We really haven’t been doing well since Wednesday late evening/early Thursday morning. We wrote in our handwritten journal an outline list of all the memories we could think of that we knew about that related to the neighbor boy and particularly as it pertained to the theme of shame. There are still memories we have to add as they are part of the story in other ways and there are still things we forgot to add.
Anyway, within minutes after finishing that and laying down, we suddenly began experiencing uncontrollable, involuntary body movements that were jerky. They would range from one side to both sides of the body, from the arms, the shoulders, legs, torso, just basically any part of the body at any time, without warning and without any pattern to them. They kept happening between 2-30 seconds and that night was pretty violent in its intensity of involuntary jerky body movements. It went on for hours. It wasn’t until well after 2 hours and after taking an anti-anxiety pill before the involuntary movements became further apart and less violent. We woke up to experiencing them, though not nearly as intense as the night before and a bit further apart. We slept mostly all day Thursday and/or was in bed. We were so out of it and depressed and just something I’m not sure I know or can put into words.
The involuntary jerky movements were really mild and far apart and so we decided to go ahead and go to group, except that while driving there, they started to increase and increase in their intensity again. We went through group with them happening from time to time, not as bad as the first time it happened, but still noticeable and distressing and bothersome to us.
After group we played a board game and at some point while playing the game we noticed that they had stopped happening or at least very mild that we weren’t noticing them as much. But then it picked back up as we began thinking and dealing with life and things again. So we went through more of it happening Thursday night with it being relatively mild or not as bad as that first night. Today, Friday (well now it is 4:30am Saturday but that’s beside the point), we stayed in bed basically all day again, sleeping or just out of it. We’re frustrated because we have so much shit to get done, but we are just “out of it” or something that again, we can’t put into words very well. The involuntary movements have been around at various times today and tonight but they have been mild and at times not there at all.
I feel like we are in this holding cell while we try to cope and deal with shit until we can see our therapist, Kathy. We see her tomorrow (Sat) afternoon, and I’m so glad we don’t have to wait any longer than that. That feeling of being in a holding cell or just in this state of mind of where everything just sort of stops in our world has happened many times before. It feels like we can’t and don’t cope or deal with shit very well at all or the very bare minimum, if that, until we have therapy and can get some kind of relief or something that helps our system get things back to some kind of better stability or a “jump start” at least to begin trying to start the rest of the week or days between therapy off and try to run on our own.
So the whole thing about our title for this point.
Telling Reactions
Why yes, this whole involuntary body movements of a jerky nature are very much some kind of crazy subconscious psychological reaction for having told. We only told just enough to jog our memory about the memories. Nothing was told in detail and it wasn’t really written down, and yet, just what little we did say along with thinking and trying to remember the things that we know still obviously greatly affected us and caused a huge reaction for having “told” by writing things down. We were only writing down notes so that we have a visual of everything and can begin putting together a timeline of these memories and eventually writing them down in detail. We were also writing them down as preparation for therapy because we have decided that it is important that we begin with these memories and work them through and get some healing done with them somehow. Well, that just freaking caused some serious havoc for us. The physical reaction of an unconscious nature really speaks volumes to us.
Which leads us to the other way of viewing our title.
First it was about the reactions of telling. Now it is about how the reactions of telling are very telling/reaveling.
I’ve always known on some level and with some memories, though usually pretty vague and only pieces of them, some of what happened between the neighbor boy and I. We still can’t quite say his name yet or put it into writing here, especially for others to see. I know that there are many memories locked away and many pieces locked away as well, but there was always a little bit there for me to know that shit happened and to carry an immense amount of shame and badness, dirtiness, etc. with us forever. And yet, on other levels, I’ve dismissed the extent at which the abuse by him affected me/us. I’ve considered my father’s abuse and the cult or whatever group that abused us to be much worse and to have affected us much deeper. And yet, just this boy’s abuse was so damn upsetting to someone/s inside or to our brain and heart or something or another that it fucking suddenly caused these crazy ass involuntary body movements for so damn long. I’m not convinced that they are over with and have stopped for good. Because they haven’t really stopped, although we’ve had some extended breaks of them today and tonight. But they still keep happening. They seem to start up when we begin thinking about shit or life or anything other than a blank mind or mindless whatever. Uggh.
I really don’t know what to do. We see our pdoc on Thursday for a pre-scheduled appt and so we’ll talk to her then about getting a real anti-anxiety medication than the shit she prescribed to me and didn’t tell me what it really was. Anyway, that’s the only thing we’ve figured out that is supposed to help this crap because everything we did in trying to research and figure out what was happening to us says basically Klonopin is what we need. I don’t know for sure. Just I hate it. Since it has subsided to some degree and at the least, it is at a much lesser degree, we are going to try and wait till Thursday rather than try to get in to see her or our regular dr sooner.
We’ve had some body movement reactions before that are involuntary to a large degree, but they have always been totally different than this and more seizure like with the whole body (at home) or with the head (home and in therapy)…not sure what that is exactly… but we’ve never had this particular involuntary movement jerky and spread out like it has been. The stuff we’ve had previously has basically been very brief and time contained and once it was over with, it was over with the physical part of it. The emotional fallout is there and other things, but still very different than from what has been happening lately.
So it is late and we need to try and get some more sleep. Just needed to say what was going on.