a child. It wasn't just that the cabinet doors would open on their own or that things would slide around. We got used to seeing things float through the air and finding objects misplaced in strange places. It wasn't fun, but what was really happening was that at night, the spirits would terrify my brother and me in our rooms. So a sugar bowl moving across a table on its own quickly became boring and a common event.

The things that went on in that room at night (for years) were so vile and so violent that it's very hard to describe. There was a lot of screaming and swearing. I was hissed at and told that I was going to hell. I was told that I would never live and that they were going to kill me- graphically. One minute I was mercifully asleep and the next, I was bolted out of bed to watch something very evil and sinister scare the crap out of me. That's an understatement. They would do things like change forms. A clown would become a snake and then a lizard and then a monster. Really, just thinking about it gives me the creeps on a monumental level.

I currently have two mirrors in my apartment. That is because they came with the apartment. In the house that I grew up in, the entire dining room wall was a mirror. The bathroom had a 6-foot wide mirror. I so hate mirrors. Growing up, if it wasn't standing behind me, it was staring at me from behind the mirror. When you brush your teeth and look up and a demon is either behind you or in front of you, you quickly learn to just not look up. Or you become a basket case and I had a lot of that going on as well. In the dining room, they would freak me out by walking through the mirror or they would stand there beating on that side of the glass. Let me out or let me in. It was pretty awful.

Speaking of "let me in", I have to say that one Mr. Stephen King really got it right in the demon department. In my 20's I dated a real horror flick freak. This guy insisted that I watch every scary movie known to man, despite all of my protests and reasoning with him. So, in the name of "face your fears", I watched them. Some of them were pretty stupid and some of them brought back some of the most awful memories. I had worked all of those years to forget what went on in that house and now I was watching things on TV that were eerily familiar and similar.

I can give you examples, because they all seemed to come from Stephen King movies. It was more than scary how identical some of these scenes were to my actual experiences. For example, there is a scene in IT in which the kids are watching a picture move and show a movie or a story. Of course, the clown talks to them; I saw that coming a mile away. In the house that I grew up in, pictures always told little stories, people moved, walked, danced or whatever. It was so common that I was utterly SHOCKED when they stopped moving. I really believe that that was what they were supposed to do. My father finally had to tell me to stop shaking the **** pictures. I thought they were broken.

Another very true to life scene, which is SO similar to what I repeatedly saw, is the scene in Poltergeist 2, where the Reverend Kane comes to the door and says, "Let me in. It will all be alright if you only let me in." And then shouts, "You're all going to die in there." SO similar to the things that I saw regularly in there. Pretty much anything you see in a horror flick, I saw in my house and that includes dead children, evil things speaking in 3 or 4 voices, things walking upside down on the ceiling, people hovering over my bed, closet doors opening and demons walking out into the room, and all manner of craziness and all hell breaking loose 24/7.

Ok, now that every light in the house is on and every door is open. That's what happened for the first 15 years of my life. Naturally, I was a weird kid who didn't like anyone and didn't want to play. Naturally, I was the jumpiest child on the planet and couldn't relax at all. Anywhere. Ever. The simplest thing would make me jump right out of my skin. I was always looking for the exit and planning an escape wherever I went. I had pretty severe symptoms for years, but they gradually lessened in my 20's and early 30's. I began to live a close to normal life, whatever that is. I thought the past was all forgotten until my late 30's.

That's when I really lost it and it was out of the blue. I really can't point to one specific thing that happened. It started with me bursting into tears every once in awhile for no reason. No reason at all. Then once a week. Then once a day. Then like 4 or 5 times a day and that's when it all broke apart.

See, PTSD really boils down to adrenaline. At least to my mind, it does. You can be in an environment in which you get that shock and surge of adrenaline repeatedly and experience symptoms for years. Post traumatic stress is very common and it is a normal way of your mind dealing with trauma. If you are in a horrible car accident, you may never want to drive again. You may be afraid of left hand turns or high speeds. You're afraid because you went through something that you thought was going to kill you. Naturally, you don't want to go through it again. So, a victim of an assault would not want to watch something like Law and Order SVU. A combat vet naturally would avoid the firework show and all of those poppers going off are enough to send you right over the edge. Post traumatic symptoms are reminders of what you went through and they can come and go. You can go about your life for a long time without having a symptom or a trigger.

But, for me, the DISORDER part of PTSD began in my late 30's just when I thought I was fine and it was all over. The only way that I can describe it is to say that all of a sudden, my mind flipped on me. I couldn't stay in the present. Sometimes, I couldn't even talk to people. I couldn't sleep or stay asleep. I couldn't eat. All I could think about was what went on in that terrible house from so long ago. And the nightmares were unbelievable! Every time I fell asleep, I would bolt out of bed in terror. Not being able to communicate and terrified was horrible. Then, my brain would shut down. I would go totally numb emotionally for days and weeks. I felt nothing but sadness and numb. One minute I would be doing some mundane thing and the next, I would be sobbing uncontrollably- about nothing. Bursting into tears several times a day was overwhelming and I really thought I was just losing it. It got to the point where I knew I had to do something because I had a raging case of the suicides. A padded cell was looking very good to me. This is all in a nutshell. If you have PTSD, you know what this is like and that there is so much more that goes on.

A professor introduced us to about 5 pages in a textbook about PTDS. They really don't teach a lot about it because they don't a lot about it, even though it's been going on with the Veterans for decades, if not centuries. That was the beginning of my recovery. A name! I'm not crazy! Ok, I might be crazy, but at least I have a name.

Then, I found a PTSD forum and that was really the beginning of me being able to piece my head back together. Forums are great and terrible and helpful and hurtful and healing, which hurts a lot. Once I knew that I was not alone and that others were dealing with their experience, I knew that I would be ok. I stopped reading the forums because it was so much of a trigger, I really couldn't take it.

It's been 5 years since I went through a couple of years of mental hell. I'm so much better now and although I still have symptoms every once in awhile, PTSD does NOT kick my ass on a daily basis. I can go for weeks or months without having any symptoms. I have a happy life. No, it's not a bed of roses and I will always have that residual feeling. It's always an undercurrent. It's never going to go away and I will never forget. Just as you will never forget and it will always be with you. There's no magical cure, sorry about that. But it does get better. I know it does because it did for me.

Soooo, that's my story and why I started this blog. I wrote a Kindle book about it all. It's short- only about 60 pages. It's called PTSD:What To Do About It When You Don't Know What To Do About It. It's more like an open letter from people who have PTSD to those who love them. Also, I wrote about what I did to help myself. Anyhow, pick up a copy, if you can. It will help you and those around you who are wondering what the heck is up and how they can help.