The Longest Journey

PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder. War veteran mental health issue. Word cloud sign.

Healing from trauma is a long journey. Lifelong, for some. In my late 40s, my own journey is just getting started. There is a lot to work through and I’m not exactly sure where to begin however I know it has to happen if I’m ever going to start thriving. Since I was 17, it’s just been surviving (and sometimes barely, at that).

Usually the advice is just to start at the beginning, square one, but we’re talking about going back to before I was born, with my mother’s toxic relationship with my father, her dysfunction in the way she treated my grandmother, and my grandmother’s own dysfunctional upbringing. This realization that it goes way back prompted me to purchase a book entitled It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn. My daughter, who is going through her own healing process, bought it about 4 years ago and strongly recommended it to me. It addresses generational trauma and PTSD with studies backed by leading experts in neuroscience and post-traumatic stress.

At its most basic, it affirms that in histories like mine (and by proxy, my daughter’s), some of the behaviors I exhibit may not come from abuse handed to me throughout my life, but may be pre-programmed types of reactions to things that happened before me and have been passed down genetically. It would seem the genes we carry are programmed for far more than blue eyes or big thighs. Mental states, even reactive memory, too can run in the family.

This honestly takes a lot of pressure off. Instead of asking what’s wrong with “me,” now I can go back and see that it wasn’t me. It does not become a matter of shifting blame for a rotten situation – I am not looking to blame – it instead becomes a matter of, “where did this come from – this trauma response to every little thing, this fear, this anxiety and regression, depression, these trust issues, this inability to relate to others or hold a relationship, this inability to care for myself, this inability to thrive?” Once that is sorted, the next question becomes, “how do I heal?”

I know forgiveness is going to be a major hurdle in healing as I am nowhere near ready for that yet. My dad (who I met finally when I was 24) taught me that forgiveness does not mean saying what a person did was acceptable. It means that you – the forgiver – are willing to acknowledge it happened and essentially erase that debt, let it go. It does not mean necessarily forgetting. It simply means moving on. As of today though, even hearing the name “Brenda” automatically makes my jaw clench, my body tense, and triggers me to either fight or ball up and cower. That is the power she had over me and still does even though she’s finally deceased (and I do not regret feeling relief and even joy over that fact).

And this is why it is finally the right time for me to begin this journey through facing the pain and abuse, facing the fallout, and clearing my path to healing. I don’t want to carry all this trauma the rest of my life. It’s too much. The burden has kept me from so much happiness, health, and success that I can no longer accept having the baggage.

Burnout Rant

Image: Stressed call center agent

Call center work is burning me out. For the past year I’ve been working in a strictly sales position (and I am not a salesperson by profession) with no break in my work routine. There is also no work-life balance to speak of and it’s wearing me down.

Several times throughout my tenure there I have tried to go into other positions to get out of the aggressive and often dirty sales tactics we’re forced to use. Twice I’ve applied for a position in Quality Assurance and been denied, another time I applied for just customer service and they wanted me for that however before I was able to make the move, they shut down that department! The only position for me to go into at this point would be a downgrade, both in position and pay, which I just can’t afford.

My shift, which I have no say in, takes up the portion of the day where I don’t have time before or after work to get anything done. As I’m leaving for work, things have just opened and after work, most things are already closed. I get home usually around 9pm, try to decompress from the day, eat, and pass out for a bit, then I’m awake for several hours because it’s screwed up my sleep schedule so bad. I try to be asleep again by 2am so I can be up by 9:30 to do it all again.

My health is legitimately suffering. My mental health is deteriorating. My stress levels are through the roof. Management is on us constantly, pushing us for more and bigger results at everyone’s expense. With the exception of the rare nice and civil person who calls in, most of the people on the other end of the phone are utter asshats who feel they can be abusive to a stranger with zero accountability. I take it from all angles. My anxiety over walking in on Monday mornings begins in my stomach on Sunday and I dread thinking of what I’ll be walking into. On the drive in, a 45 minute commute, I get heart palpitations that terrify me because often I feel like I’m going to pass out at the wheel while driving. That Monday morning meeting is always about how terrible we’ve done and how much harder we have to push. Stop pushing me!

So, for the almighty dollar, I keep plugging. I go in every morning only to hear how bad I am at my job, to get pushed harder and watched under the microscope, afraid to stop to breathe. I’ve had medical issues this year between COVID and heart issues brought on by the stress so I don’t have time off to use for a break. Plus, we are heading into the busy season where all time off requests are in the blackout period for most of the rest of the year. I need to be in therapy for C-PTSD and stress but I have no PTO with which to schedule it. I need 2 weeks off to breathe and reset but I can’t get to a doctor to recommend a short-term for mental health. I can’t afford to just leave because I’m already living paycheck to paycheck and I am the only income in my family. This job is gonna kill me.

They Call Me A Hero…

Sunday night…  I don’t know what it was that made me feel the urge to go outside but something unseen directed me to get up, go outside, look left.  I can’t describe the sheer horror when I did go and saw the smoke pouring out the front door, window and wall of my next door neighbor’s apartment.  Within seconds, the fire was also visible through the wall.

Cue panic.

Within seconds, I was dialing 911 and running to wake my neighbors C. & B. on the other side of the fire.  Those 2 minutes trying to wake them felt like forever. Once they were safely outside and substantially in shock, I ran back to my place and – still on the phone with 911 – and turned my hose on the fire (which was now clearly visible through the front wall and clear that the hot spot was a faulty electrical outlet) then onto my roof and outside wood walls and back onto the endangered apartment.  B. then turned his hose on the area my water couldn’t reach and we held the fire back until the fire department arrived a full six minutes later.

I went to talk with B. and C. while the firemen took an axe to the burning front wall of I.’s apartment to expose the fire.  The source was indeed a faulty outlet that blew with a power surge.  B. & C. had reported these power surges to FPL and to the landlord repeatedly and neither had done anything about it.  Now it became a real threat to life and property.

That night after the power was cut to that duplex and all was quiet, I was still too much of a nervous wreck to sleep.  Monday morning, A. and his mom picked me up early and took me down to West Palm for the day to try to get my mind off everything.  I almost had myself convinced that it was an isolated incident and that we were safe.  That idea didn’t last long though as I spoke with C. that afternoon and she told me the landlord and the maintenance guy came out and did a “quick fix” by simply splicing a new outlet to the burned wire, replacing the front wall wood panels (only on the outside) and turning the breaker back on.  This is a violation of fire code, it remains a fire risk and no inspection was done to ensure its safety, not to mention the maintenance guy is NOT a licensed electrician – Code Enforcement will have a field day on this  C. promised to call CE this morning and I provided her the number last night.  I called this afternoon (Tuesday) to follow up after learning that she had not called because she did not have her phone.

Monday night saw no sleep either.  This event has really gotten to me mentally and emotionally and my nerves are frayed, so much so that Monday night I tried calling around for a 24-hour free counseling line to try to find a way to quell the fear and anxiety.  The only place I could get was a Consult-A-Nurse line and all they did was tell me to go to the E.R.  Well, I did.  My blood pressure was spiking, my head was pounding, my stomach twisted in knots.  I had been in a full-blown panic attack for a full 24 hours.  The Triage nurse tried twice to get my BP but could not get a reading.  He told me it was “too high for the machine to read.”  He told me to relax (yeah, right) and they’d try again in a few minutes.

The next nurse who saw me briefly told me the chart said my BP was 117/20.  Um – what?  It’s never been that low – I have uncontrolled high blood pressure and no meds for it.  I told her the guy who just tried to take it said it was so high he couldn’t get a reading.  She said, “Oh, well it says here you’re normal,” and would not check it again to get a real reading.  They falsified my chart!  They refused to treat me for the anxiety or the BP and merely sent me home with a script for Vistaril which I wouldn’t be able to get until the next day anyway.  I went in there because my pressure was so high it was making me sick and because I was in a panic attack too scared to sleep for 2 nights straight – and they refused to treat me.  This is what hospitals do to people with no insurance – they leave them for dead.  I almost wished I’d have had a stroke in the parking lot on the way out.  Let them be accountable.

Now it is Tuesday night and I still have not been able to sleep.  The landlord and his secretary and maintenance guy are trying to say someone threw a Maletov cocktail at the building.  What a load of crap.  Even fire and police reports state the cause of the fire was faulty wiring.  Maintenance also tried to assure me the building is safe now and that my building is safe, stating mine was inspected “when it was all done,” whatever or whenever that means.  I don’t feel safe.

Even today, my neighbors are calling me a hero.  Yes I stopped a fire from spreading.  Yes I got my neighbors out safely.  But to be such a wreck afterward… Idunno… doesn’t feel very “heroic.”  All I need is Valium.