Diagnosis.

So I finally went back to see my therapist and my psychiatrist a few weeks ago. Here's the events from that.

I am officially diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (possibly recurrent) and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I was started on Pristiq for the depression. For the PTSD I am on Lunesta to help me sleep and hopefully diminish the nightmares. I now have some pills to take when I have my intense anxiety/panic attacks. It isn't really helping well so I see my doc again next week and I will try to discuss with him if there are any better options.

The PTSD is all related to my history of sexual abuse. The first thing I remember happening to me was when I was very young. Our regular babysitter was sick so her older brother (about 17ish) watched my sister and I instead. I remember him taking my sister, who was about 2 or 3 at the time, and I into my parents room and shutting the door. The lights were dim and he made us lay there while he stroked himself. He ended up asking us to kiss it, stroke it, put it in our mouths, etc. My sister doesn't remember this at all, which is understandable with how young she was, but I recall it very vividly. The second, and worst, thing that happened to me was my first marriage. The entire two years of my marriage I think I may have consented to sex enough times to count on one hand. He was very forceful and would often take hours to finish. I remember laying in bed crying as he had sex with me and told me over and over how "if I was better at it" or "if you didn't lay there and not actually try to be sexy" he wouldn't take so long. I was forced to perform oral sex if I did something wrong or lost an argument. I'm sure to some people you may not understand.. but what he did was rape. Just because he was legally my husband.. it was still rape. It took me a very long time to come to terms with it and be able to say it out loud. I am not ashamed anymore when someone asks me about the situation and I tell them. 9 times out of 10 the response I get is "rape? But he's your husband.. I mean how does that work?"

I have learned to educate people that there are so many different ways women can suffer from sexual trauma and to degrade me for saying he raped me only helps me understand why I took nine years after the marriage to finally seek help. I was ashamed and afraid that I wouldn't be taken seriously. Therapy has helped me to understand that I was not at fault, that I wasn't doing anything wrong, and that what he did to me was wrong.. plain and simple.

I know that many of you women out there are afraid to talk about what happened to you.. whether it be a situation like mine or a rape by a stranger. I want to tell you that you are not at fault. You didn't do anything to put yourself in the situation that you were in. The person who hurt you was a deeply damaged individual who wanted to control you, to feel that sense of power. Rape is about control. Most rapists say they don't do it for the sexual pleasure but for the control they feel.

By not seeking help, by not helping yourself to heal, you are only hurting yourself. Don't let that person control you for the rest of your life. The trauma may have only lasted minutes, or in my case years, but they still have a sort of control over you for so much longer after that. I know in my life it controlled my relationship with my sons father who I loved very much. I never fully trusted him. I wanted to.. but I was deeply afraid that he would leave me, or hurt me. I let the feelings of "i'm not good enough" and "If I did suchandsuch better he would love me enough to want me to be his wife.." etc. It effected our sex life because I was always afraid to make the first move in bed. I couldn't be the one who initiated sex. It brought back the feelings of insecurity I had from the ex telling me I was a whore and a slut all of the time. I never opened my heart fully to him because I was scared that If I did I would somehow be opening myself up to the pain I felt back then all over again. I never once thought that he would ever do something like that to me.. but because of my past I couldn't make the fear go away. I was consumed with irrational thoughts.

To this day I push away the people I love once things get too serious and I realize that they might be going somewhere. Why? I don't know really.. but I know it's related to the fear. I chose that man to be my husband. We said vows in front of 150 people.. family and friends who loved us. He didn't even wait till after the honeymoon to start his controlling behavior. He started demanding strange things.. like that I leave the door open to the bathroom and brush my teeth in my underwear. He started screaming yelling fights in our honeymoon suite and even out in the streets where people would be looking at us from everywhere. The point is that the man I took vows with.. the one person I thought I could trust and love for the rest of my life.. the person I thought could protect me.. Ended up being the person I needed protection from. That's something you just don't get over easily.

If you have been through a rape, trauma, molestation, physical abuse, or anything that was traumatic to you... Please don't be afraid to seek help. It's the best thing I could have done for myself. You can't handle everything yourself. You don't need to be ashamed or afraid. There are people out there who have been through what you have gone through. You deserve to get better too. Please find a local Therapist who specializes in rape and trauma. It will be the best thing you could possibly do for yourself. You deserve to find yourself again. You deserve to get rid of the fear that controls your life.

My Goals.

So I'm a huge fan of Chalene Johnson, A fitness trainer and very inspirational woman who is always preaching about the power of believing in yourself and making goals and to-do lists.

So.. In the spirit..

My goals for the future:
1) Finish my BSN since I am already into it.
2) 150lbs. Oh yeah.. It's a long way off.. but it's my goal.
3) Find relief from my chronic pain through medical treatment, diet, and exercise.
4) Become a certified personal trainer. I am hoping to someday be able to help others with my nursing knowledge and the experience I will have gained from my current endeavor to get healthier.
5) I am thinking about finding a way to use my history of rape/sexual/domestic abuse to help other people. I haven't decided yet just how that is.

Short-term goals:
1) Remind myself everyday something in my life that I am thankful for. I have so much bad in my life right now it's easy to forget about the wonderful. I need to start reminding myself that I have a lot in my life to be grateful for and happy with.
2) Sort out my current financial situation.
3) Entirely cut out all liquid calories. *The occasional healthy fruit juice will be acceptable but only when ok with my caloric intake.
4) Track all foods eaten. You are more accountable when you can see it.
5) Find new ways to get active. It is difficult right now with the pain, but I know i need it.. for my weight, sanity, health, and back.
6) Return to therapy to continue to deal with the issues I have been facing recently along with the continued control that my sexual abuse history still holds on my life.
7) Come up with new things for this list every day :)

I struggle every day through pain, depression, fear, and loneliness. I am trying to change my way of life and my line of thinking to be more positive and let myself take some valuable life changing lesson out of this struggle I am in. I have heard countless people tell me pragmatic sunshiney-happy sayings like "don't worry.. it can only get better from here" and the ever popular "everything happens for a reason." While it's always wonderful to know that people love and care about you and worry about your physical and mental health, I have to tell you that hearing these things usually makes me want to either cry hysterically or slap someone.

NOW.. I know.. I know.. I just said I'm going to start trying to live my life all shiney-happy-glass-half-full.. and I am.. but I must admit that right now people who are like that make me want to pull my hair out. Maybe it's because I have NEVER been that way. I have always been a pessimist and a critic. I have too many bad experiences not to right? Well.. I am starting now.. I am going to be that annoyingly happy, chipper, glass half-full person. Will it make a difference? Who knows. I know I can't change it overnight but hopefully if I can sit down at the end of the day and look at whatever frustrating or bad thing happened to me and try to see the positive in that thing then I am off to a good start.

SO.. My Shiney-Happy moment for today: The whole family has cabin-fever. We've been locked up together for three straight days during a storm! While this storm completely tested my patience and ability to love and see my amazing little man and all he wonderful things he has learned .

Hello 2 am Epiphany.

Yes.. It is indeed 2 am. I am wide awake, currently calming down after a hysterical crying in pain fit. I am tired. I'm frustrated. I wish my life wasn't all about pain and misery all the time.

So I'm laying here thinking that if I can't do much for myself right now maybe I can help other people. I realize I'm a nobody and it's probable that no one will ever read this blog. Hell.. I have had it for a while and have 0 readers. I am not a professional writer, I am not an overly interesting person, I'm no one special to most people, but I do have many things in my life I feel other people could benefit from. Last night I had a talk with a friend who had suffered a rape many years back and while I was crying, telling her about things I go through, she said "oh honey.. that's perfectly normal."

NORMAL!!! Do you understand how life altering it can be to realize that the pain you feel, the reactions you have, what you are going through is actually ok?! It took my breath away.

So I am going to start this blog from scratch for the most part. I am going to delete alot of old non-issue posts and I am going to concentrate this blog on my life as someone who has survived sexual abuse at the hands of her spouse, as someone who has been dealing with severe depression her whole adult life, and as someone who is suffering from severe debilitating chronic pain. I know that there are many many people in the world who would have the same sigh of relief as I did last night knowing that someone else can understand what they are going through.

The first three blogs on this page detail my story of sexual abuse and difficulties with relationships after. It's sorta a "introduction" if you will. I also have suffered from chronic pain for 2 years in my lower back but in March of this year I was injured at work and I have been incapacitated for the most part ever since. I was denied workers comp, my job let me go, I can't get unemployment, I have no income, and my son and I have had to move back with my parents because of the whole ordeal. I was scheduled for surgery on my back on October 8th but three days before it my surgeon got word that the insurance company was denying the procedure for red tape BS. He appealed their decision and was again denied and rather than chose to continue to fight them he gave up. He even told me in the appointment that he "had made himself look bad in the eyes of the insurance doctors because they didn't agree with his course of treatment." I'm appalled at the fact that an insurance company has that much power over physicians. It's sad really.

I am a 29 year old single mother and I am a registered nurse who has specialized in trauma, orthopedics, and neurosurgery. I loved nursing and it's very hard for me not to be practicing my profession right now. I miss helping people so maybe this can be my way of helping. I am struggling with weight issues now too. Since the injury I have become mostly sedentary and I have gained a LOT of weight. I am embarking on a journey to help myself conquer my use of food addiction to feed my loneliness, physical pain, depression, and stress.

I will try to write a blog regularly. I have not decided on a schedule yet but my goal for this week since it is already almost friday will be to get one more in this week. I hope to find new readers and people who are interested in learning more about the subjects that have effected my life.

I am going to start making goals for myself. It's hard to see the sunshine through the clouds sometimes.. and I have had many clouds in my life.. but I am going to start seeking the sunshine. It's all I can do!

Independent Medical Exam..

So tomorrow is my big day..

I have an "independent medical exam" to be done by a second neurosurgeon. He will have all my old films and CT scans and MRI's and he will look at my medical records and decide if the surgery is really necessary. There will be a nurse who is supplied by the "intermediary" people who are supposed to be like mediating between me and the Workers comp insurance company. She will accompany me to the appt, wait in the waiting room till he's done examining me, then he will talk to her about his opinion. I guess from there she reports this to the insurance company and then they will decide what they are going to do.. Either approve the surgery as a workers comp pay or they will deny and I then begin the ordeal of fighting with my regular insurance to get this done already.

I am soooooo ready to move on with my life. I want to be able to wake up painfree. I realize I may not ever be completely rid of the pain... but I maintain that if it even decreased the pain level by 50% overall it would truly CHANGE MY LIFE.

In the meantime I'm continuing my bachelors degree, I'm not working, and I'm just waiting patiently for things to be decided.

I will try to remember to check in tomorrow and update on how the appt went. :)

Why do we always go back to those who hurt us?

No.. not me. I am perfectly single and at the moment I am ok with it. All the years that I tried so desperately hard to make things work with my sons dad I always had at least one really good friend standing behind me telling me that I needed to move on.

It's always hard to hear someone else telling you that you are making a bad decision.. that you are making a fool of yourself again. I never understood why my friends couldn't be happy for me and why they didn't understand that I loved him THAT much. Now I'm the one trying to hold back the advice so as not to hurt someone's feelings.

We always find it easier to hold on to the past and hope that it will get better than to move forward in our lives and allow ourselves to be happy with someone else. I know this all to well. I was so afraid of the future that I allowed myself to keep going back to a man who wasn't right for me. I still love him and will always cherish the time we spent together but he's never going to be able to give me what I need in a relationship. That was the hardest thing I have ever had to do was get to the point in my life where I finally understand that.

It sucks being alone.. it really does. I have trouble sleeping some nights because I roll over reaching for someone who just isn't there. I don't know if I'll ever find someone who wants to spend their life with me and I guess I'm kinda starting to recognize the possibility that it will just be this way forever. It's hard and it hurts sometimes but I realize that regardless of all of that I am better off than spending my life with someone who I wasn't happy with. I spent 8 years trying to be someone else... Trying to be who he wanted, what he wanted, the person he needed. I felt like I had to change everything about myself to make myself someone worthy of his love. I spent every day of my life with him trying to figure out what else I needed to change to be the person he wanted me to be to finally be worthy of him wanting to marry me. After all those years and everything I tried to do to deserve a ring I finally realized I was never going to get it and I was never going to be able to change enough to make him love me the way I loved him.

I love with my whole heart and with everything I am. I deserve to find someone who loves me just as much. And so does the person who started this conversation. There is a reason things end the way they do.. You can't change the past. You can't pretend that everything is OK and you certainly can't forget the pain. As cheesy as it sounds you are a beautiful person. You can't just give up who you are for someone who didn't appreciate it before and certainly won't appreciate it now. I know how easy it is to let your mind wander and think that "this time things will be different" but I promise you they won't. Things will be all honeymoon happy for a while and then they will quickly resort back to the way they were. You know this.. it's happened before. So really why would you think it would be different the second or third time around? It won't. I'm sorry to say that.. you know I care about you. I'm not being hurtful.

Ah.. Love is a battlefield.

Oh my.. It's been a while!

So it's been a while since I posted. It turned out that there was something on the CT scan. The neurosurgeon found a bilateral pars defect at L5. I have since been out of work completely and awaiting workers comp to come to a decision about whether or not they will approve or deny the procedure. I have had ZERO income since then and things have not been going very well.

I am now moved out of my beautiful condo and back in with my mom and dad. I couldn't afford my place anymore and I didn't have the ability to get a roomate to help since it was only a two bedroom. A friend took over the condo and signed a new lease therefore relieving me of my contract. My landlord was very understanding and awesome about the whole ordeal. I'm still waiting to get my security deposit back.. hopefully soon since my car payment is already overdue and I have no income.

Workers Comp has not approved or denied my procedure and they are also not paying me for my lost income at this time. Because they still have it tied up I am unable to apply for short-term disability. I am beyond frustrated with the whole process right now and I am starting to feel like I'm being treated like a liar. I spend most of my days laying on a heating pad on pain meds. I have rare good days and try to take advantage of them when I can, but usually pay for it the next day with significantly worse pain than usual.

As far as my personal life goes.. who knows. I have met some really wonderful men lately but nothing that has gone anywhere beyond a few dates. I am baffled by the inability of most men to come right out and tell you that they are no longer interested. Is it really that hard? I just don't get it. Be a man.. don't just stop calling/texting. I guess it's hard enough for a man to want to get involved with a mom of a 7 year old but now add to it that I'm broken too.. I'm just not something that many men jump at the opportunity to be with. I'm ok with that I guess. I would love to be in love again and to feel like someone loved me.. but in the meantime I guess I really don't have time for all that in my life anyway. I have this back thing to work through and a lot of issues related to that. I figure someday maybe I'll find happiness again.. until then.. I have my son and I have my puppy... At least I know they love me unconditionally! I'm really only truly hurt by one of the guys.. it was more than just a few dates though. I really let myself start to let down my walls with him and of course felt like a jackass when he decided that regardless of any feelings he had for me he just didn't want to be with me. We are "friends" now.. so I guess at least there is that.

Oh well.. Time marches on and so shall I.

I don't know what else to ramble about right now.. I guess I'll just shutup for now. Will try to update more often.

Update

I am still not doing fabulous but I suppose I am getting along just fine.

Neurosurgeon doesn't believe that there is anything surgical. I am going back to follow up on tuesday to make sure that the results of the CT/Xray were ok. I am still on light duty until then. Hoping to get some steroid injections into the joint that he believes is severely inflamed. (My sacroiliac for those with some anatomical knowledge)

I have good days and bad. Last night was a decent day until I went to the movies to watch Transformers 2 and then by the end of the show I was dying. Ended up in tears at my friends house and he was totally flabbergasted at how to react to that. But he was sweet and did help by showing me he cared. I ended up not being able to sleep and driving home at 2:30 bc I didn't want to keep him up all night with my incessant tossing and turning and tears.