This past spring I went for testing with a neuropsychologist because we were worried about residual symptoms that stuck around after my psychosis, such as fumbling over words, using the wrong words, and memory loss. After interviews and extensive diagnosis, she came to the conclusion that I don’t have ADHD or Bi-Polar, but Chronic PTSD. She explained to me that as I have been navigating through life, experiences have piled on top of the things I never addressed with therapy. Basically my psyche formed little defense mechanisms that were intended to protect me from perceived danger. According to her, what looks like ADHD, which was what her first diagnosis would have been if not for the trauma, is not. It is Chronic PTSD. It kind of surprised me, because I don’t have flashbacks or anything like that. I’ve been through therapy in rehab, outpatient and in the hospital. I’m still skeptical, but willing to accept it.
Since I got that diagnosis, I’ve been trying to figure it out on my own, so I can deal with it faster than I could get a therapy appointment. This is pretty much how I have been healing over the last 20 years or so. There are things that are so deep and hurtful I do not like to get trapped in the thinking about them. They’ve been locked up in the no-no zone in my head. These things I pushed away from me, I refused to think about them. After I moved back to Hondo in 8th grade, I can remember laying on the couch at my dad’s house trying to sleep. Thoughts would enter my head and I would imagine pushing them down out of my body. After a while, I forgot a lot of what happened. To this day, I find it hard to remember a lot of detail about that time in my life.
Those events locked in me, I believe, are the last hurdle I need to climb over in order to free myself. Even though I’m nervous about it, I am also hopeful. My therapy appointment is next week. They didn’t have an opening for two months, so I have been patiently waiting. I’m hoping through seeing a trauma specialist they will be able to train my brain to stop doing the bad behavior that has been keeping me from living the life I know I should be living.
This blog post was going to be about how it is bad to look back on the past. When I do, I get stuck there sometimes. Even the good times. Then I wrote, and revised, and revised and came to a whole other conclusion. It is essential to look back into the past sometimes. The trick is not getting stuck back there, though.
The reason I started this blog post the other day was to show how looking back into the past can be a bad thing. The other day I found the band we used to follow around had uploaded their album to Spotify. This is music that was so important to me back when I was like 20-22. When I put the music on, it made tears come to my eyes, I was so happy. I’m sentimental like that. To me, songs can be like friends. When I play them, its as if I’m spending time with an old friend. I’m an over emotional person, lots of things make me cry. When I heard the first song, I was taken back to the time I loved that album. It was very special to me and I listened to it a lot back then. We used to go around with the band when they played around town. There’s a whole story to that, but just say we were friends with them.
After I listened to the album, the rest of the day I was in melancholy. As usual, I wasn’t sure why I was feeling bad. I even wrote “guilt” on a post-it note and hung it on my little cork board. It helps to name the feeling I’m having so I can figure out why. When I finally realized why I felt guilty, it sort of made me indignant. The reason is, I started to look at other people’s Instagram and compared myself to other people I used to know. Over the years of me acting crazy and drink and drugging, I was sort of left behind. That group of friends still keep in touch. Most of them don’t talk to me anymore.
This blog post started out way different than it ended up. After I started telling my story, I realized all the things in my life I have and how thankful I am for everyone in my life now. How things play out the way they were meant to. It made me change my mind about it being so horrible to look into the past. Now, I realize, it can be quite helpful. The trick is not to let yourself get stuck back there. Carl Jung calls it working with your Shadow Self.
I’m like the phoenix. Throughout my life I’ve created messes with my messed up mind. I’ve destroyed a lot of situations in my life. There has been a series of burning it all down then clawing myself back out of the hole, only to rise again as a beautiful bird – like a phoenix. Every single time I was knocked down, I got back up. Considering all the things I lived through and overcame actually made me realize I’m a lot stronger than I think.
My life has been pretty great, even though it has been harder because of my neuroses. Even though things were rough sometimes, there has also been even more great times. I’ve found that is the way life is. Good and bad, yin and yang.
We can’t escape suffering in this life. We all can, though, learn how to deal with it. We’ll see how it goes. I’m going to keep writing about my struggle with mental illness because it helps other people. It isn’t easy to talk about because some people will think I’m crazy. Well, let me tell you, I have been in a psych hospital and I will say, there are a lot of people out in the world who think they are normal and are actually crazy as a loon but completely normal in their own head. At least everyone in the psych ward knows they’re crazy and are able to admit it and make changes for the better.
Contesting Normal 