TRIGGER WARNING: sexual assault and suicide themes

I think of it as a part of me wandering off. 

 My doctor calls it a breakdown. 

 My psychologist assures me it is a complex post traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) relapse. 

I didn’t know you could relapse with PTSD. I knew it lingered; but a full relapse? Bloody hell.

The consensus finally reached by a barrage of health professionals, was a breakdown precipitated by a relapse.

So off I wandered last October and left here to get through has been my shadow. 

And my beloved Glen. 

Poor G. The woman he married wasn’t quite the mess I became within a year of our elopement.

One month shy of our first wedding anniversary, I had the chance at what we all hoped was a silver bullet for my CPTSD, the result of a number of assaults, hostage situations and abuse.

I was offered a spot in a clinical trial of ketamine for people with PTSD. The drug had returned some encouraging results in overseas trials, at helping people break through the worst of their symptoms, allowing them to lead fulfilling lives.

The big hope was the ketamine trial might help me sleep. The CPTSD had seen my sleep drop to an average of three to four hours a night over a period of 10 years.

And this sleep was haunted by nightmares which would often see me wake too terrified to go back to sleep.

This had a terrible impact on my quality of life and ability to work or pursue anything structured where I needed to be at a set place at set times.

But the ketamine silver bullet became a nail in the coffin of my grip on reality, and saw me come undone. Not for the first or last time.

The need to recount the details of each trauma as part of the intake process for the clinical trial was devastating to my mental health. 

It took hours to recount the the rapes, the abuse, the hostage and other life-threatening situations which formed part of the complex tapestry of my life.

And doing so rendered me a complete mess for day. But we tried to remain buoyed by the promise the trial itself held.

 —–

The first oral intake of ketamine was magical. I could immediately understand why it’s used as a recreational drug. 

I felt so warm and relaxed. Muscles in my neck, shoulders and upper back which had been locked up for years, just loosened and the headache and physical pain I had been carrying, fell away.

I cried with relief at not being in pain.

And the first night I slept a little more, perhaps five hours.

But I woke with a ketamine hangover and felt odd all the next day.

The muscles gradually started to tighten through the week but not to the same point.

The second week was just unpleasant. It was like what I assume a bad trip would feel like.

I didn’t sleep that night and the muscles in my neck and back were loosened again only to tighten straight back up.

The flashbacks started in thick and fast then.

I had averaged probably 40 to 50 flashbacks a day to all kinds of events in my past – some deeply traumatic, others quite pleasant, usually though completely random and seemingly not triggered by anything.

These ramped up quickly to probably 100 flashbacks a day then 150 then 200 as the weeks of the trial continued.

The third week of the trial I bounced back a little. I slept a bit, ate a bit, had some energy which was new.

The fourth week of the trial is when, looking back, we should have pulled the plug on it.

I started crying as soon as I ingested the ketamine and it felt as if I didn’t stop for weeks. Perhaps I didn’t. It all started to become quite hazy.

I stopped sleeping and my mood bounced around alarmingly.

Just weeks before the trial started, I had finally picked up ongoing employment, working flexible hours from home. A few weeks into the trial, the job had to be given up as I was incapable of functioning.

The fifth week was no better.

By the sixth and final week, I was an absolute basket case! 

After the last dose, the tears were flowing with seemingly no end in sight. I couldn’t form sentences properly. G had to be summonsed from the car to assist me out as I couldn’t even walk unaided.

I honestly don’t remember what happened over the next few months.

My pleas for help from the medical institute which conducted the trial, fell on deaf ears.

“We do trials, not treatment” was all we heard from them after the unsuccessful treatment.

They suggested I get private health insurance and seek additional treatment in hospital.

This enraged me because I wasn’t well enough to work to afford private health insurance. Ergo my current predicament.

I was left untethered and untreated by them and am still angry about it. In a final meeting with them I implored them to only do the trials on those who have access to medical support systems should it go wrong. I hope this is a policy which has been adopted.

_ _ _ _ _ 

I’ll never know how much was the ketamine or how much was the PTSD itself. I only know I completely unraveled. Or as a couple of people close to me have said, I simply stopped!

I stopped leaving the house. I stopped calling people. I stopped tending to relationships. I went an entire summer without going to the beach just 15 minutes down the road – unheard of for me!

I watched as my friendships fell away and I didn’t have the energy to do anything about it. I didn’t have the energy to see or call anyone, to cope with the emotional needs of anyone.

My own business all but closed as I couldn’t work.

G never wavered, but bloody hell this whole messy thing has been hard on him.

I bumbled along for months working with my psychologist and GP to get as stable as I could.

It was the start of 18 months of quiet isolation for the most part during which I broke my ankle, G lost his vision temporarily following eye surgery, and then his dad died.

Our plants died. We struggled to feed the chickens in their enclosure as neither of us was able to get up the path. We fed the chickens near the house and ended up with a bird lice infestation thanks to the horde of opportunistic brush turkeys living in the area.

My sleep stayed messy getting to an average of two hours a night. We hoped exhaustion might make me collapse into sleep; incredulously it didn’t. People believed I was exaggerating when I said I only slept two hours a night. G assured them this was indeed the case. Night after night after night. And what little sleep I did have was repeatedly molested by nightmare, seeing me wake terrified.

G took me to the emergency department pleading for help for my sleep and mental health. They sent us home with a pamphlet for the Acute Care Team.

Things started to get manic as the flashbacks stayed at around 200 a day.

Mum checked in but was struggling with her own health.

One of my dearest friend fell away, and I let her.

My best mate M still called everyday, whether I picked up or not, just to make sure I knew she was there for me.

G struggled under the weight of it, but still kept loving me.

Then it happened. We had a holiday to  Melbourne. God knows we needed it.

_ _ _ _ _ 

M’s daughter was getting married and we were delighted to be going. So we flew down, hired a car and started driving in what was a well-planned trip by me.

We had only been on the road for a couple of hours when my mood started to turn unexpectedly. I’m moody, so that’s not surprising in itself. But it became very dark, very quickly.

As we arrived at our accommodation the first night, the hysteria was growing inside me. I had become quiet but couldn’t articulate what was wrong.

I was incredibly disappointed to find our accommodation truly reflected the cheapness of its price! 

I had also been frustrated I hadn’t paid for more luggage so I could bring an alternative outfit for the wedding to the dress I had packed. (Dresses make me deeply uncomfortable and feel terribly vulnerable; ie. read rape! I still don’t know what I was thinking when I borrowed that dress, as gorgeous as it was, from a dear friend.)

When I had been behind the wheel of our hire car, the urge to drive over the side of the awe-inspiring Great Ocean Road – a bucket list trip for me – off the cliffs to our deaths, started to become overwhelming.

I had to confess to G that I was not able to drive but didn’t reveal what was really going on for me.

As G slept that first night in our awful room with shared bathrooms and a very lumpy mattress, I walked around in the rain and dark talking myself out off just walking away.

I didn’t know where I would go to. I planned to take nothing. Perhaps I would just walk into the ocean and let it take me. It was a freezing night and the wind was fierce; I was sure the ocean would swallow me up quickly.

I kept thinking about M and the life I had when we met. I yearned for that life again, a time when I was successful, I had my dream job (M was my boss!), had bought my first home, was travelling the world.

Before that one day saw it all taken away be a madman with a hatchet. (A long story which can be found here).

As the wind blew through me, I listened to the roar of the ocean crashing against the rocks and wondered how I could keep living with this pain.

And then I thought of G and my son and the pain my death would cause them. I knew I had been living for others for years, and now I doubted whether I could keep doing it, but how could I do that to them? These two people who loved me and who I loved back as much.

I only knew I wanted the unrelenting tears, lack of sleep, panic attacks where I can’t breathe, flashbacks, headaches, depression, nightmares, soul-sucking fear of everything – I just needed it to stop. It was suffocating me!

I took a couple of Valium and slept fitfully for a couple of hours until the sun rose on a rainy, grey morning. Day two saw an amplification of every feeling from the day and night before. G drove. I cried and had started to vomit each time I ate, so I stopped eating.

We saw wonderful stretches of this amazing country and I could appreciate it all while inside wanting more than anything, to be dead.

We arrived at our accommodation for the next few nights – the only option in town and quite adequate.

My head churned and I was repeatedly physically ill. We had a drink and went to bed. I didn’t sleep again.

Come time to get ready for the wedding, I fall into a million pieces when I can’t find the pin to reduce the cleavage in the dress. 

Flashbacks of rapes and sexual assaults start flying at me and I’m in tears. I race over to the front desk/local shop/survival store and they are all out of pins.

I drop to the floor in the shop and sob. I can’t explain the reason to this poor woman who is extremely alarmed. She forages around and, miracle of miracles, finds a pin and it’s big so it’s perfect! She cries with me now, this woman who I have bonded with over a pin.

More Valium, more hugs and compliments from my darling, patient G, and off we go to what is the best wedding either of us have ever been to.

We laugh, we dance, we cry with joy, we are completely caught up in the celebration of love.

The day-after-BBQ carries the same wonderful vibe and we are completely happy in these moments.

When the festivities wrap up, I notice I feel moments of peace in between being deeply unsettled by the strength of the impulse to die.

G drives to the airport because he thinks it best. I go along. When we arrive home, we are feeling good and wanting to seek more joy and laughter and love in our lives.

It didn’t last.

Within a few days a message came through that a vote had decided a Christmas celebration with loved ones would be in the city on Christmas Eve.

I had voted against the city because it is a major trigger for my PTSD. A family event in the city the previous year had resulted in panic attacks on the way down, while there and on the way back. I was so medicated I kept falling over.

When I received the text about Christmas, I didn’t know it, but I started back down the spiral again.

I should have reminded them the city triggers me, but good God, I’m sick of hearing me talk about and they are, no doubt, sick of listening.

And down I went.

The panic attacks started quickly and escalated. I couldn’t understand what was happening. I had them all night and cried relentlessly. That desire to be dead became overwhelming and I so wanted to give in to it.

It was only then that I realised my PTSD had been triggered. 

Being triggered is something people with PTSD can’t control and is very common. It’s a response to bio-psycho-social stimuli and events. Being transported back to another time or place by a sound or smell or taste is similar.

However, being triggered into a PTSD episode can be traumatic in itself. 

My mind started to shut down and go into survival mode the same way it did with the last hostage situation.

My body started to respond as if I were there that day, in that heat, with the smell of the blood which seemed to be everywhere.

I was sweating profusely and trying desperately to think clearly, but my mind was firmly in flight or fight and it was running for its life!

At my psychologist’s request, G took my car keys and some time off work to basically keep an eye on me.

My doctor changed my meds and G was put in charge of my Valium so I had it there to save my life but not enough to end it!

I started to actively plan my suicide and had begun writing goodbye letters.

I didn’t want to die so much as I couldn’t stand the pain anymore. I needed it to end and not being alive anymore seemed my only valid option.

Then came the anniversary of the last hostage situation; a date which has impacted me profoundly since it happened in 2012 and the anniversary of which is usually pretty ugly for me at the best of times.

I spiralled further. 

G pushed for me to leave the house so we went to Bunnings. A circus was set up opposite and became yet another trigger thanks to a sexual assault on me when I was 11.

The whole world felt hostile. Everywhere I turned, the deepest and darkest traumas were being triggered.

I was told by some loved ones it wasn’t real and I should be over the PTSD by now. 

Each time I heard this, I would want to die all over again. Not being believed by people who mattered to me, was devastating.

I lost 12kg in a few weeks, stopped eating, couldn’t get out of bed and spent hours crying.

I developed shingles for the first time and a bizarre condition where the whites of the eyes turned red. The weight continued to fall off me.

Our indoor and outdoor plants died again. Our carefully manicured garden became an unkempt small jungle.

The Acute Care Team was called and stepped in with emergency visits to the house. My doctor spoke with me weekly and my psychologist had me emailing her daily.

G stood by me stoically though I could tell the toll it was taking on him. M still called me every single day, whether I answered or not.

My son was not told about what was happening at the time and Mum would check in when she could but had been having her own health issues.

I lost the emotional energy needed to maintain most of my relationships and the vast majority fell away naturally. There were friends who would send an occasional check in message, but not many. I deeply value those who remain.

Seven months on from the start of the relapse/breakdown/loss of grip on reality, I continue to drift further away from people and society.

While the loss of contact with some friends used to hurt me, I don’t have the energy for talking anymore. My phone stays on silent most days and often in a draw. I don’t miss a lot of calls.

_ _ _ _ _

It was recently our third wedding anniversary and I wish I could be the wife for G I had hoped to be. We didn’t marry expecting I would have a breakdown trying to find a miracle cure for the PTSD. We didn’t marry thinking I would rarely work and the financial weight would be pulled mostly by G.

I wish I could be the mother my son needs. I wish like hell I had purpose and routine and paid employment. I wish some of those people who left my life were still in it. I wish none of it ever happened.

But wishes are not reality.

What I do have is my love, G.

I am healing slowly. I don’t leave home very much and I like it that way. Our home is safe. I sleep better now, though there is no rhyme or reason to why or when I have good and bad nights.

I do attend a dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) group which is hard emotional work but a journey I think we should all take.

I spend a lot of time frustratingly looking for employment where I can work from home, at hours that suit me. In my mid-50s, I don’t have companies throwing offers at me. 

But with such a large part of me having wandered off when all this started last October, and only my shadow left to run the show for me, it’s far from a straight path to recovery.

Perhaps the part of me which wandered off will return one day. Maybe better, brighter and happier than ever. A shiny new and improved part of me. Or perhaps she is forever gone to be replaced with I don’t know what yet. 

 And through it all, I am trying harder than I knew possible, to just be love. I don’t want to be angry or bitter or sad or feeling sorry for myself.

I want to be love as I heal and rebuild my life into I don’t know what. Something different. But something with meaning and purpose. And love.