CPTSD Diaries #2: 12 months of hell
It’s been a year.
A year since I stood in an empty house, having just told my partner I wasn’t going to be moving overseas with him, and was leaving him.
I was already broken at that point, we weren’t in love, and I wasn’t benefitting from that relationship in any way shape or form, and the thought of moving overseas with him was the final thing that pushed me over the edge.
I should have rested after that, my brain had been rotting for weeks prior. I was exhausted, but there was so much to do. I needed to sort the house out, I needed to find a new place for me and having just sold everything, I needed to get new things.
I didn’t stop moving for three weeks after that.
Any time by myself was torture, so I never let myself have that time. I filled my days with coffee catch ups and lunches, hanging out with friends, and doing any and every chore that slightly needed to be done.
I didn’t just burn the candle at both ends, I burned the house around it.
It was around that time I got my diagnosis, prior to that I thought I just had a touch of depression and anxiety, but turns out I had a lot of anxiety, depression, and this thing called CPTSD.
As another one of life’s cruel jokes, turns out I’m resistant to anti-depression medication, and so I went through months of trying to find the right medication. Medication that didn’t make my insomnia or Restless legs worse.
All that medication made my liver worse too.
I wish I had slowed down and taken things easier, I’m so impatient and wanted to so quickly move on from my marriage that, looking back, I achieved nothing, I made things worse.
I let fake scenarios torture my mind for days, I read into every possible subtext, and worried endlessly about things I didn’t need to.
That was a catastrophic trauma for me.
I was not healthy in that relationship, years before I ended it, and I stayed in it until it broke me.
I wish I could say that that was my one and only trauma, but life had been throwing me curveballs for twenty years prior.
When you have trauma, you learn to cope with it, but the coping mechanisms aren’t healthy, they are short term and hurt you more in the long run.
Which is why stepping away from my marriage broke me, my coping mechanisms, that I had used for over twenty years, couldn’t help me.
They exacerbated the issue. It was like having your rock climbing tools fail you half way up a climb.
I have spent the last year desperately trying to get off that mountain without any tools, unable to build any new ones.
I wish I could say that after the separation things got easier, but it has been 12months of hell.
Partially the hell I have inflicted upon myself, but also more of life cruel games.
I owned a house that was bleeding my dry, and it took six months to sell in which every possible thing went wrong. Two days before the sale I collapsed in exhaustion.
I lost three family members in the span of a week, and a month later lost my job.
I had my credit card scammed and got tricked into working a job I wasn’t qualified to do, in a workplace that wasn’t a heathy space to be in.
No wonder meditation, yoga, breathing and all that jazz wasn’t working. I was a sinking ship taking on more water than could be bailed out.
I’m surprised I’m not resting on the bottom of the seabed right now.
But it’s been 12 months and I’m still afloat.
Yes nothing has worked, yes I’m in daily pain and discomfort every day because my body is taking a pounding for all the crap my brain can’t deal with, and I’ve not had a good night sleep in years.
But I’m still here.
I’m determined to make the next 12 months better, though it is a very low bar.
I want ti all to be fixed over night but I know that’s not possible.
No medication can cure me, no amount of rest will leave me feeling rejuvenated, and no amount of positive thinking will turn things around on their own.
I kinda need to do it all, and more.
I’ve found myself often wondering what ‘normal’ people think about in their day, how they feel after sleep, how they look at their life.
All this trauma has got me feeling like an outsider, like my brain is running on a different plane of existence than everyone else.
It feels like it knows too much, like pandora’s box has been opened. I find myself wondering that normal people must just be ignorant of the stuff I think about, and I envy them for that.
I need to use my brain, to retrain, my brain and body, which feels like trying to sharpen a knife with itself.
But I know it’s possible.
It has to be possible, because life is starting to feel small. I don’t really dream about doing much, and I’m anxious about everything in life.
Travel feels too much like hard work, going out with friends feels draining, eating right feels impossible, giving up vices like vaping and sugar just feel pointless, and the thought of exercising tires me.
But on the other hand, I’d love to travel, I don’t want to be at home all the time, I’d love to feel like I have energy, I’d love to feel well rested, and I’m not particularly happy with my body at the moment, which isn’t helping.
As you can see, I’ve got a lot going on.
It’s funny because I’m great at the macro thinking, it’s why I’m good at work.
I’ve been telling the people I work with that they are overwhelmed by too many fires, and need to try and take a step back and make meaningful steps towards reducing the number of fires, to make the problem more manageable.
Sound familiar?
That’s exactly what I need to do. Easier said than done.
But If my next 12 months are going to be better than my last, I need to start somewhere.