Like every other aspect of my being, my experiences don't fit into a box. I don't quite qualify for anything and am left feeling unclaimed, unwanted, and insufficient. I am not understood or accepted. Always the borderline. I walk around the outskirts and wonder, If not here, then where am I supposed to be? 

My traumatic experience is no different, but it has left me feeling vulnerable and exposed.

I came to Daily Strength for other reasons...in search of another support group which I joined. Writing there, freely sharing my story and receiving support and acceptance has been liberating. Though I count any step no matter how small, significant, my progress does feel almost nonexistent. 

Hypervigelence. Flashbacks. Nightmares. Panic Attacks. Isolation. Insomnia. Exhaustion. Perpetual state of anxiety. These are the words that most accurately describe my every day life.

I have PTSD. I have not been brave enough to speak to someone who can formally diagnose it. But having studied psychology and dealt with anxiety for the majority of my life. I know enough to know this is different than what I used to experience...and I know the PTSD criteria like the back of my hand. 

My trauma was unlike that of others. At least the trauma that triggered this...

I have spent the last two years in support of a friend in an abusive marriage. Having spoken to people knowledgeable in the field, that abuse has been identified as sexual, financial, mild physical, verbal, mental, emotional, psychological, digital,...you get the picture. It's a lot. It's a lot for one person to live. Just one of those is too much for one person to have to endure. In the beginning of those two years, initially because I was supportive of my friend (before knowing about the abuse) and encouraged her to speak up for herself, to communicate her feelings rather than be trampled, and later because I did know the truth behind closed doors, this man came to hate me and made it his mission to separate me from my friend however he could.

Two years ago, I also made the decision to leave an extremely toxic work environment. I had been there 3 years and had been there 2 years prior with 2 year break for school in between. After all that time, I knew the owner personally--which meant I knew exactly how she worked, what made her tick, her bad habits and narcissistic tendencies. I was careful to keep her at arms length and never turn my back...but I sometimes slipped. By the end of my final 3 year stay, I had been stripped of so much power because I didn't do things "her way" that I knew it was becoming unhealthy for me to stay there. I, alone, did the work of 3. I was often the first one there and always took work home. I skipped meals--I would simply forget to eat because there was no time for lunch and I wouldn't realize I had worked through the day until it was time to go. I started skipping dinner as well--when I've gone all day without eating, even the thought of food is hard to swallow. I lost 17lbs in my final 3 months there. I knew it was time to go. I was starting my own business. Though my friend/boss pretended to be excited for me, I knew she felt threatened. It didn't make sense because I was only one person and could not possibly come up against a company of over 200 employees...but I was also one person, who was rejecting her power and ruling and claiming to be able to make it without her. That was enough.

These two seemingly unrelated stories are what shaped the entirity of the following two years and stole my life from me. I did start my company...and I continued to support my friend...but it came at a cost. 

Take one jealous and narcissistic husband and one insecure and narcissitic business owner with sociopathic tendencies and what you have is a deadly combination. You see, my friend also worked for this boss, and all her husband had to do was pick up her phone (which he did often) and text her to tell her she felt threatened by me and afraid for her life. That was all. That wasn't all that happened. But it was enough to get all the balls rolling towards me at once. 

I didn't know. I had planned to go to a conference just a few months after starting my company. I knew so many former coworkers would be there. People I wasn't necessarily friends with but had always been friendly. I greeted them as I normally would--one after the other, all hurried away from me or gave me weird looks without responding at all. At first, I assumed they were just eager to get to where they were going but deep down I knew they weren't. The conference hadn't started yet and everyone was just socializing...with anyone that wasn't me. It happened again and again and again. Too much to be coincidence. My friend was there. I spoke to her and she pushed me away. Pretended not to know me though we had just been on the phone earlier that day. She treated me just as everyone else did. I found out later that her husband had reached out to her boss...I found out later that everyone had been warned about me, warned to stay away because I was crazy and could snap at any minute. No one defended me. People I knew for years chose to stay away from me rather than come to me for truth. Nobody even told me what was happening. I was a leper. I was the person people crossed the street to get away from. When I became upset about it over the course of the weekend as they became more and more obvious in their treatment of me (still not knowing why), I called someone out on it asking her to leave me alone so I could speak to my friend whom she was trying to physically pull away from me. They took my upset state as enough to solidify the claims of insanity. More rumors were spread. I was taken to court. By my friend, dragged by her husband to make claims against me...the girl I called out tried but didn't have any evidence of my having done anything. My friend did not either, but her husband coerced her to write accusation after accusation--all things he himself had done to her. That was enough. My friend made sure she went into that courtroom alone (without him) and she told the judge that her friend and colleague had overreacted and that she herself did not feel threatened by me and wanted to drop it all. The judge accepted and moved on. I was cleared. But she still didn't defend me. Still didn't speak up. Still didn't tell the truth. We were not there because her friend overreacted. We were there because her abusive husband forced her to take it there. My charges were dropped but the support and cover-ups and "innocence" was still his. What everyone belived was that she did me a favor...something I did not deserve. I was still exactly who they had all said I was. My name was never cleared...my integrity, my credibility...gone. 

She stayed in my life...in secret. I was always her secret. Now not only could her husband not know she still spoke to me but her work couldn't either. I lost all of my "friends" ...anyone that was ever in my life. I was in a town I was hated but I couldn't leave partly because I didn't want to give them the satisfaction...partly because I knew I was the only one that knew the truth and my friend needed someone to support her and rescue her from time to time when necessary. I couldn't leave her. I stayed. I stayed and took on whatever identity she needed me to take. We spoke in secret via an email account under an alias...at times in the past we used snapchat or skype...both under an alias. If we spoke on the phone, I called from an unknown number and we could only speak for short periods. (Her phone logs were being monitored). I lost my identity along with everything else.

I stopped going places almost immediately after the court incident...even church. I kept running into people. I never ran into anyone before then but now they were everywhere. All gave me the same looks from a distance. Any that did approach and speak to me only wanted to see how crazy I was. I guess they thought I wouldn't notice what they were doing. I couldn't risk it. I stopped leaving my apartment other than for work. I worked alone so I knew it was the one place I wouldn't run into anyone. But it was incredibly and increasingly lonely with each day I was more aware of how alone I was in the world. I had to move after a few months. I knew I was being watched...looked for....followed. My two harassers and their minions (whoever they might be), would circle around my apartment trying to find my car to confirm I was still there. Still in town. Planning their next move to try again to get me out. The nightmares never stopped. I cycled through periods of insomnia and periods of such extreme exhaustion that I couldn't help but sleep. But the nightmares never stopped. Even when I was awake. I could see them watching me. I could see the looks I always received when others would run into me. I could hear the words of every rumor that had made it's way back to me over and over and over in my head. On a loop I couldn't stop. I would picture everything that had happened and feel exactly as I did when they happened. I would try to speak out but no one could hear me anyway. The panic attacks were constant at that point. I couldn't do anything to fill my lungs with oxygen or remove the pressure from my chest...only hope that it wouldn't get worse. 

I learned to not ever show that I needed anyone. I had only one friend and I was her secret and she could never be there for me because of her situation. Everything was always on her timing...and I knew what she was going through was bigger than any problem I could have so I always put her first. Until recently. Two years of putting her first...and I got to a point where I needed my friend. Everything was crumbling. Life was too much to handle. There were too many difficult and impossible decisions to make alone. I wanted to disappear. I needed to feel I was worth....something. I reached out to her and she rejected me. I tried to get myself together and I did for a while. A week or two later, I tried reaching out for help again and was rejected...and I completely lost it. It wasn't the first time. It wasn't the first time rejection pushed me to the edge. It certainly wasn't the first time I tried in vain to take my own life. I didn't want to do it...I reached out to her because I didn't want to do it. I just needed someone to save me. I just needed someone to show me I was worth saving...worth anything. I called her. I knew I wasn't allowed to. I knew he monitored her phone. He had my number blocked. I had several internet-based numbers just from having multiple gmail accounts. I also knew what websites I could use to call, text, or email anonymously or with an alias if necessary. Those are the ones I used. She refused to respond to me. She disappeared from my life for a few days...then she wrote to tell me how much my actions made her hate me. 

It had happened before but never to that degree. What I realized this time is that no matter where I started...what made me need someone...what issues I was dealing with...what I always went back to was that she chose to defend a rapist over me. Yes, he did so much more than just rape her, and those things upset me equally, or so I thought, but in the end that is what stood out. That is what played in my head over and over. The truth that was greater than all the others. Always. What I had to come to terms with this time around was that I needed her to stand up to him for that. I needed her to not accept it or make excuses for it. I needed her to fight against sexual abuse....because I couldn't...because I can't.

For years (around 20, maybe more), I've battled the suspicion that I was molested or sexually abused in some way in my childhood. This started around age 11 when I realized I had no memories of my father who had always been home...He claimed we were close once. I don't remember being or not being prior to age 9. I simply knew that after that age we were not...and that I didn't want to be. He made me uncomfortable. Physically unconfortable. In ways that I couldn't understand or explain. Just his presence but also the things he would say to me. I hated being around him. When I was 11, he yelled at my mother and accused her brother of raping me. He said it in front of me as if I wasn't there. I knew how wrong he was. I knew my uncle had never touched me or done anything to me. But even being only 11, I remember immediately thinking he had said that because he was trying to cover up something. I just never knew what. I pushed the suspicions aside for the most part but they resurface every couple of years for one reason or another. I never have any proof. I never remember more prior to age 9. I never know anything other than the truth of how I felt around him and how I still as an adult feel. I also remember no one else seemed to suspect anything. Even when he made comments that shouldn't be made to a little girl...or a daughter...he would say the jokingly and no one would react how I needed them to. No one would react how I did inside. So I learned to keep quiet...I assumed I was the problem. Having no proof and only the views of others to go on...I was forced to keep quiet about something I suspected. Something horrible. 

And that's in addition to the emotional and mental abuse I endured as a child. 

Everthing in the past two years of my life has been both a new trauma and a trigger. Everything about what my friend is dealing with has been a trigger as well...some to points I didn't even realize. 

Dealing with one means dealing with all....I'm not sure I can. Especially without a friend....Without anyone.