the cement of writing

Dear Darklings

I am here I am fully here I have been writing both poetry which is not autobiography and in this blog as my diary which is autobiography but I keep saving all the diary posts as drafts because of the difficulty of writing what I want and need to write so I will start at the middle and work my way in

I have surprised myself by doing some deep therapeutic "work" with new nurse which means exploring but not exploring but putting words to a piece of the trauma that created my PTSD I don't think I've ever written about it with any specificity I searched all my old blogs but couldn't find it anywhere I know I told my son about it once he was grown and I feel like I may have written it at some point or told someone but I told new nurse that I write everything down which is true because writing it not only gives me a map it helps me remember and it always feeds never starves me

this is about the abuser

my abuser

I know I've written that word I've written that I lived with a man who abused me but those memories have long been dormant though awake I remember everything but I have pushed it so far back that it only shimmers in the distance

I could describe it perfectly as happening to someone else

a couple weeks ago I was watching Bill Hader's brilliant hbo series Barry and in the show Barry is rehearsing a scene from a play and in the scene his girlfriend instructs him to put his hand on her throat to pretend choke her and as soon as he did it I had a momentous flashback something that has never before happened to me and I started crying and I couldn't stop I cried for two days straight and

now explosions are going off loud and guns all the white men with guns drunk out here on the island and I have been hiding from this travesty of a holiday for many years because

my abuser held a rifle to my head right to my head not near it with his finger on the trigger he was going to shoot me in the head

and I sat on my bed watching Barry and sobbing in terror two days later I was in new nurse's office telling her the story not as a memory of a memory of a memory but as though it had just happened I told her my abuser held a rifle to my head with his finger on the trigger he was going to shoot me in the head and as I told her it was as if it had just happened

I have watched all kinds of movies about war and terror and abusive men always remembering always remembering everything but at a remove as someone else's memory as chimera

I told new nurse I had never written it but I am not even sure of that

and now I have

I am taking Doxazosin for PTSD it has allowed me to sleep every night for three weeks in a row without nightmares without waking myself up screaming and my prostate feels shiny and brand new and I am seeing new nurse every two weeks and she moved my appointments to Saturday mornings early so I don't have to deal with traffic and on Saturday mornings she brings her dog to work an elderly dachshund that is so fat she is pretty much a square dog and new nurse carries square dog down the stairs when I leave so square dog can poo because the she is too fat to to make the trip on her own

the dog's name is Piper

my son is home today the first day he's had off in months and the first time he's spent this particular holiday with me since he was able to drive and he understands it he understands most of it especially the explosions

I have some photos of around the house to post but this was enough writing it here cementing it here as something that happened to me as living in it I don't want to pretty it up

love