Rock Bottom

PTSD is born from fear. It's natural for people to feel the "fight-or-flight" response when faced with fear. In people with PTSD, that "fight-or-flight" response is changed, or damaged, and essentially, becomes simply,"flight." In a lot of cases, "flight" during PTSD episodes is simply dissociating.

You don't know when you've hit rock bottom, until you've seen rock bottom in hindsight. In my case, rock bottom was October 15, 2010. I had had several dissociation episodes at school, and after a horrible meeting with a counselor that worked for my school, I remember calling my best friend. I couldn't stop shaking, crying, or getting "out of my head," so-to-speak. I can't remember what I said, but I can't imagine it was a great conversation. When I got home from school that day, I relayed my day to Eric, again, shaking, crying, and essentially, feeling like I was losing my mind. In hindsight, on October 15, I had already lost my mind. I had lost it to PTSD.

I don't remember the conversations I had later that day, I don't remember what I did. But I will never forget the intense fear that I felt. I couldn't stop my mind from racing, I couldn't stop moving about my house, and I couldn't focus on any one task. I just wandered aimlessly, crying, shaking, and wondering if maybe someone should take me to hospital. To say I was emotionally distraught would be an understatement.

I felt like I was staring at the shambles that was my life. I once was confident, I once was excited about teaching, I once was a person people wanted to be around. With PTSD, you don't succumb to fear. Instead, fear envelopes you. It's not a shallow fear, it's a deep-seeded terror that you absolutely, cannot escape.

I don't remember if I ate dinner that night. But I do remember after dinner, there was a knock on my door. Sitting on the couch, my anxiety was sky-high, and that knock sent me running into the kitchen. I remember looking in at myself - my eyes red from crying all day, my clothes hanging off me because I had lost so much weight. My hair a mess from dragging my fingers through it all day and my make-up long gone. I stood in the kitchen, hiding from the front door, terrified of what that knock would bring.

I remember hearing Eric let someone in as I stood huddled against the kitchen cabinets, hands cupped around my mouth and nose, breath held. Who was it who was it who was it?  When my best friend rounded the corner to my kitchen, I remember losing it. I sighed out a huge breath and instantly began convulsing with sobs that wracked my body. She carried a basket of goodies, like bubbles for a soothing bath, and a mug with a smurf on it that said, "I Love ME."

I think in that instant, when she saw me, she knew that no basket was going to fix what was going on in my head. So she hugged me, and held me, and told me I was ok. She had driven 45 minutes on a Tuesday night, to simply make me feel better. But the basket, the hugs, the pats on the back, wasn't enough ammunition for the war I was waging in my head.

I was able to calm down enough to talk to her. I don't remember what we talked about, but I remember she didn't stay long. Sometimes, I wonder if it's because what she saw scared her. It scared me.

When she left, Eric and I talked about going to the hospital. I felt like I was losing my mind. Instead, I called into work, sick, for the next morning, and told myself, and Eric, I was going to make an appointment with the family doctor the next morning.

I cried throughout the night, barely slept, and the next morning, made that appointment. I truly believe that appointment is what saved me. When I finally met with the doctor, I remember telling him that I thought something was wrong with me. Something was very, very wrong with me. I remember him probing me with questions, and I remember finally telling him everything that was going on. I started from the beginning, gave him the Reader's Digest version, and he patted me on the knee. He told me he'd be right back, and from there, left me, curled up on the exam table, still crying. When he came back, his exact words were, "We're going to get you in to see someone who will be in your corner." And with that, he made an appointment for me to see a psychologist across town, and filled a prescription for what a friend jokingly calls, "Little Blue Crazy Pills."

In hindsight, that was the worse day of my life. People will say the day they lose a loved one, the day they lose a job, the day they lose a pet is the worse day of their life. But the worse day of my life was the day I felt like I could not get away from the immense fear I felt. It was overpowering, more-so than the grief I felt the day my dad died, and the days thereafter.

After several appointments with the psychologist, psychiatrist, and a lot of more Little Blue Crazy Pills, it was determined that my fear stemmed from self-fulfilled prophecy. If someone tells you something enough times, you begin to believe it. For three years, I had been told I was a horrible teacher, a horrible person, and I should leave. And I began to believe it. From there, that thought bubble grew until it was consuming my entire world and all thought processes.

My psychiatrist wrote on a piece of paper, "This situation does not define me as a teacher or a human being." I took that piece of paper and copied the mantra on post-it notes. Bright orange post-it notes that adorned any place I would look in my house. On the mirror in the bathroom, by the closet where I dressed in the morning, at the bottom of the stairs, and tucked safely inside my wallet.

As time went on, as I was exonerated, and as I began to take down the beasts that had taken root in my mind, those orange post-it notes began to lose their stickiness. As they fell, one by one, off the mirror, wall, door, steering wheel, and anywhere else I had posted them, so did the monsters that lived inside my head.

The mind is a powerful thing, in the fact that even after fear had enveloped it, it was able to bounce back. My confidence returned, my personality returned, and a love for life returned.

In hindsight, October 15 was rock bottom. But with rock bottom comes another direction, and really, the only direction.

Up.