I am so tired just trying to 'survive' ~ I don't have the energy to 'live'

When I was a child I just focused on surviving. Now I am sick of working so hard to survive…when do I get to just live? Not ‘relive’ ~ live.
How do you find the balance? How do you let yourself feel and not become overwhelmed? How do you listen to the hurt ones and not blame them, feel too much, and become incapacitated by them?

Both Wednesday and Thursday nights I found myself so overwhelmed with the pain that I was lying on the bathroom floor in a full-fledged panic attack; alternating between shaking uncontrollably and hitting my head on the floor, to pacing the floor considering ways to kill myself. In that moment, anything, including death, is better than living like that night after night. Major crazybrain freak outs both nights!
I feel so far away from myself. Each morning, after a night of dissociative fear and destruction, I try to put myself back together again. But each time I break apart, it gets harder and harder to fit the pieces back together again. Somewhere in the midst of these nightmares I lost my soul. I am not connected to this soulless body ~ it is merely a carrier for my traumatized brain. I feel tangled inside a mind I cannot escape.
Every night so many voices, so much confusion. His face before me, his hands on my body, his breath breathing on my neck. She takes a step back to avoid contact with him. She cries out. He advances toward her. She takes another step back, retreats further into the dark abyss waiting for another to help with the pain. Hopeless. She reaches out faintly while being overtaken by the memories boiling over. Step back! Get back! Step back! Get away! Over and over, night after night. Shame. The unspoken pain and shame.  What happens when it truly becomes so overwhelming that it does kill me?

This is not good. Every single night I fight for a reason to live.  Every night a coin is tossed ~ one night I'm going to lose the toss.  Why does my body continue to scream at me? Why is it so hard? Why is there no end in sight? When will it get better?  I am so tired *surviving* ~ I don't have any energy left to *live*! 

Grace, put down the cupcake and no one gets hurt!

I wrote a month or so ago that I have been making myself vomit again.  I had stopped for a few months but now it's back.  I dont' really talk in much detail about the puking to the therapist - like, there are other, more serious things, we discuss each week. 
And then last week, when we were talking about food, she said, "Well, Grace, something's getting in or you would be wasting away in front of me."  OMG!  Did the therapist just call me fat????  And since then the 'Grace is fat' crew is on high alert and anytime I think about food, I hear her.  If I eat something, I hear her.  So now it's even worse!  Yesterday I ate lunch AND dinner - and so I made myself puke 4 times and took 5 laxatives.  And I STILL feel fat and bloated today! 
In my office, there's 1 bathroom that's off the beaten path, and it's a private bathroom.  So I've been making myself vomit at work now too.  And I always take a tooth brush and toothpaste with me - so I can brush my teeth right after.
And the past two weeks I have had horrible acid reflux - I don't know if it's from the puking, or not, but now it's constantly annoying me. It happened before and I became reliant on zantac...I'm trying to remember if it was associated with a previous vomit-attack monster - but I'm not sure....  But it's either that or throat cancer...see, the hypochondriac monster is trying to attack me as well.
And if the therapist thinks I'm fat - that probably means everyone else does too - and just doesn't say anything - that's why I got the adipex from a friend who ordered them on the internet. And bought more laxatives on Saturday.  I don't want to be called Chubs...that's what the SF called me when I was a kid. 

I just want to feel safe, dear therapist. It’s been a really long time since I’ve felt safe.

I had a bit of a mental meltdown last night.  (That's a big shocker, Grace!)

The therapist had not emailed me by 10pm, and it had already been a really emotionally charged weekend. By 10:01~ the 5 year old was crying from fear and feelings of abandonment, and PAG was hoping the therapist would forget again so she would have a reason to be pissed off at the therapist. Okay, that isn’t a fair statement~ PAG gets pissed off at the therapist all the time for reasons she makes up in her crazybrain. Maybe it would be more accurate to say PAG wanted a reason to that she could throw in the 5 year old’s face to PROVE to the 5 year old that the therapist doesn’t care about her. Anyway, it didn’t happen for her because the therapist emailed a few minutes later. It didn’t matter though. Crazybrain was already at defcon 4 and inches away from self inflicted pain. So Grace called the therapist for help, but PAG wouldn’t let the therapist help, she just wanted to fight with the therapist….the therapist was not in the mood for a fight (she never is) so she told Grace that if she wanted help she had to listen and stop fighting the therapist! Eventually Grace listened because there are no cuts or bruises today.

Thanks to the therapist’s help and patience, we stayed safe from self-jury, but were still unable to find a sense of safety, it was a constant battle to stay present and not dissociate but it was a losing battle for most of the night. In the moments I was in my body, I felt like there was a bolt of lightning constantly circulating through my body. I could not relax, I could not concentrate, I couldn’t even order coffee at Starbucks! Calling in sick was not an option because it was a day packed with deadlines and yet I could not even find a folder that was right in front of my face. I thought I should make a list of things that I had to get done but I couldn’t even figure out how to get that done! Extremely frustrating to find myself in a position where I cannot concentrate at work. Typically, work is a place I can escape the craziness in my head but it wasn’t working! Nothing felt safe and yet a small rational voice knew there was no logical reason for the fear and anxiety which increased the frustration, leading to more anxiety…and suddenly Grace is on her own personal Crazy~Brain~Carousel, complete with the circus music!

I met with the therapist at 10am this morning but I still couldn’t explain what was happening with the lightning inside my body or the fear inside my head. I couldn’t speak or look at her for the longest time. Eventually she asked me what I wanted to get from the session today and I said I didn’t know. But I did know. I just wanted to feel safe…even if only for a few minutes. I just wanted to feel safe. And the therapist made me feel safe today. Today, even just sitting there, in her office, my body full of electricity and 10 different voices inside my head, the therapist made me feel safe….just because she was there. Just because she’s the therapist....

She listened, she sat with me, she tried to help me stay grounded today...but most importantly, she made me feel safe.  She was still there...still trying to listen and understand *all* of Grace...because she is kind and patient.  Because she is the therapist.

I am lost

I am lost. Unable to find my way. Pieces of me are crumbling, falling to the ground.
I am scrambling to grab them all before they smash on the ground - but I'm not that fast. Pieces of me, lost, broken on the ground, unable to be recovered, never to be seen again. I need a way to solve this but there is no way. There is no way out and I am afraid…and so tired. Tonight I am unable to stop the madness…I cannot get them off of me, out of me. I can feel them with every inch of my body. Everything they did ~ everything they touched.  I want these feelings to end. I need them out of me. But I think about the days afterward, when I feel so weak and pathetic and like such a failure. But then again, how is that different than right now? I want to be invisible. I want to hide away forever. I have no body. This is not mine. But I feel it. I am trying to ignore it, telling myself to stop being crazy, but I cannot stop my body from remembering. I want to be invisible. Maybe if everyone saw what I was, what I let them do to me they could see how revolting I really am. I am so good at hiding it now but it is a mask, a façade. He told me I was a little whore. And if I was a whore at 5, what does that make me now? There is no word for me, are there? It wasn’t just him…so many others, so many other things…I am an accomplice to all that is evil. I want it to stop but it doesn’t comply. I need my head to stop thinking and my skin to stop crawling, and my stomach to stop churning, and I need my body to stop feeling things that are not happening now.

Lost One by GracefullyGrowing on Polyvore.com

What should Grace do next?...Why I don't cry in front of my kids...and a horrible experience at Wal-Mart

I felt anxious all day Sunday...I couldn't focus on anything for more 30 minutes or so. 

The day started with a lovely morning trip to the local Wal-Mart where I met up with 2 disgustingly filthy looking men who smelled like stale beer and cigarettes ~ who immediately reminded me of the SF.  DD was with me and I was trying to act normal, but I was dizzy and nauseous...and of course there was no escaping them ~ I swear to God ~ they turned up in every aisle!  If you're wondering why I didn't just "leave" ~ I suppose that was an option, but I lived through it and I have to someday face the fact that that was then and this is now...and obviously since he's dead, it wasn't him in the store.  And it didn't kill me...and as a bonus gift I didn't even puke in the aisle!

I spent the day moving around from project to project...not being able to 'entertain' myself with anything for more than a few minutes.  I worked on the vacation scrapbook, then I put some more bows in the Christmas tree, folded a load of laundry, read a couple of 'educational' articles'...back to the tree, back to the scrapbook, hung at polyvore for awhile. What I really could have used was one of those infant toys with all of the visual stimulation play spots on it ~ maybe I can add that to my Christmas list.

The later it got, the higher the anxiety level grew...by 8:00, I was in that place where I knew I had better wrap up in my blanket with a cup of tea and start talking to myself about where I am and try to calm myself down with my own voice.   I do that a lot now...talk to myself to try to prevent any type of borderline dissociative freak out.  It works a lot better than it used too.  Probably because I used to just cuss out the scared freaked out one ~ but I've adapted that to at least try to be more calming/comforting (sans cussing) in the best way that I can..."It's going to be okay" seems to work better than "STFU right this minute baby!" (I know - yea me - Grace is awesome ~ break out the party hats...and then pack them back away)  I look for familiar things and remind myself where I am, what day it is, etc.  I think part of the problem last night was I knew it was Sunday and that DT was supposed to email me, and since she forgot the previous week, the 5 year old was afraid she was going to forget again.  So I had to remind her that DT isn't her mother and just because the host body used to promise things and NEVER follow through, that did not mean that DT would forget.  And even if she did, we made it last weekend without a major freakout, right?  She did not forget, BTW.... 

No matter how anxious or sad or scared I get I don't express those feelings in front of my children.  I talked to the therapist about that recently and she said I should cry in front of them, or "feel" in front of them.  That they should know that their mother gets sad, afraid, etc...I told her I couldn't do that.  I hide in the bathroom instead, or try to hold it all in until everyone is asleep.  Last night DD told me that grown ups don't cry.  I told her everyone cries sometimes.  And she said, "Well, you don't cry in front of me because you know it makes me sad if you cry, and you don't want me to be sad."....she's right.  I don't ever want her to be sad...ever.