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sprytling 
1:29pm, November 23, 2008
I talked with someone for the first time today. I'm 58 years old and I've never told anyone how bad things were when I was growing up. All my life I've had bad dreams of my parents and my mother hurting my father and throwing him out all the time, and of being awakened from sleep with them fighting in my bedroom. I remember my father lying on the kitchen floor with my mother standing over him and telling him to die, after she hit him in the head, once with a big seashell, another time with a steel soup ladle and yet another time with a baseball bat. When she managed to throw him out, she turned on me. I was the eldest of six kids.
I was 21 when I ran away and married a man I met and knew for about a month. I stayed married to him for ten years. He wrote bad checks, conned people and lied to me, and I had two children and we were always running away from whatever he had done. So we moved alot, and I was really frightened all the time. One day a man knocked on my door and told me that my husband had invited him. He beat and raped me and I couldn't do anything because I was afraid he would hurt my children. The funny thing is that mixed in with the bad dreams, the rapist has my mother's face sometimes. I've been so afraid I was crazy for years.
I've been waiting to grow up and forget all the bad things. When do the bad dreams go away. All of this happened years and years ago and I divorced and remarried 27 years ago.
I'm physically so ill now, and I get panic attacks. Not all the time...but when I'm not having one, I'm afraid I will. I guess I'm a mess. But I want to try and find my way out of this maze I've created for myself. I am afraid to leave my home anymore, but even if I wasn't, I don't feel well enough to go out. But my doctor thinks I should go to physical therapy. I've applied for disability so I can afford to fix my car. Today the psychologist that Social Security sent me to said that there was a way to help me with the panic attacks. She suggested counseling and she said for what I'd told her, I wasn't so strange. I don't know if I agree...but I really want to try.
Comments
I'm just feeling a little down right now. I did raise five children and I've had a good life too. But I'm so tired all the time, I think now that they're raised and on their own, I need to help myself. Everything seems like such a struggle.
sprytling
I've had double pneumonia since I wrote the above. It's September 18 and I still don't feel really well, but I've been going to physical therapy three times a week, except for when I was on the antibiotics. My hip feels better, though it's still weak and I'm still walking with a stick. I started seeing a counselor who I think was crazier than I am. I started seeing her in June, and stopped at the end of July. I just started seeing someone else. She seems a little flighty, but at least she started the first meeting with trying to find out about me. The other one was telling me that I hated my mother and that I never should have had children because I was passing on a bad seed. I was more depressed after speaking with her than I was before.
I did get approved for disability and Vocational Rehab is trying to help me get a job, but we've decided that perhaps it would be better if I get a little further with therapy than I have. I'm really terrified to leave my house...I do, but it takes every ounce of energy to not turn around and run back inside. I'm so scared I'll have a panic attack while I'm driving.
Anyway, I found a cognitive therapist who says she can deal with helping me to get out of this maze I have myself in. I don't understand why it takes so much energy to concentrate. I'm taking classes online and I've earned my associate degree in Business Administration with a concentration in accounting. Now I'm working on a bacheor's in paralegal. But if I'm doing my schoolwork, I can't concentrate on anything else at all. It' takes ALL of my energy to concentrate on anything. I haven't really read a book in years...I feel as if my brain is scrambled eggs. But I have really good grades in school. I don't understand.
sprytling