The Great Escape, CPTSD, and Depression

So on Thanksgiving Weekend, Rev. Linda and I drove down from Buffalo to Long Island to pick up my mother. We had a network of about 30 people (online and irl) who helped us organize absolutely everything (from safe houses to transportation). We left on Friday morning and arrived Friday night, and on Saturday morning at about 7am we had word that the operation was a go. Rev. Linda and I high-tailed it to my father’s house, and Rev. Linda went in to help Mom while I stayed in the car (originally not intending to go in).

Mom sent me a text saying things were okay, and asking me to go to her studio to pick up a few things, and I dropped them off in the SUV. While sitting in the SUV my father came out, and I debated whether or not I was going to open the window (for safety reasons) but he seemed off, and shaky on his legs, so I rolled down the window. He put his hands on my face and said “I always loved you…but the business…” and kissed me on the forehead. It was weird, and it was creepy, and it was manipulative, and it was also a lie. My therapist would later say “I think your father’s refrain might be ‘I love you, but…'”.

Upon my father’s departure (to what I assume was the bar) we loaded up the SUV with my Mom’s things; and I saw my brothers. My twin was surprised to see me, my younger brother Sam was in shock. My twin’s wife was cordial (as she always is) and my younger brothers girlfriend gave me a big hug and we caught up a bit.

We put the dog in the car, and we high tailed it to the safe house.

From there, we had breakfast, coffee, and then went to my Mom’s friends house where she had been sneaking things to. After filling up the SUV more, I realized we needed to rent another SUV, and so her friend and I went and rented one (she had a special discount card) and we filled that up, and we hit the road: my Mom and Rev. Linda in one SUV, and me in the other.

It was a long drive back up to Buffalo, and when we got here, we were so fortunate that friends helped us unload the car…and in the coming week friends helped us get unpacked, and settled, and we are working toward our new normal.

I – personally – had been so focused on my mother’s transition, that I didn’t put in too much thought to my own…how my life was going to change..and so I am dealing with that now: I am happy to have it change, but it takes work to incorporate all of the new, moving elements (including a standard poodle, and what this means for my cat).

I am so, so, so thankful that I was able to pull a B+ in Interventions I and another B+ in History of Social Work & Policy…and I am thankful that I got a flying color review for my field placement…it has been, just, an incredible amount of time, work, and energy moving apartments, extracting my mother, working, going to school, and going through field placement (and now learning how to live with another person again).

So this has been an emotional rollercoaster, with lawyers, and family, and, and, and…but it’s also been interesting because one of the things my therapist and I have been working on is how to feel feelings again. I know I used to feel things…I would feel happy, I would feel sad, I would feel…something…but at some point, I started cognitively experiencing things…like, I know I should be happy because X,Y,Z, is happening…and it’s very had to explain, but I stopped experiencing feeling, and started cognitively understanding…and in working out the entire string of events that have happened, over the past year, it’s also going through and understanding the abuse that I experienced, and the abuse that my mother experienced, and the military related PTSD I left the army with.

So I’m working on that, and one of the ways she wants me to work on that is by writing, and another way is through a social work intervention which involves deep meditation, and bringing up an emotion, and then attempting to hold the feeling for as long as possible. With that, I’ve also just come out of a bit of a depressive episode, so that’s good.

…and this, by no means, is to say that things have been awful, or poor me: things are, actually, going fairly well, but it’s been a bit overwhelming, and there’s a lot to do, and a lot to work on, and I’m trying to get caught up on work from when I was moving apartments/extracting my mother/etc…but one thing at a time, and now, sleep…but moving forward…regular blogging, if nothing else, because I really, really, really need to begin to feel again.