In The Beginning - Flashbacks

I think it was 2004 when I began to realize something was up. My cat died. She was my life – my little Penny. Only eleven years old. It was hard, really hard. She had been my constant since the age of fifteen or so, since I returned from camp broken. Major hives had sent me to the Emergency Room three times while up there, finally they said I couldn’t go back. They were internal, I couldn’t breathe. And I returned to what was supposed to be my mom’s cat, who became the only member of the family I could trust.

Penny’s story, like all of the ones I have, is a long one. We battled cancer for two years and I watched helpless as tumour after tumour erupted across her skin. Her fur was falling out in little clumps across my apartment, often with decayed flesh still attached.

I expected grief when she passed. I expected sadness. I didn’t expect flashbacks. Especially not ones so vivid that in my sleep I was throwing myself into the wall, scratching at my skin, waking up with bruises and bloody arms and legs. The worst one I threw myself out of bed – hard – and landed on my stomach, face, and hands. It felt like I broke my nose.

First I went to a grief counselor that specialized in the human/animal bond. She was provided free by the veterinary office I had taken Penny too. It was supposed to be ‘group’ but I was the only one there. We talked about how Penny opened the world to me – she visited neighbors, I walked her on a lease, everyone responded positively to her. We also talked a bit about my homelife and that was when she suggested I go see a therapist to deal with that. She also told me to expect a lot of stuff to come back up as Penny was the gatekeeper – the last vestige of that life- and kept the demons at bay. With her gone, everything rushed through.

The one I remember the most, that wasn’t just the huge black shadow deeper than night with storm-cloud eyes, was a dream I had when I was maybe a freshman in highschool. I remember because it was one I tried to tell my mom in an effort to understand.

In the dream I am in the attic and my mother is coming after me. She’s just pale waxy skin and those grey-blue eyes of hers that when I was young envied as more beautiful than my hazel, and as I aged feared as they were just thunderclouds. She keeps coming after me and I’m screaming and screaming and the only thing I have on me is this whistle she had given my brother and I. It was a loud one on a mustard yellow lanyard and we were to blow it if we were ever being attacked – but they were taken away since the only place we used them was inside with her. So the whistle is in my hand as she’s coming after me so I just keep swinging it at her and finally it hits her in the forehead with an awful squishy thud and imbeds in there. I remember her falling, then the look as she is on the wooden floor, hands curled into the wood, her face turned up at me smiling with the whistle in her head and the skin buckled around it.

“But I wanted you dead!” I tried to explain the next day. “I was trying to kill you, but you wouldn’t die. I just remember wanting you dead so much!” I cried trying to understand how I could wish any mother dead. Mother’s are the givers of life, right?

“Are you having troubles at school?” she asked me. “Is someone picking on you?”

I looked up at her in complete disbelief. “The dream wasn’t about anyone at school,” I told her, “it was about you. Me trying to kill you.” I left out the beginning part – that it was self-defense, that she was trying to kill me and I was fighting to live. What bothered me more was that image of the whistle in her forehead, her irises staring up at me from the floor.

“Oh honey, it’s that girl Neetu isn’t it. Is she picking on you?”

For some reason, as all the flashbacks swarmed around and overpowered my senses, that was the image that remained, the one of her attacking me and that damned whistle. The conversation when I tried to tell her what happened and it was blown off – as so much was. At least, that’s the one I remember the most.

I also started breaking out again after Penny died. One cry would turn into splotches then a rash then hives and then the occasional visit to the doctor. I wasn’t getting sleep, I was jumpy, depressed – really depressed – and just walking in a daze. I ended up losing a good thirty pounds in those months (maybe year?) afterwards before I got a better handle on things.

Dentists

The other day I went to the dentist. I can’t stand the dentist. It’s such a harrowing experience each and every time I go – which of course means I have to go often. Bad teeth. I’m on my third root canal.

The first time I went to the dentist on my own I cried. Actually, I cried every time I went to the dentist. Having no insurance I didn’t have the luxury to shop around and thus ended up in a place with a surly man named Mr. Sun to spend over 500USD to drill and crown a tooth. He asked why I cried each time (not sobbing, just tears that wouldn’t stop) and I had no idea. I just felt – overwhelmed.

That crown lasted for a few years before the tooth hurt again – by then I had moved up the insurance ladder in America – you know, the one with every other rung sawed through so you step on it and fall? Yeah, our structure for health care is bad enough, but often times dental isn’t considered important. So I had good health insurance at that point, but a dental HMO.

I ended up going to a dentist somewhere in Washington Heights. Those who live in NY are probably shaking their head from side to side at this point. The Heights isn’t known for their dentistry skills. There the crown was replaced and in doing so the guy drilled through the crown on the tooth above it, to force it ‘to fit.’ But the pain had stopped. A year later it hurt again and he said he no longer accepted my insurance. Oh, and while I was there, yes, I teared. I also have a bad gag reflex and the hygienist refused to clean my teeth, even though it was free under the HMO.

Now we’re on to the third dentist. He came recommended, he was congenial at least and I felt at ease. When I’m at ease, the gag reflex lessened. This is one of those ‘childhood’ trauma things I think. When I get stressed out I can’t have anything touch my neck or come close to it, I start to choke and can’t breathe.

So this guy takes off the crown and sends me to an endodontist. I needed a root canal. Luckily, the HMO for some reason covered the whole thing. I get it done, go back, and get the crown on. Only – the crowns keep cracking. Three into it and the dentist is yelling at me because the crown doesn’t fit, because I say it’s uncomfortable. I tell him it’s the labs fault, he tells me I bite down too hard. Finally, with a temporary in, I run out crying.

I went months with that temporary in, not wanting to go back. Then finally I switched jobs and got a new insurance- a limited one (it pays 80% of dental bills up to 1K a year I think) but better. My boss sends me to her guy. They do the x-rays and find out . . . the other dentist, before putting the crown on, sealed cotton in my tooth. He had told me he ‘built it up’ but all he did was plaster over a cotton ball. I wonder how many other people he’s done that too. I remember calling the insurance company after that, the old one and telling them not to pay. They told me with an HMO they don’t pay per procedure; they just send a monthly check. That explained a lot to me about this guy’s mentality.

Here’s the interesting thing, with this guy now the gagging is minimal. He’s friendly, nice, and knowledgeable – and I owe him thousands of dollars because he had to redo the previous work, and then I needed another root canal and crown and he has to redo the crown the other guy drilled through.

The dentist is a major anxiety, but now the times the anxiety creeps up is when he asks about the past. He keeps talking about that drilled through crown, and I have no idea when it was put on. X-rays show an impartial root canal. He figures it was a temporary put on a long time ago, but I have no memory.

Dental care was tough when I was younger. I remember we went to the dentistry school. My mom’s bridge fell out in a burger once. McDonald’s – now there’s a future post. There were a few months when we ate nothing but McDonald’s because my mom worked there and they let her bring the food home at the end of the night.

What I don’t remember is the dental work done. It was the dentistry school, the smell is there. That latex and hot breath smell. There was a treasure chest – I remember that. If you were good you could pick out a toy. I had a sticker from there; it was of a man in a barrel. I thought it was funny; he had suspenders to use the barrel like clothes. He had a long white mustache.

When I was in college I started getting headaches. My mother said PMS, my friends said wisdom teeth. My closest friend, R., had just had her wisdom teeth taken out and was in a lot of pain, but my symptoms mirrored hers. I hadn’t seen a dentist in years and asked my mom to take me to one. “No,” she replied. “You were always too much of a brat at the dentist.”

“But I need an x-ray,” I replied, “and I’m not five years old anymore, I need to go to the dentist.”

When I told her I wanted to check out my wisdom teeth she replied, “Mine came in fine, your brother’s came in fine. It’s not your wisdom teeth.”

Thanks ma. I ended up taking her insurance card (I knew I was covered under it) and my friend’s father drove me to her oral surgeon. He took x-rays and sure enough, they were all impacted. One was even causing a cavity of another tooth under the gum line. We made an appointment to have them all removed the next time I came home from college- December 24th, Christmas Eve. The only thing that wouldn’t be covered was the anesthesia.

When I talk to my friends now, they are amazed that the surgeon took all four out at once – but I had no choice. There wouldn’t be another time and I didn’t know how my mother would respond in the first place. Luckily, she saw it as a chance when I needed her and was wonderful once I proved that I needed her help. She drove me there and stayed in the room with me (so I’m told) the entire time I was out. She paid the 240USD for the anesthesia so I didn’t have to be awake as they cut into my gums, lasered my teeth into pieces, and then extracted them. She helped me to the bathroom when I woke up and set up the reclining chair at home so I could sleep upright the first few days.

I think with the dentist – there’s fear. There’s confusion. There are flashbacks. There’s a major feeling of being trapped. You are in a chair on your back staring into a light and can’t move because of sharp objects in your mouth. How much more trapped can you get? I tell my current dentist I feel like I’m being abducted by aliens. “Maybe that’s what all these abduction stories really are, transformed memories of dentists” I say. He laughs.

There was one time I walked out of my current dentist’s office, and it was when his hygienist was cleaning my teeth. You know how there are some people that can just somehow, through their personality and inability to stop making inane banter take up an entire room? Well she has that ability. I tried so hard to let her clean my teeth, but as she kept going on and on she ended up talking about childhood and mothers and praising them and I just couldn’t take it anymore. She had gotten to the point of just suffocation, I felt so trapped I couldn’t think. I started to tear up and tried to ‘be brave’ but in the end I just got up and left. I can’t take being trapped.

But really, does anyone like dentists?

photo from http://www.cartoonchurch.com

Flashback Central - Three Stories of 'Friendship'

Today has been a weird day I think. For some reason I’m remembering moments with friends where I feared I did something wrong, or, where now I recognize what they did was wrong and I let it happen. All this tends to make me physically dizzy, and, to some extent with a rumbly tumbly.

I think I’ll go scenario by scenario.

#1 – College, Senior Year.

I had gone down to the soda machine in the basement and it ate my dollar – no soda. No refunds either as I recall. So about a week later my roommate asked me to go down and get her a soda, and I agreed. Well, wouldn’t you know the machine spat out two bottles? (I swear- she and I were the only ones who got the ginger ales anyway.) So I went back happy saying, “oh look, it finally gave me my bottle!” but she said because it was her dollar that got the two sodas it was hers. In the end I did get the soda, as ‘her gift’ to me.

Well that was the first memory, and I wondered about the ethics of it. Was it really her bottle as it was her dollar? She knew I lost the dollar earlier, and had I been in her shoes I wouldn’t have questioned the claim that the bottle belonged to each of us. After all, she had intended to get only one bottle of soda with her one dollar, and I had lost one earlier. There was no difference in standing than when I left the room. So was I being presumptuous in claiming that bottle as my lost one and had my act to get her soda, originally an altruistic deed, turned into a motive of profit and/or theft? Was I stealing her soda? Technically, this time it was her dollar.

I spent entirely too much time trying to figure out the ethics of this one. The machine owed me a soda, and I got it from the machine. But did I do so at her expense? Honestly, I’m at the ‘let it go’ point. There was a valid claim to that drink.

#2 – College, Junior Year

A friend who I would have to write multiple posts about, R, and I are going on what is my first vacation. I have done all the booking, put it on my credit card, and planned it all out. When I finally go to the ATM to get out 150$ spending money, the machine gives me 300$ instead. It is late at night so there is no one in the bank. I tell my mother and she immediately wants to drive to the bank and get a withdrawal, thinking it’s free money. She tells my brother and he calls his friends. They all go to the machine. Meanwhile, I call my bank to check my balance – there is only a 150$ difference.

My family comes back dejected – the machine is out of money.

So I tell my friend about this and she suggests I call the bank. I do, multiple times, and finally they say that there is no record of me withdrawing any more than 150 and that ATM is now out of service. I will not be charged more than 150 and since there is no record they cannot accept cash from me except to deposit it in my account. So, yeah! Extra money for my first vacation.

But, when R finds out about this she insists that half of this is hers because we are going on the trip together. It was my account, my worries, (and remember, I made all trip arrangements anyway) but she insists that as my travel partner I give her half, especially since it will cover most of the bus fare up there. I say no again. She then tells me that God sent me the money to do the right thing – split it with her. Again, and this time aghast, I tell her no.

Now, I know she was in the wrong with this one. She was an extension of my mother, one I got rid of a few years before my mother, but equally as controlling in many respects. So after the trip I fill out all the paperwork to get my tax refunds for the hotel and she insists on half. She did pay for half of the hotel, so fine. But it turns out the total is something like 52.35. Since half of that is 26.175 she decided she should get the extra half a penny – 26.18. She argues the point incessantly, and I, being the me at the time, give her the half a penny rather than argue.

#3 Twelve Years Old, Sunday School

This one also involves R. At Sunday School they had this treasure chest and the minister had a bag full of keys. Every Sunday he made a show about putting in a new shiny toy. There were fire trucks, my little ponies, princess castles, a Crayola backpack that I wanted, etc. You could go up and pick a key each week for remembering your Bible verses from the previous week, being picked by your Sunday School teacher, or one key for each new friend you brought to church. So I brought R. and won! I was so happy, the backpack and the princess castle were calling my name.

Now, I had fully intended to share with her as she was my friend. For so many weeks I had remembered my Bible verses and tried lots of keys. Of course, the Sunday school teacher asked me which toy I’d give my friend for helping me win. Then R. decided it was an equal share, because without her I wouldn’t have won. There were at least 12 toys anyway, so I was fine with that. We’d take turns picking out toys. Then she says she gets first pick. I didn’t like that. But she insists that it’s only right in God’s eyes that since it was through her coming I won. She starts to get mad. Did I mention she and my mom got along super well? Lol, my mother considered her the daughter she wish she had had. Every time I had wanted to stop being her friend my mom sat me down and had a talk with me about keeping her around.

Anyway, in the end I acquiesced and she took the backpack! I was so friggen upset. I still got the Princess castle that did special thinks with a magic ‘key’ and other stuff, but not the backpack.

So as I’m thinking over all these things I begin to feel distressed. I berate myself. “Why the hell did you let her walk all over you?” I asked myself. “You were such a f*cking wimp. What the hell? Couldn’t even stand up for a ½ a penny, let alone your backpack. You earned those Sunday School toys, why did you let her take them?

Then I started to feel lower and down on myself. Then the internal dialogue begins. There is the one me berating my childhood self, and the other recognizing that I was so beaten down by my mother I did what I was told. R. was an extension of her and the fact that I stood up to her in the college scenario shows progress and a development of self. I shouldn’t insult myself for actions that were deemed necessary to avoid conflict – something I lived in constantly anyway. It was my feelings of self-worth and like I was ‘undeserving’ for everything that let her have the backpack, not me.

It’s all so exhausting, to have to talk myself up after each little memory sneaks up triggering others and they just keep flowing and flowing. Then I have to talk down those feelings of powerlessness that come up. Then I berate myself for how petty this all must sound, a backpack, a soda and ‘found’ money.

Photos taken from the following sources:
http://www.britsuperstore.com/
http://www.simplydumb.com/
http://www.churchsigngenerator.com/

Gynecologist’s Visit

If any guys read this, here’s your chance to turn back. Not that I’ll be graphic.

Since I’m thirty, I decided to bit the bullet and get the full check-up. I don’t know why thirty is the magic age, well, okay, I know part of it. Thirty is the age by which if you haven’t shown signs of bi-polar disorder you are free of it. That was my sword of Damocles as it were, that I’d be like my mother. That I’d have her disorder. Like everything in my life, there’s a lot more to it. Living with a woman who was as wild as her, and a brother that whether he is bi-polar or acted wildly to be more like her and be accepted, well, I never learned what emotions were or how to express them. But that’s another post.

One of these days I’ll get into the physiological aspects of PTSD, for now, I’m just writing these entries as things come up. And today, it was the gynecologist.

She came highly recommended by a workmate. And she was incredibly friendly. The part I always hate of any new doctor is when they ask for family history. I’m honest.

“My mother lied a lot,” I tell her fighting back a tear. I knew I would tear up. It’s a new situation and, dammit, it triggered a memory that I’m fighting against. “For instance, when she had gastric bypass surgery she told everyone she had cancer instead.”

“I had a friend like that in college,” she told me, “our whole senior year she told everyone she had ovarian cancer. She didn’t.”

I don’t know my family medical history. That bothers me at times. My mother also lied to me a lot to keep me ‘in line.’ For instance, if I wanted pizza she’d tell me I was lactose intolerant. If I wanted strawberries I was allergic. If I liked a boy in school she told me we were related and I was a sinner. Blah, blah, blah. So while I’ve been allergy tested for most things, there are still a lot of questions left. The only thing I know for sure is that she is, by all standards, bi-polar.

“That must have been hard,” the doctor told me. “My mom tells me some of her stories. Her grandmother abused her horribly.” I sigh, because abuse is just so common.

Then she asks how I’ll do in this, how I’m feeling. I tell her the truth, that besides the possibility of a flashback, I’m all for it. I run at my fear now, not away from it.

See, when I first started having my period my mom did the sensible thing and took me to the woman’s clinic in our hometown. There was only one, and it was a good drives away down an old country road. The first time I went as the doctor explained about hair ‘growing between your legs’ I started cracking up picturing my inner thighs turn into Chewbacca. I had learned this already in school and knew what pubic hair was. But the second memory –

One of the things I have to work on in therapy is how I view my memories. The worst ones, I see them as one watches television – on the outside looking in. I’m completely detached. I need to get back into myself and look out, to feel my emotions and see through my own eyes, not those of the observer I became.

This one, it’s half and half. Half in, half outside observer. And, like the worst memories, there are gaping holes in the action. What I remembered, and what played through my mind as I was talking to the doctor as I fought back tears, was a fight with my mother. I forgot what started it but I was yelling at her. I was loud. She then decided that I was crazy and it was a PMS induced insanity. Thus, and I think my brother helped, it’s just darkness in my mind, she dragged my out of the house by my hair and into the car. Then she drove me to the clinic as I kicked and cried in the back seat of the car.

My brother’s smile. I remember that clearly. Him looking down at me with his smile. He had this particular smile that just by him doing it frightened the shit out of me. It meant something was up. I really can’t describe it, but it wasn’t a happy smile, it was an evil one, one of power over another. I remember screaming just when I saw it; the sides of his lips curl up. He must have helped her, because I remember that smile as I lay in the backseat of the car.

She dragged me to the clinic the whole while screaming about how I was going crazy. I was insane. I was unstable.

I don’t remember if I ever saw the doctor. I don’t think I did. A nurse came out and saw the scene, maybe she realized who the real crazy one was. Although, not enough for me to be taken away from my mother.

This memory came up as I sat there talking with my doctor and I started to tear up. It was strong. But you know what? I’m getting there. While I recognize that it’s not the best that for part of that memory I was watching myself helpless in the backseat of the car, I still went though with my appointment. I didn’t faze out of the situation either, I was able to ask the doctor questions about what was happening, about how everything looked.

In the end, the doctor said I did marvelously, that she has had patients come in with a similar history and just seize up and cry. But I didn’t want to let the memory overtake my present. I want to live in the now. I do, however, realize that perhaps that’s a memory I need to work on as even now typing it I want to cry and I don’t know if it’s because I don’t have control of it yet, or that perhaps it is one worth crying over.