I feel like I have never grown up – I feel stuck, emotionally stuck, mentally stuck and socially stuck. The walls I have built around myself all these years are crumbling and I feel vulnerable and exposed. I can’t hide anymore, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t – I have lost control of my emotions, they splatter all over the place without my permission at odd moments. It’s like I’m being forced to acknowledge the past now, I can’t hide from it any longer, pretend that it didn’t happen, or pretend that it wasn’t that bad. Even if it wasn’t that bad, I didn’t cope with it and now I have PTSD.

My mother tells me that as a baby, I never cried. She would forget about me for hours and when she remembered to come find me, I was just sitting in my crib staring at nothing and didn’t seem to care that she had come to me.

I have a few memories of my childhood, some indicate the possibility of abuse or trauma … so I am just going to document them here chronologically.

My earliest memory is of a pillow over my head, I’m not struggling, it's like I’m resigned to the end – and then I hear anxious voices, a man’s and a woman’s ... end of memory.

At age 3 my dad comes in screaming at my siblings and I ‘go to your room, do you want your mother to die?’ We scatter to our rooms, I can hear dad shouting at mom in their room, the curtains are closed and I know now that she was experiencing severe depression. I sneak out of my room and sit on the floor with my hand on the door, praying ‘Jesus please don’t let my mommy die’.

I am quite young around 3 years old. My siblings and I are in the chemist with my father. My brother is saying ‘holden hands … holden hands’ he was playing big brother holding my little sisters hand and wanted to hold mine too. I have my hand behind my back and I’m scowling at him, I don’t want to hold his hand. My father overhearing this exchange barks at my brother, ‘leave her alone, she doesn’t like to be touched.’ When we leave the chemist, my father takes my brother’s and my sister’s hands and walks out. I follow them at a distance panic stricken. They cross the road, not looking back to see if I am following. I follow them home like that, feeling so afraid and so left out. My father taught them to do that, he taught them how to exclude and sideline me. I have been invisible to them my whole life and they still treat me that way.

At age four my mother took me to a pre-school. The teacher asks me to go play outside while she and my mother have a chat. This is the first anxiety attack I remember. My ears are ringing, I can’t hear what is being said and I am frozen to the spot. My mother puts her hand on my back and guides me out of the door onto the grass. I stand on the grass, aware that I am being watched through the window by my mother and teacher, aware of their expectation for me to go play, aware of their anxiety that I do not, aware that they are talking about me. I know I must do something for them, so I sit down. When the meeting is over my mother comes outside and calls me. I hear her through a fog, I know I am supposed to go to her, but I am stuck, I can’t get my legs to move. Eventually she comes over and lifts me to my feet and I find I can walk out with her holding my hand. I hang my head and feel so ashamed, I feel like I have failed her.

At age four, I am hospitalized for a minor operation. I am afraid that I will be abandoned there. At night and I cry into the pillow trying to stifle my tears and not let anyone hear me. When the nurse comes round I turn my pillow over so she can’t see it is wet and know that I was crying and I pretend to be asleep, holding my breath till she is gone.

The next memory I have is of being lost in an apartment building block age 5. We have been sent out to go find a little girl who wondered off from the party. I can’t run as fast as the others and get left behind. I don’t know where I am or how to get back. I find myself in a stairwell, I have wet myself. I remember thinking, all I need to do is walk every level of every apartment building on the block and I will find them. I can’t remember doing that … my next memory is of finding my back and of the relief and shame because I have wet my pants … I look into the apartment and see my mother, I want to run up to her and tell her I am ok and I need her to hold me, but my sister is on her lap and I know I can’t get her attention. I go up behind her chair, sit on the floor and lean against the back of it, trying to feel her and gain comfort from her closeness, hoping that my pants will dry before we have to leave.

The next memory is also around age five. My dad calls me over to his bed, we are alone in the room. He makes me get under the covers with him and lie on his shoulder, and then he fumbles with the back of my pants until he gets his hand into them and then caresses my bottom while sighing and making other sounds of pleasure … I never remember how it ends. This was an ongoing thing. I tried desperately to never be alone with him and began hiding in cupboards quite a bit. While I lie there in the bed with him, I freeze, I hold my breath, there is ringing in my ears and I feel disassociated. I don’t have clear memories of anything else sexual happening with him until around age ten. My mother is out one night. I am in the bath and he walks in, I immediately get out the bath and try to get out to my room. He calls me back, tells me he wants to cream me because me skin is dry. I make some excuse about needing to get my pajamas and rush out to my room. I am crouched on the floor next to the floor heater praying that my mother will come home so that this won’t happen. Eventually I can’t ignore him any longer and I return to the bathroom where he stands me naked on a chair and creams my entire body. I can feel the wall heater hot on my head and his large hands all over me, he doesn’t miss a spot, again anxiety attack while he is doing it. I don’t know how it ends, the memory ends while I am sanding there.

My sister and I shared a room. She liked the door ajar a night to let the light in. I liked it closed because it made a huge noise when it opened and I always felt vulnerable at night and wanted to hear if someone came in. We alternated open and closed. On the nights that it was ajar, I had recurring nightmares all night – horrible emotional terrifying dreams with no real context, just crazy sensations. I would try to stay awake all night, waiting for my father to go to bed. Holding my breath when he walked past, listening to his footsteps around the house, terrified that he would come in. I have no memory of him actually coming in to my room at night. I still have those nightmarish sensations, I wake up feeling like there is someone lying on top of me, I can’t breath and I am holding something phallic in my hand. I don’t know if it was just a dream or real. My sister wet her bed every night until she was about 10. There was no medical explanation for that. I suspect my father was abusing her too, but she has never spoken of it. I told her once that I have memories of him with his hand in my pants. She says she remembered he did it to her too, but she doesn’t seem to think it was a problem.

When I was about ten, my mother took me for a hospital ‘check-up’. The nurses gave me a vaginal exam and took swabs. To explain what they were doing they told me that they were cleaning out ‘talcum powder’ from when I was a baby. I never questioned it or asked my mom about it.

My mom never showed me any affection. I can remember her comforting me only once - I was an adult and terribly disappointed about a relationship that hadn’t worked out. She was not like that with my siblings, she was very affectionate with them. I would watch her with my sister, sitting in front of the TV stroking her hair and wondering what that must be like, to have my hair stroked and feel love.

The first time I confronted my parents about my memories, I was 27. I had discussed it with my sister and she agreed that confronting my dad with the memory of his ‘groppings’ in our pants was a good idea. We went to have lunch with them one Sunday. When the moment came, I said to my dad, ‘My sister and I have memories of you putting your hand in our pants.’ He barked out, “that never happened.’ And my mom got up from the table and said, anyone for desert?’ That was that, I was not empowered enough to push it further, we had desert and it was never discussed again until I was 33.

At 33 I had an emotional breakdown. I was living alone and had to cash in all my insurance to cover the cost of not working for six months and getting psychological help. The collapse came on after a confrontation with my father. He noticed that my car registration disc had expired and proceeded to proclaim doom over my negligence, stating that I’d get thrown in jail if there was an accident and then I’d become a burden to him and my mother as they would have to bail me out. I stood up to him and told him to stop being so dramatic. He threw his hands in the air at the retort, because we never spoke back to him he didn’t know what to do and then he just turned his back on me and walked away. I began to cry and my mother came over, I told her that he made me feel so ashamed and afraid and guilty. She did something she never does, she took me by the shoulders, looked me straight in the eye and told me ‘you need to ask him why, you need to find out why.’ I couldn’t believe what she was saying, almost begging me to unearth the past. I immediately asked her, ‘tell me what you know, tell me what you want me to know.’ But she was already lost to me, she had shut off and I couldn’t get her to speak.

At my Therapists advice I cut ties with my family for about six months so that I could work through the memories and the pain without the family controlling me and getting in the way of healing. I was a wreck anyway and didn’t want to see them. I was diagnosed with severe anxiety depression. I worked really hard with my therapist for a number of months. That was the worst and best thing I ever had to do. Worst for the pain that it generated and best for the place it got me to. She suggested that I not confront my parents again. I did all I needed to do to forgive them and when the time was right called them up and asked if I could see them. I was in their home for ten minute and I knew that this would never be over, I couldn’t move on, I needed to confront it. Two weeks later they agreed to come to therapy with me. In therapy, with them, the therapist mediated a conversation in which I raised the same memory with my dad again. Again I confronted him with the memory of his had in my pants, he jumped up from his chair threw his hands in the air saying ‘‘it never happened …. it never happened!’ My mom saying, ‘you dreamt it up.’ The rest of the visit was horrendous, with my father shouting, my mother mostly silent and the therapist at a loss with what to do. My father called me up almost daily after that asking me what I planned to do. Confused, I told him I had no plan, I was looking for honesty and forgiveness and seeing I couldn’t get that, I didn’t see a way forward. He pressed me, saying that this was the work of the devil. He kept up the battle saying that I had a knife at his neck and he couldn’t live like that for the rest of his life just waiting for me to have conclusive evidence of his abuse and asking me why I didn’t just get it over with and call the police, then they could come take him away and all his peers could know. I was stunned at that statement, I had never thought of prosecuting him and told him so, stunned at the thought that he anguished so over his reputation. He proceeded to have a nervous breakdown, my brother suggested he go to therapy - He began therapy a few weeks later, something he felt ashamed of and tried to keep secret. My mom became distant and cold and accusing. One day she questioned me about my memory, asking about the nature of memory and if memory could really return, she didn’t want to believe it was possible. She assumes I am making it all up to get attention. She dramatized it further by insisting that I saw her as an accomplice and told me she would always stand by my father, nothing happened!

A family meeting was called and I was asked to bring up the allegations again. I did. What a furious night. My sister hugged me and wept and told me she always knew, then promptly forgot that she always knew and told me dad was innocent. The evening turned out badly. I week later my brother was sent to tell me that unless I withdrew the allegations, I would be disowned. I was a wreck, this whole thing was out of hand and all that I had wanted was a bit of honesty, a chance for him to come clean then I would have said, I forgive you and that would be over. I was so alone and on the verge of losing my family, my siblings, my niece and nephew – I withdrew the allegations. That was foolish but at the time I didn’t see a way out. We all gradually healed from that – they kind of see it as a bit of insanity and nobody mentions it. I told my dad that I couldn’t let him touch me as I had anxiety attacks when he did. He stopped hugging me and touching me for a while. Today I can accept a hug from him, I still freeze up though. My mother is desperately trying to bond with me, I make no attempt to reciprocate, it feels dishonest. I see my brother and his family a bit, but they are distant with me and I see my sister quite a lot, she is quite dependent on me.

That was all about four years ago. I gradually found my feet again, the anxiety attacks stopped altogether and I got on with my life, ended therapy, got off the sleeping pills and antidepressants (no mean feat!) and went back to work. I changed my name, not wanting to be associated with that old ‘defeated’ me ever again. Two years ago I met a wonderful man and moved in with him. I told him this whole story after I had known him for a while, I was quite disassociated from it and had no real emotional response to it - I told him matter of fact what happened … and he flipped. I couldn’t understand his anger until he showed me how abusive they had been and how badly I had been treated. Even now, we come away from visiting my family and he explains the interactions to me through his eyes. He sees how they disregard and disrespect me and how I’m sidelined. He wants me to have nothing to do with them.

The anxiety attacks began to reappear about a year ago. Roughly the same time we moved in together. Since then we have bought a house together and I have gone back to study full time. I am back at therapy, where I was diagnosed with PTSD. My memories are slowly returning now. I get flashes of sound … myself as a child screaming …. Someone saying, put her in a bucket and close the lid … My old name being called just as I wake or just as I am drifting off to sleep. My biggest problem at the moment is coping with all the triggers. Right now, I try to avoid them as much as possible as I can’t deal with the anxiety attacks and the adrenaline overload. My triggers are everywhere though; I’d need to be wrapped in cotton wool with a blindfold and earplugs to avoid them. I am really struggling with memory and concentration and find myself despairing for any kind of ‘whole’ life again. I am incredibly worried about my fiancé. I worry that he can’t cope with me. He gets afraid when I have an anxiety attack or I need to close myself up in a dark corner and his fear comes out as anger and attack. Later I explain what is going on and he is sorry for being so harsh, but I understand, he thinks I’m losing my mind and he thinks he is losing me. He promises to do better ‘next time’, but that is a tall order, I am only just getting handles on all this and can’t always tell what is going to happen next, so I can’t expect him to be able to. He is good to me though if he catches himself before he freaks out and is able to calm his fears, then he talks me through it and sits with me and is a great comfort and support.

My anger is beginning to surface … I have been asleep emotionally for three decades and now suddenly – overload … then it switches right off when I am feeling vulnerable and nothing I do will turn it on again for days. I experience most things off-line – experience the emotions that should be there in the moment much later. I can’t predict how I will be one hour to the next, one moment I want to be held and touched the next I want to rip someone’s face off. I wake up anxious and disorientated most mornings and last week I almost rammed the shopping trolley into an old lady’s heels because I chose to go shopping on pensioner’s day and the whole place was filled with slow wheeling grannies! I don’t recognize myself anymore and I’m scared of where this road takes me.

Shiraz, Anthony has not been on the forum for the past few days but I have asked him to take you out of moderation next time he logs on as he is the only one with the permissions to do so. Thanks for your patience.

Shiraz, love your screen name by the way!!

My parents deny everything as well. I relate to so many things you say. I will read everything you write and I hope you can find some peace and that it will replace your pain.

Hugs from Void

It has been two months since I first wrote in this diary and reading it today brings hope. I see how much I have progressed and how I have changed.

The panic attacks are more under control now, I am able to deal with the first signs of attack and although it is exhausting, I am able to calm myself before a full blown attack occurs. I have learnt to stop fighting the intrusive images and thoughts and to just observe them and then to observe my body and the sensations of panic that rise and to breathe through it until it abates. Today in a three hour exam, WHAM! - intrusive images that set off the beginnings of an attack - and I'm surrounded by 1000 students! I wanted to run from there! But, I didn't, I just put my pen down and sat quietly breathing and self-talking my way through it. Ten minutes later, I picked up my pen and finished the exam! I did it! I am getting better.

I have also started to take FULL responsibility for myself - which means I relinquish control of my environment to a certain degree - which means, triggers can occur more often, but now that I can work through the attacks better, I am able to let go a bit more :)

I have learnt to be more assertive in terms of standing up for myself and in terms of asking and keep asking for what I need - until I am heard :) and until behaviour changes :)

I have two more memories:

1) I am hiding in a cupboard in my parent's room - I must be quite small as those cupboards were jammed with spare clothes. My father walks in and I freeze, I can't let him know that I am there - something bad would happen if he knew I was there. I wonder how long I will have to wait until he leaves. He closes the bedroom door and locks it and closes the curtains .... fear, panic, terror .... end of memory

2) I remember seeing porn magazines at my grandfather's house, they are lying on the dining room table amongst a pile of newspapers. This is a strange memory as my family are very religious and such magazines would never have been allowed.

remembering things is strange .. like slowly realising that the thought or memory has been there with you, slowly surfacing all day, until you realise that it is there and identify it as a new memory. it is like that Nora Jones song ... 'one flight down, there's a song playing low and your mind just picked up on the sound ... and it's been there playing all along, now you know, now you know'.

I feel that way about my dreams. I wake from disturbing dreams most night, but can't remember some of them. I feel like they are just under the surface, telling me what I need to know ... but just playing too low to hear properly.

The dreams I can hear are telling me very clearly to DEAL WITH THE ISSUES. Perhaps I can .... perhaps I need more 'evidence' ... more memory. Perhaps I just need to believe my own story and ACT ON IT.

The adrenaline and constant high anxiety are still around causing trouble - my heart races constantly and my blood pressure is now an issue as it is way too high - so need to work on that. But I am finally feeling and expressing ANGER for the first time - just need to work on doing that appropriately now :( sheesh! ... and work on how to release the anger faster.

Lots of progress ... but this year has brought too mush stress with taking on full time studies, buying a house and having the economy collapse ... I haven't brought in any income as I didn't realise how overwhelming UNI would be and how PTSD would escalate - so part time work was not an option ... and the challenges of a relationship with recently diagnosed PTSD and becoming a dependent -result: I am near breaking point and need to take some time out. Last exam on Friday and then, if I can manage it - getting out of the city for a few weeks.

Finally a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has taught me to heal so far and given me the courage to fight and live and love and grow .... you know who you are and your support is what makes it all possible.

A couple of days ago I found myself deliberately exposing myself to triggers - for me that is R- rated movies, and willing myself to shut off and switch the emotions off because I am tired of lying in bed being afraid and not sleeping when my man is up all night watching such. When I felt the panic start I said "it doesn't matter" over and over again until I become numb.

Today I remember that I used to affirm 'It does not matter' to myself all the time. I was late for a meeting "it doesn't matter" ... I stubbed my toe "it doesn't matter".... I felt sad "it doesn't matter".... I had a bad day "it doesn't matter".... I forgot to do something "it doesn't matter".... I was alone "it doesn't matter"..... I was happy "it doesn't matter" ... I did well "it doesn't matter"............

Then I remembered a time I ran a race at a school sports day and for once did not come last but came second-last. I was so excited I ran over to my mother and told her 'I didn't come last!' ... she looked at me dead-pan and said - 'you did come last, but it DOESN'T MATTER - somebody has to come last, it might as well be you.'

I have allowed myself to come last ALL my life - because it saved someone else the pain of it and it seemed that that was all I was good for - at least I was good for something ... right?

NOT RIGHT!!!!! I am valuable and worth so much more than that! Never again will I allow myself to be last and never again will I say 'it does not matter' ... from now on I say ... I MATTER and I WILL SHOW PEOPLE HOW MUCH I MATTER ... if they put me down - they can face the dragon ... consequences will be felt!!!!