I need help.

I started crying in the car this morning on the way t work. I was imagining a conversation I might have with my boss, a conversation about how I was planning on capitalizing on my skill set and minimizing the weak parts.It was a conversation about how I, as a great teacher, could continue to be a great teacher in the face of debilitating mental illness. I could use the energy of the interns, the newness of the mobile computer labs, the excitement of the kids, and my creative mind to restructure my day. I have interesting classes, during which students think, develop new beliefs, and grow in understanding of the past and the present and their place in the moment. I'm a good teacher. I became a teacher because school was so safe with its routine. I was liked and respected as someone who was smart. Sometimes I didn't like the teachers, but mostly I did.
They helped me interact normally, understand what normal adult/child relationships were, and said nice things about me.

Learning was fun. I loved it. But when school got in the way of drinking and getting high, sometimes I didn't go. I also got angry. So I determined I would become a teacher and my time with students would be my contribution to young people trapped everywhere but in school. Not to many suicides happen in school. School tends to be safe. So I became a damn fine teacher.

If there was a flat-earther talking to me and he said "does the earth have an edge or does it go on and on forever?" You would say, it has neither an edge nor does it go on and on forever. The flat-earther would not be able to comprehend what he earth was....if it didn't have an edge and it didn't go on forever.
But you could help him understand over time.

Sitting in therapy, we discussed the plan for the next month or so, We're going to tackle some issues. I may or may not be stable enough to continue a life. The gist of what my therapist wants is for the deep shame and destructive forces to step back. I got a little angry and said "Don't you think I would change that if I could?"
and the therapist said "you can't change it." And I angrily asked "So if it can't be done what's the fucking point?" The therapist said "I'll help you."

So I'm a flat-earther and if the earth doesn't have an edge and if it doesn't go on forever.....what?

My mom is getting surgery and that has risks. Someday she'll die and all the shit that shames and destroys me will come to the funeral. It will pour out in rivers of snot and tears. I don't know if I will be able to contain the destruction at that time. If mother dies I know if I can continue to be respectful and kind and genuine with students anymore - My life's goal is to provide a safe place for kids in danger, and a little tension relief too. If she dies I may fall apart and the overwhelming power she has on my soul will not be buried with her, it will be the cloud that has encompassed me.

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Transference, and Loss of Bladder Control

Just a little background in the form of a timeline:

Sept. 16 - After a short argument with my husband, I was overwhelmed with terror and panic and peed my pants all over the kitchen floor.

Sept. 24 - In a therapy session, toward the end, I became panicked with a feeling of being trapped and left prior to usual "end of therapy" rituals. We had been discussing my feelings of being trapped during my argument with my husband....I think.

When I got home from therapy, "I" wrote this:

I can't understand the directions to the student's house where I have to do homebound instruction tomorrow.

I can't remember what we talked about right before I left therapy.

I don't know how to organize my lessons on the SmartBoard - it's new technology and I've used it every day since the school year began but now it doesn't make sense.

I deleted an important memo on my tablet and I don't know how or when I did. I just know it's gone.

I can't remember why I've held on this long. I can't remember why I chose life in the past.

I don't understand how to back off the intensity when the intensity is nuclear melt-down.

I pissed my pants. ON THE FUCKING KITCHEN FLOOR.

I need a haircut, but every day is hellishly long and weekends are a nightmare of trying to sleep, do school work, clean the house, and not go fucking insane.

I hate all of my clothes.

I didn't recognize my face in the mirror today. It was so puffy and fat. And the lips were weird.

I don't understand shy I'm not actually trapped if I can't control myself, the people around me, and the feeling of being trapped.

I don't understand how I'm supposed to work on getting better if I don't have the energy to stay up past 8PM.

I don't remember most of today.

If I feel so unsafe that I want to kill myself, then I really am actually unsafe.

If I wet myself, then I really shouldn't be in charge of kids all day.

I had a lot of trouble taking attendance today, because the kids were unrecognizable and the names unfamiliar.

I feel like I should know a lot of things I don't know, and so I fake it.

People don't get that sometimes I cry so hard my whole body hurts, and that even though I act normal, I piss my pants.

I am powerless in the face of overwhelming terror and panic. I see what I'm doing but can't control it. I could hear the urine hit the floor, even though I was also screaming, and I couldn't stop doing either.

I get really dizzy when I try to understand that I don't need to feel ashamed.

All I have to do is work 8 hours a day and I can't - at least I can't and feel ok. I am exhausted.

There's no reason for me to be so exhausted, yet I am.

There's no reason for me to be so afraid, yet I am.

There's no reason for me to be depressed, yet I am.

There's no reason for me to panic and feel terrified, yet I peed my fucking pants in terror.

I have trouble breathing.

My muscles hurt because I tense, and release, and tense, and release, and tense, and repeat forever.

I fucking hate my life - yet shouldn't because I have a pretty nice life.

I can't stop seeing me blowing my head off.

If I try to stop seeing me blowing my head off, I then see me hanging from the garage ceiling.

I forgot why people love me.

I forgot what I love about people.

I wish I could hold Danny's future baby, but I don't deserve to love.

I shouldn't have had a family- I should have killed myself back when I first became obsessed with suicide at age 12.

I hate. I fucking. Hate.

Sept. 25 - Oct. 5 - I went to work, I went to sleep, I went to work, I went to sleep, I went to work....you get the idea.

And now, today, I have a thought forming. I was thinking about the post about my little dog and how it's obvious I am feeling things about myself through my pets. I also am annoyed that one strategy my therapist was discussing with me was how to get up and leave a situation when I became aware that it was triggering. And how that seemed impossible as I become paralyzed with terror when triggered and I feel trapped. And how I was feeling trapped in his office, and overwhelmed. And then I left. The annoying part is that I play-act in therapy the skills I need to transfer into my life, i.e. walking away when overwhelmed. It annoys me because I know I practice this kind of shit in therapy all the time - my therapist being a stand-in for all sorts of people in my life now and in the past. It annoys me because I walked out, truly angry and overwhelmed, and yet it's FUCKING THERAPY. It's not real. And he suggested it.

So, for weeks really, I've wanted to end my therapy, enact the righteous "walk away" skill. The thought is seductive and terrifying, empowering and ridiculous. I couldn't survive without therapy.

It hit me this morning that yet once again my preoccupation with therapy is simply a stand-in for the real issue - the real issue being that I couldn't leave my abuser as a child of 2 because my abuser was my caregiver at that time. And then, my real caregiver came and got me and did everything "wrong" and I still couldn't leave. And my husband is now my caregiver and I can't live without him. And my therapist is my lifeline to not blowing my head off and I want to leave therapy but I can't because then I'd die.

I guess I became a history teacher because history repeats itself and in learning about history a person can make better decisions in the present to avoid the mistakes of the past. But life is a paradox, and as I try to resolve the deep issues of a 2 year old getting sadistically tortured by her caregiver, I relive the situation over and over and over because there is NO FUCKING RESOLUTION.  A 2 year old CAN'T leave her caregiver, she CAN'T walk away, she CAN'T cope with the overwhelming sensations and feelings and CAN'T cognitively interpret the situation. Of course she pissed herself.

I can't leave the man I love who helps me live, I can't leave therapy, and I can't cope with the overwhelming feelings left over from the overwhelming and impossible-to-interpret situation I keep reliving in various ways. I can't understand it. I can't walk away, because it's locked inside in the form of a vague and undefined shadow that disappears with every light and every darkness. Shadows don't exist in the light, and they don't exist in the darkness, either.

In the hospital we received a kind of therapy in which we set up a scenario and acted out the scenario both as ourselves and as some "other" in the scenario. I set up a scenario in which a little girl played on the living room floor (me) and I as an adult that knew what was coming next took the girl away from the horrible living room chair before the man entered the room. Someone else played the little girl, and someone else was supposed to play the man. I say "supposed to play the man" because in the scenario, the man never entered the room. Every time the therapist had the man take a step toward the door I dissociated. The therapist was really good at his job, because the signs of me dissociating were so subtle I didn't realize it was happening at all - I just knew he would stop the man from entering for some reason over and over. I finally realized that he was watching me closely, and when he said to the man "step forward toward the doorway" I got foggy. So, the scenario was all about the little girl playing and the adult me stepping in to lead her away. It is what I wish could have happened. I wish I could take her hand and help her walk away. But it was just a dumb fucking scenario played out in a dumb group therapy room in a dumb fucking psychiatric hospital. In reality, the man came in, sat on the chair, and the same Chain of Events that I still replay in my mind 43 years later actually happened. The little girl didn't walk away because she fucking can't.

So how am I supposed to walk away from a triggering fight with my husband who I love and who takes care of me? How am I supposed to continue therapy when it has become the thing that terrifies me? And keeps me alive? Like the issue of sexual abuse of a child....a never ending Chain of Events that replays over and over and I can never take her hand and lead her out because that's not what happened.

I can back off the intensity of the shame of peeing on the floor as a 46 year old woman. I can do that. Because peeing your pants in the face of terror makes sense to a 46 year old woman. But I can't take the little girl's hand and help her walk away because that's impossible. And she will never understand what happened, because she's fucking 2 years old.