Something is missing...

I am going to make a difference in this world.

 Fear will never again define my life! 

I choose to live. I choose life! 

I have felt nothing, truly deeply nothing of my own for so long. I don't know how to feel, let alone what to feel. I try to focus, examine my surrounding. I know what I am searching for but its not happening.

"What is it?" I ask myself.

"Take in anything, focus, find something!" I scream!

I need to feel something. Desperate desire to decipher, analyze, understand....something. It is so lonely, not exactly the emotion of loneliness, more so in reference to an emptiness. 

"What is wrong with me?" My mind, and body respond to the internal question with a blast of overwhelming sensation I cant seem to control. My thoughts jerk around, like drunken teenage boys surrounded by very intoxicated female peers. There is no certainty, just a series of illogical responses to hormones flooding the mind and therefore the body. My chest tightens, heart races, head feels fuzzy, vision blurs in a response to a disorientation. 

"Here it comes." I recognize the pattern now. Its not something you can get used to. Adrenaline educes a flood of reactions that nearly bring an emotion to finally feel. Almost.... 

What you wind up with is not feelings that anyone would want to encounter. Imagine betrayal so deep, pain so intolerable, fear so debilitating, or something so damn terrible that your soul, the very essence of your existence in some beliefs broke, took off to hide, or worse. Not entirely pleasant in my experience anyway.

I am 30 year old Mother of three, wife of 10 years (unfortunately), sitting in my garage, completely alone on the Friday evening before Independence Day. The garage I've owned for only 6 months. I helped design and build our first house a privilege I still deny I deserved. I always felt the garage was way to big as I looked over the blueprints but its for resale value, aka preparation of failure. Now, I'm grateful for its size. It's late, the day has passed too quickly. A beautiful sunny, warm day in July. I heard the boats on the lake periodically as my focus faded in and out. I had planned to spend a day with members of my family experiencing the Michigan Sand Dunes for the first time. Planned being the key word. I desire trying many new things and exploring what I may or may not like. I usually find reason to do something someone else likes instead. Its a difficult thing to choose yourself over others when yourself is so blank but others give a sense of something, direction, feeling...

I've spent a lot of time here lately in this garage. This used to be a place I came routinely with my Husband. We'd escape into our electronic devices, never one another, while inhaling nicotine as if the stresses of our children and secluded home life were too much. I sought a different kind of escape these days, though escape nonetheless. This garage I've become a squatter in, devoid of external influences, positive and negative alike has become familiar. It has been my refuge from the barrage of uncontrolled emotions I began to explode with not all that long ago. I later found a term in a blog, that just for today kept me from slipping too deep into myself. He termed these as episodes as pseudo-seizures but they can also be defined as a flashback.

Something important is missing from me. I'm lost, rather the things that seemingly would define me, you know, as a human being versus just a mammal with a thumb, that's missing. One point of view I adopted because it made sense personally was that my soul, or part of it at least was not with me. At a point in my early life, that I can't seem to recall yet, my soul abandoned ship through fear or pain associated with the trauma of abuse, betrayal of trust by a loved one presumably my psychopathic Mother and never returned. I don't know how else to explain, in summary my current condition, since I haven't found the answer I'm being forced to seek. I'm not even sure the right questions are being asked.

Today, I've spent all but maybe an hour in total, sitting right here in the garage. Time seems of no concept whatsoever as I had no references to it like work or any responsibilities aside from sustaining my life. I am from what I am told, approximately a month in to a dissociation episode, contributed to delayed onset of Complex PTSD directly related to long term, chronic abuse as a child and adult sadly. I'm rapidly loosing time and awareness. I can best describe this medically as depersonalization. It happens to be more related to what I'd consider an identity crisis type moment. That seems to better reference lacking/missing knowledge of myself, how I feel, what I like, who I am, and that is in my opinion, identity. I'll spare the series of unfortunate events composing my life leading here, for a later post or series of post more likely. 

Ive decided to document through journal entries during moments of comprehension, to reflect on and share with intentions of making a difference for someone who themselves may be suffering without definition, like I had been. You are not alone!! This is not your fault and all those personality disorders and terrifying mental illness titles likely are not the cause. You are not crazy. That was the first thing I found comfort accepting. I have spent as much of my energy as possible arming myself with knowledge for my personal battle. It takes guidance, information, strength, courage, and support to survive C-PTSD and its debilitating hold. 

I've become completely consumed by severe PTSD symptoms at times over the past 30 or so days. There is no option of escape from the darkness that has seemingly, without warning, consumed my entire existence. I'm here, wherever that is. The only way out now is to push through it. "It" is PTSD. 

I've been alive for 3 decades, but experienced nothing for myself. Most people on death row are considered to be Living Death. No purpose, no rights, no choices, no regard for self preservation, basically nothing to live for. I had been Living Death but am finally choosing life!

Favorite blog of the day: PTSD and Me 

Does any of this nonsense hit home? Do you feel this way? Are you reading this? Is there anyone else out there?