PTSD

"You are a walking poster child for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder."

What? I remember saying something like, "But I've never been in combat."

The psychologist looked at me and said, "Yes, you have. You've been in combat for the last three years."

And then I wept. Finally, there was a name for these feelings. There was a name for my debilitating, jagging crying episodes. There was a name for the out-of-body experiences I kept having. I wasn't losing my mind.

But I was. 

After more conversations, more sessions, and more comprehension behind those words, I finally came to grips with the fact that I, indeed, had endured three years of things that someone should never endure.

 I am not a soldier. I am not a prisoner of war. I am not supposed to have this disorder.

But I did.  

So thus began the long road to where I am today. There were days where I felt like I couldn't even get out of bed. I was tired from not being able to sleep the night before, having had horrible nightmares that kept me up once I was able to finally fall asleep. I leaned on my friends, husband and sometimes family to help me through the toughest days. There were days, a lot of days, where I really felt like I couldn't.

But I can.

And I can say that now. I did overcome this. After many sessions, I was more accurately diagnosed with Acute Stress Disorder, which is a subset of PTSD. Mainly, it's all the same symptoms, with greater emphasis on dissociative states.

I remember describing the dissociative state to the psychologist  like I wasn't in control of myself. I knew what was going on around me, and I was responding to those things around me, but it was like the walls were closing in. I would get incredibly dizzy, I couldn't focus on things and God only knows how I was actually able to hold it together in front of those who had absolutely no idea what was happening. I was able to hold conversations, do daily tasks and generally lead a normal life. But while holding those conversations, I could barely hear the person who was talking at me, and I couldn't make eye contact. I would shake, have to grab ahold of something that would keep me upright, and generally, get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

My brain was waging war on the world around me as a way to protect itself from the dangers that I had been enduring for the last three years.

A dissociative state happens directly after being stimulated by a dangerous reminder of what I was battling. That dangerous reminder was the classroom. The school. The thing that I had to walk into every. single. day. The thing that I had had such a passion, energy and drive to get into. I wanted to get out.

So I dissociated. Frequently, I couldn't remember exactly what had happened while I was dissociating. I remembered who I had talked to, but I didn't always remember what was talked about. I remembered trying to make my mind focus on what was happening around me, having to concentrate on my breathing, trying to hide the fact that not just my hands, but my body was shaking.

It was like a really bad panic attack. Almost every day. Add in sleepless nights, a diet that consisted of Oreo Cookies and water, and I was on the precipice of a dangerous downward spiral.

It took several months and love and support from my closest friends, family and amazing husband to trip through the realization of what had, and was, happening to me. There were early morning and late night phone calls, several nights where I really wanted to give up, and self-realization that I was truly in one of the darkest places I had ever been.

So I left teaching. Although partway through that last year, I began to get back to myself as a human being, and by March, I saw brief glimmers of my confidence, my sense of humor and most importantly, my happiness. When I walked out of those school doors in June, it was a huge sense of relief. I had no job, I had no idea what I was going to do. I would be paid through August and I didn't have a care in the world until then. I was going to concentrate on me.

That was the most transforming decision I have ever made. I found a job with a non-profit, working a desk job, still working with students and students with disabilities, but very distantly, and by August, I felt strong again. I appreciated my life again. So Eric and I decided to have a family.

But in the healing depths of my mind, I missed music. I missed teaching every day. I loved going to work at my non-profit organization, screwing around with my boss, going out to lunch every day, being paid a below-mediocre salary to answer phones, scour the internet and generally, focus on my pregnancy.

In reality, I am so thankful I was pregnant nearly the entire year I worked for this non-profit, because it allowed me to focus on that, rather than what I was missing most. I never had weekend commitments. I was able to spend an entire week at home with my family over Christmas. I was able to decorate the nursery on weeknights instead of being so completely exhausted that I could hardly stand upright.

I needed to give myself, and my brain, time to heal from my ordeal. And I did. It was a year of rest and relaxation. There was going to be another year of rest and relaxation with my non-profit job, and my new baby boy, but God had other plans.

Long story short, insurance for my non-profit job was not bad. We only had to pay $250 out of pocket to have James. That's it. A $15 co-pay on prescriptions and doctor appointments. But once we had James, prices sky-rocketed. We looked into private insurance, but that too was going to be astronomical.

Eric and I had a blow-out one night about the cost of this insurance, and he dropped the "if you were still teaching" bomb. Oh no, he didn't. *snap snap snap*

So to spite him, I looked on the internet. I remember a couple years prior, I had mentioned to a friend that maybe I would be good in a smaller school. If the small 2A/3A school just north of us had an opening, maybe I would try for it. And as I scoured the internet that night, I tripped across that opening. There were only 72 hours left before the job closed. I called a few friends, crying as I asked them what they thought. I scrambled the next day to gather references and letters of recommendation. I was still on maternity leave, and with James being so young and sleeping all the time, I was able to scrounge everything together.

And then I got an interview. And then I got the job.

When I said I would take it, I was terrified. I felt ok. But was I really ok? This was the doubt that would creep into my mind daily when I was in the clutches of PTSD. And it was creeping it's way back. Could I really come back from this? Was I truly ready?

I felt ok as I went into the main office to get my keys at the end of July. I felt ok getting my classrooms ready for my students. I felt ok getting my offices together, and picking out music, and rearranging the rooms. Maybe I was ok.

Eric is the most supportive person I have ever met, and I remember on my first day of school he said, "Good luck, you'll be great."

And I was.

That first day of school was exciting because I met my new students. My students had fun in my classes. I joked with them, I got to know a few of them, and here I was, with a smile on my face while walking out of the building that afternoon.

It wasn't the "it's going to be ok" moment I was hoping for. It was the "I am ok" moment I never thought would come. I am ok. I am a survivor, in one of the greatest senses of the word.

Someday, I'll be ready to share, fully, the ordeal that put me where I was two and a half years ago. I have never actually written it down. I have boxes upon boxes, copies upon copies, reminding me of what exactly happened. But I have never written it down beginning to end. There are details that only Eric knows. Part of me is still scared of the other shoe dropping, as it had so many times before. But other parts of me knows that it won't, because it can't. So many things happened, there is nothing more left.  

So many days I felt like things were falling apart. But maybe, just maybe, things were actually falling into place...