Hard Times

So…

Things have been a little rough around here.

I’m back on two psych meds to manage my PTSD and anxiety.  I have to have more exams and more tests and some surgery and possibly an IUD put in…

This all… terrifies me.

I’m working so fucking hard every day to do all the “right” things.  To do the research, to ask the right questions, to hold my boundaries, to make decisions, to manage my records, to get prescriptions filled (harder than it fucking should be sometimes!), to make phone calls…

Today I called it quits with my HMO and went rogue.  I made an appointment at a women’s clinic in my city.  The receptionist was nice and understanding when I told her what I was going through.  I almost cried on the phone.

I’m doing everything in the best way I’m capable of doing it…  But… There’s no way for any of this to be okay.

There’s no way to get through this period of my life without horrible wounds opening and bleeding…  Some of them literally.

It’s just so hard.

Last night I woke up screaming.

Again.

It’s down to about 3-4 times a week.

I alternate between anger and anxiety and tears and manic determination (usually when beta blockers have cut off all my adrenaline and I can’t feel the fear anymore.)

Anxiety is almost constant except when I take the beta blockers, but I can’t take the often because they cause dangerous mania – like I feel invincible type of mania, which is the most dangerous kind because that’s when people jump off buildings because they feel they can fly…

The first time I took it I took a full dose and Sir was at work and I managed to hurt myself and traumatize myself – I figured if I could work my way through all of my dilators (vaginismus), then I could handle the speculum just fine at my next exam.

I have four sizes of dilators.  When I started, I could barely use the smallest (the size of a tampon.)

After 10 years, I can use the next to smallest now fairly well and the third largest if I’m really slow and work up to it with a lot of relaxation exercises and breathing.

On beta blockers I decided to try the largest one.  It’s still smaller than a speculum.

Apparently there is only so much adrenaline that beta blockers can block.  I managed to find the top of that wall, crest it, and flood myself.  Sir found me curled in a ball, bleeding (worse than usual), and shaking from constant flashbacks.

So now I have to be super careful with beta blockers.

I have Ativan, too.  Ativan doesn’t completely stop the anxiety… not like beta blockers.  It brings it down to a background buzz… a cold knot in my stomach… that mostly doesn’t wake me up at night.

But it makes me depressed.

The day after taking an Ativan I spend most of the day lethargic, hopeless, imagining that I have cancer and thinking about whether it would be better to just give it all up and have a hysterectomy… or kill myself.

I have to be careful about taking Ativan.

Things were slightly better for a couple of hours the other day.  I was walking past Sir and he just brushed his hand against my hip… affectionately… gently… but somehow at that exact moment my brain had chosen to replay the tenaculum ripping my cervix (it did)… and the biopsy sound being inserted (which feels EXACTLY like a pedophile shoving a folded coat hanger through your cervix when you’re eight… just… FYI…)

Needless to say, the awesome coincidence of this particular flashback and Sir’s hand touching my hip led to an abrupt shift from fairly peaceful and normal conversation to screaming, flinging myself against a wall (away from Sir) and curling into a sobbing ball.

Sir apologized.

For touching me.

I told him not to apologize, and not to stop touching me.

Please.

He’s making an effort on both fronts.

But I can see the fear in his eyes.  Sub Brother’s, too.  Not afraid OF me, but for me…  Afraid of hurting me, afraid of breaking me…

I don’t know how to explain to them that… I’ve always been broken.

I was broken 36 years ago.

And sadly little since has done anything better than compound the damage.

Except Sir and Sub Brother.

Sir hesitates at night when I wake up screaming… not sure if he should hold me or scoot away so his body doesn’t touch mine accidentally as I flail.

And I can’t tell him which is right in any given moment… because… it is moment to moment…

Sometimes I desperately need to be held, to feel safe against his body, to feel cradled and protected.

And sometimes any touch sends my mind down a spiral of horror that… I can’t even describe – even thinking about trying to describe it makes my throat, literally, clench up and my stomach start doing that seizing thing like it’s going to try to throw up.

And that’s just my body.

Even R-dog is struggling.  He’s restless and anxious, he wants to be near me, but then he whines and can’t lay still.  He flops on top of me and puts his head on me, wherever I am.  He sits on his bed and stares intently at me and whines.

I… don’t know how to get through all of this.

It feels like a door has been opened that won’t ever close again.

No matter what… my health is going to force me to go through exams and procedures on a regular basis that I don’t know if I can handle… and probably for the rest of my life.

When I’m on beta blockers, I think that this is all a good thing… that I’m being forced out of my complacency in avoiding this aspect of my health.

But when reality comes back I remember it hasn’t been complacency, it’s been fucking survival, and I don’t know if I will survive without it.