I can't remember - First Post

[holocene]

I don’t know where to start, or how.

I’m a revisionist. A revisionist of myself. I try to write this without forcing myself to delete everything I write, but I’m struggling. I’m always at war with myself. I hate when people misunderstand me. I often speak in convoluted ways, because I want to eliminate any space for interpretation. When I want to say something I don’t fully believe or something that is contradictory, I have to first explain that the following sentence isn’t my full belief. I will speak at length about something without ever mentioning the actual subject of what I’m taking about (much to the frustration of the people I talk to), just to avoid that minuscule space in which misunderstanding would reside. To correct myself after having said something seems impossible to me (and if not impossible then absolutely excruciating). As you will have noticed, even this prologue is a means to avoid misunderstanding when I talk about the following. I need it to be known how I am, before being known. Which is an issue in itself, because I’m not sure I actually want to be known. Not for a sense of mystery, but for keeping myself liminal. I need to know that I can make myself disappear (spoiler alert: I can’t) or I need to at least be able to believe it.

It’s very foggy today. I think my mood stems from the fog. I always fear sounding psychotic. I’m not, I have a therapist who tells me I’m not. I also don’t feel psychotic, but that doesn’t say much, because I don’t know what I feel most of the time.

I think I’ve been abused. There it is. The big bad word I’m not allowed to say. One of many, but who told me not to say them? I can’t remember.
Disgust rises in myself as I’m thinking about this topic. Disgust for myself. I can only describe it as a black, thick, glutinous mass that runs through my veins. That’s been there for a long time. Something revolting right at my core.

I think I’ve been abused, but I can’t remember and I don’t know by whom.
Until two years ago, I had never thought of this before. There was no doubt, there was no suspicion. What I remembered of my childhood was a loving, protective family, some close friends, some falling out, some fights with my sister, but nothing too grave. I remembered curiosity and shyness and sadness. Deep, deep sadness. Everything was sad, everyone was sad and I felt like I had to fix it. Some of my oldest memories of this sadness span back to when I was four or five years old. I looked back and thought I was just emotional and maybe I was (I definitely was). But then I remembered begin 7 years old and that number always had a strange quality in my mind. Seven. And I remembered that I was feeling ill every night. That I couldn’t go to sleep. That (what I didn’t know then and could only name later) I was having anxiety attacks every night for years. Shortly before, my sister had experienced something similar, she too would feel ill, but that phase passed and everyone thought that I had just inherited her fear.

After seven everything gets a little bit muddled. It’s not that I don’t remember these years, I just can’t really put them in order very well. I remembered that I was sent to therapy for anger control issues although I remembered mostly none of this, I can only conjure this image in my head of cramping my hands together whenever I felt like my emotions were too much. I remembered that I was afraid of darkness, because I had this looming feeling that someone was standing behind me and for many years I was afraid of washing my hair, because I was convinced that if I closed my eyes to wash out the shampoo, someone would be standing in the room once I opened them again. I attributed this fear to having seen the beginning of an episode of CSI Miami, where a man appears behind a woman without her noticing it. I thought I was just impressionable.

I remembered that I had a verbally abusive math teacher throughout middle school, who I was mortally afraid of. I remembered that my then-therapist gave me some very misguided advice to calm my feeling of illness every night by suggesting a strict eating regiment which set loose my still ongoing struggle with disordered eating. Then 11, I remembered more clearly. I was miserable at 11. I felt wrong. My body felt wrong. I felt disgusting, revolting, unloveable. I told my parents on the phone before school once, that I would kill myself because of how unhappy I was. My father drove to school to pick me up for the day. I felt ashamed for saying it afterwards. I will never forget the worry in his eyes. It still upsets me today.

Then my teenage years, which I will mostly leave out because they were a huge mess. The feeling of ugliness and deeply rooted disgust for myself stayed. I felt stuck in my child body, even though I was looking in the mirror and saw a young woman, the moment I stepped away from any reflective surface I felt like I had the body of a child. I remembered being incredibly depressed from 15 onward. Sexual intimacy was unimaginable. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I felt like that would be wrong. I was wrong, no one could look at me in a sexual way, that wasn’t allowed, I was a child, you don’t have sex with a child. Depression stuck around for four years. I was incredibly suicidal for most of that time, my disordered eating reached an all time high. I never truly attempted suicide, but I was close to it more often than I can count. And all throughout there was a voice in my head, not audible, but a part of myself that lived in that darkness. A part that tried to convince me everyday that I was that darkness. I had incessant intrusive thoughts of harming myself, of others harming me, of passive acts of violence against me. Everything was always directed towards me. Everything was always wrong. Telling someone about my struggles was wrong, not telling them was wrong. This part told me that I should kill myself, but told me I was weak whenever I considered it. There was a lot of screaming in my head. Sometimes I would sit in complete stillness, whilst a sea of screaming voices would tear me apart inside. I dissociated a lot. I wanted to think away my body. I remember once, everything in my head got so loud, that I couldn’t walk. Everything was shouting, „Walk!“, „Stay still!“, „Turn around!“, „Don’t move!“. I stood in the middle of my school hall on my way to class and I couldn’t move. My entire childhood and youth I was convinced that I would die once I turned 18. I was convinced that I wasn’t meant to live.

At 20 I remembered all of this and thought, that was just the way my life had gone. That there was just something dark inside of me, that had always been there and that it was this that was causing my depression and anxiety and disgust for myself and that maybe I’d never find out what it was, but maybe I wouldn’t have to. I had realized at that point that I had not died once I turned 18, much to my dismay and had been struggling to find a way to keep living. Through few attempts at romantic intimacy I learned that I had no greater fear than a man being close to me, that men caused me anxiety in general and had at 20 eliminated all men from my life apart from my family members. I couldn’t explain any of this to myself, but that’s the way it was and I felt that that’s the way it would always be.

And then through luck and chance and fate or what have you, I changed therapist because I felt stuck with my old one (another one than the childhood therapist). And I changed to someone with a background in trauma therapy. And we started work and I felt comfortable with her. And then we did craniosacral therapy. I was keen to try it out, but I was also skeptical. My therapist sat at my head and the craniosacral therapist sat at my feet and guided my body. Without having raised this issue to me before, without mentioning it or having premeditated this subject, at a point in the session my therapist asked „Might this feeling be tied to abuse?“, in a way of asking the body for answers.
And a wave of fear washed over me. I started shaking and my muscles cramped and my eyes forcibly closed themselves. I couldn’t speak and felt like I was suffocating. Nothing comparable had ever happened to me in my entire life. The craniosacral therapist answered „Yes.“. To the question as to how old I was when this abuse happened, the craniosacral therapist said that I would have to have been 7. I had no memories, nothing distinct resurfaced, no images, no people. Just fear and shame and screaming in my head and an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness, of death. The aggressive part in myself that had bullied me for years came back stronger than ever. It told me I was lying, this wasn’t real, I was seeking attention, I was making it up, I should control my body and stop moving, I was doing this all by myself.

It is two years later. I have had many sessions with my therapist, have had craniosacral therapy which went the same every single time. My body would convulse, contract, I wouldn’t be able to speak, a deep hole would open in my chest and almost swallow me whole. No answers. Sometimes it helped, helped calm some part of me down. Other times it didn’t. What it did do, was shatter my history.

I am fragmented now. I search for explanation in my past, try to make room for an event of such magnitude. I look at everything that I remember and see how strange some of my feelings were, how some things didn’t quite add up, but I can’t find a memory. I feel like the more I look, the less I see. But it’s there now, in my body. This dread, this fear. It’s more pronounced, I feel it more clearly. I feel lost in the fog of my mind. Like today. I derealize constantly, depersonalize sometimes. When something triggers me, my whole body cramps. My eyes shut, my muscles spasm and all the while part of myself is screaming at me that none of it is real. Even writing this, this part is here and it is convinced that I’m lying. Or maybe it isn’t convinced at all, maybe it’s trying to convince me. I’m a stranger to myself. My past feels foreign, my mind feels foreign. I question the stability of my reality. I don’t know if I wish or fear for it to collapse. Maybe both. I want a clear cut answer, someone to tell me „You have been abused and this was your abuser.“, but I think I’m lying to myself. I think I don’t want that at all. Some part of me fears that all of this isn’t real, that my abuse is still happening and this is just an insanely elaborate fictitious world I have created in my head. That, should I remember what has happened, I will return to this moment of pain and be trapped there forever. I’m lying when I say, that I want to know, because the truth is, I want to know and cease to exist right after. Fulfill my destiny of dying, as if I never should have lived at all. At this point, I even fear that it isn’t true. That I have broken myself apart for nothing. That I have fragmented myself in vain. I don’t let myself believe that I have been abused, but at the same time fear that it might not be true. As if I were drowned in even more silence and pain, should I have to take it back, say it never happened.

I have no one to talk to about this other than my therapist. I don’t know how you would talk to someone about something you don’t know yourself. But it makes me feel so lonely. So hopeless. That I’ll never be able to love and to exist freely without this constant vitriol in my mind toward myself, without this blackening disgust and self-destructive calling.

So, today I found this forum, after being triggered by I can’t say what. And then I read many of your posts and felt a little bit seen.

Hello, I’m new here.
- Holocene

[Jonesy]

Hi holocene

A very warm welcome to isurvive. Thanks for sharing so openly with us on your first post.
I am glad you found us, there is always someone listening here

[greendreamdays]

Hi Holocene,

You story is so much like my own it was like reading one of my own posts. I hope you can show yourself some gentleness during this time. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to hold back those emotions, but especially when it comes to those bodily reactions you describe, the body doesn't lie. I think those parts of us that try to tell us that we are lying, exaggerating, or that it's not real are protective aspects of us that know that the repercussions of opening the floodgates of believing that something happened can be intense. I think it's really important to offer yourself a lot of grace and patience and as much self-compassion as you can.

I can't tell you what happened to you, but as a fellow survivor I can say that body memories--as that is what it sounds like based on your description--can be intense, especially when you don't know the context and have little other visual or conscious memory to link it to, it can be really unnerving. I would never want to say anything to upset anyone, especially on this forum where people can be in a delicate state, so I feel hesitant in saying anything at all, but in the hopes that it might help in some way I will post in anyway. I read this in a book about survivors, it surprised me, it was bold, but I also found it a little confusing, freeing, and validating, and I would like to share that with you. If it doesn't help, please please disregard it.

If and when memories come up, whether they are visual, or just a feeling, it's important that you let them, and not try to push them down again. Traumatic memory is a tricky thing to navigate. Generally, memories come up when your body or mind feels safe enough to let them come to the surface. Sometimes memories come up decades after the event(s). It's a bit impossible to control the timing. If you feel that more memories may be close to the surface it might be a good idea to block out some time where you are around safe and supportive people, or somewhere you can be alone to process.

[holocene]

Thank you Jonesy for listening.
I strangely wasn't afraid of posting my story, but I was afraid of not taking it down immediately.
Thank you for reassuring me that this is an accepting place, it means a lot.

greendreamdays, thank you, truly. Since I've never spoken to anyone who might relate to my story, I have never known what it feels like to be honestly and earnestly validated in my experience. The feeling is honestly a little overwhelming (not negatively). Some very young part within myself is strengthened by your words and advice. This part is usually the one full of hopelessness and terror and right now this sensation has lessened in them and I have no words to describe how much that means to me. Before signing up to this forum I read one of your posts and felt so much compassion for you, because of how much I saw myself in your words and at the same time felt sadness because I related to your struggle and through your story was able to feel the compassion I often can't feel for myself.
I wish you the same you wish for me. I hope we find our kindness.

(edited to change trigger to NT)

[Progress]

Dear Holocene,
I’m glad you posted. I get it. I understand, and I believe you.

I am one of the “lucky” ones who has flashes of memory. Of faces and moments and places and events. Even with visuals alongside body memories and emotional memories, I have struggled enormously with believing myself. I think it comes with the territory.

In the end, I do believe myself. It is the truth. I am lucky in that I know where to place blame. I am lucky that I have found anger, and it is appropriately directed towards my abusers.

Sending you gentle compassion and care and validation that you are in the right place at isurvive,
Progress

[holocene]

Thank you for your support, Progress.

Even though I haven't been here long, this forum has already made me feel very welcome and safe. Thank you for being a part of that!
"I think it comes with the territory." really woke me up to the fact that knowing might not be easier than not knowing, that there is no easy way to any of this. I appreciate your words.

[xxwonderousxx]

hi holocene,

i couldn't help but smile when i read the very first paragraph. it was like i was reading about myself. i completely relate to that. I have been forcing myself to just type, don't look back and post, but the thought of being misunderstood is such an overwhelming thought..

thank you for sharing. nothing but compassion, love and understanding sent your way

- xxwonderousxx

[holocene]

Thank you for your response, xxwonderousxx!
I'm still taken aback when someone replies to my post here, because I'm not used to being seen. It's an interesting feeling to be told that someone else sees themselves in my writing or my struggle, it's comforting to know that I'm not alone.
Thank you for that.