NBD

by V.V.

I’m not really sure how to begin this. It’s not so much writer’s block as writer’s overflow: There are so many things that spring to mind to share when you’re a survivor of abuse. One, I hate that word. “Survivor.” I’m not a “victim,” either, in my head. I am a very smart, very together, very angry woman. I’m a textbook case of long-term child sexual abuse, from the high school eating disorder to the collegiate promiscuity, the constant overachieving, the perfectionism, the control issues. I confronted my father about the molestation when I was still a child — 15 is, after all, still a child — and ended it. I got my acknowledgement, my apology. I did the standard, “no really I can deal with this myself” until I couldn’t anymore, and then I got help. Lots of help. I refused meds. I learned how not to cope through dissociation. I was angry, sad, angry again, sadder. I broke up with and hurt people who loved me, and whom I tried to love. I broke up with and found new therapists. I kept myself very safe, and very close. I got into grad school. I found someone to love. I finally made my father tell my mother exactly what had happened. I ended my relationship.

And then, and only then, did I have a nervous breakdown.

Wait, sorry, I forgot. They’re called “major depressive episodes” nowadays. They are sustained psychological shitstorms that completely take over your body for days or weeks at a time. My hands are going cold and clammy, typing this, remembering the utter lack of control. I spent a month with my abdomen clenched against my spine, trying not to shudder — much like I’m trying to keep the tremors at bay right now. I feel like I’ve had a thermos of espresso and someone shut me in a freezer.

It started slowly, my episode. Not immediately after the breakup, but after he had moved out, and after I had moved on to rebound sex with a really hot undergrad lady I’d been crushing on for ages. (Did I not mention that I dumped him because I’m a lesbian? I am.) But then she was needy, and I was annoyed, and so I wrote her off and, absent any sex drive, was alone for the first time in a long time. I can’t even remember how it began — whether my ex texted, or I found a note he’d left me, or the dog thought he’d seen him outside and got excited, and I had to explain that No, That’s Not Him — but the regret kicked in eventually. And it wasn’t even about him. That’s the funny thing about emotional triggers: They can be utterly random, relatively unrelated to whatever trauma you experienced, but still powerful as fuck. I honestly can’t remember the first day of it, or how it felt at the beginning — whether it was the crying, or thinking about my kitchen knives in entirely the wrong way, which is called suicidal ideation when it’s involuntary, and constant involuntary mental images of you killing yourself are kind of unsettling — but the next thing I knew I was in my bathroom, crying so hard I was choking, hyperventilating on the phone with my ex. (I spent a lot of that month in the bathroom, on the bathmat, next to the dog.) He came over and sat with me until I fell asleep. The next night it happened again, and he came and took away my knives, from 9” chef to butter. The day after that I tried to go at myself with a corkscrew, just to focus the flood of feeling on one point, to focus the pain to suffocate a little less. He took that away, too. And my safety razors.

I still thought I could handle it, at this point, because, well, I had this ex to unfairly demand things of, and it was all happening at night. Though I wasn’t really eating during the day, I could still pretend I was fine for 12 hours. Then I started crying while walking the dog. Not a little decorative tear here or there, but massive inhalations that had to be suppressed by not breathing at all, brought on by nothing. I wore sunglasses a lot and resisted the urge to walk into traffic. (The dog saved me. He is quite literally the only reason I didn’t stroll headlong into a truck. I worried about him being alone.)

Finally, I called one of my former therapists, from the last city I’d lived in. It was a Sunday. She called my school’s mental health department, and their On-Call psychiatrist stayed on the phone with me until I walked to their office, twenty hysterical minutes away.

My (very well-funded, very well-staffed, private) school’s mental health department took charge. They gave me a bottle of Inderal, which I’d taken in college for stage fright, and dealt with my body. They gave me Ativan — only a couple at a time — to deal with my mind. I had one in-person shrink, one on-call shrink, and one therapist, and had to check in, in person, once a day for two weeks. A pain, yes, but it was summer, and, frankly, that was infinitely better than the alternative, which was checking in to a facility in D.C. (I can’t handle tile and overhead lighting in the best of circumstances, let alone mid-breakdown.) I don’t remember eating at all, just walking. Hour-long walks with the dog twice a day, every day. Eventually runs, and then pilates. I think I just ate Wheat Thins, but I can’t be sure, because the thought of food was literally nauseating, and eating was physically hard to do without gagging. I made a scene that I’m still embarrassed about at a party, because the combination of Ativan, vodka, and an ex is never good, and I blacked out and then cried hysterically in the cab a friend had bundled me into all the way home. (A friend I didn’t even know was a friend, and to whom I’ll always be grateful.) That’s how mental health works: one very well-behaved step forward, five staggers and one public scene back. Eventually, the ratio improves as you find the right therapist, the right anti-depressants, the right friends, the right exercise.

It took me months to hit stable again, to not dissolve into tears when my therapist made me sit still and relax my stomach for seconds, then minutes at a time. I gained back seven of the 30 pounds I’d lost in that month of being completely crazy. Of looking completely crazy. All of my clothes were too big, and I’d cut off all my hair. I’d also cut off my parents — yes, parents, a unit, part of my family, also a unit, something none of our six assorted therapists and shrinks have ever seen but that is, inexplicably, still a unit for the present — but started to take their calls. I let my mom visit me, let myself be sad in front of her for the first time ever.

That is what I survived. Myself. I survived all my own behavior, everything my mind threw at me. I survived watching my mother cry. I survived her knowing what had been done to me. I survived being taken care of, dangling preposition and all.

V.V. lives her life in grayscale. If you or someone you know is experiencing abuse, ChildWelfare.gov is a good resource.