My Story - Part 8

July, 1995

The room was tiny - 2m by 4m, and contained a table, pushed up against one wall, with three chairs arranged around it. Dust particles danced in the single, narrow shaft of natural light coming in the tiny, barred window in the furthest wall. A petite woman with dark brown hair, pulled back into a bun and steel-rimmed glasses was sitting at one end of the table. I was standing by the locked door, breathing fast, adrenaline tensing every muscle in my body. I'm still not sure what I was afraid of.

"I'm doctor Smith", she told me in a calm voice. "There is no need to worry, I just want to talk to you. Won't you sit down?"

My mind was racing. I remembered the brown man with the spider hands, and all the therapists that came after him. They all had one thing in common - they asked a lot of question to which I didn't know the answers. Being in jail, I shuddered when I imagined what would happen if I was unable to answer her questions.

I stayed standing by the door, frozen, my heartbeat thundering in my ears.

"I can see you are afraid, she said. There really is no need. Nothing you do or say will leave this room. Even in jail, doctor-patient confidentiality still stands. This is the one room in this entire complex where you do not need to be afraid"

Without putting any more pressure on me to relax and sit down, she started a gentle conversation. She asked me inconsequential questions, like where I grew up, or if I had siblings. The session was over before I knew it.

On my second session, I cautiously made my way to to table, and sat down. She smiled at me, but didn't say a word about it. She continued to chat about meaningless topics, in the same gentle, quiet voice. I started to relax.

Slowly, she started to win my trust. After several weeks, I surprised myself by blurting out that I had a nightmare the previous night. She asked to hear about it, but after telling that it was about my foster father, I ran out of courage and fell silent. She didn't push. She merely said that it was ok, I could tell her when I was ready.

From there, I would continue to open up to her more with each consecutive session. The flood gates were open and 23 years' pent-up emotions started flowing out. This release, along with the medication she prescribed, enabled me to start looking towards the future for the first time in my life. I signed up for the prison education program, and finally started working towards high-school graduation. One of my chosen subjects and by far my favorite, was "Computer Studies". I did not realize it at the time, but when I chose "Computer Studies" as a subject, I embarked an another, all together more healthy love-affair. I had unwittingly taken the first step on the way to a successful career.

End September, 1995

I stood in my favourite position in front of the window, with my back to the room. Dr Smith sat on the hard little chair at the table.

"Dr, what's wrong with me? Am I insane?"
"There is no such thing as 'insane'."
"Then what? What the hell is going on inside my head?"
I heard her sigh, and the rustle of papers.
"I can answer that, but I need to you come and sit down so I can explain to you".

I sat down, and she started explaining. The list wasn't very long. It contained 4 items:

1. Majour Depression
2. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
3. Borderline Personality Disorder
4. Depersonalisation Disorder

She explained that all my symptoms could be traced back to those four items. She explained how she believed they had formed, and how they interacted and fed off each other. She also explained why the various medications she had prescribed for me, helped. I understood some of what she said, some not. What I did understand, was that there was hope. There was a name for my insanity - I wasn't alone. Someone understood what was happening to me, and if someone understood, someone could help me.

Time would teach me all about the prejudice and stigma those "labels" bring with them, but that would never overshadow the relief I felt when I realised that there was hope for creating order in the chaos. The road ahead would not be easy, but I would not be stumbling along alone, in the dark any more.


The most difficult thing I had to learn, was to answer that staple of psychiatrists the world over - so, how does that make you feel?

At 16, I was kicked out of a psychiatrists office because he refused to believe that I didn't know. At 23, I was still unable to answer it. The closest I could get was "bad" or "good". Fortunately, my new therapist believed me when I told her I didn't know. She helped me. She gave me lists of emotions, discussed what the words meant. She gave me "decision trees" of emotions, breaking them down further and further, until I was able to describe what I was feeling in a reasonable amount of detail. Slowly, as the weeks passed, I started getting better and better at it.

The second most difficult thing I had to learn, was to stay in the moment. My whole life, I had been used to "shut down" when distressed. To dissociate. I can still recall the first time she made me remember an event of abuse without dissociating. It was terrible. During that period, I spent a lot of time in the psych-wing, resting and recovering away from the general population. Those sessions were some of the most emotionally shattering hours I have ever spent in my life, but also some of the most cathartic. We spent a lot of those session sitting cross-legged on the linoleum floor, facing each other, as I talked and the doctor kept calling me back every time I started to dissociate. It was hell, but by now there was no turning back. I had no choice but to fight through it.

A few months into my jail term, Dr Smith decided that I was ready for the next step in my recovery - dealing with my addiction. She introduced me to a new program called SMART Recovery, backed by Cognitive Behavior Therapy. By now I was getting better so fast that I was spending less and less time in the psych-wing, and more and more time in general population. Deciding that mixing with hardened criminals was not good for me, my therapist wrote a letter to the parole board, recommending that I should be paroled, and transferred to long-term rehab instead.

After 6 months in prison, I moved into rehab for the last time, where I would continue to work with Dr Smith.

April 3, 1996

After 4 months in rehab, 10 months after my arrest, I was allowed to leave the facility over weekends, as long we were back before nightfall.

Almost 11 months after my arrest, I was given permission to leave rehab and go home for my birthday. My brother told me later that he was extremely nervous about what he would see when I stepped off the bus, but when the day came, I could have walked past them without them recognising me.

I had put on at least 20kg. My hair was clean, and neatly cut. In fact, I was going through what we now laughingly call my "vain stage" - my hair wasn't only neatly cut, it was also blow-waved. I was wearing a new T-shirt in sky blue - a far cry from the washed-out black I used to favour. But my brother will say that the biggest change was in the way I carried myself, and in my eyes. My grandma said that the moment she saw me, she knew that I had changed significantly, and that I would never do drugs again. I was still on various different medications, including anti-depressants and anti-psychotics, but something significant had changed - I had tasted happiness, and I was ready to grab it with both hands.

I had just less than 24 hours to spend with my family. I will always remember those hours with joy. Everyone kept staring at me, touching me, hugging me. I was the hero of the day, the prodigal son come home. If they had a fattened calf, they would have slaughtered it.

I could not get enough of talking to my family. My brother was like a stranger that I was getting to know for the first time. My brother's girlfriend finally allowed me to play with their baby - then already over a year old. The little guy took a liking to me, insisting on handing me his toys until I had no more space on my lap!

Over all, the weekend of my 24th birthday was filled with joy and celebration, and above all - hope.


After that joyful weekend, I would spend another 2 months in rehab before moving out into a sober-living house, where I would live for two years.

Sober-living came with all the usual rules - curfews, a cooking and cleaning roster, weekly meetings and monthly "feedback sessions", where you had to prove that you were putting effort into creating a future for yourself. There was also rent to be paid. Fortunately, they also assisted the residents with finding employment - for me, that meant a job as a cashier at a supermarket. It didn't pay much, but it paid the rent and bought some clothes.

One day, not long after I started work, I saw an advert for a programming course in the newspaper. I called during my lunch break, and by the end of the week I had enrolled. Struggling to pay both my rent and my course fees, I got a second job, as a waiter. For two years, I would work two jobs, see my therapist for an hour, three times a week, and spend the rest of my time studying. It was exhausting, but I had caught a sniff of the life I could have, and I would stop at nothing to get it.

A few months later, I wrote Louise a long letter. In it, I not only apologised, but also explained everything that had happened to me since I walked out of John's house on that fateful day, how I had gotten help - the therapy, the medication, my studies, everything. By the time I had completed the letter, I had to mail it in two envelopes. I spent four very nervous weeks waiting for her reply and when it finally came, it wasn't very long. I opened it with shaking hands, but I needn't have been afraid. It said "I knew you could do it", "I still love you", and "I'll wait until you can come back here". We continued to wrote each other until I moved back to my home town  I still believe that those letters brought us closer together than we had ever been, and could ever have been without them. There were no stormy emotions, no violent screaming fights, no wild make-up sex, just conversation and a lot of deep emotion. It was in those letters that my infatuation turned into deep, enduring love.

When my parole finished during the winter of 1998, I was off all medication, had completed 6 part-time programming courses, and felt confident enough in my ability to manage my mental health, to move back home to my family and my angel. I sent my CV to every IT company and every recruitment agent I could find, pack my belongings, and caught a bus back to home.

August, 1998

I struggled to find a job. No one wants to employ a 26-year-old with no relevant work experience, a criminal record and a history of addiction and mental illness. In the end, I stuffed my pride in my pocket and all but begged a friend of John's brother to give me a job and a chance to get some experience. He must have pitied me, because he finally employed me, at the rate that the company usually paid 18-year old interns. Grateful for the opportunity to get my foot in the door, I worked like a slave and gained a massive amount of experience.

Three years later, I got my second job, for a much better salary, and my career took off from there.

Although I no longer had a formal relationship with a therapist, I continued to work on my mental health using books, articles, long-distance phone-calls to Dr Smith, and later also the Internet. Louise was right beside me every step of the way, learning with me. She learnt so much that she was eventually able to stop a flashback within minutes, or calm me down with only a few words whenever I flew into a violent rage. She got to know me and my daemons so well that there were times when I lost my way and my emotion got away from me, that she could explain my emotions to me. She deserves a lot of credit for the fact that I continued to improve steadily, even after I stopped formal therapy.

When I started earning enough to have money to spare, I started systematically getting rid of my scars. I covered my worst track-scars, the most obvious piece of scarring on my right wrists from where I had cut it years before,  a deep scar on my back, from where Jeff had almost beat me to death and another deep scar, higher on my back, with tattoos.

My next step required saving up a lot more money, but after more than a year, I finally had enough money to get laser treatment for the millions of tiny scars that covered my arms, from more than 2 decades of cutting. And then, the last step - I will never forget the day I finally had enough money to get lazer treatment on my back and shoulders, to remove the scars from cigarette butts, leather belts, electrical cords and various other tools of abuse. After the laser surgery I had to spend more money touching up my tattoos, but I didn't care. The process was complete. I had taken my body back from my abusers, removed their brands, and added my own.

Epilogue

This story would not be complete without me giving some information about my life after 1998.

I am ashamed to admit that after moving back to my hometown, I was still messed up enough to treat Louise like dirt for several years. I was terrified of commitment, and would use every tool available to me to push her away, including being unfaithful, multiple times.

The last time I cut myself, was in the Spring of 2000, after a violent fight with Louise.

Upon arriving at prison, I was giving a full medical check up, and was diagnosed with Chronic Viral Hepatitis C. I was told not to panic, since more people die with Hepatitis than of it. Towards the end of 2001, however, the virus started inexplicably but violently attacking my liver. I got so sick, that I was eventually forced to get treatment. I was on Interferon / Ribavirin combination treatment for six months. The side-effects left me so sick that I was physically unable to work for the last 4 months. Fortunately, Louise's interior-decorating business was by then doing well enough to support both of us, and pay for my treatment.

After treatment, I've never tested positive for HVC again, and thankfully, Louise never tested positive either.

One day, in the spring of 2002, Louise and I were laying on a blanket under a tree in a park. She was reading a book, and I just sat gazing at her profile. Suddenly, it occurred to me that I would never find another girl who could mean as much to me as she did. I didn't ever want to be without her again and yet, I was doing my best to sabotage our relationship. In a moment, something clicked into place in my head, and I knew I was ready to commit to her, 100%. I startled her by taking her into my arms, and telling her how sorry I was that I had been such a lousy boyfriend, and that if she was willing to help me, I'd do my best to treat her better from that day on. I couldn't change over night, but from that day I worked as hard at being a better boyfriend as I had worked at overcoming my addiction. Our relationship improved almost daily. I never cheated on her again.

While eating dinner on a Saturday night in November 2002, a thought suddenly occurred to me - if we were going to stay together forever, why not get married? I looked at her, and without even considering that I should have planned a romantic scene, told her simply "let's get married". She looked at me for a moment, saw that I was serious, and said yes. She would tease me ever after, for not getting down on one knee with a tuxedo and a ring!

We planned the entire wedding, booked the venue, the photographer and the caterers, all in  6 weeks. We got married in January 2003.

We had a beautiful baby girl in October 2006.

In October 2009 she was in a horrific car accident. She died on the way to the hospital.

We are now in September 2012. A large part of me is still grieving for my beautiful angel, but another part of me is embarking on the next phase of my life. I don't know what the future holds, but I am looking forward to finding out.