Too Raw

I was recently told after a moment which should have been a win but was devastating to me, “With how much hasn’t gone your way, and everything that’s fallen apart, it’s really impressive you keep going.” Wow. I think it was supposed to be a compliment, but it knocked me out. That's how I'm viewed? People see me as someone living a life of disappointment and it's so fucking astounding that I keep trying? I gave a curt smile, but it's been rolling in my head incessantly. Because believe me when I say I want to give up constantly. I'm exhausted. 

I am going into my 11th ketamine treatment next week and I feel horrible. I don't feel like the pain will ever end. I'm crying all the time, I'm overloaded, every interaction is landing wrong. And I also know this is pushing everyone away when I need acceptance and help more than ever. 

I know people are trying to support me, and I appreciate that. The hard part is that right now everything is hitting me harder than it normally would. My system is very open (from the brain neuroplasticity of the ketamine working) and I don’t have much buffer, so even well-meaning words can hit in ways that devastate me. It’s not that people are saying terrible things; it’s that I’m in a phase where everything feels amplified, and there’s less filtering, so I’m feeling the full weight of things in real time. That can create a disconnect where intention and impact don’t always line up. If I seem reactive or pull back, it’s not about anyone individually, it’s just that I’m dealing with a level of emotional intensity that makes it hard to take things in the way they’re meant.

I'm not sleeping well as the nightmares are back. Part of opening the neural pathways means everything I shoved down and contained, to be able to function as a human, is raw and flashing at me at all times. This is apparently the "middle phase" of ketamine and a bit of "it gets worse before it gets better". I'm told what gets you to the other side is support and right now I feel on an island. 

I was looking at a picture of myself around 2 years old. I look happy. I remember very few happy childhood moments. My mother said around age 6 I stopped wanting anyone to hug me. I was the first born so she thought this was part of growing up until my brothers never did this. I'm overwhelmed right now, and told this is a huge part of where I am in ketamine treatment, but feeling like is it even possible to come back from decades of this. I have no memory of being uplifted, told I mattered, or supported (until now - I do have people telling me this now). I get amused, and angry, when I hear people talking about loving yourself or having a good self-esteem. How exactly do you do that with zero foundation of it? 

I'm told I'm "flooded" and the intensity needs to be brought down just enough that I brain can actually do something with what’s coming up. Not eliminating in it, just not drowning in it. I'm trying but I'm drowning. The brain needs time to recover and integrate without triggers. I'm sick today and being forced to rest. I'm hoping that just maybe this will also calm my nervous system. I'm so fucking scared.

Flashbacks

Trigger warning - This writing contains some graphic content which may be upsetting to some. Please read with care.

“No one knows the pain you carry. Everyone hides it… and when it’s bad enough you either come through it or you don’t. The world keeps turning just the same, blue sky and all.”

Now that I'm past the induction period of ketamine (2x a week for a month), the flashbacks have come back with a vengeance. In depression and long-term trauma, certain brain circuits become very fixed. The brain keeps running the same emotional pathways over and over. Ketamine reduces the dominance of those networks for a while. When that happens, the brain can revisit stored material that normally stays compartmentalized.

So instead of the brain keeping things neatly boxed away, connections between memories, emotions, and body sensations become more fluid. Emotional memories surfacing, sudden grief or anger, vivid recollections, and flashbacks.

I'm having all of this. The brain is actively processing material that used to stay tightly contained and it fucking sucks. If I'm not sobbing, I'm holding back tears. I hear the younger me screaming, "Why me!? Why did these things happen to me!?" There will never be an answer to this other than I just wasn't dealt a nice deck of cards in this life. 

The sadness is overtaking me again. The thoughts have grown increasingly dark. I won't do anything, yet I feel so much anger that I have to keep living. The pain is indescribable. The worst of it all is the isolation. Trying so hard for someone to see me but they just don't, and likely wouldn't be able to. I'm told "you can call me at any time", but this isn't reality. I can't wake a friend up at 2am because I had a panic attack remembering the first time I was raped as a virgin. I can't text someone saying how I am having vaginal pains recalling being abused as a child. And what would you say to me anyway? It happened to me and I wouldn't know what to say. But screaming and sobbing alone is a loneliness like no other. 

People genuinely want to help, but there is often a strange disconnect between intention and impact. Sometimes the words meant to comfort land sideways. Not out of cruelty, but because suffering makes people uncomfortable and they reach for the nearest phrase that sounds supportive. And as I’ve said so many times before, the perfect words don’t exist. You can’t tell me it’s going to work out, because it might not. You can’t tell me things will get better, because they can get worse… much worse. The truth is that when you’re in the middle of something like this, there are no reassuring sentences that can carry the weight of it. Sometimes it feels like I’m standing on a stage with everyone watching, quietly waiting for the moment when I’m finally “better.” There are times I sit holding my head, swaying back and forth, trying to will all of this away, and the only thing that comes is more tears.

I feel one of my deepest neural pathways, that possibly the ketamine is loosening, is the constant fear something bad is about to happen. Because horrible things did keep happening and I couldn't tell anyone. How do you explain to your friends at 16 as they go to prom and plan for college, that you have knives hidden all over the living room to kill your mother's boyfriend for how he was terrorizing us? How do you explain that every time you tried to hope it was blown up in front of you? Most people don't know what it feels like to have been on your own since you were a teenager with no safety net; no family to give you some money if you're going under, no partner to have your back, knowing the entirety of your survival is up to you. 

I'm told this is the resurfacing phase. For people with trauma histories especially, the brain reactivates stored emotional networks and accesses material that used to be locked away. My brain has attempted to numb and push it all down. It’s not healing; it’s containment so you can function. The brain is bringing the memory network into awareness where it can be reorganized. It's incredibly lonely and destabilizing to do this by myself. But there is no other choice. 

As we're so often told "it gets worse before it gets better". The next phase would be reprocessing and integration. Yet I'm barely breathing.

"No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don't." Stephen King (2008). “The Stand”

Reprocessing

Processing. I'm so sick of the word processing, along with trauma, healing, and so many other therapy buzz words. But apparently this is the stage I'm at in my journey. There is a lot of misconception with ketamine treatments that they in itself will "make you better". (Note: I didn't use the word healing. Let's just lose that word entirely when it comes to CPTSD and treatment resistant depression. Not helpful. In fact, it's hurtful.) 

As ketamine changes the brain's neuroplasticity it also loosens the brain's filtering system. When ketamine loosens the brain's defenses, older parts of your life can start to surface. When the brain becomes more flexible, the protective walls you built to keep painful material contained can loosen. So things you pushed down can surface. Memories, grief, anger, shame, sadness, and flashes of the past all hitting at once.

I thought the incessant crying was over but it's back. I'm told this is processing crying instead of collapse. It feels the same. I broke down the other day in front of friends. I was doing everything in me to hold it together and then one asked about my ketamine treatments and I fell apart. It was humiliating. Everyone was kind and said they loved me but now it's been over a day and no one has reached out. Not a surprise to me as this has happened my entire life. You are told you are safe and to open up, you do it and then silence. No one looked back to see if I was still standing. I get it though as there are no good words to say. If you hit me with some toxic positivity shit then I'll push back hard, but then if nothing is said I'm just as sad. There's no way for anyone to win here. 

Yesterday was brutal. I spent a good 6 hours crying from afternoon to night until I passed out on the couch from the exhaustion of it all. Woke up still crying. My cats were jumping on me and meowing as they knew I wasn't OK. Passed out in another crying fit this afternoon. I don't want to detail my thoughts as they'd land me in inpatient and if that were to happen it would be the literal end of me. I guess there must be some hope left to have the strength to refuse. 

Doing this alone is rough. There is no one to hug you and say they won't leave you. (Well, there never was anyone anyway) I have no safety net. People care about me but at the end of the day it's me holding everything. 

I am just so sick of being this person. It's always me. The sad one, the one alone, the one making bad choices. I have another appointment tomorrow. I'm still trying, but right now I don't know how much I have left.