My official diagnosis is post-traumatic stress disorder. No surprise there, right? What is a surprise, to me, is that it is getting worse. Which would be why I’m trusting my therapist when she says that shattering the bone into a million pieces will actually make it heal better in the long run. Okay, so maybe those are my words, but replace bone with psyche and you have the image I display when asked to “relive” the memories. Next session will be the first one to discuss an actual memory from my past.

As I’ve mentioned before, most of these memories are neatly tucked away in the darkest recesses of my mind. I’ve lost the catalog files and have no idea how to retrieve them, which is more than okay with me. However, there are a few that refuse to leave me alone and I  fight them on a near daily basis to be gone. I will bring up one of those, since I have no way of keep the little monster in the bag, anyways. 

This has presented problems in the past. The last time I wrote about one of the memories here on this blog, I lost days worth of time in memories. I know this is going to repeat itself, as my mind has been a powerful instrument in keeping myself sane and ready to take part of society as a normal, functioning adult. This will be its undoing, it seems, as well. My next therapy session is still five days away and I’m already having glimpses of time removed. I had taken a nap and my husband woke me up (as I requested) after a specific amount of time. I went to the restroom, but forgot that I was meaning to stay awake and fell back asleep. I thought I had merely awoke to use the bathroom. Being tired exaggerates this problem immensely.

What prompted me to even start writing again, though, was my dreams. I’m taking a medication for a health issue that has a side effect of incredibly realistic dreams. If you can imagine, this fun side effect is making life a bit more difficult than it needs to be right now. However, some of these dreams seem to be my subconscious speaking directly to me and I want to write them down before I forget them.

I just woke up from two woven dreams. One was about going to Disneyland with a childhood best friend and both of our families. In reality, over 10 years ago, I had to “break up” with her in order to escape my problems and survive it mentally. In this dream, I chose to leave my family (and spouse?), while her and I enjoyed our time together there. I missed her so much and the ache was tremendous after I awoke. That friendship will never be rekindled, as we are two incredibly different people now, and that is not the desire anyways. The point was the missed friendship when I needed it the most. She was the first person I had ever told about my dad sexually abusing me and it was while it was happening. But before I moved away, I told her that I was an habitual liar (which was true to a point) and that she shouldn’t believe me when I say crazy things like that. She seemed unsure and I reiterated the previous lies I had been caught in. She seemed content with that and I walked away heart-broken, but ready to move forward.

I want to cry just thinking about how badly I truly needed her back then. I wish I had seen her continued friendship as helping hand instead of a way to emotionally hold me back from my escape. I thought I needed a clean break from my life and it did work. I removed myself from the problem and while I’ve had my bumps, I’ve held onto sanity with an iron grip. I just recognize now my recovery should have started a lot sooner. Her friendship would have been part of that.

The second dream was about the day after the  Disneyland trip. I wanted to go back and enjoy a second day with my best friend. Apparently, my husband (whom was a placeholder in the dream, as he was neither my first or current husband) was with me and we all were sitting down for breakfast. My mother said something that upset my dad and he started being incredibly rude to her. I thought he was taking it a bit far already, but then he called her a whore. I flipped out. Everyone was shocked by both his words and my reaction. I went off on him and then stomped away, husband in tow. My husband was unsure how to respond, but asked whether I was right in reacting so strongly. I was aghast that he would question me like that, since I would never tolerate any friend or family to be treated like that.

After a while, we came back to the table and ate together in silence. My parents had apparently made up and said they were too exhausted from the previous day’s trip to the park, so they wanted to go see the latest movie that had just been released. They asked if we wanted to join them and I refused, saying I’d like to meet my best friend at the park for a second time. Reluctantly, they agreed to go on their own and drove us over to the park. Once we arrived, my dad walked me across the street (and I’m losing the memory so I’m not sure why) and said that he was upset about my earlier reaction at breakfast. He said that I didn’t know the whole story and wasn’t there for all of it so I shouldn’t be getting mad at him. I was shocked and told him that no matter what my mother did, she doesn’t deserve to be disrespected like that and nobody has the right to say what he did. He got mad and marched back to the car.

There was more to the dream, but I don’t remember it anymore. What I do see, from the remnants that I have written down and still remember, is that I am communicating with myself. It is painful and if asked, I’d probably tell you that I’d like to erase this year from existence. However, no matter how far I fall in this process, the important part is that I’m fully prepared to make the climb back up to a healthier mentality. I do not want to be plagued by my past any longer. I know that I’ve grown strong on my own, but I can do better, with assistance of my therapist, husband and family. I can do this. But it is going to get worse before it gets better.