J.S. Memoirs
A Collective of memoirs by J.S. about Trauma + Mental Health + Abuse + Healing.
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#selfproclamations #abuse #trauma #healing #childabuse #attack #PTSD ♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤ Curled up on the couch, a soft fur blanket drapped around my body, fingers laced with my husbands' --- feels like home. We are watching a Netflix original, trying to keep our eyes open past 1am to enjoy our greatest version of a date. Alone time after the three kids go to sleep. Hearts calm and bodies relaxed, enjoying the lack of awareness of day or time. It is winter and no responsibilities are calling our names here in the night. He kisses my cheek and I smile, feeling warm and content as he admires the outline of my silhouette and runs his finger down my nose. There is an intimacy between us that can forever be unmatched. A safety in his touch and the presence of the space he takes up next to me, legs intertwined and feet touching. A feeling builds up in my chest, a quick pick up of breathing and lack of exhales causing me to raise my left hand to my chest, bare beneath the neckline of my shirt collar. My ears are picking up something from the depth beyond the shut wooden door that keeps us time blocked in date night. A thump. A creek. And a sudden shriek of the door POPPING loose and dragging open in the dark. Just as my body sensed its movement, my nerves LEAP with intensified fear. Neck whipping, I turn to my husband and ask him to check if a child is out of bed or if something pushed the latch open. It is silly, but I am frightened. He gets up in serious fashion to explore what is most likely a toddler awaiting retrieval from the baby gated bedroom across from ours. Instead, he meets gaze with a dark, empty hall and turns to me to smile gently for reassurance that everything is ok. I am up behind him already. He shuts the door and tells me that it was nothing. As his body passed mine to return to the couch, I turn back away from the door and it POPS open again. This time, my shaking hand meeting the backside and shoving it shut. I am pale and I can feel the goosebumps rising over my back underneath my silky top. Heart pounding and tears welling up along with the thump, thump, pause. Thump, THUMP, PAUSE --- I am met, chest to chest wit an understanding hug as he holds me. As he repeats, "YOU'RE OK. YOU'RE OK." Hand caressing my back. He knows. --- Unmatched intimacy. He knows. ♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤ PTSD sometimes looks like knowing 5 seconds before it happens. It's feeling the air change. Or an expression alter. It's seeing something there that no one else sees because it happened, just a long time ago. For me, PTSD looks like petite hands pressing a wooden door shut at 2am and making bruises on a strong, thin calf of someone prying the door open in order to reach me. 2am, hair grasped in fist and screams, inaudible, felt in vibrations down my spine. Goosebumps and chills. Fear she will get in. Fear of what happens if I am not strong enough to shut the door. A final slam and standing fast on feet to hold the door shut from inside. Desperately looking around for something to hold it shut, absent of a lock on the cheap brass handle of the eggshell white portal I desperately beg to cease moving. So I tug heavily at the vintage dresser and get the corner to pass the door. I keep pushing and manage to shove a heavy, 9 drawer natural wood IKEA vanity across the right corner of the room. I melt down in front of it and press my body to the drawers. Knobs resting my head and spine between them. PTSD is not remembering how many hours i slept on that hardwood floor that night or what got me into school the next morning. Just knowing I reached an adult I trusted instead of taking my midterm, to shakily pass words I had been waiting to utter for years. "Attacked". My PTSD shows up during normal hours. It does not pencil in meetings with me or request a call. It just comes, unannounced. Like a walk-in for an important meeting. A meeting of timelines. A recollection of truths. As I grow older, gaining understanding of what is happening and learning how to say PTSD in line with my name... I realize the foreign sound of this term only means I have not presently associated with my past. February 2019 was my first real diagnosis with this term. It was not until summer that the pronunciation felt right. Past reminders in current situations. Pre processing of past events. So what does healing look like for someone with PTSD? For me, it is the meeting between past and present in order to map out a healthy future. It means using my senses and my present awareness to assist in honoring boundaries to make the flashes subside and the title "healing" feel attainable. It means I will have the whole body experience of hitting "play" on my life. J.S. Jaded Savior ♡ An excerpt from "STUCK ON PAUSE", an autobiography about living with PTSD, depression, anxiety, trauma, abuse etc. Coming in 2020 ☆ 
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My truths look different than the truths other family members have in my family. Everyone is affected differently by Trauma. And not everyone in the family gets abused by the abuser. In fact, it can be common for one person to be singled out while everyone else is unaware of it. Narcissistic people often surround themselves by adoring fans in order to not raise suspicions and successfully gas light TF out of their victim. I was in abusive, volatile situations my first 16 years of life. It took me years after to ACTUALLY, cognitively, process what had happened. To come to terms with definitions like addict, narcissist, schizophrenic etc. To gain validation from actual medical professionals once both parents of mine went into the hospital for near death experiences due to their addictions. My father was found nearly dead from a heroin overdose. He was brought into the hospital and soon after admitted into a long term in-patient program. My mother had seizures and passed out during Thanksgiving in front of her siblings and parents, having an ambulance take her out. She was admitted only a few days then sent home. Alcohol poisoning and problems with her body. I had called the hospital when my mother went in. I let them know I was her only child and that she was an addict, so medications should be provided with caution. They ignored it. Both of my parents began drinking and doing drugs in their early teens. I would figure out decades later that they both suffered from abuse since childhood and mental health issues, without any diagnosis or treatments until they began self medicating and got harmed by it. Common for people struggling with mental health issues, such as bipolar and schizophrenia, each of them did not actually know what was wrong with themselves until they were very deep in dangerous symptoms of their conditions. No one in my family ever talked to me about their conditions or their addictions. In fact, my mother was often just eye rolled at when she peeled off the foil seal of a new bottle at a holiday dinner or even a get together. "There goes Cathy, drinking again" was the closest I ever heard to anyone pointing out a bad behavior, though sharp tongued as to say it was as annoying and typical as nail biting. And soon after, discarded as a lost cause. I remember how much anxiety I felt whenever my mother, who had residential custody of me, took me to family events. My father on the other hand did not want to see his family as the years went on. He cut them all off. He even cut off his childhood best friend. His girlfriends. And then finally me. I remember wishing other people could see what I saw. I wanted someone to say something to both of them. To call them out on their problems. But when it did not happen, I felt crazy. Had I imagined everything to be worse than it was? After all, both of my parents were adults and bought their substances with their own money. They both held jobs. They both had relationships. And relatives who still wanted to invite them to things. I often thought I earned it. That I must have been a bad kid. So bad my parents did not want any more. So bad, they divorced. So bad that I was punished often because I was not living up to their standards. My mother would do this thing whenever we saw my cousins. Any cousins from any side of the family. She would let me play with them. Let me get messy. Let me run around laughing and having a good time. Then the whole car ride home, she would talk about how messy I was. How loud I was. How I was not "as smart as", "as pretty as", "as obedient as". I was a bad girl. A fresh girl who liked to talk back. A girl who ripped her tights and wrinkled her dress because she did not care to be polite or neat. When my father took me from my mother to go to an event or play date, he actually brought me rugged Jean's + t shirts. I dressed down and took my hair loose. I went out in the yard. I got dirty. Then I would get dropped off home and face the ridicule of a lifetime for looking and smelling the way I did. They knew each other like warning labels --- there was no way it was accidental, this exchange of a pawn. A checkmate between dirt and clorox. --------------------------- When I reflect now, I have a whirlwind of emotions. At 29, I still ask myself sometimes if I "imagine to be worse than it was". I also have to sit with the fact that not everyone in my family experienced the same behaviors or abuse from my parents. That to some, it looked like I had a normal childhood. My parents were both high functioning. And their Jekyl/Hyde personalities fooled a lot of people. There were other abusers in my families. All 3 families, since my mother was remarried by the time I was 6. I knew narcissists, emotionally and physically abusive members, other addicts, and even a pedophile. I was sure of it. In my silence, I also grew up hyper vigilant. I carry guilt for not being able to expose those truths. And pain for all the enablers or people who just kept a blind eye for convenience. But something very important I discovered this year changed my life. MY TRUTHS ARE THE TRUTH. For me, the experiences were REAL. They happened to me. It was not an illusion. And I AM SURE of what is healthy v.s. not. So what helps me through these struggles? The FACT that I KNOW RIGHT V.S. WRONG. I know what abuse looks like, from education and awareness. Even though I no longer live in those toxic situations, I still relive the memories. But this time, I am able to process the guilt and pain. To justify how I felt and what it all did to me. And I can release the thoughts I have about anyone else I grew up around. I can tell myself that everyone has their own experience. I have to accept that some people loved the abusers in my families'. That some people loved and love my parents. I have to detach from the notion that my family has to validate the abuse in order to validate that I experienced it. It is not true or necessary. So I release it all. Anyone else's feelings or examination of my truths. I also stay introspective because that is healthy. I had to make that boundary myself. To ONLY THINK ABOUT MY OWN EMOTIONS and not try to process or control anyone else's. It is true that some people do not have the same truths or realizations I do. But just because someone else was not abused like I was, by the same person, does not mean that person was not abusive. A narcissist is still a narcissist and an abuser is still an abuser. IF SOMEONE DOES SOMETHING UNHEALTHY AND IMMORAL TO SOMEONE ELSE, EVEN JUST ONE VICTIM, IT ABSOLUTELY MAKES THEM WRONG. Toxic is toxic. And no one else can speak for me to say I was not abused. No one else was there, but even if they had been ------> someone else having a lack of capacity or awareness of what is right and wrong should not affect in any way what I know to be right or wrong. And even if no one else is able to have the same realizations I have, it is my job alone to create my own boundaries. To keep myself safe. I have had to keep my safety and distance ---> not just for myself but for my children. I have had to break the cycle of abuse by deeming it not okay to be around addicts or abusive people EVER. I have to be able to live with my own decisions. And I can, every single day that I choose HEALTHY in order to break the cycle. ♡ J.S. Jaded Savior |
J.S. Memoirs
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TRIGGER WARNING: Content mention of Rape, Abuse, Neglect, Addictions, Mental Illness, Kidnap, Molestation, Child abuse, Teen Pregnancy, Abortion, birth, body image, gender/identity dysphoria, sexuality, personal trauma, domestic violence and other extremely personal stories. Please practice caution. I am not a licensed physician or mental health professional. No medical prescribing is provided on this site, Only personal insights, experience stories, and advice; All stories published have had prior authorization. Questions? Contact Jean at: jadedsaviorblog@gmail.com |
EMPOWERING MINDS SINCE 2019
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