Day 23: Alone in a Little Boat in the Dark with no Oar and a Storm Approaching

They just left. He took them for a 5.5 hour drive to another state for a college interview tomorrow. then, wednesday, they’re back on the freeway again for another 5.5 hour gamble with their lives.

I may sound dramatic, but I am a person who hasn’t driven on the freeway for over 3 years. it started with flashes of panic while driving on the freeway. so intense that my body flushed hot and my hands felt instantly swollen. worse, i felt like i couldn’t control my hands. and that i was about to veer out of my lane. it was all-encompassing, and i couldn’t breathe. then it would pass. next time would be worse because I’d think omg not again! i started to be afraid it would happen. i started to plan what i’d do. i became afraid to get out of the left lane, because i needed to be able to exit the freeway asap if it came over me. i started avoiding the freeway. 

I wasn’t safe. i started getting the  panic on highways, going 45 mph. compulsive thoughts would take over my mind, and i would imagine veering into ditches or trees, imagine in greattt. detail. it was excruciating and terrifying. many times i had to take my hands off the wheel, steering with knees or fingertips, because i felt a voice screaming in my head to just DO IT! i was terrified my hands would jerk the wheel of their own volition, or some part of my unconscious that i didnt have access to would make it happen! it felt outside of myself it felt out of my control. it became a significant part of my life: my fear of driving. 

my therapist called this OCD. I bought some books. “The Imp of the Mind” was one. i went on forums and read about Pure O and wrote down other people’s advice. i integrated as much as i could. my OCD waxes and wanes, and it’s hard to tell exactly what, if anything, causes it. i have been able to drive on highways fairly anxiety-free for 6 months, but still avoid freeways and curvy mountain roads. 

the one thing I keep thinking about is that it started right after my therapist tried to do that light-bar therapy, EMDR. she tried it on me to address the cPTSD. we did it once for a minute, and that night i felt really weird. a couple of weeks later we were going to try for a few minutes, but within seconds i went into a full-blown panic attack. i had never panicked in front of her. actually, i am a very reserved person in public and have managed to avoid “freaking out” in front of people except twice. no, three times. that time with her, once in the dentist chair with that horrible plastic flap covering my mouth, dental dam i think?, and once when i was getting set up to have an MRI on my head. they clamped this plastic cage thing on my head and were about to stick me in the giant pencil sharpener, and i absolutely lost it. it was bad.  i ran all they way out of the clinic into the parking lot in they stupid gown with the back open and my butt showing! so humilating 😦 shudder just thinking about it.

do I avoid dentists and MRIs and light-bars now? yes. yes i do. and freeways. i am a person whose life is dictated by fears. im pissed about that. but not sure what to do. they say, “oh just expose yourself a little bit at a time, just a little bit” and yet i can’t help but thinking it only takes a little bit of 70 mph veering to kill me and maybe others. i do force myself to go to the dentist. i have had conscious sedation MRIs. but the freeway, its a hard one for me. 

my therapist thinks it stems from this (but, idk): when I was a kid and a young adult. if i would be driving with my mom, we would be talking, as ppl do. normal chat for my mom often turns into highly emotional erratic rants. i have learned to disengage and tune out as much as possible because it’s emotionally and physically painful. she would be jerking her hands in the air (jerking hand–my fear of my hand jerking against my will?) and then, on many, many occasions, she would ask wildly, “what if i were to just drive in front of that truck?!!?!?” i will admit that this scared the shit out of me. few things can make you feel less in control than being in a situation like that. it was terrifying. and the worst part was that there was this enormous pressure to respond Exactly Right. she was teetering on the brink — or was she? — and my life depended on easing her back to reality. and i was a child.

yeah, it could be connected. idk sighhhhhhh fuck

Im Alone in a Little Boat in the Dark with no Oar and a Storm Approaching. this is how I feel with my kids gone and possibly in danger. taking care of them and protecting them has been priority #1 for 17+ years. their dad, my husband of two years, was an alcoholic, drug-addicted, and violent man. he was an unlawful citizen from Russia. he had overstayed his student visa. we thought when we got married, and surely when we had the twins, he would be granted a green card, or at least a work permit. but no. that’s not how it works in America! he was only granted a green card after we divorced and he was arrested several times. because seemingly innocent young fathers who want to work don’t deserve citizenship, but criminals do!/s 

he wasn’t innocent tho. he terrorized me, beat me, and even started to abuse them, which is what finally forced me to escape. he threatened me constantly. his dad was the captain of a huge merchant ship that delivered goods up and down the coast every couple of months. my ex-husbands favorite threat was that he would steal the babies and get on his dad’s boat and have his mother raise them. this was logically feasible. and I knew if they got to russia, i would never find them. i lived in constant fear. fear of the minute-by-minute possibility that he would snap and someone would be hurt or worse, and fear that they would all one day be gone. my trusty hypervigilance kicked in, and i stopped sleeping. 

eventually it was me who disappeared with them. when they were 14 months, I ran and hid from him until he could be arrested. he was in a deportation holding camp when 9/11 happened, and he told me terrible, just vicious, things that happened to middle eastern detainees after that. then he was just randomly released. he lived in the city, about 90 minutes away, and fell back into heroine, a drug he had escaped for a number of years. crime followed, and right after i moved two states north to get away from his unpredictable visits and constant threats, he was finally deported for these unrelated crimes. they were 5. so it was 5 years of ridiculous hypervigilance. he threatened from Russia too, and altho i felt less afraid, i couldn’t let go of the hypervigilance. i petitioned the school to block their names from yearbooks, i petitioned the state to not seek child support because that would give him our address.  not like i expected child support anyway.

his sister, who speaks no english, emailed me once or twice. she said he was cycling thru addiction/crime, prison, and rehab. this made me feel safer. an addict has a hard time orgnizing shit enough to pull off sneaking back into the US. but I would say it wasn’t until the last year or so that i realized i could start to really let it go. they’re practically adults. he can’t really kidnap them now. he would have to try to reason with them, and he wouldn’t be able to convince them to go. we’re finally safe from him. i mean, we may have been safe from him for a decade or more, but i finally feel that we’re safe. that threat has released me. or, i have released that threat?

I do wonder about the timing. how the threat from my ex-husband began to wane just as the threat of the freeway and other types of containment and pain began to build. i understand how PTSD, especially chronic, affects the brain. when you’re so used to being a highly stressed state, relaxing can be uncomfortable, even impossible. the brain just tries to keep the status quo, does what it has to do to keep those stress chemicals flowing. understanding this has helped me to recognize a lot of the thoughts that were my brains way of “doing it’s job”. but i wonder if this stuff is deeper– i suspect my unconscious mind of this bigger mischief. 

only once before in the last 17 years have my kids been away from me, not counting sleepovers and mini things like that (which ultimately I am still in control of). when they were 9, i let them go back east with my ex (the one i just split with), let us call him Mark. (took 23 days to give him a fake name.) Mark took them back to meet his family. it was impossible for me to travel because of my back injury, so altho it was weird, his family was super nice, and my kids had a great time. i hated to let them go. flying. being out of my care. being with strangers. mark, an alcoholic, being in charge. i hated all of this. but i didn’t want to stand in the way of my kids having fun, novel experiences. and ive always wanted them to have other people, not just me. and in the long run, it was a great experience for them. i clearly remember going to the airport to pick them up. i was wearing a typical outfit for me, some dark boho witchy style. i remember because i saw my daughters face as they approached me from down a long corridor. i became self-conscious as i saw her study me and i saw her smile drop and a disappointed look come over her face. she was 9, she was just starting puberty. this was the perfect time for her to see me as something separate from her and to reject it, to reject me. it hurt so much, but i knew it was healthy for her to push me away as she figured out who she is. i knew that if i could handle it lovingly and without judgement or expectation, she would eventually, hopefully!, come to accept me for who i am, even love my weirdness. and now that she’s 17 we have a great relationship. we are very, very different. but i feel like she accepts me, and i think that as she becomes an adult, she may even love me just the way i am. but it was hard for many years. hard to be rejected and disliked by someone you love so so much. but that’s parenting!

they were gone for 9 days. (2009, 9 years old, gone 9 days. weird.) this was a very interesting and harrowing experience for me. I remember i had certain plans for what I’d do while they were gone to distract myself. but within hours the silence became like this ominous force in my home. it followed me around, getting closer and closer and heavier and heavier until i felt suffocated. i started to panic. this was before i knew how horrible benzos are for you, so i just started popping them like crazy. finally, by like 6pm, i called my mom and asked if i could come over and stay until my kids came back (weak!). when i got there i was a little better, but i was so antsy. then i found a project, a huge one. my g-ma, who lived with my mom, had a million slides that my granpa had taken over the course of 50 years or so. he was an amature photographer. he had died in 2000, and she had stored all these boxes of slides. so i bought a slide scanner and set to work in the basement. at that time, the slide scanners only scanned 4 at a time. so it took me many very long days to get them all. 

so two things came out of this. no, 3. actually, 4:

1. I was able to make thousands of amazing family pictures accessible for myself and other family members, who did not hate me any less for it.

2. I popped so many benzos that i got really messed up and decided to look into them and discovered forums online that helped me get off of them for 4 years (until i was put on a high dose in the hospital 3 years ago and havent been able to wean off them again sadly).

3. my kids got to make connections with a nice family who I think they still feel connected with to this day. if nothing else, they got to experience a different type of family, which has to be good for them.

4. my kids, or at least my daughter, got a kickstart in differentiation from me, which I know is healthy. i know she really liked/identified with (?) Mark’s mom who is wealthy and ditzy and marterialistic and barbie-doll pretty and super sweet — total opposite of me!

but now I have 3 days without them. two nights.  this time’s differnt in ways. they are older, for one. and they have been more and more absent the last few years as they spend time with friends and involved in extra-curriculars. so, im more used to them being gone. im not used to both them and him being gone however. and with their final departure looming (college) in just a few months, something i dread no matter how hard i try not to, there is more significance to them being gone this time. but i have prepared. i have been reaching out to OA people. my #1 priority is to not turn to food, alcohol or pills to distract me from this challenge. i plan to attend an AA meeting today, and OA meetings tomorrow and Wednesday. plus im going to listen to program podcasts and text/call people. i have crochet and knit projects, and some binge TV shows to listen to while i work on them. i have healthy food in the house. the weathers a bit warmer so i am going to take the dogs to the lake as soon as im done writing this. i have a stack of good books and some meditation podcasts set up. i have some yoga videos on youtube ready to go that were recommended to me by a reputable indian friend.

I want to do weird stuff like meditate naked and blast old school dark wave and dance in black robes. im smudging the shit out of the house! 

and I am really grateful. maybe it would have helped me to not cling so tightly, but i am so grateful that i don’t have a situation like so many people do: shared custody. specifically, shared custody with an asshole. the idea of having to let my kids go with someone i dont trust on a monthly or weekly basis…not being able to demand to be included in group texts like i did with Mark this morning, or to track them like i do with Life360, or to have to let them go when i don’t i feel its safe and the best thing for them. not having that kind of control and peace of mind. just a horrible thought. at least with my ex-husband — yeah i never got any financial help or a break. and my kids didnt’ have a relationship with their dad. these things really suck. but there are people in very similar situations who have to give their kid(s) up to an irresponsible jerk, possibly even an addict or abuser, and the law protects that bad parents right to time alone with their kids. so, as hard as things have been/are, i am so grateful that was not my situation.

im obvs writing a lot so I don’t have to go deal with life. but one last thing. i was trepidatious about how mark would behave when picking them up. this being the first time we’ve seen each other since he left. i purposely didnt get dress (pjs) or do my hair/makeup. i was friendly and superficial. he hugged me three times, all intiated by him. the first time he did some weird kiss/long sniffing thing with a slight, almost silent, moan. seemed affected, but it’s hard to say. the second two were more normal, and i was like uh, ok, tried to be generic but not rude. the kids were gone for the last one, he had closed the door so i was nervous, and he said i love you. i paused, but said it back just to be polite. stupid, i know. im sure it didnt sound passionate. its just he’s leaving with my kids and i dont want him having negative feelings toward me. idk i feel kinda shitty about it. it was just weird. also, he smelled bad. like old rotten garlic.

on that note — To The Lake!!!!

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