The Past Was Always Vague

It seems to be a theme in my life these days.

• Everyone has a story.

• Don't ask what's wrong with them... ask them what happened to them instead.

• Everyone has something that changed them.

For a long time, I spoke about my symptoms. The state I was currently experiencing, and the ways in which I was working towards recovery and walking along my journey. I spoke about trials and successes… and I mentioned trauma – in brief, vague, and very generic ways.

Always vague. Always ashamed. Always afraid.

I’ve spent the past four years writing, sharing, and speaking about mental health; with each opportunity to share creating further determination within myself to be honest, authentic, and open. For the most part, I’ve been successful… my story of mental illness, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, anxiety, suicide, and depression… no longer leaving me regularly feeling burdened or ashamed. I’ve found peace, despite the struggle – knowing that to end the stigma attached to mental illness, I need to end the stigma that I myself feel towards it.

It’s different though when you look at the history… the past.

It’s an intricate dance, and a balancing of speaking truthfully and openly about your experiences… and using those same things as a crutch – an excuse for your behaviour.

But the most impactful words I’ve heard this year was when a friend told me that it’s okay… and to actually look at my past.

Not as an excuse, or a reason, or way to ‘play the victim’. But as a way of seeing how events in my life formed the way that I think, act, and react to various situations. As a way of understanding the impact that trauma has on the mind, and the ways in which it causes different responses in each unique person and in each unique situation.

For so long I was afraid to say too much. This fear of hurting those who hurt me. And this shame associated with remaining in harmful/toxic situations. But also the shame of still choosing to stay… to fight… to work. I felt unable to speak about the pain, the trauma, and the history… guilty myself for not making different choices… unworthy of acknowledgement of the pain.

I’ve spoken for months now about the trauma and the revelations in my life that have impacted me this year. Things that have shaken me… not just because of the current impact in my life; but because of the impact that they had over the course of a lifetime. But I refused to speak in authenticity. Honesty. Openness. I felt conflicted over the word victim, and the use of my story within my journey – not sure how to find the difference between words like victim, blame, responsibility, honesty, and explanation.

The longer I put it off though, the more urgent it feels to express these things… to include the history within the story of my journey. Because they are a part of who I am, and the struggle that I face on a daily basis. And I believe that we all have things that have deeply impacted us… and the only way to end the stigma against mental health, is to end the stigma surrounding the rest of the storms in our lives. To talk about the un-speakable topics. To share the pain. To express the experiences. To learn to empathize and understand that we all feel grief and trauma differently… and that no single response is more normal than another.

Speaking up and sharing the history and the journey and the experiences and the pain and the success, does not mean that I am living in the past, or that I haven’t done the work to move forward. It doesn’t mean that I hold onto hatred for those who hurt me… or even that the horrendous things that other people did which deeply impacted me, make them bad people.

What it means is that I have accepted it as a part of my own journey… and that I’m no longer afraid or ashamed. I’m no longer trapped inside of the bubble in my head that says that I “can’t” share my story because other people might think “__________” or that it might embarrass, humiliate, or hurt the other party within my story. It means that I am at a place where I can talk, and write, and share about my experiences and the things I’ve felt, and the way that they impacted me and changed my life. The same way that the decisions that I make now are changing my life again.

It means that I no longer see myself as ‘weak’ for not responding the way that I believed I should have. It means that I no longer see myself as ‘weak’ for the impact that my experiences had on my mental health. It means that I can now see two decades worth of trauma that led me to react and behave in ways that I didn't understand. It means that I see it now, and I can openly share about it and speak about it... because it did impact me, and while it isn't an excuse for my reactions, it is an explanation. And with an explanation, comes the ability to heal and to continue to change and head towards healthier behaviours. 

It means that as I continue to write, I will no longer filter the past, the current, or the future experiences that have continued to impact my mental health. It means that going forward, I will continue to work towards full authenticity in the sharing of my journey.

It might take me time, but I will learn to let go of the shame and write in full authenticity as I go forward from here.

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As the Shell Crumbles

Somewhere right around eleven years ago, I experienced a trauma that shook me to my core. It wasn’t the first major trauma that I’ve faced in my life… but it is the one that I can distinctively pinpoint as the start of my decline into serious mental illness. It was one trauma too much… the straw that broke the camel’s back. In the months that followed this trauma, a few minor breakdowns occurred and I tried my best to hold myself together. A new fear had formed, planting itself deep in my life and I tried with everything inside of me to hold it down and keep going, despite the cracks I could feel growing ever deeper in my mind, my heart, and my soul.

At twenty-three years old, I didn’t have the stability or support to acknowledge, let alone face any of this trauma… I didn’t even know that it was trauma. And I certainly didn’t know that working at a job, with direct ties to the trauma I had faced, was continually re-traumatizing me with every shift that I worked.

For the next year, life was busy… too busy. Already a mom of three, I would learn soon that I was pregnant once again. Money was tight, and our house was stressful. Along with financial concerns came the pain… hip and back pain that was beyond what I had experienced with any of my previous pregnancies had left me unable to work and on medical leave. Partial placenta previa had affirmed my decision to take time off of work, and left an additional fear on our shoulders as we waited for the all-clear – the knowledge that the placenta was no longer in the way of my cervix and a continuing risk factor for me.

Over the same year, our daughter who was two at the time; was facing an entirely different trial – her kidneys wreaking havoc on her little body. Trying to control her condition was not working, and as summer hit, we were booked into Sick Kids Hospital for her to undergo a fairly major surgery. Thankfully, everything went according to plan, and a few weeks later, our little girl was back… happy and playing and finally well.

I didn’t know that within two weeks of our daughter’s surgery I would face another health concern myself. Still only barely seven months pregnant; I woke up one morning in the worst physical pain, I’ve ever experienced and had my husband take me to the hospital. At first, my symptoms led them to believe that my appendix had ruptured… but an ultrasound soon disproved that theory and showed them instead that it was my gallbladder. Gall stones trapped in my bile duct were yet one more reason to worry, and the pain as my son consistently kicked the inflamed regions was excruciating. Off and on throughout August and most of September… I faced repeated incidences of the same symptoms. The stones usually dislodging and giving me a few days of peace before another flare up.

Finally in September, I arrived at the hospital; sick, tired, and in pain. Speaking calmly but firmly I told the doctor that they needed to take either the baby out, the gallbladder out, or both. I wasn’t leaving without something being done. Labour was induced that afternoon; and after only a minor allergic reaction to an IV antibiotic, my fourth and last child was quickly born.

Ten years ago this past September, our family was completed. A decade. 

And while I found joy in the small moments, that trauma that I experienced the year before had begun a chain-reaction in my life beyond what I, or anyone else could have predicted. 

I once had a wise person tell me not to think in days, or months, or years when it comes to periods in my life. (Okay, she told me this way more than once!) Instead, she advised me to think in decades… a concept that I tried to process and work with, but until recently had been unable to commit to.

But as this past year has floated on past me; it is a thought that has continually come back up.

Up until this past year, I could look back at my life and speak about the trauma that I have consistently faced with a straight face, a few tears, and an acknowledgement that parts of my life hadn’t been rosy. I honestly believed that I had worked through a lot more of what has happened, than what I have.

In a previous post, I mentioned that this past nine months or so, have been the most difficult months I’ve ever experienced.

For a long time, I’ve tried to right the situation.

Nine months. It seems like an incredibly long time to struggle with life – to experience depression and anger and a loss of focus, drive, and hope. Nine months seems like a long time to work on trying to change your life while you continue to hit brick walls. Nine months seems like a decent time frame to get it back together following another traumatic revelation, learn to smile, and actually push through the trauma and reach the other side… wherever that other side might be.

A couple of months ago I was trying to understand why I hadn’t gone anywhere in my recovery… instead I felt like I was spinning further and further out of control.

Over the past two to three months, I have had to learn that nine months was not an adequate time frame for my personal journey towards full healing, to even begin.

It seems kind of crazy. I’ve known about mental health for a long time… and I have experienced fluctuations, ‘aha!’ moments, and triggers. I’ve walked the walk, and I’ve done the work to learn and re-learn how mental illness has affected me, and the ways in which to not only manage it, but to treat it. The past four years, have been an intense and ongoing battle inside my head as I have worked towards acceptance and healing… as I have forced myself into behaving in different manners, and trying to understand where the uncontainable emotions come from.

Almost three months ago I was lying in bed broken. I literally could not move, let alone think straight.

I didn’t know if I had any fight left inside of me. I didn’t know why I was the way I was… and I hated myself. I wanted to run away… I almost did. A grown woman, looking to run away from everything… including her family and the life that she had consistently fought to build.

I’ve taken a lot of time over the past three months – a needed time of quiet… at first I believed I needed to force my brain back into functionality… to return to where it had been, so I could quite simply get back to living life.

But each step I’ve taken in that direction, has reminded me that it’s not possible.

Eleven years since the trauma that began to crack me down the middle… and I finally feel as though I’ve been truly broken - a truly odd feeling for someone who thought she was so much further along in her journey. For the first time ever, I can see the shell of what I was, in pieces on the ground all around me… a small and fragile centre huddled up and exposed where the shell used to shine. For a decade I’ve tried to mend the cracks and pick up pieces and rebuild the puzzle. I wanted the shell. I wanted the normalcy. I wanted the lies.

For the first time I see the real me.

And though my shell is broken – unfixable – the inside is there in one piece, naked and humiliated, and scarred, and terrified to come into the light, terrified of the world seeing the small and fragile person within.

It took a decade plus a year.

Nine months was nothing. Nine months was the final breaking away… the changes that I had made through my work on myself, the mental illness, and the way I lived my life… forcing the final breaking apart.

I’ve frequently spoke of my journey – and that’s the funny thing about being on a journey… you never know what’s around the next bend. What new revelation, breakdown, or stall will occur as you observe the world both around and within you.

And life is like that… built up out of moments – both good and bad – each pattern of events unique… each person’s journey incomparable to another’s – although the similarities able to connect us.

So often, we look at one event - or a short period of our lives, where it's been rough... or where we've been out of control and unable to manage. Sometimes it's a period, where life has seemed to pass us by, as we have just floated through - struggling just to hold on to some semblance of sanity. I've been there. I've done that. 

Now I'm taking a few steps back... looking at the big picture. Letting the shell crumble. Allowing the vulnerability to shine through and make way for true growth. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. It's also the most valuable.

For the first time in a very long time, I can look back over eleven years and let out the breath that had been suffocating me. I can breathe clearly now... my head beginning to make sense again. The calm that I generally feel as I look awkwardly around me different, scary, and unfamiliar... but nice.

I still struggle. But the picture looks better now... open... real... complete in it's in-completion.

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