I've been working on this one for a long time. I always say that if something has to be forced then it's probably not the right time to share it. Well, I've added to and taken from and manipulated the words and phrases, but none of it was right.
Maybe tonight is the right time.
The last breakdown.
To begin with, I'm one of those, not unusual by any means, folks who holds it together beautifully during a crises, a situation. I'm one of those that keeps their head, breaks down what's really happening, what needs taken care of, what's just fluff, how to manage what is right in front of the face, even if it feels like it's off over down the barrel of a gun pointing out into the woods, or something. My job is to define, to delineate, to defuse if necessary and create a working plan of attack and conquer.
When my older girl turned 18, she took off.
I've written about those details before so I'm not going into them here. I went into my crisis management mode, negotiated a treaty and working plan of communication, and began the business of putting our home life back together. That was tough. It hurt, so terribly. I didn't understand what had happened, why it had happened or how it was going to turn out. Late at night, exhausted by the emotional fog that was enveloping me, I would ask the powers that be to lift the fog, to let me breathe.
Stupid.
The fog would begin to lift, but the pain was so intense and sharp, I couldn't think straight, much less breathe. So I would beg the universe to please return the fog.
That went on for months, for me. The entire summer, I could feel the weight of pretending that all was well work on me. I focused on our family, on the farm, on every and anything except what was happening.
Long story short, I know...I ended up on meds, after a few hospital visits, not altogether successfully. I was already working my way though a very good book, but the panic disorder had reared it's head, probably because I absolutely could NOT sleep.
On meds for panic, functioning more or less...
then a doctor decides to plop a different drug on me.
Buspar.
A spit in the ocean, they said. Very mild.
By the 2nd day, I began to feel the slide of depression. Alarmed, I called. No answer. No answer. No answer.
No answering service, either.
Day 3, I'm crashing. I've been here before, I know what it is. I call again. Get a person, but everyone from my doctor's office is out until Monday. What do I do, I ask? Well, don't stop taking it. They'll be back in 3 days.
Day 4. Worse. I'm vomiting. In serious trouble.
I stop taking it.
Too late.
That night, I have a psychotic break. I am certain that's what it was. I've never before, nor since, experienced such a thing as this was.
I was busy fixing dinner, a late dinner.
Suddenly I was doing something else, something terrible. I've only been able to talk of it once, it was so horrific, and it was happening. I was certain of it.
But I wasn't. It wasn't. I was still at the counter, chopping greens.
I gasped, dropped what I was holding, and quickly walked down the hallway to a spare room. To be honest, it had been daughter's room, redone and had become a hiding place for me. I would read, or knit, or whatever. Well, I went into the room, locked the door, and called a crisis line.
Shaking. Heaving. I hadn't been able to eat for days, which I'm sure added to it as much as the insomnia did.
In that moment of time, I lost everything that I had thought was keeping me grounded to the world that I lived in.
I believed in nothing. Not in my own physical body, not in the floor I was curled on.
I trusted nothing. How could I trust what I couldn't believe was real?
And what WAS real, anyway?
Anything?
Nothing?
I already wrote a small bit of that night in the post "children"...
After I left the room, I went outside to think.
I looked up at the stars, my friends...and felt a cold grip of death and fear.
*****************************************************************************
The stars had always given me comfort. I would often go outside, wherever I might be, and look up at the stars in the night, the moon, watch the clouds drift if there were any, listen to the wind through the trees and imagine that they were talking to each other. Removing the spin of the mind, if you listened closely, with more than just your ears, but with your whole body, you could hear the slight movements of night creatures, their calls that were barely perceptible, the shift of the breeze by the change in the sound of it through the leaves...this always cleared my mind of any worries, helped me center and refocus, feel the connection between myself and all around me. It made me less significant, which did bring me comfort. It made me a part of something instead of the all of something.
That night...those stars brought terror. When I say that I lost everything, I mean that. I no longer believed that they were real. I needed to focus solely on what I knew to be true, and what I knew at that moment was that I knew nothing.
I'd been through a few breakdowns before. Puddles. The times when you become a puddle, and build yourself back up, hopefully shedding the garbage that had been weighing you down and keeping the truths that you had found for yourself.
This was nothing like those 2 other times.
If I did know anything, at that moment, I knew that I was in serious trouble and that I had no way of getting myself out of it. I didn't know what "it" was. Panic? I was so far beyond panic. I was afraid of sleep, afraid to think. In my mind I was screaming for help, but my voice, when I heard it, was calm. Shaky, but calm. Yes, that was me, my lips were moving. "I'm not okay", I told my former spouse. "What do you need?" he asked. "I don't know", I answered. And that frightened him in that moment. I always knew. He's the one who walked me out into the yard, to look at the stars...I glanced and then looked quickly away. I looked at the ground, I looked at my feet, I started to cry and to shake. I wanted to be held but I was afraid to be. To his credit, he told me to stay put, went back inside and quickly returned with our small dog, Lola.
Lola. She saved me.
A puppy mill Pomeranian, but not the icky kind. She was larger, and beautiful. She had the sweetest face, the sweetest spirit. Funny, smart, loving...she adored me, and the feeling was mutual. She had been rescued by my older girl, who couldn't keep her. We took her, and Lola and I instantly bonded. This is not a breed that I like. But this was a dog that I loved.
He brought me Lola and handed me her leash. Lola would run around and around like a horse on a lunge line, we couldn't let her loose, she'd be gone. But that night, when Lola came out, bouncing down the steps of the deck and racing around, the moment my hand touched the leash she stopped. She stopped, and she stared, head tipped...then slowly walked to me, looked up as I started to cry again and sat on my foot, just staring up at me. I was so afraid that she would sense something terrible inside of me, but this small creature just sat there, watching me, then leaned against my leg and pushed. I reached down to touch her and she jumped up into my arms and put her head against my shoulder, by my heart and completely relaxed.
The tears are running hard now as I remember this...she told me that I was okay, inside. Terrified, but not a demon. Not a danger. She told me that she trusted me, and that gave me a tiny bit of trust in myself. She told me because an animal will not react that way if there is something terribly wrong...evil. Which was my fear that that moment.
I've always said that animals are emotional livers. There has never been a time when I've been hurting, frightened, sad, when they haven't come to me and pushed their bodies against mine. Even the horses would. I'd go into the field to find peace and just sit. Before I knew it, my mare and the others would be around me, heads down, breathing softly. Usually Abi would but her face into mine, and we would share breath before she would rest her head against my own. When I could, I'd stand and walk into her shoulder, her neck down over my shoulder, her head pulling me into her closer. I could feel her heart, smell her own particular pony scent, bury my face into her mane and neck and just be held, with the others standing closely by. I honestly could feel the pain, the sadness, the confusion, the fear leave my body as if drained by some force, extracted...and then, I could feel warmth and peace flood back into me. Strength, quiet, calm. My emotions taken, filtered, returned. It was incredible and it happened over and over.
The cats and dogs do the same now, they press close and they hold, they ask nothing of me and give me everything good.
Lola, that night, took me as her own. Not as the adored "grammy", but as her own. We were no longer owner and pet. For the next few months, I belonged to Lola. She never let me out of her sight, and we were touching constantly. I never had to reach for her. She took care of my younger girl, watching over her as well. It went so far as that she wouldn't eat until after I had, so my eating began again to keep her fed.
In that moment of utter loss, many parts of me shut down completely. I found myself lost in a cloud of terrible memory, of ocd, of fog. My body was weak, I could lift little, I could barely focus, walking was an ordeal...eating...it wasn't happening. I choked on juice, I couldn't swallow anything at all. I was terrified to sleep and what was worse was knowing that when I woke up I would wake up to another day of hell.
It was a horrific place to be.
And I had 2 more days to go before i could get in to see my psychologist.
Days became eternal minutes.
and now, i must sleep.
