thegooseberrypatch

[thegooseberrypatch]

Age is Just a Number (Mostly)

As long as we are not talking about some people's definition of "relationships," I feel like age is mostly just a number. Life is rarely so simple as to allow for certain things to stop just because one is 20, 40, or 70. I'm here with several examples for those who have copious amounts, or maybe just a little bit, of trauma. Trauma hurts regardless.

I'm 40. I was raped when I was 12 by a 13 year old boy. I was a ministers daughter, he was the son of a cop and a football star. I didn't tell anyone. I buried the memory. I am one of the few cases of legitimate repressed memories. I didn't remember my rape until I was 20. I was at college, engaged in my first back door experience, and the pain triggered the entire rape scene and the months after the assault. My shrink had never met anyone that had true repressed memories (I'd been seeing him for well over a year.) 20 years after recovering the memories, I am still healing from the experience. I am rarely triggered by certain pains, scenes in movie and tv don't bother me anymore, flashbacks are rare/non-existent. My husband taught me dirty self-defense and made sure I KNEW I could protect myself; so even if I froze and survived another assault, I would know that I was capable and strong. There is everything to be said for SURVIVING. Surviving is not consent. I survived my rape by dissociating. There is nothing wrong with that.

I'm 40 and I have extreme medical trauma and White Coat Syndrome. November 2023, my doctor, whom had earned my trust and respect, laughed at me during an appointment. I was in the middle of an explanation and while I was drawing breath to finish, he burst out laughing and blamed it on impulse control issues. My husband was there, thankfully, as a witness to this. Before that, I had GBS and had no medical care from either my PCP or the Neurologist assigned. He said there was "Nothing wrong with me" after 3-4 weeks of being partially paralyzed from the waist down and unable to walk, hold my urine or bowels. He didn't say "I don't know," or "We'll figure it out," or anything else that wasn't ego driven. HE didn't know what was wrong with me and so I was the one making it up. He lied in his official report in my file and basically said I was anxious and blah, blah. My husband was also witness to this. I've had 20+ years of bad health care, ego driven and incompetent doctors, and conditions no ones bothered with. I need medication to see doctors, I avoid them like the plague, my husband has to attend appointments with me, I start having anxiety attacks 3-4 days before scheduled appointments. The only doctor I trust is my dentist; she is amazing. Snapping out of it, isn't an option because I have ongoing medical issues.

I'm 40 and I suffer from Agoraphobia. I no longer fight it. If I need to go out, somehow I will. But I mostly don't leave my property without my family and I am okay with that now. I used to fight it to the detriment of my mental and physical health.

I'm 40 and I still cut. It's a tool in my toolbox that I rarely use but when I need it, I use it and without guilt. My husband is aware and is supportive of responsible use of this tool.

I'm 40 and I am in the middle of my first eating disorder relapse since I recovered in my early 20's. I got pregnant and weighted 110lbs at 5'2. I was required to gain 10lbs as quickly as possible for her sake. I was also a very high risk pregnancy. The last 2 years, since I had GBS in the summer of 2022, have been extraordinarily difficult, culminating in the near ending of my 18 year marriage. I've been in counseling for years, because I like it, he's been in counseling for well over a year, we're going to do couples to work on communication because that's our main issue: he's autistic and I have ADHD. Our communication is apples and trucks. He's also got other issues, that I won't discuss, that he is committed to working on. We had 7 days where we didn't speak, see each other, nothing. I didn't leave my room, he stayed at work. It was hell. We both came out of it different and ready to fight like hell to keep everything we've built. But that week for me, it was something else. Something scary. I *believed* it was over. I wept for days, had chest pains, anger, rage. I went through the cycle of grief, alone. When we came out of our mutual places, we realized that it was the end of a shit marriage and the beginning of a new one. But now I am in the throws of ED relapse with no tools. I haven't dealt with it in therapy in many years, haven't needed to. I've had a few blips but never a full relapse. I'm trying not to feel stupid, etc. I didn't decide to relapse and my husband is very supportive of me getting it worked out. Before November of 2023 I would have called my doctor and told him what was happening; he's not a therapist but I trusted him, with every fiber of my being. At that time, I knew he would have bent over backwards to help me until I found a new shrink, etc. Now, he doesn't even know and the one person I could have counted on medically, isn't safe anymore. I miss him. I still grieve that *MEDICAL* relationship.

Your trauma isn't you. It's part of you and it doesn't have to rule you. But sometimes, it pops up and makes lots of noise and feeling it and letting it go is probably the best way to deal with it. You aren't alone. One day you'll be as okay as possible.