I Cannot Believe I Finally Had That Bad Dream.

Well I have been waiting for this and it finally happened. Believe it or not, in all of these years, I have dreamed about my ex-husband a lot. None of the dreams were good or bad. Just dreams he was in....usually having to do with mundane things. Well finally after all of these years I actually had a bad dream starring "him". I never thought that would happen since we haven't be married in like 18 years. The dream I had involved him hitting me and me trying to get away from him, waiting for the police to come. It was creepy, he was creepy. He was trying to talk me into being cool and not doing anything, of course. He was all charming, but scary charming, threatening, pretty much as I remember him. As most dreams go, I don't remember much. But I do remember a child that I was trying to protect. I am thinking that my therapist could really do a number on figuring out where this is coming from. I, myself, am going over this in my mind and trying to figure out why now after all this time am I having a bad dream about him. I think part of it may be because of some books I've been reading are violent and have to do with someone's past and the heroine being helpless at the time things happened but yet fighting back. 

  The part about the child...well I think that has to do with something that my youngest daughter told me. About a memory that she is trying to expand on. It is not about her father but it is bothering her because she can't remember. Of course I am concerned, yet at the same time I have always been really good about determining when someone has been sexually abused. I don't think this is the case, but I do think that it is the actual "not being able to remember" that is really making her crazy. I think that it is a scary memory for her because she had been left alone by her oldest brother in an area of town that she was not familiar with. She wasn't supposed to be alone, my son's girlfriend was supposedly next to the car when she was in the car, but she doesn't remember seeing her. But I told her that it was possible that she was sitting down behind the car and she conceded that it was possible. It was nighttime and she was scared because she woke up alone in the car and didn't know where she was, she had been sleeping. So now I need to get with my son and talk to him about it. I am not sure if he will even remember this as this was many years ago when he was heavy into drugs. Which is where he was when this happened, buying drugs. I am also afraid of how he will feel if something, god forbid, did happen to his sister. I had to think about this a lot last night and realized that I HAD to talk to him for her sake. I know my son and he will be so devastated if anything did in fact happen to her, he would never forgive himself. They are both really close even though they are many years apart. I realized that I can't pick the feelings of one child over another. I have to talk to him and find out what happened that night. She remembers some other things about it that are more troubling and that is what I REALLY need to know for her sake. I hope that there is a simple explanation for what she remembers. For both of their sakes.

Why, oh why, do people think like this?

So today I was browsing the day's news on the internet, as I tend to do, and I was reading an article about David Carradine who died from auto-erotic-asphyxiation a year or so ago. Just for those who do not know what this is, it is
the practice of cutting off the blood supply to the brain through self-applied suffocation methods while masturbating. Now it is truly sad that his wife who was left behind has to deal with this, she loses her husband to something that maybe she had no idea he was in to. But one of the worst things to me, and I've heard it before, is the people (mainly men) who spout off on messages boards and say "well, if she was a good wife".....OMG! I cannot tell you how many times I have heard that. Seriously, I hear that all of the time about cheating husbands. That if only his wife had been a good wife he wouldn't go looking anywhere else. Please define "good wife" for me. Tiger Woods' wife looked like she was a good wife, beautiful, took care of her home and her children. I imagine that she took pretty good care of Tiger too. Same with Sandra Bullock. From all sources close to her and Jesse James it seems as though she was the "perfect wife". Now I don't believe in "perfect" anything. But I think blaming cheating on the spouse who was cheated on is a cop out. Not to mention the fact that research shows that men cheat for various reasons but one of the biggest is self-esteem issues. Oh, you may say, if she was a good wife he shouldn't have self-esteem issues. Let me tell you from personal experience I did anything and everything to make my husbands life a happy one. I built him up as much as one can do and not lie. I gave him pretty much every thing he ever asked for and did anything for him.  I was a W-O-M-A-N, I brought home the bacon, cooked it up in a pan, and never let him forget he was a man. But he STILL cheated. 

It is really funny that when a man cheats it's because he's not getting his "needs" met at home. When a woman cheats, she's a whore. Seems pretty unfair to me. When I think about my marriage, by the "good wife/husband..." standard I realize that I'm the one who SHOULD have been cheating because MY needs weren't being met and that is the truth in all it's painful reflection. The man was abusive and cruel. And as far as the bedroom goes, truth be told I didn't have even ONE orgasm the whole time I was with him. And that was for a lot of years. I mean it's no wonder...I cannot tell you how many times I'd say "ow, that hurts" because of something that he was doing or if he was being too rough and his response was "no, it doesn't". Really? It doesn't? When did he slip into my skin and was able to feel how I was feeling. Not to mention that if you have to ASK if your partner had an orgasm, chances are......nope. He may have asked, but he didn't really care what the answer was as long as he got what he wanted. But I never, ever made him feel bad about any of it. I was a very good partner. Too bad I didn't have a good partner myself when I was with him. 

You may think that this doesn't have anything to do with PTSD, but it does. When you have PTSD everything associated with the trauma can be triggered. I was in a long term marriage that was trauma filled. When you are married to an abuser, chances are you will suffer from PTSD. It doesn't have to be violent either to be traumatic. There are so many ways to be abused. Here is what an abusive relationship looks like courtesy of Michael J. Formica, a Social Scientist and Educator via "Psychology Today"...

"Well, it's not always about being slapped around. Abusive relationships come in all forms along with physical abuse - social abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse (we are not referring here to molestation), financial abuse, etc. Abuse is about a dynamic of extremes, domination and submission. It is about giving and withholding, also in the extreme."

  So think about that if you know someone who fits any of this parameters. Abuse is a ripe breeding ground for PTSD. I believe in trying to keep marriages together, especially if you have children. But if you are being abused and you have a partner who won't get help....then you need to walk away before you find YOURSELF writing a blog like this one....

Catch Up and Welcome to My Life!

Hello and welcome to my blog and my life. When I first thought about starting this blog I had lofty ideas that I would write about my life every day and write about what was happening with my therapy. Well, every day turned into "no day". So I am giving myself some slack and writing when I get a chance. I know that writing is a good thing for all of us to do, especially when we are trying to work things out in our lives. So, today is the first day that I am finally writing, god knows I used to write on a daily basis, let's see if I can do something close to it again.


  First of all I will try to fill you in on some background. I am in my late 40's and apparently have been suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for about half of my life. It started with an abusive marriage when I was 18 years old. The man I was married to was my same age but years ahead of me in the manipulation and abuse of others department. We married and had 4 children together when I was finally released from that hell by him cheating on me repeatedly. I didn't know it, of course, only suspected but in great manipulator style he made me think that any and every problem in our marriage was mine. My fault for trusting him when my instincts were screaming at me.  In the end he decided to "confess" all of his sins in the space of one night. Which rocked me to my core, let me tell you. I have never gotten over the deceit and betrayal....not to mention the fact that I was married to someone whom I didn't know at all. It was like he had another life. And lest you think, as some tend to do in these situations, that the sex must have been non-existent or bad.....we had sex every other day, at least,  for 12 years and then some. The sex was the best he ever had (this is a quote from him, not me). What he wanted was something that no one could give him. He didn't love himself and when you don't love yourself you can't love anyone else. He was looking for something that he has never found to this day. 


  Anyway, the marriage was fraught with mental, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Why did I put up with it? That is the million dollar question. Most of all it was because I was young and naive. I believed in sticking it out, plus we had children to consider. I tried and tried to make it work, but there is no way to work out something like this. My ex-husband was sadistic and he derived some kind of pleasure from making me suffer. His oldest brother once told me that he wished that he weren't related to him because he always treated people close to him like crap, but treated everyone else really nice. I know that most people who knew him thought he was funny (he was), charming (he was), and nice (he really wasn't). He was cruel to those closest to him. That of course meant his family of which I was now a part of. I will talk more about this and perhaps more specifics later as we go along this journey together.

  Another trauma that fell under the PTSD banner was the sudden death of my mother. She died with no warning, in bed, while taking a nap because she wasn't feeling well. I had just seen her a few weeks earlier when she had come to visit with my dad. She had only just turned 58 years old. Very young to die. It was totally unexpected and threw me into a very deep and serious depression. I am an only child so my mom and I were particularly close. I didn't think I would ever be OK again. By that time I was already divorced and caring for 4 kids by myself. I was working a part-time job and could barely go to work, then I would come home and go to bed. My poor kids didn't know what to do. No one around me knew what to do. My boyfriend at the time couldn't understand why I wasn't over it after about 6 weeks. Not that he didn't care, he just didn't understand. He kept thinking, "well she's in a better place"....meanwhile I am just missing her and not knowing how I could live without my mom. She was my closest friend. So the boyfriend and I broke up, he broke up with me because I "wasn't the woman he had fallen in love with". Of course I wasn't, a loss like that changes you. He has since come to regret that assessment and we eventually got back together for awhile. More on all of this later I'm sure...

  So the last trip on the trauma wagon is the suicide of my father 4 years after my mother died. I don't think there needs to be a lot of explanation here right now about this as I know it will come up later.


  The reason why I am now getting help....which by the way I did try to get before, just the wrong therapists at the wrong time or something like that. The reason is that I had taken on a job at a call center in a bank. Now I am really good at talking to people and normally I have no problem with it. The job is a VERY stressful one whether you suffer from PTSD or not, but it is particularly bad if you are a PTSD sufferer. I found that I DO have a problem with people calling me every name in the book and there is nothing I can do about it. It pulls me back and reminds me of my marriage when I was powerless to do anything. I begin shaking and feeling like I'm going to die, in other words I have a panic attack. These types of calls are what my therapist calls a trigger. The call center is full of triggers and I may not ever be able to go back. Oh yeah I'm on disability right now. I am trying to get as much therapy as I can before I go back to work, wherever that may be. Just trying to find the money to live and keep up my insurance. Whew!

  So for the moment I am going to leave you with this summary of what traumas caused my PTSD and I hope that you will join me as I go through my therapy with it's highs and lows. There is hope for all of us who are suffering. I have a therapist now that I think really gets me and is already helping me to understand a lot. I would like to share this with you, my readers, wherever you are. I hope I have some at some point. I hope that you will also share this with others who suffer or have someone close to them who is suffering from this paralyzing condition.