Mental Cracks

February 2017.

A five number entry code on a Liberty handgun safe ensures I remain alive. My family doesn’t trust me to know the code. They are smart; they know me well. I do not trust myself either.

I would like to claim that my spiritual relationship with God is deep and strong enough that I would never be suicidal. He is strong enough. He is enough. Yet, freewill can be dangerous when it becomes unfettered from obedience and submission to His will. Being human, I recognize I always have the potential for my mental perception to be warped by emotions that are unhinged from truth. Having lived through the dark shadows of overwhelming psychosis, I know the valleys caused by abuse and trauma can shift normal reality into a mental state where the physical world is no longer solid and unwavering.

Humans always have a latent potential.  

Normally, I would never even inflict self-harm on myself; however, no one—nothing—can guarantee that I will permanently remain mentally stable.

I have witnessed too many near-death episodes in life.

I am an adult survivor of severe domestic violence.

My counselor, of ten years, helped me to see that I am actually a survivor of a concentration-camp-style childhood. Growing up, I assumed eighteen years was the sentence of my confinement; however, I was held captive decades later. The mental consequences of abuse lingered hidden deep within my psyche thirty-five years later.

Today, I no longer see my counselor. It has been over four wonderful years since we have had our regular weekly brain trauma therapy sessions. For my mental illness—my certifiable disability—I am quite sane ninety-nine percent of the time.

I suppose there is no permanent cure for childhood developmental disorder (CDD)—a name yet to be sanctioned official by Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (known by professionals as the DSM and edited by the American Psychiatric Association). CDD is still a diagnosis proposed for children who suffer through severe abuse during their formative, childhood years. Therefore, I am officially classified as having a form of PTSD and, previously before I finished my therapy, I fell into the alphabetical category of DID-NOS (Disassociate Identity Disorder—Not Otherwise Specified)—a fancy name for an irregular form of multiple personalities. Thankfully, I no longer qualify for the later.

Let me be clear. I do not long to be dead.  I am not a negative, morbid, haunting soul. Yet, I would not mind being dead—and that is the problem. A serious problem, I suppose, some would say; but I feel for my history, it is more than normal if not totally logical—maybe even a sign of high intelligence. Just like a part of the body can be broken and some permanent or lingering damage can remain even after physical therapy, a person can also have a broken brain. The more traumas endured and the earlier the age they were endured have an enormous impact on the injury and recovery.

Never would I threaten to harm another person with a handgun; though, to be fully honest, I was an accomplice in near death shooting of my father when I was only sixteen (or was it fifteen, details sometimes swim around in the murky waters of my cluttered memory). It was my freshman year of high school; it is easier to remember years than ages.

My memory is my biggest mental problem; I remember too much.

In me, the past—which included a shared past to my siblings—had a voice.

My voice is my greatest sin, according to my family: my brain was unable (to them, I was unwilling) to hold the memories down underneath the water long enough until they were dead—extinct—removed from life. In life, through me, I gave the memories a voice.

I did not choose this role in my family. The memories kept creeping out of the edges of the deep, dark mere—usually during the night. Like a swamp monster that would not stay dutifully within the bounds of its assigned allowable territory, the memory monster of my past continually lurked into my present. Mindful meditation was never a pleasant, serene possibility. The memories were present whenever I stilled.

I want to scream, “It is not like I had control.”

But for my siblings this is unbelievable, because for all appearances sake, and as they tell, they all have been able to have control.

My siblings were all seemingly better at keeping theirs submerged. Some had a metal lid strongly welded to the top of their memory by a searing hot flame that flickered as it burned in the black torch held firmly in the welder’s hand. Others had the pond covered like a landfill that was backhoed and then leveled to nicely bury it beneath a beautifully landscaped parcel; no one would dare guess anything morbid lie beyond the surface of the well-maintained lot. Some are better than others at keeping the monster from surfacing. A few solidly testify it is long gone—finished, the past, dead cold. Mute. That which is dead does not speak. In most abusive families, mute dead memories are good for the whole.

For my own good, I allowed my mind—or possibly, my soul—to be carefully excavated under the care of a paid professional. This doctor, a highly qualified and uniquely trained psychologist, is so much more than a practitioner. I will for life consider her a dearest friend; though now I only see her once or twice a year. She is my battle buddy who got deep into the trenches with me during the most harrowing parts of the war; she faithfully participated in the meticulous excavation of my psyche until I no longer required her service. Few people in life are ever fortunate enough to have an exceptional doctor or a true friend—in knowing her I have both.

Through the years of therapy and being a constant learner that loves to research, I learned about trauma, the brain and healing methods. The brain is the most complex and still less understood organ in the human body. Oddly, it takes a brain to study the brain. Magnetic Resonance Imagining scanners (MRIs) have provided the much-needed evidence doctors have theorized about regarding the functioning of the brain. As these studies grow, methods to treat a broken brain will be refined. The pioneers in brain trauma therapy began with war veterans. Much credit needs to be given to doctors and therapist who stepped out in faith, using the knowledge they had, to delve into the brain’s potential to heal itself. Just as the deep state of sleep that includes Random Eye Movement (REMs) nightly during sleep processes events to help maintain mental health, a trained therapist tapping into this right-to-left brain movement helps people who have a broken brain to process traumas. My therapist used a therapy called Eye Movement Desensitization Reprogramming (EMDR) that eventually moved to a more client-led brain trauma therapy called Brainspotting.

I know every person is not healed in the same way. I am a very firm believer that healing is very personalized. For me, these therapies enabled me to heal my broken brain. Because of the abuse in my childhood I developed mental illness, and therefore I needed serious therapeutic and psychiatric help. I am certain my siblings have all been scarred by the child abuse we endured. However, I am not sure that they developed mental illness. We are not real open with each other. They are able to cover it up the consequences of the child abuse better than I was able, or even willing. Maybe their protective armor is thicker than mine. Maybe their cube is made of steel, while mine is visible glass.

The truth is I chose to not cover IT up because I was becoming incapacitated. I had fallen down into a lump of wailing psychotic tears; I had lost the ability to hold myself together; I wanted to stop dragging the people I loved into so much pain; therefore, I wanted to be dead. In order to live, I chose to endure trauma therapy, which purposely exposed IT all—well, only what was necessary for healing. (If I had needed to expose it all, I would never have finished therapy.)

 And yet, I cannot be certain it was totally a volitional act of my own and one not compelled by another who loved me more than I loved myself.

I chose—sometimes against my own husband’s wishes—to keep going to therapy because I instinctively felt it was the only path I could take if I wanted to be the best mother, wife and person I could ever become. And for this choice, I live with the consequences, which are both extraordinarily positive, and, sadly, also some that are not what I desire.

In the end, I have peace in my soul because of this decision I made. I have peace because I was obedient to the call of surrendering to “not my will, but yours”.

Quiet places do not scare me, anymore. I can gaze into my soul and not run, avoid or cover up. I am not afraid to gently move the soil around and to see if anything is hiding beneath the surface that needs to come to light.

I have faced the voices in my head, given them time to speak, and sought help in knowing how to respond, and thereby, how to live.

I await the next quiet place that will take me to a depth I never knew I could still go, and I am thankful that as long as I approach these places with a childlike heart, I can enjoy wandering, no matter where it may take me.

As you will read in this book, I have regrets like every other person alive. I wish I could have do-overs in life with the knowledge I now possess of what situations would happen, how I would feel and how I would react. Doesn’t everybody? Yet, this is not the way life goes. We must live with our reactions, responses, and consequences.

However, we fortunately do get to uproot our life experiences and sift through them to determining what needs to be removed; that is, if we choose to go through this process. It is neither easy nor pretty, but if done thoroughly it can be final and beneficial. The more we allow traumas to surface, to be uprooted, learned from, and, eventually to be released, the clearer minded and lighter we can live daily.

Yet, usually unconsciously many people simply keep packing life experiences down. They make numerous passes with a mental tamping machine compacting their memories into a dense slab to safeguard against any emotional or mental cracks. The drawback to this method of dealing with harsh life experiences is that nothing is uprooted; it may seem gone but later life crisis can shake the supposed-solid foundation. A sliding fault or rumbling fold can displace memories that were thought to be over and of the past.

In my own personal pursuit of God, or I should say, His pursuit of me, I have been continually challenged to hold onto nothing, and to approach my relationship with Him having my hands wide open ready to receive all the Giver has for me. The more baggage I let go, the more I can be restored and blessed. And I have learned, after being blessed, I am in turn able to be a blessing to others.