Tag Archives: Possibility

June 19, 2008 (or, Tequila!)

19 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by in kids, love, marriage, medicine, my awesome husband, PTSD, Rape, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It was raining this morning as I headed out for my run. Ten years ago on this day, though, it was hot and sunny. I know this because I can remember the beads of sweat rolling down the back of my legs as I sat in my green minivan in that long, heavy, black Land’s End skirt I’d bought on clearance a few weeks before. My air conditioner was broken and the van churned out warm air as I sat staring down at my phone.

I’d programmed the phone number for the Pittsburgh field office of the FBI into it a couple months before under the name “Hope.” It was finally time to call. I knew he might kill me. Knew he might kill my two boys. Mies had just turned 4. Max was 2 1/2. I asked God to please protect them but told Him if something happened to them, I knew it just was what it had to be. I had to turn him in. I could never face my babies again if I didn’t. I didn’t want them to live in that kind of world. Abraham, I am feeling you, brother.

I operated purely through adrenaline at that time. Until he was arrested in August. And released on bail to a local podiatrist. And jailed again since he, ya know, had threatened to kill me and my kids and all. And then as I fought to stay in school as my med school slut shamed me and tried to get rid of me. Once the adrenaline stopped flowing continuously later that Fall, the real hell began. PTSD.

I wanted to give up but I somehow got to a place where I told myself, this isn’t it. Someday things will get better. You will watch your babies grow up. You will become a doctor and take care of your patients. You might even get married and have more babies. Maybe a daughter. Maybe. I fought off the hopelessness. I convinced myself there was possibility.

Here I am ten years later. With five beautiful kids (including a sassy-sweet daughter). With a handsome, devoted husband. With a practice of my own, complete with amazing patients I care about more than I knew I could. Healed of my PTSD. Having forgiven Jeremy and even Sylvia, the head of my med school, and all those professors who betrayed me. Training for a semi-impossible obstacle course race with my husband and a trainer, for goodness sake. A trainer. More than I dreamed possible.

I am so grateful to God my babies are alive. That I am alive. That I am a doctor. That I have the husband and kids I do.

I skipped work today and drove through the country to Deer Lakes park to go running. The rain and grey gave way to fluffy white clouds and sunshine in a beautiful blue sky. I held my hand out the sunroof as I drove. I felt the sweat run down my legs from my run as I drove.I sang along to Tequila! like a fool. I’m sure I looked and sounded ridiculous.

I pray the little girls he hurt find the peace I have. I pray he does too.

I am so grateful for today. I am alive, I am free. Thank you God.

Tequila!

Fish oil and marshmallow foldovers will be served at our Gala banquet

10 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by in autism, PTSD, Rape, special needs, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

I had fish oil the other day for the first time in a decade. I’d bought an especially high quality one called OmegaCure for my two littlest ones who can’t swallow pills and was excited when it arrived. It is flavorless according to what I’d heard from my sources and I was hopeful I could get it past them. I made them each a peanut butter and marshmallow foldover and put a glug in between the peanut butter and mini marshmallows. They gobbled it right up. Now, marshamllows are such a treat for them it’s possible I could have put just about anything in there and they’d still have inhaled it. But I was pretty confident it was due to the true flavorlessness of the oil. The next morning I opened the fridge to get some berries out for my morning smoothie and the beautiful glass bottle of golden oil was there shimmering at me. I thought, why not put a tablespoon in my smoothie? And I did. And I drank it. I ran into the laundry room and excitedly told my husband the news.

“I had fish oil!”

Silence

“I had fish oil! For the first time since 2008!”

Silence

More laundry folding

“Ya know?”

Silence. Folding,

“Since Jeremy. I couldn’t take it because of the trauma…”

“Ok good.”

Clearly not something that broke his usual daily laundry folding routine

For me, it’s a big deal. For me, the question “why not put a tablespoon in my smoothie,” has a lot of answers.

The first time I asked that question and ended up vomiting was in 2012. I was pregnant with my daughter Lena and knew I should be taking fish oil heavy in DHA for brain development. It was even more important for me than a lot of moms because I already had a son with autism and malformation of his brain and optic nerves which meant any baby I carried was at higher risk for having issues and needed the best possible start, including fish oil, folic acid and vitamin D. I managed the vitamins fine but the fish oil did me in. When my husband asked me why I wasn’t taking the fish oil capsules he’d gotten me, I had to admit to myself I wasn’t throwing them up because I was pregnant. It was because of *him*. Jeremy. The Ordeal.

No big story attached to it. Jeremy made me take fish oil capsules daily, amongst his other weirdities. Some people are health nuts. He was a health sociopath.

I’ve attempted fish oil a few times since then and it was always a No Go. Couldn’t bring myself to swallow them. The one time I forced myself to swallow them and keep them down, the resultant fishy burps sent me into a daylong relapsing remitting flashback. From that point on, I decided I was going to concede the battle for fish oil. We lose certain things to trauma. It just is. You have to fight to save the things that really matter but you have to learn to let go of the things you can afford to. Lose the battle, win the war. And all that.

But as I stood peering into my fridge this week, that fish oil looked so lovely. (Like nectar collected by little hummingbirds and their magical fairy friends. I’m not kidding. See for yourself, it’s gorgeous.)And I know my kids need me healthy. And so, I figured, why not? What’s the worse that could happen? A day of fishy burp induced flashbacks again? I’ll live.

No fish burps and no flashbacks. It was a little hard to get myself to drink it, I admit. I’ve never been so afraid of a smoothie. But my two littles were sitting there with me at the table watching and I knew I had to play it cool. So down the hatch it went. And stayed.

2018 is a big year as far as my trauma goes. A decade since the trauma started, since I turned him in, since his arrest, since my school initiated their illegal persecution of me for my decision to turn him in, since I got the school’s suspension overturned, since the PTSD began.

It’s not a sad thing. It’s a triumphant thing, I’ve decided to call it my Gala Year. The resumption of fish oil is just the beginning. There’s going to be a whole calendar full of activities commemorating the events, remembering the heroes and making sure it doesn’t happen again.

I was looking for a race to run today. Now that I’m taking fish oil, by God, I ought to be ready to start running again and eat healthy and all that, right? It’s going to take a good while to get me in shape so I Googled “races november 2018 pittsburgh” to give myself ten months. I happened upon one of those obstacle races which I’ve always had an interest in despite being painfully uncoordinated. And it was a charity run for a group that serves people for autism. Perfect, I thought, I can motivate myself to run by raising money for autism. But then when I looked into it further, it wasn’t in November and wasn’t in Pittsburgh after all (thanks Google). It’s called the Beast on the Bay and it’s on Presque Isle in September. Presque Isle, Erie PA. The city of My Ordeal. The home of Sylvia Ferretti. She who sought to shame me out of being a doctor.

And so, please note on your calendar of Gala Year events, the date of September 8th. I will be completing the Beast to raise money for autism services and for The Exodus Road, a nonprofit group that rescues sex slaves throughout southeast Asia, India, and the US using a network of covert surveillance teams and individuals. (i.e. Jeremy Hunters). It will be my first time returning to Erie since his trial in February of 2011 so I imagine there were will be other Gala events added to the calendar for that weekend. Be sure to stay tuned.

2018 will mostly be comprised of healing my children of PANDAS and building up my practice. Of watching my Auggie learn to speak and sending my Lena to kindergarten. Seeing my Max become an excellent cellist and trying not to ball my eyes out on my Mies’s first day of high school (getting dizzy just typing those words). Fighting for my PANDAS patients’ recovery and learning all I can to defeat the Bear once and for all. But it will be my Gala Year too. Let the festivities begin.

“I’m sorry but I can’t look you in the eye because you remind me of my rapist. Nothing personal. I’m just fairly terrified right now.”

23 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by in medicine, PTSD, Rape

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

I went into a patient room at my urgent care day job today to see a patient with chief complaint “sinus symptoms.” A routine visit, I was in and out in 3 minutes flat. It’s a very mechanical process when you’re seeing 50 a patients today, 95% of whom have one of ten diagnoses seen over and over. I walked in, though, and said, “I’m Dr. Spaar. I understand you’ve been having sinus symptoms,” as I always do. And I turned and got some hand sanitizer from the pump om the wall as I always do. And turned around to face the patient as I always do. And I’m sure he said something like, “Yeah it’s just all this pressure right here,” and he probably gestured to his face like patients always do when they present with a sinus infection. But I didn’t hear him.

Something about him, something about the look he gave me, reminded me so much of Jeremy. The look in his eyes. My stomach dropped. My body went numb. My heart started racing and things started closing in and going black. I quickly moved away from him to get the otoscope off the wall as he talked. I couldn’t look at him, at his eyes. And I needed a moment to panic without him seeing. I went about examining his ears and sinuses and lungs and asked the questions I was supposed to. I finished as quickly as I could and told him his diagnosis and plan and escaped the room. I did not look him in the eye.

And afterwards I found myself thinking, I wish I could have just said to him, “I’m sorry but I can’t look you in the eye because you remind me of my rapist. Nothing personal. I’m just fairly terrified right now.” It would have made me feel better, I think. And if rape survivors did this, wouldn’t the world be a better place? Why do we carry the burden alone? I think about what he did to me daily and yet there are so many people allowing themselves the comfort of pretending rape and child trafficking are not common. And it will never end as long as so many people remain so comfortable.

And maybe I’m wrong about this patient. Maybe he’s a rape survivor too. But rape is a systematic method of oppressing women and so I speak of women here as survivors and men as perpetrators and those conspiring in silence. Because statistics.

I rarely get triggered these days. It was a small blip in my day. But so many women are not as lucky as I am. They are living in the day in day out hell of PTSD. It is holding them back from who they are supposed to be. Creating a space for mediocre men to take the rightful place of exceptional women in many cases. Very few women in my situation would have graduated medical school, gotten a residency and graduated it as well. How many women have dropped out of college and grad school because of rape? How many have set aside ambitions and settled for a small life? And how many men have benefitted from this?

Perhaps the next time this happens I will tell the patient what I am feeling and why. And perhaps he will complain and I will be reprimanded. But I have learned long ago it is the keeping quiet that destroys your career, not the speaking out. Because it is the keeping quiet that takes your soul. There will always be another way forward even if your school or your job or your family or your husband reject you. Silence will eat you from the inside and take it all away. You will pretend at being alive until you can’t anymore.

And so perhaps next time I will tell the patient what I am feeling and why as I go about examining his sinuses and writing his prescription. Because a life of silence, however small, is not living.

Aluminum and gold

21 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by in medicine, PTSD, Rape

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

The CBS national news is featuring a story today that I appeared in as a PANDAS expert. PANDAS is a medical condition affecting kids where their immune system attacks their brain when they get sick and gives them things like tics, OCD, anorexia, rage and cognitive impairment. It’s vital that awareness is raised because so many kids get misdiagnosed and don’t get the treatment they need.

Check it out here

IMG_0641

End of PSA. Here’s the deal:

The story is a personal vindication for me. After my trauma, the story-slash-international-sex-scandal hit the AP wire and was featured in national and international news. It was not a flattering story for me. My name isn’t mentioned; I’m called simply, Noyes’s sex slave (should have read RAPE slave. there I fixed it for them). It led to a public shaming that contributed to my chronic PTSD settling for seven long years.

The head of my med school said I’d never be a doctor because of my moral failings. Not only am I a doctor (make that, an expert) but I am using my degree to fight the good fight. Quite the opposite of what she uses hers for.

Forgive them Lord for they know exactly what they do and do it anyway but you are a merciful God. Good way to flex your mercy muscles.

2017 is drawing to a close and here I am again, writing another reflective end of year post. I haven’t written in this blog in quite some time as I have a blog on my medical practice’s website now. This blog is really about trauma (although that’s not what I intended when I started it. Life’s funny that way I suppose). It’s about trauma in general and about one trauma in particular. The trauma Jeremy brought to me that cold snowy winter of 2008.

The trauma started January 2008. I began healing in January 2009. I got the subpoena written out by he himself to testify at his trial January 2011. I had my final healing from PTSD January 2015. And so…. January. January is coming again.

IMG_1001

It will be ten years since The Ordeal. An anniversary. What are you supposed to give as a gift for your tenth anniversary? I looked it up and it said tin/aluminum for traditional and diamond jewelry for the modern gift tradition. It’s too bad I skipped our ninth anniversary because that one’s leather (get it? He was into BDSM. Leather. Get it? It’s ok. You can laugh. Or look at me awkwardly. You do you)

So what should I get to commemorate the occasion? A tin man? A Coke can? Perhaps an aluminum foil hat to block aliens from stealing his thoughts?

The thing I have in common with him is that he and I both think about The Ordeal everyday of our lives without fail. No one else does. Not consistently. Not without prompting.

My relationship with Jeremy has changed over time but I will always have one with him. From Stockholm Syndrome to fear to anger to forgiveness and then back and forth a few times. To compassion. Ok, sarcastic compassion at times, but compassion nonetheless.

My husband is reading a book about domestic violence right now and we ended up having a conversation last night about the importance of being able to confront an abuser and bring them to task.

“Did you ever do that with Jeremy,” he asked me

“No. I sent him to prison for the rest of his life. I really didn’t need to say anything”

“No but did you ever assert yourself with him verbally. In the courtroom maybe? I wasn’t there when you testified.”

“No… no. He was completely out of touch with reality. He said “I forgive you.” to me”

Eric continued on about the importance of this confrontation of the abuser and I interrupted him and shut him down. Just… no. No. This conversation wasn’t happening. I had no energy for it.

His point was that Jeremy needed that in order to come to terms with what he’d done. Bullies will never change if no one stands up to them. My point was that Jeremy is delusional and believes my sister and I orchestrated a grand conspiracy to frame him with the entire FBI backing us. He honest to Jesus Joseph and Mary believes that raping little girls is actually good for them, so… I’m really not seeing this asserting myself thing doing a whole lot. And quite frankly, if sitting staring at prison bars for 45 years doesn’t cause you to do a little soul searching, I’m pretty sure a sassy physician confronting you ain’t gonna do it either.

He continues the discussion of abusers as bullies and you need to stand up to bullies and all that and my mind wanders back to the courtroom. Back to the bedroom. Bitter, grey Erie. That uneasy feeling in my stomach. That fight or flight in my muscle fibers. In my eyes, always darting, scanning for danger. As it laid next to me.

There was a discussion at work today about what each of us would do if we won the lottery. Conversation drifts to the importance of buying land as it’s a limited resource and I find mySelf saying “or gold.” They begin discussing the merits of gold versus silver for price stability and my mind wanders back to the gold shop in Erie.

Jeremy was fixated on buying gold. He thought he could make money buying and selling it. He watched the gold markets obsessively. He never slept. I remember that. He was up all night on his computer. Barely slept. He watched the markets and talked to Alex in New ZeLand and researched evil.

He thought he was amazingly smart. Smart enough to outsmart the police. Smart
enough to make it rich buying and selling little gold bars. (Spoiler alert: he’s not)

At some point in The Ordeal he had me take my money and buy gold. I lived off student loans At the time so the money I was to live off of was dispersed in two
payments: one in August and one in January. He had me lend him this money I had set aside to live off of later in the year so he could buy gold. He would then sell it back and pay me back and keep the interest I suppose. I don’t remember the details. I remember very little about it. I remember driving to the bank near the Moe’s to withdraw the money (Welcome to Moe’s!)

I remember sitting in the Cheesecake Factory with my sisters that spring and mentioning the gold to them. I remember the look on my sister’s face and the way she spoke. She spoke to me the way you’d speak to someone holding a gun in their hand about to shoot. She looked horrified. She spoke calmly and slowly. She told me I needed to sell the gold back and put the money back in my savings account. I told her I would. I was glad she wasn’t angry. I was worried by the way she’d talked. Was I crazy, I wondered. She talked to me like I was crazy.

I remember insisting Jeremy give me the gold back in June. He said, the price of gold has gone down. You should wait and I’ll sell it and you won’t lose money. But I insisted and he complied. I don’t know what excuse I gave him. It worked. That’s all that matters.

I needed to get the money back because I was turning him in. Soon the government would seize his assets. I remember sitting there in the minivan with the broken air conditioning outside the gold shop in Erie. Sweating in my heavy black Land’s End skirt.

I still have that skirt. Still looks good. Damn good quality skirt.

Purple scrubs now, standing in urgent care a few lifetimes later. I walk away from the lottery discussion to work on notes. The memory of the Cheesecake Factory is unsettling. It fills me with shame. What decisions I made at that time of my trauma were mine and which were not? Maybe I would have done something crazy like buying up gold even if I hadn’t been in a situation where he controlled me through force.

If so, do I deserve to feel ashamed? No. I remind myself of this. I take a deep breath and let the shame go. Sort of. Hey, life’s a process. Don’t rush me.

So maybe I should get Jeremy something gold for our anniversary? No. Gold was a mistake. I’ll definitely stick with aluminum this time. Maybe foil for the rabbit ears on the prison TV so he can learn about PANDAS and the good fight.

13 years

03 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by in autism, doctors, kids, love, medicine, PTSD, Rape, special needs, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

I am sitting here reading immunology. Cytokine storm, interleukin-1, natural killer cells. I am doing the thing I have been doing for almost 13 years now. I am trying to fix my babies.

Autism and PANS and Lyme and on and on. Their immune systems have betrayed them. They are attacking their own brains. I must stop the marauding hordes. I must. I’m their mother, after all.

I decided to become a doctor almost 13 years ago. Soldier Boy was a few months old. He’d already had more medical tests and seen more specialists than most of us will see our whole lives. Diagnosis after diagnosis. The idiot doctors couldn’t see he was perfect.

He was perfect. He is perfect. But, he’s not. His body betrays him.

I decided to become a doctor for a lot of reasons. Some noble and some not so much. One of the reasons I became a doctor was because I wanted to fix my son. I wanted to save my perfect baby from the many sicknesses he’d been born with.

I had his little brother while I was studying to apply to medical school. He was different. He was not sick. No tests, no specialists. He never even got a cold or had a fever. Ever.

Then, when he was 3 1/2 he stopped eating and began threatening to kill us and… you can read about it here. He got PANS.

Doctors have been no help. I am now finally a doctor all these years later. Almost 13. And now it is my job to figure things out, to help them, to fix them, to save them.

And so I am sitting up, exhausted, reading through immunology slides trying to understand the autoimmune nature of autism. Trying to understand the things I can do for Lyme triggered PANS that has been going on for eight years.

Innate immune system, cellular immunity, microglial activation, …

As I sit looking at the diagrams of these various immune processes, they are familiar to me. You learn so much in medical school they say it’s like drinking from a fire hydrant. You retain the things you use in whatever specialty you wind up in. But I am finding now the things you haven’t thought of in 10 years come back quickly when you need them.

Ten years ago I sat studying Immunology in my living room in Erie. Its a very clear memory. Sitting in the large overstuffed brown arm chair next to the end table with the touch lamp. The same end table I’d placed our Little People manger scene on at Christmas time. We lost baby Jesus and I replaced him with a Matchbox car because… because little boys. The chair was in front of the big bay window where my boys would climb up excitedly when the garbage truck came by.

I remember so clearly sitting there reading my Immunology book the night before the exam. I was behind on studying and I was excited it was clicking. I think I will do well on this test, I thought.

I was behind on my studying because of The Ordeal. Because of Jeremy. I failed the exam the next day.

Amazingly, the unit after that, Neuroanatomy, I rocked. It was considered the hardest course of first year. I was being actively traumatized by a sociopathic sadist, and I somehow managed to kick some ass. I’d gone from scared to pissed off at that point. I’d decided I was going to find a way to turn him in no matter what. Once I got to that place in my head, focusing on studying wasn’t a problem. I’m very good at compartmentalizing my mind when it’s required

But Immunology, I failed. And so I had to remediate it that summer. Immunology and Pharmacology. He did too. I saw him there. It was in those two weeks of remediation that I turned him in. I passed the remediation exam. And then went and turned him in. I was busy.

For so many years this trauma has been at the center of the story I tell of myself. Not so much to other people but to myself. For years it made me believe I was worthless. And then I entered recovery and I became defined as a survivor. Each step closer to becoming an attending physician was marked with a “screw you Sylvia” (Sylvia being the head of my med school who slut shamed me and tried to kick me out) and a “you’re in jail, Jeremy but look at me”.

I had come to accept this. But now, it isn’t true anymore. It isn’t the biggest part of my story.

Being a doctor was always about my boys. And now it is again. They’re the reason I fought to stay in med school when Sylvia was trying to force me out, heaping degradation on me. They’re the reason I stayed up til 2 in the morning studying organic chem long before I ever met Jeremy Noyes. They’re the reason I have started my own practice now. The thing I have been dreaming of for almost 13 years.

In some respects, it is easier to have rape and torture at the center of your story than to have your sick babies there. What mother wouldn’t rather endure suffering herself than to see her babies suffer? But we are not put on Earth to choose the easy path.

I named this blog I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead when I was in residency working 90 hour weeks, 36 hour shifts. But the truth is, for doctors, the sleepless nights and exhaustion pretty much end when graduation day comes and attending life begins. For autism moms, there is no graduation. There is no finish line. We really will wait our whole lives for a sound sleep.

I went into medical school to become a different kind of doctor than the ones my son had. Condescending, close minded, clueless. I went undercover. Deep cover. And I unavoidably lost my way. Drank the Kool-Aid because there really is no other way to make it out alive.

But I’m on the other side now and I remember who I was. I am an autism mom who became a doctor. I am an autism mom. I am an autism mom who knows immunology and pharmacology and neuroanatomy. I am an autism mom who gave her soul and body and mind and heart for her medical degree. And I have it. And *that* is the story of me. Jeremy and Sylvia were mere diversions.

I am going to help my children and my patients. I am going to speak out and challenge all they do that is wrong. I am going to sleep very little. Because that’s what autism moms do.

Good night. I have some reading to do. 

Merry Christmas to you, Jeremy, in jail!: A very PTSD Christmas Eve

24 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by in christianity, Evil, kids, PTSD, Rape

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

I love Christmas. I’m a Christmas nut. Perhaps the result of growing up on a Christmas tree farm. I love the music and the movies and the pine cones on the mantle and the gingerbread cookies my four year old insisted using the cowboy hat cookie cutter for. Christmas Eve is a very special day for me. But it’s also one of the 365 days a year I have at least a passing thought about my trauma. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

One of my favorite Christmas movies is “It’s A Wonderful Life” starring Jimmy Stewart (who is from my hometown, by the way. I used to volunteer at the world famous Jimmy Stewart museum) as George Bailey. There’s a scene in the movie where greedy villain Potter gleefully shouts “Merry Christmas to you, in jail!” at George. (I’m not going into the context here but I’d encourage you to watch it if you’re curious)

So, I have a Christmas Eve tradition that those of you who haven’t known trauma might find a little… odd. Creepy maybe. Depressing perhaps. I like to shout,

Merry Christmas to you, Jeremy, in jail!

Jeremy’s the one who did trauma to me(read about it here if you like). I’m an anomaly in that my rapist actually went to prison. Not many do. It’s a merrier Christmas this year and the next 40 of them for the little girls he was planning to traumatize. So, I don’t see this tradition as odd or creepy or depressing at all.

Christmas is a season of hope. What was the birth of Jesus if not the creation of a whole new hope for us all? Hope that there is something more than this fallen world. And hope, I’ve learned through my PTSD, is the stuff of life. Without it, we’re not dead, but not really alive either (read about it here if you like). My hope was resored when I recovered from PTSD. I like to think sharing my recovery on here could give other survivors in the purgatory of PTSD have some hope too.

I’m a big believer in speaking your truth, in the toxicity of silence. The time I spent singing/screaming in a riot grrl band were some of my most empowered. Maybe it’s the autism in me, but screaming is liberating for me. When the problems of life seem unsolvable, I scream and it helps. For so many years I was told be quiet about what Jeremy did to me. I was told it would ruin my career. I was told it was my fault, that I was a slut and I mustn’t advertise this. I have seen the damage this did to me and so, I don’t just speak my truth in this season of hope. I scream it.

Joy to the world, you fucker.  Joy to you, little girls. There is hope.

2016 was-boop!-a little-boop!- stressful boop boop!

19 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by in autism, christianity, love, special needs

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

2016 was a helluva whaddayagonnado kinda year. Bernie rose and then had the election stolen from him by corporate Democrats. Trump won, ushering in an age of all out fascism. Brock Turner got a slap on the wrist for rape. Various police got absolutely nothing for murdering people of color. Aleppo. Standing rock protestors getting limbs ripped off for peacefully protesting. Global warming it is now unavoidably obvious is going to kill us all off pretty soon.

On a more personal front (hey, stick with me here. this post will take a positive turn soon. I swear), my autistic legally blind son got horribly bullied in our school district. My other son’s anxiety reached an all time high and his tics escalated to a whole new dimension. My marriage disintegrated, culminating in separation. I had a post-pregnancy hormonally induced mental health episode. My cousin died from mental health problems. A dear kind friend died from overdose. I found out some other beautiful friends from high school are on heroin (and therefore, will die soon enough. opiates are what they are). I broke off with my family. Is that enough, people? You want more? Oh yeah, our four year old still isn’t potty trained…

But here’s the thing:

Millions of people voted for, donated to, fought for a Jewish democratic socialist who demanded universal health care, maternity leave,  a $15 minimum wage and a kinder approach to Palestine. If you’d told me in 2015 that would happen, I’d have told you that you were nuts. And even though Bernie didn’t win, he’s still out there fighting like hell. And people listen.

For the first time ever, we actually talked about rape and the disgustingly low conviction rates and sentence lengths, as a nation. Some people even said “rape”. Do you realize how huge that is? (Most of the headlines still used euphemistic bullshit and called it “sex” but, hey, it’s movement).

Indigenous activists and their allies won. Won. The people who have endured the most, who have had the most stolen from them, who have suffered the most violence, in this nation won.  Did you expect that? I didn’t. They worked and sacrificed and prayed and endured and… won.

Pennsylvania (my home state) legalized medical marijuana despite the ill informed Pennsylvania medical society opposing it. I did not expect this. It’s huge.

My legally blind son with autism started at a new school (not in our district) where he is thriving. He went to an amazing therapeutic summer camp. He’s made more progress at his new school than he’s made in the past few years combined.

My son with anxiety got a great psychiatrist and got comfortable at his school and is doing a ton better. (and he doesn’t make his “boop” tic unless things are really stressful now. Boop!)

My most recent episode combined with other events from this year caused me to truly shift the way I approach my mental health. I’m now committed to doing every single little thing I need to do to keep myself healthy. No matter what. I’m working through issues I thought were un-workable. I’m feeling more optimistic than I have since I was five. About myself, my kids, my marriage.

I worked through my lack of enthusiasm for Catholicism and have started a whole new kind of Catholicism in our home. I’m reconnecting with the mystical.

My son sang beautifully in his school musical. I had one of the happiest days of my life taking my daughter to the Nutcracker. My son with autism can now get his head wet in the pool without melting down (after 8 weeks of twice daily swim classes at his awesome therapeutic summer camp). My baby turned one and still has the chubbiest most delectable thighs you’ve ever seen. He calls me Mama and loves the water like a fish.

I prescribed suboxone to a lot of patients who hopefully will not die from opiates as a result. I started at a new urgent care where I actually have time to talk to my patients. I had a paper on intimate partner violence published in American Family Physician and got invited to speak at some medical education events.

I’m not going to sugar coat things. I’ve got nothing to say to you about Trump or this country’s refusal to face the racist police violence plaguing us. Global warming’s not looking good either. But, as Howard Zinn said, pessimism is illogical. Amazing things you didn’t see coming happen all the time. Look how many in 2016 alone? And, as my old pastor used to say, God is good all the time. All the time, God is good.

Happy holidays, everyone. Here’s to finding out what 2017 holds for us.

pretending to grill in the garden of eden

04 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by in love, PTSD, Rape, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

I have lost some weight recently. A goodly amount, I think it’s fair to say. Only ten more pounds to go. I weighed 150 pounds nine years ago when my trauma began and by 2013 I was 224 pounds. I ate for a lot of reasons. I’ll tell you about it some time.

Today I am thinking about a picture of me grilling. Well, pretending to grill. It was 2007 and I had left my first husband and was just starting medical school. I was young. So damned young. 28 to be precise. I just knew my soul mate awaited me out there. And I would of course find him on the internet. A single mom going to med school doesn’t have time to go out, so she would of course take advantage of online dating. But, I needed a profile picture. This was before the advent of selfies and not too many of us had a gaggle of carefully angled, flattering pictures of ourselves lying around in our smart phones. I didn’t even have a smart phone. So I asked my mother to take a picture of me.

I wanted to look natural so I said, take a picture of me in the kitchen cooking spaghetti. (Because everyone has a picture of them in full make up smiling as they cook spaghetti. So natural. And maybe I could use it if I ever decided to sell my own brand of jarred spaghetti sauce. Kill two birds with one stone. Bam) Unfortunately, the lighting in the kitchen was bad so we went out on the back patio of my little ranch house in Erie. Unsure of how to keep up the natural theme, I went for the grill. Here, I said, take a picture of me pretending to grill.

And so here I am today, looking at a picture of me with my hair perfectly done, pink lip gloss shining, smiling with my mouth and my eyes (so it wouldn’t look fake. Even though it was). Holding a large grilling spatula in my hand, the cold grill lid opened. No sign of my special needs toddlers to be seen. None of the dark circles I’d soon earn staying up late studying. The flat stare of depression that had occupied my face most of my life, the fear of the abuse I’d lived under, the wide eyes of my mania, absent. I’m beaming with hope in that picture. An endless stream of possibility before me. Faith that I will have a wonderful life. (I did work in the Jimmy Stewart Museum in high school, after all).

I do have a good life now. Nine years later. I have been blessed and I have fought for it. I certainly do not have the life I imagined then, when I was young. How many of us do? I have walked through my darkness these years and come out on the other side.

I am now almost to the weight I am in that picture. And as I have dropped each pound, run each mile, I have thought, this is a victory over my trauma. I have reclaimed my mental health and now I am reclaiming my physical. He can’t take this from me. I am leaving behind my trauma pound by pound. I am escaping a body that is not really mine. Getting back to being myself after so long.

But now I am close to the weight in the picture, to wearing the clothes I wore then, all of which I have saved in anticipation of this day. And I look in the mirror and I have not returned to looking like myself at all. I am not the girl at the grill.

My stomach has gone from that of a 28 year old whose had 2 kids to that of a 37 year old whose had 4 and gained and lost a lot of weight. My face has crow’s feet and laugh lines it didn’t then. And my eyes don’t smile the same. They’ve seen too much to smile so damned naïve. They smile not with happiness, but with the joy that comes from knowing sadness.

I’ll be honest with you, I wish my body looked like it did back then. I’d love to be a good feminist and not feel that way. I know I shouldn’t subconsciously convey such attitudes to my sweet daughter. But, life’s a process, okay? And I wish I was a little firmer, a little perkier. Less stretch marks. Less lines. But I don’t wish my eyes were perkier. I don’t wish these past nine years had been different. Don’t wish I could return to being naïve.

I’ve never believed in regret. It’s never made sense to my logical autistic brain. If you can’t do something over, why would you possibly sit around thinking about what might have been? It is what it is, I often say. Life is what it is.

I have no regrets about choosing the medical school I did. About pursuing the awful man I did. About turning him in as I did. Never have, never will. But I have been continuing to labor under the false idea we get after trauma. The idea that keeps us from moving on, that locks us into PTSD if we believe it enough. The idea that we can make this trauma not matter. That it can become a minor footnote in our life story. That we can go back to being who we were before. Before. Before *it*. You know, that event that doesn’t matter anymore. Even though it’s the yardstick we now measure every accomplishment by. Constantly claiming victory. Telling yourself, living well is the best revenge. Tallying up everything you have that your perpetrators never will. Telling yourself, I’m not like those whiny survivors who blame all their problems on their trauma. I’m different. I have overcome.

The truth is, your life was divided the day the trauma began. There was before the trauma and after. And it drives you mad. You just want that damned line erased. You want your life whole again. A beautiful continuous flowing story arc. With twists and turns and dips and peaks, but unbroken. But that fucking chasm, fault, break, schism, crack, gully, canyon, whatever you call it, it’s still there. Won’t budge. It’s not something you can remove. Because it’s not something. It’s the absence of something. You can try and try to fill it, but it’s still there. Go ahead, dump in food, pills, booze, drugs, sex, work, reckless driving, overspending, self injury, reality television, starvation, obsessive relationships, obsessive religion, hours of staring blankly at walls… It’s still there. Fill it til it overflows. It’s still there.  It. Will. Always. Be. There.

The Garden of Eden will not be restored. The fallen world remains.

And that’s okay. Well, it’s not *really* okay. It’s trauma. And trauma’s hell. But… it is what it is. It doesn’t have to be okay. It just is. And you have to learn to accept that it is. Over. And over. And over. You build up a life on the other side of it. You peer down into it and thank God you haven’t fallen into it. That you’re here. Looking back at it as you run, mile by mile.

I swallowed a vitamin yesterday. A really big vitamin. I’ve always been good at swallowing pills. So are my kids. Family skill. (baggy esophagus maybe? we’re not the most coordinated family so it’s certainly not that we have an especially athletic swallowing mechanism). The thing is, Jeremy raped me a lot of ways but the scariest one was the oral rape. Because I thought I would die. He would suffocate me and count to ten slowly and I thought he might just hold me there long enough to kill me and I’d never see my babies again. I felt so utterly powerless. I was so utterly powerless. He would tell me he was training the gag mechanism out of me.

It didn’t work and ever since then, I have had trouble swallowing certain things like big pills. Vitamins in particular I guess since he had me on a vitamin regimen of sorts. It wasn’t something I ever wanted to deal with. I  just took gummy vitamins. But yesterday my husband said, these are really good vitamins, maybe you could try and see. And so I did. I put this rather large vitamin and my probiotic capsule and my two medications in my mouth and took a big gulp of water and threw my head back. And they all went down. Down the hatch.

I felt so victorious. I thought, I wish I could tell someone. I was so happy that he’d now taken one less thing from me. I thought about telling people, though, and how I would need to explain that whole oral-rape-until-you-suffocate thing. And then I remembered the whole orally-raped-until-I-suffocated thing. And I felt so powerless. So utterly powerless. There in my living room, my babies’ toys strewn on the floor, the fireplace I love, the pictures of our wedding and our first communion at the Easter vigil and… I felt so terrified and so sad and… I thought to myself, a really awful thing happened to me. A freaky, awful thing. A thing no one deserves. That happened. It happened to me. And it can’t be undone.

The moment passed quickly. In a matter of seconds it was done and I was back to my life. To my beautiful fireplace and crazy bubalink babies and my devoted husband and I stumbling through Catholicism. And now I was doing all that with the benefit of a wonderful multivitamin.

You tell yourself, you need to stop running *from* the trauma and start running *towards* the good things. And the truth is, I do have runs where I think about the healthy habits I’m giving my kids and going on hikes with my husband, maybe learning tennis or kickboxing. How good it feels to be lighter on my feet, to get around easier, to know I’m probably going to dodge the bullet of diabetes type 2 and keep the arthritis at bay as long as I can. But sometimes I think of how far I’ve come. Sometimes I think of him, of her (the head of my medical school),  of the sickness in their hearts that makes them do the things they do. Of the happiness they tried to deny me.

They did, in a way. They took from me the naïve happiness I had then. They put a fault in my life. Made it into a before and after. But I have made a home on the other side. I am not hanging off the edge. I am not in the darkness of it. My happiness has given way to joy and wisdom and a greater love than I could have known. The fault is there to stay. And that’s okay. Well, it’s not okay. But it is. It is what it is. And after all, it really is a wonderful life.

food is not love ( or: Hail keystone party mix, full of carbs…)

12 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by in kids, love, parenting

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

I’m working a lot of days this week. 6 out of 7 days. Which when you work 12-13 hour days, is a lot. For me and for my kids and husband. #UrgentCareLife.

I needed to prepare for this by making freezer meals for both this hellish week and then the week after since I’d have no time to make *those* meals as I normally would the week before. Because I’m working 6 out of 7 days this week. Did I mention I’m working 6 out of 7 days this week? It’s kind of awful.

I was making a new recipe for the freezer. One I had never attempted before: chicken cacciatore. As it was simmering, I thought of my childhood, of my grandmother’s house. She used to make chicken cacciatore. She wasn’t Italian; she was a farm wife whose people had come from Scotland and England like the people of Appalachia tended to have done. She always cooked from scratch. Three meals a day. No sandwiches for lunch. It was boiled potatoes and pork chops and sliced tomatoes and fruit and… Something was always cooking, the scents hanging in the house when you walked in the door. She wasn’t much into baking so when we would walk the mile down the road to her house on hot summer days to go swimming in her pool, she would bring us Keebler Soft Batch chocolate chip cookies as a snack. Something we did not get at home. Something we absolutely loved.

I thought back on the chicken cacciatore she made as I watched mine coming along. I felt my heart warming to think mine was turning out as well as hers. And then I thought, my Grandma never seemed to love me. I mean, I’m just being brutally honest here. It sounds awful, but I come from a dysfunctional family where I just had no emotionally intimate connection with anyone. It astounded me when I grew up and found out how other people felt about their grandparents, the close bond they shared. Not so with me and mine. I had just assumed that’s what a grandchild-grandparent relationship was *supposed* to be like. Turns out I was wrong.

So, why was the chicken and peppers boiling away in our cast iron skillet making me feel all soft and gooey?

I thought back on my grandmother’s chicken cacciatore and my mother’s snickerdoodle cookies. The peanut butter bread my mother made for us with raisins that made a smiley mouth and two mini marshmallows for eyes. The trips to McDonalds with my mom when my sisters were at school, just me and her. I told myself that food was her way of showing love. But it wasn’t. It was the desperate attempt of a little girl to believe her mother loved her in a way she definitely did not. Children are completely dependent on their parents for their very lives. They have to believe in them, in their love. And so I found a way.

What I didn’t realize until that moment in the kitchen next to the hot stove with the chicken cacciatore wafting into my pores, is that it wasn’t love at all. It was just food. And for all these 37 years I’ve been alive, I have comforted myself with food because, to me, it is love. Not a symbol of love, not a sign. It is literally love. When you’re upset, you should be able to go to your mother to be comforted. I never could. But I could eat chocolate. I could pour my sadness out to Little Debbie cakes and my anger into Doritos.

If your parents don’t comfort you when you’re young, you never learn to comfort yourself. Not in a healthy way, anyway.

For me, food has been my answer to sadness, worry, uncertainty, joy, anger, boredom, frustration. It’s been my self care and entertainment. It has been my secret, my rebellion, my hiding place, my distraction.

I remember being 10 years old in 4th grade and we had to all cross the road to the YMCA and take swimming lessons. I felt horrible about my body. I thought my thighs were just massive. I couldn’t stand the thought of being seen in a bathing suit. I’d never been made fun of. But the idea was there because of what I heard discussed at home as well as the messages we get in our culture. I began looking for excuses not to participate. I would forget my clothes on purpose. Say I wasn’t feeling well.

There was a vending machine at the Y that we were forbidden to use (this is in the days before there were vending machines in schools). I used to try to be the first one out of the locker room after class so I could quickly deposit my quarters to get a snack size bag of Keystone Party Mix. A compilation of pretzels, cheese covered tortilla chips, barbecue corn chips and cheese doodles. I would hide it away in my bag and save it for later. I would take it back to my bedroom and eat it in secret.

My parents found out I was missing swimming class and sat me down and asked me why. Was someone picking on me? No, I answered honestly. But I knew I couldn’t tell them why I was really skipping class. An unwritten, unspoken rule of the family. Don’t have negative emotions. Don’t expose your vulnerability or they will pounce. Everything. Is. Fine. And so I said what I was supposed to. Made up some unbelievable excuse which they readily believed. Everything. Is. Fine. After all.

My Keystone Party Mix comforted me. My Keystone Party Mix was the secret I kept from them. It was mine and mine alone. A protective wall. The more they know about you, the more they will hurt you. Reveal as little as possible. Protect yourself.

Hail Keystone Party Mix, full of carbs, … protect us, Mother.

That was the beginning of it. This is the end.

I know I deserve more now. I deserve love. And food is not love. I am finally able to eat healthily and be happy. I am able to comfort myself without turning to cake. I can get angry with my husband and not stop off at McDonald’s on my way to work for a Sausage McMuffin. I can make it through a boring, frustrating day at work without noshing on candy all day. I can stop after a handful of chips or a single brownie, because I am not empty and searching. I hope I am giving this to my children too. The ability to sit with the hardships of life, to turn to people who love and support them, to know they’re worth more.

I do cook for my family because I love them. I work urgent care for them and clean for them and kiss boo boos too. But I do not offer food as a substitute for love and compassion, emotional validation and open, safe, discussions. Sometimes our family *isn’t* fine. Sometimes we’re a wreck. No, like, a flaming tire fire kind of wreck. And that’s okay. It’s life. It is what it is. We all have permission to feel whatever it is we’re feeling at that moment. We’re allowed to have boundaries. I hope they like my cooking and the birthday cakes I make them, but I hope that’s the least of what I mean to them. They deserve more.

 

Lemons and sugar in the snow

31 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in marriage, movies, my awesome husband, PTSD, Rape

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

My husband and I are trying to get out and meet new people, to try to make some friends. “We’re putting ourselves out there,” I said to him as we discussed it the other night, “so to speak. It’s kind of like dating. We’re trying to find another couple to be besties with so we have to be more social and put some feelers out.” He looked a little annoyed, or maybe mildly disgusted. Sort of like the face you make when your stomach is slightly off and you’re trying to figure out if it’s going to pass or if it’s the beginning of a full on GI issue.

I took the first step for us (just as I did back when we first met) and found a get together for us with other 30-something couples with kids at a nearby pub. It’s other Catholic couples so I figured I could pique my hubs’ interest with it and I was right (this is, in fact, even more complicated than dating as it turns out. It’s like I’m a matchmaker *and* I’m dating. This analogy is getting a little cumbersome). I checked with our babysitter and she was free the night of the cas’ soiree so I entered it onto our family scheduling app and we were all set (It wasn’t actually that simple because nothing in our chaotic life is that simple, but we’ll leave it at that).

A few days later, we were driving home from our Saturday evening marital therapy appointment where we’d spent an hour making a family genogram (don’t ask), and my mind began to wander as my hubs drove the minivan down 376 as Soldier Boy made explosion noises behind me and the Baby tried to decide if he was going to cry or fall asleep. I started thinking about what I would wear when we went out to the pub in a couple weeks. I’ve been losing weight lately and I thought of the clothes I haven’t worn in a while that will now fit. I mentally assembled an outfit from med school and paired it with a pair of boots I recently bought. I pictured my hubs and I alone in my car (not the damn minivan, thank you very much) heading out and what nice compliment he might pay me. And then I thought of what I might say to him.

“Do you remember this outfit? Remember the last time I wore it?”

The answer is not our honeymoon or our first date or anything other such romantic thing. The answer is actually that I bought this outfit at the Millcreek Mall in February of 2011 while we were in Erie for the trial of Jeremy Noyes. The man who put me through my Ordeal.

I did not think of this moment, of telling him this, with sadness or anger. I actually thought of it with a slight small on my face.

Jeremy’s trial started on February 14th. It was my hubs Eric and my first Valentine’s Day as a couple. We spent the week up in cold snowy Erie. Jeremy had fired his attorney and chosen to represent himself. He subpoenaed me to testify. I’m not sure which is worse: having to be questioned by your rapist in federal court, or all the time before it that you spend imagining what it will be like. We spent the whole week in Erie, waiting for it to be my turn to testify. Eric was allowed to sit in on the trial but I was not since it could affect my testimony when I was called to the stand later on.

I only packed one suit but I thought I might need a second if my testimony took more than one day. So, as Eric sat taking in images and words at that trial no person would ever want to, evil hard to imagine, I went to the mall. I bought more than I needed, more than I should have. I bought a really, really pretty top. A flowy translucent top with corals and browns and turquoisie blues in a muted floral design like the impressionists, Manet and Monet and all that. It was so pretty. The trial was so ugly. So I bought it even though I was broke. I’m not sorry I did.

We stayed at a nice hotel that the government said they would reimburse us for. We went down to the nice restaurant in the nice hotel one night. I don’t remember which night. The night before I testified? The night after? The night in between? (I was right, it was two days of testimony so I really *did* need that second suit. Not everything else, but, the suit yes)

I don’t remember which night it was but I remember getting ready to go downstairs and making him laugh. I remember sitting there in that nice restaurant in that nice hotel in that pretty flowy top eating a lovely meal with my lovely fiancé. I remember he ordered us dessert and we shared it with two forks and it tasted better than I thought food could. I remember laughing. I remember his eyes. His mouth when the corners turned up. We were still there. In Erie. At a horrible stomach turning trial of a sociopath child predator. We were still there, but for a night, it was a little less. A little less there. There, but better.

And so, almost six years later, when I sat in the mocha colored minivan, a wedding and two kids and a hell of a lot else later, I thought of wearing that top again with the corners of my mouth turned up. It didn’t make me think of my trauma or sitting in that courtroom as Jeremy said the worst things imaginable to me. It made me think of that night. Of that respite, of the soft lighting and the attentive waiter and the clean linen table cloth on the little round table we sat at together. It made me think of all the years and all the hell he’s stood by me through. Of this most unusual life we’ve had together. Of the sweetness that comes with the bitters.

We had watched a documentary about a Holocaust survivor the night before. Made by a man Eric had made films with in another life. And the survivor in the movie told a story of starvation, of being moved from camp to camp. And on one train ride they all looked so malnourished these village women threw food onto the train, whatever they had with them from the market. And so, they had things like flour and sugar and lemons. And at one stop, a man got snow off the ground and brought it on and they made lemon ice with the lemons and sugar. The survivor in the movie said how much he loved lemon ice for the rest of his life. How could that be, I’d asked my husband. Eric had made a lot of films with survivors and he said, yes, he’d heard that many times before. He said, the lemon ice was the first thing he’d eaten after starving for so long, why wouldn’t he love it now? I said, “I guess if I was more like him I could take fish oil capsules.” But I can’t.

Jeremy made me take fish oil capsules. I can’t take them now. I can’t even take vitamins. The body remembers. The esophagus remembers. Remembers the other things he forced down my throat, remembers not breathing, not knowing if he would ever let me breathe again. Eric says I should try to overcome my aversion to fish oil and I say, No. I have overcome a fuck of a lot in the past eight years. I’m just gonna take fish oil as a loss. I’m gonna pass on conquering that one.

But sitting in that mocha minivan, I see the fish oil capsules are not my lemon ice. The flowy top is my lemon ice. I see now how he could love lemon ice. The joy and the beauty and the bodily memory of quite a different kind.

Life is not simple. Is not, yes or no. Good or evil. Would that Eric and I hadn’t spent our first Valentine’s Day together in gray snowy Erie at the trial of a madman. But there was beauty there too. There were lemons and sugar in that snow too. There too.