To live in the present tense

Most trauma survivors have a wall.  If we didn’t, we’d be a quivering, crying, puddle of goo all the time.  Life would just be so overwhelming, we couldn’t cope with all of the constant data coming at us.  So most of us have a wall.

Mine started being built probably in childhood when I first started realizing how incredibly fucked up my family was.  I had friends who’s family’s were even more fucked up, so I didn’t realize until fairly recently how mine was just as messed up, but in a different way.  But I can see where it started.

After my first assault, that was when the first wall slammed down.  I became a different person.  It was slow at first, but by the end of my senior year in high school, I was no longer recognizable as the same person.  I was withdrawn.  I barely had any friends.  I didn’t participate in any activities.  My grades were horrific.  I skipped school, I stayed out all night with various people of questionable character.  Things I would have never even thought of at the beginning of high school.

On to my relationship with #2, and the wall that formed in high school kept me from seeking help.  I thought I deserved his abuse.  I felt dirty, ashamed.  I no longer had the network of friends I once relied on, so I was alone.  I had one particular roommate from hell who would stand over my bed and scream at me when I had nightmares about the abuse.  That further reinforced those walls.

Then #3.  He succeeded in breaking down some of my barriers with his own admissions of abuse.  I learned later that this was probably a technique to gain my trust and my pity.  I never once told him EVERYTHING.  There is only one person (other than my therapist) that knows EVERYTHING.  The walls started to be reinforced yet again after I got pregnant and he rejected me.  I felt so alone after that.  I had shared some things with this person that I had, up until that point, shared with NO ONE, and he was rejecting me because we created a child together?  A child he claimed to have wanted?

The walls were rigidly in place when I left.  Nothing was penetrating them.  I think it took six months or so into my relationship with my husband to realize the dual  nature of the wall.

Yes, it is protective.  The wall protects me in my everyday life.  I can function by keeping that part of me walled off from my consciousness.  If I am not constantly bombarded with memories, I don’t grieve for what happened to me.  I don’t dwell on what might have been.  I don’t relive the events and replay them in my mind and try to figure out what I could have done differently.  I don’t fear for my daughter and her future.

But the wall was preventing me from sharing that intimate part of myself.  Yes, I had been burned before.  Yes, many times I had been hurt.  But this was the person I truly felt I was meant to be with.  In our decade and a half of friendship, he had never once given me an indication that he felt I was “damaged” or “dirty” or even to blame for what happened.  He was exactly the number two person I told when my initial assault happened.  And he was the only person, to this day, that ever did anything about it.

I wanted to share with him.  I wanted to be completely honest with him.  I didn’t want to hide from him anymore.  So off to therapy I went.  He is the one person who knows EVERYTHING.  Maybe not in vivid detail, but he knows the story.

It isn’t perfect.  But I feel that I can be 100% honest with him.  In our interactions sexually and otherwise.  I can tell him when something is bothering me, why it is bothering me, and I don’t have fear of ridicule, of “just get over it” or “its not that bad”.  I have understanding from him.  That is all I could ever want in a partner.

The wall is also diagnostic.

Other than when I am inebriated, which is rare, gaps in the wall can usually be attributed to stress or illness.  If I am noticing an unusual amount of nightmares, unreasonable anxiety, or even flashbacks and it is not around an anniversary or a trip back to trigger city, it is telling me that my stress is out of control.  That my brain is working so hard to cope with the stress of every day life, that it is having difficulty maintaining the wall.

That is what happened this week.

My husband works in a very interesting environment.  He works night shift with very interesting people.  We were at breakfast the other day when he was mentioning their discussion the other night of some particular sex act.  One that I will never, ever, ever, do because of my issues.  In the recent past, just the discussion of a particular sex act wasn’t problematic.  Since the EMDR, I’ve really had no problem reading about or discussing sex acts that I can’t physically do because of my issues.

But for some reason, on this date, the flashback hit me in the chest like a sledgehammer.  I couldn’t breathe.  Tears started forming.  I was back there.  With #2.  I could hear the water.  I could hear his voice.  And then the waitress was asking to take our order.  I have no clue what I ordered, but my husband quickly figured out that something was wrong.

I told him without shame, without difficulty, and our discussion turned to other topics.  But I know my wall is damaged.  For a flashback to occur so suddenly, in a safe environment with barely a hint of a trigger, something is definitely wrong.

I know what it is, but I can’t deal with it until my living situation improves.  So I hope writing about it helps.

For now I’ll just take care of myself.  I will avoid anything that could possibly hint at triggering me.  I can’t do much about nightmares, but I do know that I can text or call my husband if I wake up from one and he is at work. I am going to go on an avoidance campaign until this situation becomes more stable, that means no  media that could have the possibility of triggering me.  No books, TV, movies that could come back at night to haunt me.  No Law & Order, no Vampire series, no erotica.

I am in control.  I can deal with this.  I can patch up this wall.