What’s wrong with me?

What do you do when you are so far down that you need a stepladder to reach the bottom? What do you do when you are so overwhelmed that you feel like you are walking through jell-o? When your life is coming apart and your heart is breaking, when you’re feeling like just chucking it all and jumping off the nearest bridge, or drinking a drain-o and gasoline cocktail, how do you get over it?

Sometimes life is hard. Sometimes we don’t get a good deal as a kid and it screws up our whole life, our whole reality. Those of us who experienced a lot of abuse in early childhood wind up being haunted by it, internally tortured by our memories, and even by our continuing contact, with people, places and things that remind us of those horrific times.

What makes things even more difficult, especially when I am having difficulty overcoming my past, is to have family members and friends who didn’t experience the same abuse, the same horrific times, tell me to “Just get over it, for God sakes!” or “I don’t know what you are so worked up about, it wasn’t that bad.”

It’s times like these that I find myself wondering what it is that makes me so weak, so ineffectual, so trigger prone, that my life comes to these stand-stills where I am so depressed and distressed that I think about just ending it all. I mean, what’s wrong with me?

Maybe there is nothing wrong with me. Maybe it’s normal to become extremely distressed and overwrought after telling someone, a therapist maybe, about an incident when you were four years old that is as clear as a bell in your mind, where you watched you mother kill a kitten before your eyes.

Maybe it is normal to become triggered and depressed when I discuss events that were so personally shattering, even years later, that I have difficulty rationalizing them. After all, they happened when I was a child, with no capacity for rationalization, let alone understanding. It could very well be that this is the most right, most natural reaction to remembering childhood trauma.

And, lets face it, there are some traumas that remain hidden, because they occurred before the formation of our capacity for cognition, or they are wrapped in such terror, such emotionally shattering pain that we shelved them in some untraveled part of our mind. Or, as in my case, I dissociated and the memory is being held by another aspect of myself because it’s import is so personally shattering that it can only be contacted by connecting with that alternate part of myself. Nevertheless, it surfaces in nightmares and flashbacks. This is what I am dealing with right now, and let me tell you, it’s no picnic.

For a while I feared that I might need hospitalization, but I have a really good therapist who feels we can deal with this without resorting to such disruptive measures. Still, I sometimes think it would be better to do so, as my functionality has become severely hampered by the flash backs and the mind numbing fear that surrounds the memory.

It has me questioning the validity of my life, and other memories and perceptions that I have always felt were true. Sometimes I feel as though everything I always believed to be true is nothing more than just an illusion. I feel lost, totally alone, and completely helpless. In fact, it is very difficult to write this, as I have always prided myself in producing positive and supportive articles through which I have always tried to give hope and positive direction.

Nevertheless, right now I feel completely hopeless and devoid of positive direction. But, my therapist told me to write about it, to express it in any way I can, and so that is what I am doing. The truth is, right now my life is a struggle, and I fear that I may not get through it. Sometimes I feel downright suicidal.

I would like to end this article on a positive note, but at the moment, I don’t see how. Maybe, in a month or two I will be able to share with you the resolution to this dilemma, maybe not. Maybe, instead, I will decide that continuing my life isn’t worth the effort. If nothing else, I must be truthful.

Kerry Dennis

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