RussellSue
Not Active
Hi There,
I tend to be long-winded, so I'll try to summarize. Forgive me if I am bad at it, but I wanted to explain why I am here. I am sure I have c-PTSD, but am diagnosed with PTSD. I was born with a severe bilateral cleft lip and palate along with some other abnormalities in my face which were not outwardly visible. I have had close to 15 reconstructive surgeries, most of which were before my 16th birthday. I'll be 38 this month.
There was a birth defect gene on my father's side of the family, but my grandparents and father opted not to tell my mother. My older sister was born with no problems. Apparently when I arrived a lot of bad stuff happened which amazingly included my father deciding I was not his at all, though his brother and cousin had related deformities. My mother and father divorced when I was less than a year old and my new stepfather was no happier about my problems. I had a speech impediment, hearing trouble, I couldn't close my mouth all the way and so on. When I was five he told me that I was never to speak in public again because I sounded like a "retard" and he didn't want people to think he had a "retarded kid." I was already afraid of him; he was physically abusive and so I may have said a dozen words total in the next five years. My father sent presents to my sister until my mother said he'd send presents to us both or not at all. He stopped sending presents.
My stepfather held me off a roof, terrorized me verbally, created some bizarre sexual confusion that I still don't understand and molested my sister in front of me while simultaneously telling her how beautiful she was and then telling me no one would ever want me because I was so ugly. He snorted cocaine off the table and drank and drank and drank.
It was my sister's molestation that sent him away. Apparently no one noticed that I clearly had PTSD by 7 years old or didn't much care. I think it started when he pulled the gun off his hip and fired directly between my head and my sister's. She had laughed at him. That was her punishment and he was very drunk. It happened three years before he left. I remember getting excited thinking that my grandparents had seen it; he was sure to go then, but no one said a word to my mother out of fear, I expect. I suspected he could kill us before that; after hearing that bullet go by I was sure. For the next three years, I clutched his fancy booze bottles just waiting for him to come near my door or for me to hear my sister whimper. She was bigger, but I was pissed. I, at about 8 years old, had fantasies of homicide and I wish I felt bad about it, but I don't.
Unfortunately, he taught us a lot and after he left my sister spent about two years threatening to kill me in my sleep. My birth defects meant less attention for her and all the embarrassment that a beautiful teenage girl could possibly handle. One day she pulled a butcher knife from the block in the kitchen and chased me out of the house, locking the door behind me, though I was not fully dressed for the cold and there was no one else home. She was 15 and I was 12. My mother kicked her out to protect me, but 6 months later she met a new drug addict and we had a clash of opinions: I didn't want another one. Then I was homeless and I was never permanently housed again as a minor and was never in foster care. I mostly bounced from one friend's house to the next until I was an adult.
When I was 13, for some unexplained reason my father let me move in with him. When he abandoned me for 6+ weeks with no food or money and then picked me up by my throat for the second time, I kneed him in the crotch with everything in me and walked out the door of the old single-wide trailer leaving the familiar wretched stench of dog piss permeating the sub-floor behind me for good.
I had a serious reconstructive surgery at 15. Then looking almost "normal" I had trouble understanding attraction and romantic love (still do), since I had not changed, but the way men responded to me took a huge turn before my stitches were even removed. I shaved my head. The problem was basically solved for a while.
School was important to me. When they wouldn't let me into an Orange County school because I had no legal guardian, I got about 9 months behind in tenth grade, but when the other school district let me in, I caught back up and graduated on time with a 4.0. Still, I ended up with cognitive problems from all the stress that I still struggle with.
This was nothing near the extent of my childhood trauma, just a synopsis. The facial deformity alone in an uneducated and embarrassed family was enough to obliterate any chances at self-esteem. One surgery was nearly fatal. My grandmother told me I'd never meet a decent man if I didn't have all my surgeries and then I lost my medical insurance and couldn't. She also told me how grateful I ought to be because in her time people like me were locked in cellars. My other grandparents clearly resented me for being born with a birth defect. My mother had empathy for me at least; it just wasn't as strong as her attraction to drug addicts. I had infections constantly and my hearing came and went and luckily came back. For some reason, school was pretty alright socially even with the deformity. I was a tutor; some of the kids were glad I wasn't making fun of them. I developed early, though. I was wearing d-cup bras when I was 13. Imagine standing somewhere and having a man make some sexual grunt your direction just to come sauntering up and get a look at your face to suddenly lose all color. In utter horror men would confront their mistake as though I'd been a werewolf or half Piggly Wiggly. I still remember how their eyes would bulge and they'd quickly turn sideways to escape the terrible deformity with curves as though I was been pursuing them.
As an adult, two men I planned to marry died. I took care of them both and witnessed one of the deaths. I was initially diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder when I was 21 and that diagnosis morphed into schizophrenia and went back again several times over the next 16 years. I am not diagnosed with either one, now, but was diagnosed with PTSD a few years back. My therapist doesn't seem to think I ever had either psychotic disorder based on the fact that all of my psychosis was linked to times of extreme stress.
I was a member of a schizophrenia support group prior to the diagnosis change and members expressed concern that my diagnosis was wrong. Whatever the case may be, I am very disabled and have some form of PTSD. I gave up working in the public about 8 years ago and decided that getting an education whereby I might find a way to work from home would be my best option considering that I am triggered frequently and struggle daily with my attention span. I finished a BS in Cultural Studies with a concentration in communications, then a MAIS in writing (27 credits) and management information systems (9 credits). As of today I have also finished a graduate certificate in English. All were completed online and this worked out very well. I am currently enrolled in a proofreading program. My hope is to find editorial or research work from home (proofreading, copy editing, editorial assistant, content specialist, internet researcher, etc.) and that little adventure is about to begin.
I am very happily married to a very recently reformed small-town editor turned educator. My husband is an incredible support. He's my first husband and we're coming up on our third anniversary. I'm on Disability, but really want to go back to work. We're just about getting by, but things have been hard since we decided to develop our own property a little over two years ago. We didn't quite have the money to finish the job and wound up spending two years with no electricity. Our location sucks and therein lies part of the problem. We're in a small town where education means just about nothing and basically everyone gets by on minimum wage, though I still don't know how.
So, after all of that, I am here because I'm a little terrified of how this job search is going to go. I've done so well in school confined to an online format, but I don't know if I'll be able to find anything that doesn't require me to use the phone or worse yet, a camera. The fact is that I don't have confidence that I'll ever make it in the "real world" because I trigger too often and too easily and I don't always do my breathing when I ought to. I've been in therapy for like 15 years and I have improved, but I want to give myself a real chance here and maybe I'm being a little extra cautious, but I think that's a good idea under the circumstances.
I have one friend with PTSD. No one else gets it but my husband and he's still learning. I guess the long and the short of it is that I need some added support from people who have experience with the problem. I know it's always different for everybody, but sometimes I think that my therapist's formulas are a poor substitute for the actual experience. She was excited that I was thinking of volunteering at the school. In retrospect that was a terrible idea. Maybe after I'm successful volunteering in a small group of 4-H kids I can work my way up, but jumping in seems like a bad plan, especially where kids are involved. When Johnny pulls on my injured shoulder and I instinctively punch him in the face, I'll have real problems in this little witch-hunt town. I don't need that and Johnny doesn't need me to give him PTSD.
So that's where I'm at: just about done with school, struggling financially, planning to go back to work, and constantly triggered by a menagerie of PTSD symptoms. I'm sure I can do this work thing, but it would be nice to have some people to relate to. I've been feeling especially vulnerable because a group of board members for a local organization decided they should take my article draft from their trashcan and have a discussion among themselves about it, just to contact my husband and tell him that half of them were against it being published. I didn't care if it got published, but I kind of lost it since they were snooping and because it still had red ink and clearly wasn't asking to be published. Though, I've also been to their meetings and these people are nasty when they don't agree with others and I went a little bonkers in an email to their chairperson feeling like I'd been ganged up on. I guess that was about a week ago and I'm still not sure how to feel about it. I was certainly triggered, but I'm not sure if I owe any apologies. Whichever is the case, the intensity of the triggering was a big surprise and I cried for 3 days. It made me feel like I'd taken ten steps backwards. That made me think that maybe I am looking at this work thing too casually and that I ought to have greater resources available.
If you made it this far, thank you for your efforts. I really try to keep things brief, but am historically very bad at it.
I tend to be long-winded, so I'll try to summarize. Forgive me if I am bad at it, but I wanted to explain why I am here. I am sure I have c-PTSD, but am diagnosed with PTSD. I was born with a severe bilateral cleft lip and palate along with some other abnormalities in my face which were not outwardly visible. I have had close to 15 reconstructive surgeries, most of which were before my 16th birthday. I'll be 38 this month.
There was a birth defect gene on my father's side of the family, but my grandparents and father opted not to tell my mother. My older sister was born with no problems. Apparently when I arrived a lot of bad stuff happened which amazingly included my father deciding I was not his at all, though his brother and cousin had related deformities. My mother and father divorced when I was less than a year old and my new stepfather was no happier about my problems. I had a speech impediment, hearing trouble, I couldn't close my mouth all the way and so on. When I was five he told me that I was never to speak in public again because I sounded like a "retard" and he didn't want people to think he had a "retarded kid." I was already afraid of him; he was physically abusive and so I may have said a dozen words total in the next five years. My father sent presents to my sister until my mother said he'd send presents to us both or not at all. He stopped sending presents.
My stepfather held me off a roof, terrorized me verbally, created some bizarre sexual confusion that I still don't understand and molested my sister in front of me while simultaneously telling her how beautiful she was and then telling me no one would ever want me because I was so ugly. He snorted cocaine off the table and drank and drank and drank.
It was my sister's molestation that sent him away. Apparently no one noticed that I clearly had PTSD by 7 years old or didn't much care. I think it started when he pulled the gun off his hip and fired directly between my head and my sister's. She had laughed at him. That was her punishment and he was very drunk. It happened three years before he left. I remember getting excited thinking that my grandparents had seen it; he was sure to go then, but no one said a word to my mother out of fear, I expect. I suspected he could kill us before that; after hearing that bullet go by I was sure. For the next three years, I clutched his fancy booze bottles just waiting for him to come near my door or for me to hear my sister whimper. She was bigger, but I was pissed. I, at about 8 years old, had fantasies of homicide and I wish I felt bad about it, but I don't.
Unfortunately, he taught us a lot and after he left my sister spent about two years threatening to kill me in my sleep. My birth defects meant less attention for her and all the embarrassment that a beautiful teenage girl could possibly handle. One day she pulled a butcher knife from the block in the kitchen and chased me out of the house, locking the door behind me, though I was not fully dressed for the cold and there was no one else home. She was 15 and I was 12. My mother kicked her out to protect me, but 6 months later she met a new drug addict and we had a clash of opinions: I didn't want another one. Then I was homeless and I was never permanently housed again as a minor and was never in foster care. I mostly bounced from one friend's house to the next until I was an adult.
When I was 13, for some unexplained reason my father let me move in with him. When he abandoned me for 6+ weeks with no food or money and then picked me up by my throat for the second time, I kneed him in the crotch with everything in me and walked out the door of the old single-wide trailer leaving the familiar wretched stench of dog piss permeating the sub-floor behind me for good.
I had a serious reconstructive surgery at 15. Then looking almost "normal" I had trouble understanding attraction and romantic love (still do), since I had not changed, but the way men responded to me took a huge turn before my stitches were even removed. I shaved my head. The problem was basically solved for a while.
School was important to me. When they wouldn't let me into an Orange County school because I had no legal guardian, I got about 9 months behind in tenth grade, but when the other school district let me in, I caught back up and graduated on time with a 4.0. Still, I ended up with cognitive problems from all the stress that I still struggle with.
This was nothing near the extent of my childhood trauma, just a synopsis. The facial deformity alone in an uneducated and embarrassed family was enough to obliterate any chances at self-esteem. One surgery was nearly fatal. My grandmother told me I'd never meet a decent man if I didn't have all my surgeries and then I lost my medical insurance and couldn't. She also told me how grateful I ought to be because in her time people like me were locked in cellars. My other grandparents clearly resented me for being born with a birth defect. My mother had empathy for me at least; it just wasn't as strong as her attraction to drug addicts. I had infections constantly and my hearing came and went and luckily came back. For some reason, school was pretty alright socially even with the deformity. I was a tutor; some of the kids were glad I wasn't making fun of them. I developed early, though. I was wearing d-cup bras when I was 13. Imagine standing somewhere and having a man make some sexual grunt your direction just to come sauntering up and get a look at your face to suddenly lose all color. In utter horror men would confront their mistake as though I'd been a werewolf or half Piggly Wiggly. I still remember how their eyes would bulge and they'd quickly turn sideways to escape the terrible deformity with curves as though I was been pursuing them.
As an adult, two men I planned to marry died. I took care of them both and witnessed one of the deaths. I was initially diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder when I was 21 and that diagnosis morphed into schizophrenia and went back again several times over the next 16 years. I am not diagnosed with either one, now, but was diagnosed with PTSD a few years back. My therapist doesn't seem to think I ever had either psychotic disorder based on the fact that all of my psychosis was linked to times of extreme stress.
I was a member of a schizophrenia support group prior to the diagnosis change and members expressed concern that my diagnosis was wrong. Whatever the case may be, I am very disabled and have some form of PTSD. I gave up working in the public about 8 years ago and decided that getting an education whereby I might find a way to work from home would be my best option considering that I am triggered frequently and struggle daily with my attention span. I finished a BS in Cultural Studies with a concentration in communications, then a MAIS in writing (27 credits) and management information systems (9 credits). As of today I have also finished a graduate certificate in English. All were completed online and this worked out very well. I am currently enrolled in a proofreading program. My hope is to find editorial or research work from home (proofreading, copy editing, editorial assistant, content specialist, internet researcher, etc.) and that little adventure is about to begin.
I am very happily married to a very recently reformed small-town editor turned educator. My husband is an incredible support. He's my first husband and we're coming up on our third anniversary. I'm on Disability, but really want to go back to work. We're just about getting by, but things have been hard since we decided to develop our own property a little over two years ago. We didn't quite have the money to finish the job and wound up spending two years with no electricity. Our location sucks and therein lies part of the problem. We're in a small town where education means just about nothing and basically everyone gets by on minimum wage, though I still don't know how.
So, after all of that, I am here because I'm a little terrified of how this job search is going to go. I've done so well in school confined to an online format, but I don't know if I'll be able to find anything that doesn't require me to use the phone or worse yet, a camera. The fact is that I don't have confidence that I'll ever make it in the "real world" because I trigger too often and too easily and I don't always do my breathing when I ought to. I've been in therapy for like 15 years and I have improved, but I want to give myself a real chance here and maybe I'm being a little extra cautious, but I think that's a good idea under the circumstances.
I have one friend with PTSD. No one else gets it but my husband and he's still learning. I guess the long and the short of it is that I need some added support from people who have experience with the problem. I know it's always different for everybody, but sometimes I think that my therapist's formulas are a poor substitute for the actual experience. She was excited that I was thinking of volunteering at the school. In retrospect that was a terrible idea. Maybe after I'm successful volunteering in a small group of 4-H kids I can work my way up, but jumping in seems like a bad plan, especially where kids are involved. When Johnny pulls on my injured shoulder and I instinctively punch him in the face, I'll have real problems in this little witch-hunt town. I don't need that and Johnny doesn't need me to give him PTSD.
So that's where I'm at: just about done with school, struggling financially, planning to go back to work, and constantly triggered by a menagerie of PTSD symptoms. I'm sure I can do this work thing, but it would be nice to have some people to relate to. I've been feeling especially vulnerable because a group of board members for a local organization decided they should take my article draft from their trashcan and have a discussion among themselves about it, just to contact my husband and tell him that half of them were against it being published. I didn't care if it got published, but I kind of lost it since they were snooping and because it still had red ink and clearly wasn't asking to be published. Though, I've also been to their meetings and these people are nasty when they don't agree with others and I went a little bonkers in an email to their chairperson feeling like I'd been ganged up on. I guess that was about a week ago and I'm still not sure how to feel about it. I was certainly triggered, but I'm not sure if I owe any apologies. Whichever is the case, the intensity of the triggering was a big surprise and I cried for 3 days. It made me feel like I'd taken ten steps backwards. That made me think that maybe I am looking at this work thing too casually and that I ought to have greater resources available.
If you made it this far, thank you for your efforts. I really try to keep things brief, but am historically very bad at it.
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