All in Your Head

This has been sitting in my drafts folder for a few days now.  Of everything I've ever written, its the one I want to share the most, but am finding it hardest to do so.  I want people to understand.  But am afraid of looking weak.  Of admitting I am.  Its time to let go of that pride.  To let the demons out.  I'm not asking for sympathy.  Or pity.  Not even understanding as I don't think you can truly give it unless you've been here too.  All I'm asking for is the recognition that what you see isn't always what you get, it isn't as black and white as it seems, and that some things are much more than skin deep....  


And maybe a hug if you see me and I'm looking down...  Some days that helps more than anything else...

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Its all in your head.  Such is what people say about any form of mental illness.  I won't dispute that.  But what I'm going to do is blow the rest of that myth out of the water.  What's in your head can be very, very real...  Its not always "just grief."  And sometimes it takes more than just time to heal...

I don't think my "issues" all started the day Kurt died.  I've always been a glass if half empty kinda gal.  Some would say pessemistic.  I called it realistic.  I can't say I was ever really happy, totally happy.

Until I met him.  And my glass overfloweth.

And then he died.  And my glass shattered.

I couldn't refill that glass if I tried.  And in its shattering, it cut me in places no bandage could heal.  With that, came the depression.  Full blown, all out.  Laying in bed not finding any purpose strong enough to drag yourself up.  Not wanting to.  Sitting on the couch, staring out the window because you don't know what else to do.  And wouldn't have the strength to do it anyway.  And wanting nothing more than to die. And be willing to do just about anything to do it.  I've been there .  I also know the little white pills to combat that work, but not as the miracle drug I hoped.  They don't make me want to live again.  They don't take the hurt away.  But they give me enough get up and go to get up and go.  To do what needs to be done.  In essence, to try to live.  And I am trying.

I hate that I need them.  Hate the fact that two or three days without them puts me right back on that path to no where... on that path to Kurt.  Hate the fact that I depend on them... that they are in many ways keeping me alive.  I've tried to take myself off.  Tried to tell myself I was okay.  Only to find myself up at wee hours contemplating life and death in ways no person should...  I know I need them.  I hate that I need them...  But right now I need them...

Then there's the anxiety.  Before Kurt, I was self-conscious, but comfortable.  Able to speak in front of crowds.  Sit in groups and not feel like every eye was on me.  With Kurt I didn't care how many eyes are on me.  Without Kurt, I feel as though everyone is watching me, judging me.... and I don't like it.  Its like the room is closing in.  Even in smaller, intimate groups.  The breathing speeds up, the chest constricts.  The stomach knots.  The world goes fuzzy.  Sometimes they leave me on the floor, gasping for air.  Sometimes I can walk through them as though nothing is happening.  But on the inside, I feel it.  There's drugs for that too.  I used to hate them as well.  Resist taking them until it was too late.  Until the mental pain turned physical.  Now I depend on them.  To get through that which involves a crowd, be it a dinner out, or a meeting at work.  Sometimes just to get through the moments alone.

Sometimes, I worry, that I need them too much...

And then there's the ones that the pills don't help.  The big white elephant in the room, that only I seem to see.  The one I can't talk about....  That only a select few know about...

Until now...

The mental health professionals call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I hate that name.  Personally rebel against that diagnosis.  Not sure I believe it.  This wasn't trauma.  Trauma is long and repeated.  Its big.  It happens in the middle of military combat.  The result of repeated violations.  Huge natural disasters.  Not by simply finding your husband dead in a tub of water.  Not even witnessing.  Just finding.  In my eyes, that this has affected me so profoundly is a sign of my weakness.  My inability to deal.  To accept. To cope.  It has not happened to me.  I have done this to myself.  People have survived worse than this - horrific acts.  And been "okay."  I am not strong.  This is my failure.  Which is why I fight against it.  And yet I'm losing the fight.  Which means I have failed even more.  It's a never ending battle....

But whatever the name, the effects are real.  The flashbacks come with little warning.  A bathroom door.  A police car.  Running water.  A flashing light.  They take me back to the moments like I never left.  Put me back in the situation, like I am living it again.  Like I could touch him, feel him.  Save him.  Even experienced as often as they are, the emotions are as raw as the day they were new.  And every time I emerge from this alternate reality to find him still gone, the guilt that I could do so little comes back stronger and longer.

Its my own personal chokehold on the past.

Just as real as the memories, is the never ending sense of dread.  The constant belief that someone close to you will die.  The huge lump in my throat when I walk out of my son's bedroom at night, fearing he will not be alive the next morning.  The vivid images of our car going over the bridge, him in the back seat and me unable to save him.  Our house burning down with only me escaping.  The panic when he makes so much as a sigh in his bedroom.  The panic when he doesn't make a sound.

Afraid of reliving the past in my dreams, I lay awake some nights, reliving the past in my present.

When I'm alone, I escape.  Go somewhere else, to a place I'm not even aware of.  No awareness means no hurt.  No pain.  No guilt.  No memories.  And even when my mind tells me its time to come back, there are moments my body resists.  Its safer there.  Or at least it hurts a little less....

They say time heals all things.  I'm not so sure.  I fear I'm broken beyond repair.  That there's not even enough of me left to salvage.  The Chrystal I was - she lays under the rubble somewhere, perhaps already ashes like her husband.

Maybe it is all in my mind.  I'm no expert.  This territory is new.  There's a lot I don't know.  But I can tell you the mind is a very, very powerful thing......

Sometimes too powerful.

Try as I may, I can't seem to defeat it.