I'm in Crisis: Break down or break through?

I don't know if it matters, but I have been in crisis.

Wait. Let me start again. Because it totally matters.

Here's the thing: I have been in crisis. The deep, churning, emotional kind where the only options are break or transform.

Somehow, I have managed to do both.

This is exactly as awkward and weird as I've been feeling.

This is a share I didn't know if I could make here. I'm choosing to risk exposure. The deep, dark truth about me is that I am a survivor. Of abuse, violence and sexual assault.

In itself, being a survivor is a good thing. But it is my dark truth because right now I'm not actively surviving.

The world rained some shit on me nearly every day of my childhood. Shit that affected the way my brain developed. I had a very real daily expectation of being harmed. And when I got out of my home, I found more people to harm me. Eventually, my husband and I saved each other, and I will have to tell you about that, but right now I'm saving myself from shattering.

I hurt all the time. My heart feels like it's being squeezed. When I let my attention land on this constant pain, it expands. I think it might blow outward through my mouth, raining sadness and fear on everyone.

Like what sits inside me might burst me as well.

When you are a survivor of violence, sometimes your body remembers when your mind does not. My body has been recalling much of late. I know this because I've been shifting with nightmares that slip away, all but the feeling of bruises and rawness on my skin. And when I am awake, my mind is careful to stay outside my body or just at the edges, to prevent sitting too deeply in that physical recollection.

Two weeks ago I realized I have been living in a triggered state for months. High anxiety has become my baseline. I've been in it so long I stopped seeing it, was confused by my body's enormous responses to small stimuli; the rolling chills and numbness at a stray breath or light touch, the duck-and-cover when balloons pop. I was at dinner with my husband checking all the exits and scanning my fellow diners for threat potential when the expression on my husband's face clued me in. He said nothing, but his concern was palpable.

A few days later, while driving, I had trouble holding down the brake. I was just too tired of everything. I wanted to let go, but that would mean rolling into the intersection with all my kids in the car. I went home and called my doctor.

I have been on and off anxiety medication since my teens. Medications don't sit well in my body, so I turned to natural supplements, physical exercise and diet modifications. Much improvement was made, but not enough to stop the cycle of triggers. My doctor looked at my long list of attempted meds and adverse reactions. He said I've put in the work physically and with therapy. He told me I've done everything there is to do. Then he suggested a prescription we hadn't tried. I received a list of therapists that do EMDR. My husband suggested yoga and meditation. I have done all of this before.

I don't want to do it all again.

Honestly, I'm just too tired.

So, I am looking at my history and saying, "This depression and anxiety, this PTSD, this alphabet soup is part of who I am. I am not going to fight it anymore. I am going to sit gently inside it and manage it just as I do my stims." Mood management through medical intervention will become part of my self-care routine. It will join dietary curation, aromatherapy, CrossFit, meditation, writing, coloring, closet retreats, and my many other self-care tools.

This is what crisis means: seeing what you do not wish to see and knowing it as reality. Or seeing what you wish to see and not knowing whether it is real.

What to do in a crisis: breakdown or break through.

Dandelions know what this is all about.

As a child, I had a practice of looking in the mirror to try and spot my soul. I never found it, but there were moments when I saw spark, possibilities. I stared into my reflection asking "who are you?" and finding the answer open and incomplete. That practice held me steady in a way I can't describe except to say I was reminded every afternoon that I was there. Real. That I was something. It was a daily breakthrough.

Perhaps it will seem indulgent, but I want to bring that practice of seeing myself here. In one post per week, I will either record a video or share selfies so you can see me as I am. So I can see me in a space where others can affirm I exist. I hope you will join me.

Here is the first image. In it, I am looking at myself. I am seeing myself. I am accepting myself.

I'm smiling a bit because it's what you do in pictures, but also because I feel hope, and hope is everything.

Why selfies? Think for a minute. A selfie is a self image. What I need now is to see myself in order to be with myself. It's strange, I suppose, but it works. I've shared this type of images here before, and in my private Instagram feed. It is easy to feel erased or unseen when you experience depression. Even easier to have a skewed sense of who or what you are when you experience anxiety. Let alone when you add in the role of motherhood. Lately, I've felt I'm disappearing from the inside out. I want to stay.

Thank you for witnessing me.

Selfie aside, images are from pixabay.com