Shame and Insanity: my DV survivor story - part three -

By Alisa Yardley

WARNING: This blog series contains graphic accounts of things that some readers may find upsetting. It is intended for mature audiences, and contains depictions of domestic abuse, sexual violence, self-harm and suicidal ideation. Reader discretion is advised.

They say when three specific conditions occur at the same time, it creates a perfect storm, and that storm becomes bigger and more ferocious than it could ever have been without all three components coming together. In my case, those components were a history of childhood abuse, escalating abuse in my relationship, and a mind altering medication I did not need.

Taking responsibility for your own thoughts, words, and actions is one of the best things you can do for yourself and those around you. It helps you grow as a person, and it shows respect for the people you interact with. But man, it's hard when you have to take ownership of things you said and did that you couldn't have ever imagined yourself saying or doing. It is no easy task to lay bare one's own shame, however, I am making the choice to do it because I cannot in good conscience tell my story any other way.

The story that follows marks the beginning of the most humiliating and shameful decade of my life, for one umbrella reason. I lost control of myself. Rage was creeping up on me during the years I was with my partner, but I was able to tamp it down most of the time. All the insults and degradations I experienced likely would've dissipated over time, had I left that wedding and never looked back.

After the wedding fiasco I threw everything my ex-fiancé owned into boxes and bags and left it all for him and his friend to collect when I wasn't there. That was when I did my first "crazy ex-girlfriend" thing: I took a pair of scissors and put tiny little holes into a bunch of his clothes. Then I cut straight through a shirt I had bought for him. Then I wrote "liar" on his runners. It was not one of my finer moments and it got worse from there.

After the breakup, I had a rebound, two-month relationship with a friend who had been there for me many times over the years. During that time, I was sending awful, and plentiful texts to my ex. At my worst, I think it was in the area of 50-100 per day. Mostly in bursts, but my texting compulsion was off the charts, and it was not at all okay that I was doing that. I was so angry I couldn't see straight. I called him names. I swore at him. Everything he had done to hurt me over the previous three years was coming out in angry tirades. It was awful. I was being awful. And I could not stop myself.

We had tried to talk, and he lied to me again straight away. I lost my patience completely. After I kicked him out, he was able to afford a new place, that was about three times the size of his old place, in a brand-new neighbourhood, within two weeks. We started fighting about all the ways he had manipulated me financially to save up that much money behind my back. I felt very strongly that he had used me to get himself that second property. I told him I thought what he had done had been highly unethical. He just kept making excuses, claiming it would've equaled out over time.

The first major side effect I had to the medication was almost immediate. I barely slept or ate for five days straight. My impulse control was disrupted. I was buying lottery tickets by the dozens. I didn't even enjoy it. It was a compulsion, like the texting. I started to do all sorts of weird things. I built myself a fort in my walk-in closet, where I read books, smoked weed, and played games on my iPad. I felt like a child again, hiding from the chaos in my own little cubby hole. It all happened so gradually, I didn't realize what the medication was doing to me until much later.

By the time I stopped seeing my friend, I was a complete mess emotionally, and I wound up back with my ex. I was still taking the medication. I kept getting worse, and my behaviours kept becoming more erratic, so I went back to the doctor, and more than one therapist seeking help. One therapist who didn't look at me the entire hour, decided I was bipolar. I wasn't. My doctor's reaction to my increased distress was to increase the dose of my meds. He said he wanted to see me smile.

With the increased dose, I got worse. I started to develop tremors. My face would twitch so bad there were times I had to pull over on the side of the road to wait it out. My legs would flex and loosen like they were attached to tens machines, sometimes for hours at a time. I couldn't hold anything in my stomach, which led to gastrointestinal bleeding and dehydration. I went back to my doctor more than once to report my mounting concerns. I don't remember how many times he increased my medication, but the side effects kept getting worse.

I started having night terrors. I woke myself up screaming several times. The rest of the time I had normal nightmares. My ex thought it was funny. He said I sounded like an opera singer. During the holidays, while he was away on vacation, my mom came to stay because I was thinking so many crazy thoughts, I was afraid to be alone. She said the screaming sounded awful.

When I became suicidal, I was so worried about my lack of impulse control, that I was terrified of being left alone. There were times when I was convinced if my partner left me while I was like that, that I would not survive it. I said all the wrong things. I said things like, "Don't leave or I'll kill myself." I knew you weren't supposed to say that, but I wasn't saying it to manipulate anyone. I was saying it because I was really that scared. I knew how often and how deep the suicidal ideations ran for me. I didn't care about right and wrong, or how I might come off in those moments. Nothing about that experience was politically correct. All I cared about was surviving my own dark thoughts.

Then I started to hallucinate. My face looked like the shape of the scream mask, all bent and moving like a lava lamp. One night my eyes looked like a monster. Another night my eyes were deep black pools that made me look like I was dead. The next day I saw an image of a dead girl in my university textbook. Her eyes looked exactly like mine had in the mirror. It was utterly terrifying. When I was awake, I was living a nightmare. When I was asleep, I had literal nightmares. There was no escape.

The scariest thing that changed about me, was that I started to self-harm. Not in the usual ways that you hear about with people who cut. I was having knee jerk head smack reactions. The first few times it happened I shocked myself more than anything else, but I became really scared about it, because I couldn't control it. I was hitting hard, and I had no idea why it was happening.

I have since learned through my own research, I was probably experiencing some form of akathisia-- a profound neurological disruption that causes an overabundance of adrenaline to flood your system, resulting in severe restlessness. That likely led to something called myoclonus-- a condition of sudden, involuntary movements meant to stop the akathisia. As I said in part two, I am not a doctor. I'm basing this hypothesis on my research and my lived experience.

Around the same time that started happening, I also stopped being able to feel my skin. Actually. And my thoughts became extremely delusional. One night I decided to test my skin to see if I could feel a lit joint pressed into it. I had a sense of the pressure, but no pain whatsoever. That freaked me out even more. I did it a few times and I could not feel one iota of pain. I cannot stress enough how scared I was. I thought I was going insane.

I reached out for help every way I knew how. I called help lines, I told friends and family I thought something was really wrong with me, I went to my doctor, I went to therapists, I looked online for help... Nothing was working. CBT therapy felt like a slap in the face because prior to the terrifying changes I was going through, I had been a leader who helped other people think healthier thoughts. I was in so much agony, I became suicidal. I never acted on it, but I craved the release I thought death would bring. I wanted to stop the torture any way I could.

One morning, after three days of my muscles pulsing with no reprieve, my legs went out from under me. We had a roommate at the time, and I made it to the basement to tell him that I needed to go to the hospital. I got back up to the kitchen, then my legs gave out again, and I waited with my roommate until emergency services arrived. When we got to the hospital I told them everything. I told them I couldn't feel my arms; I told them I was hallucinating, having daily anxiety attacks, and self-harming; I told them how suicidal I was.

One of the nurses or doctors I saw, chalked up my symptoms to disassociation, and asked me if I would end my life in front of them right then and there. I said no because it was something I would do in private. She told me since I wasn't willing to do it right there in front of her, there were other people who needed help more. She gave me a list of therapists, told me it would be a two month wait, and sent me on my way.

Two noteworthy things happened that day. My partner refused to see me in hospital. He delivered food for my roommate and I, but he refused to even say hello, even when my roommate tried to convince him. My friend told me, he'd said it was because he had to pick his parents up from the airport. The other thing that happened, was much more significant. The look in my roommate's eyes was so sad and worried for me, that in that moment I decided to fight. Not just with my partner as I had been doing, but I was going to fight to live.

I went to the gym. I was looking for the manager, but I got the owner instead. I was inquiring after private lessons because after my neck injury, and not being able to lift anything over ten pounds for six months, attending regular MuayThai classes would be too risky. The owner said he would train me himself. I was blown away. Ever since I was a little girl, I'd always dreamed of having lessons with a master martial artist, and now that dream was coming true!

Right around that same time, I got so ill with the medication that I started to forget to take it here and there. On those days, I felt some of the fog lift, and some of the anxiety ease. So I tried it again on purpose. I stopped taking my meds for a few days. I felt so much better, I stopped taking them completely. I knew I would go through what they call "brain shock" because I had quit cold turkey, but I didn't know the long-term side effects of quitting like that. In a nutshell, it's not great for your brain health. It causes memory issues, and brain fog among other potential long-term damages.

When I quit the meds, I stopped hallucinating right away. I stopped having facial twitches and tremors, and my stomach settled down, but the impulsivity didn't go away, nor did the rage. The rage got worse. The suicidal thoughts didn't stop, and neither did the self-harm hitting. I never burned myself again, but the head smacking felt like I was trying to force my brain and emotions into submission. Because I understand about head trauma and concussions, I was worried about what would happen to me if I kept doing that, so I asked my partner to stop me if I did that in front of him, even if he had to hold my arms so I wouldn't hurt myself.

He took it way too far.

My daughter was celebrating her birthday with a sleepover party. I wanted him to come hang out with me while the girls did their own thing, so he grudgingly agreed to be there. Then he acted miserable about it, which led to another one of our fights about him having bought the other place, the state of our relationship, and all the usual jargon. He was laying on his back propped up against the wall on my bed, and I was sitting on the bed facing him. We were fighting under our breath so the girls wouldn't hear us, when my anxiety spiked, and I open palmed the side of my head.

He managed to whirl us around so quickly I don't know how it happened, and I found myself suddenly pinned to the bed by my neck. He wasn't pressing hard, but I couldn't move either. He was angled off to my right side with his face just to the side of mine. His eyes were pure black. He didn't seem present. I didn't know what to do. My daughter and her friends were in the next room, and everything was taking place silently.

My mind raced through several scenarios. He was in perfect striking distance of an elbow, but he'd had several serious concussions and I didn't want to take the chance of killing him. I fell back on trying to shock him out of it. I played on his mind. I taunted him, trying to bring him back to reality. He didn't even budge. So I scratched my own face. I didn't know what else to do, and it worked. He let go of my neck and grabbed my arms instead. He continued to hold me down, but I don't know for how long. That's all I remember.

I was so humiliated about what had happened that I didn't go to my lessons at the gym for a week. I had visible scratch marks down my face and bruises on my arms. I was ashamed, and I blamed myself. When I finally went back, my coach asked me what happened to my arms. I said, "Someone held me down. I don't want to talk about it." He just shook his head. I'm sure he knew, but he never forced a conversation about it.

Those lessons saved my life in a very literal way. If I had continued to take the medication for much longer, I would almost certainly have taken my own life, if the neurotoxic response I had to the SNRI didn't get me first. Being back at the gym, learning from my mentor, created the space I needed to discover my inner strength again.

He held pads for me for six months. It was better than any therapy I've experienced before, during, or since. My anger had a healthy outlet. I was gaining physical health which aided in the reparation of my mental health. I was still losing my temper. I was still behaving poorly, but there was a renewed sense of hope. It was the beginning of the end of what was the worst relationship of my life.

Unfortunately it wasn't over yet.

It took me two and a half more years to gain the strength I needed to walk away.

Plenty of people who go through trauma experience their memories in a disjointed way called flashbacks. Most of my childhood trauma is like that. Moments. Words. Sensations. Incomplete stories. Mysteries that will never be solved. I have three memories like that from my adult life. One happened during the year I went back to the gym.

My partner and I were having the same fight for the umpteenth time. We were fighting over the lost pregnancy because I had felt I was being put on trial to get pregnant again, or he wouldn't marry me. I don't know if that was really the case, but that's how I felt, and I told him so. We were fighting about that, and the money he'd directly cost me while he had been saving the downpayment for his new place behind my back. I had added up the numbers, and without including university or the vacations, I was out 20K directly due to his dishonesty.

The only reason I know about this memory is because I wrote it down in my journal the night it happened. When I read it several months later, it upset me so much I ripped it up and threw it out. The only part I remember, sits in my mind now like a movie I saw. There is a certain surrealism to flashback memories. Sometimes you are inside your body. Sometimes you feel like you're on the ceiling, or watching from the side. This one was like the latter.

We were at the edge of my bed. He was standing and I was on my back. He had my legs by the ankles, trying to wrestle them apart. I remember him saying, "You want a baby?! You want your twenty thousand dollars?! I'll fuck one into you, throw twenty thousand on you, then I can be rid of you forever!!!" That memory, once retrieved, stuck in my mind because it was so awful. The words he said were so disgusting to me. I don't know what happened after that. I don't know how it resolved. I blocked the rest out.

I said a lot of terrible things to him too. Nothing like that. The worst thing I ever called him was "Hitler." And I called his parents assholes. My own asshole move was speaking the truth in overly harsh ways. I became very aggressive verbally.

In the summer, I was pulling away from him, and I was doing really well! During a staff turnover, I had been hired to be the new manager at the gym. The previous manager had been there for nine years, was excellent at her job, and was very well loved there. They were big shoes for me to fill, and I felt very honoured to have been chosen for the job. I suddenly had a safe place where I could get away from the abuse at home. My partner was not tough like the people in the gym. I knew he wouldn't try anything when I was around them. It was helping me heal.

But one weekend, my partner and I got together, really connected, or so I thought, and wound up getting back together. Turns out he was making a date with another woman at the same time, while he was in my bed. I found out when he accidentally sent the text he'd meant for her to me. He was super mad at me when I found out because he said I ruined it for him with her! We were on and off together for the remaining time we spent together, but he still spent the night at my house on a regular basis. He claimed later we weren't together all that time, but you don't threaten to break up with someone you're not with, and he used threats of leaving routinely through the entire time we were together, in my opinion, as a way to control me.

That fall, I got so ill, I went to the ER again for suicidal thoughts. This time I was not taking no for an answer. I needed help and I was not getting it. I learned from the last ER trip, so that time when they asked if I would end my life, I said I would. They finally believed me, and admitted me to the short stay unit so I could have time to get better. I was working at the gym when that happened. The owner was kind to me about it. I opened up to him about something I was struggling with at the gym, and while I was in hospital, and for a few weeks after, he and the previous manager cleaned up my mistakes and took care of everything. Neither of them treated me any differently when I came back. I couldn't have been more grateful for that.

While I was in the hospital I was cloaked in a blanket of shame that's never fully gone away. Insurance companies require mental health care professionals to enter codes to get the payments and budgets they require to continue care. It's a faulty system because it leads to rushed diagnosis, but I think most mental health professionals are over-worked and genuinely do their best to help people. Some don't. But most do, in my opinion. I had experiences with both types of professionals.

The doctor at the hospital said a few things that stuck with me. He said I was in the hospital because I was with a jerk. I concurred. He said I had Borderline Personality Disorder. At the time, I had all the symptoms so I took him at his word... at first. But there were contradictions with the reality of what I was experiencing. He also diagnosed me with over-responsibility. That was accurate. I frequently take the blame for things other people say and do. And he said I was highly self-aware. Which was feedback I'd been given by most of the therapists I saw.

I was at the hospital, because I had been abused, and essentially poisoned by the medication I was taking, until I became emotionally dysregulated. I was engaging in something called reactive abuse. My poor behaviours were almost exclusively directed at my ex-fiancé. In order to be diagnosed as a Borderline, according to the DSM 5-TR you must have the symptoms pervasively across all domains in your life. The traits are usually observed in the early teen years, and will be a well established part of your personality by your early to mid-twenties. People with BPD are not known for taking responsibility for their actions. They almost invariably blame others. They are not known for being highly self-aware, and they are not generally super concerned with total transparency.

I asked over and over for clarity regarding those contradictions. No one that I asked gave me an answer. A woman in the hospital who had PTSD was one of the first people to suggest that's what I had. I brushed off the idea because I thought you could only get PTSD if you were a veteran, or a first responder, or the victim of a vicious stranger attack. A few other people after that suggested I was presenting as someone with PTSD too. It put a seed of thought in my mind that helped me find answers later, but I wasn't ready to accept that could be true for me.

For a while, things stayed pretty much the same. My partner said he still wanted to marry me, yet he refused to let me see, or be around anyone in his life. For the most part, I didn't mind, because I didn't want to be around most of them, but I also didn't see how a future between us could work if we didn't resolve our differences and try to normalize our relationship. One night, on Good Friday, I cancelled my plans because of Easter. I asked my partner if I could join him and a new friend he said he'd made instead. I felt it would be the perfect opportunity to start rebuilding. There were no bad feelings between me and the new person, because we didn't know each other.

He said no. I asked why. He wouldn't give me a clear answer. By that point I knew his friends, thinking he was single, were trying to set him up and he was responding to the women they sent his way-- I'd seen proof-- so I asked if he was really meeting the friend he claimed he was going to see. By that point it had been almost two years since he'd included me in anything in his life. He said if I asked again, he would dump me. I was getting stronger, and I was so sick of his games, that I asked again.

He got up to leave. I stepped in his way two or three times. That was wrong of me. I should've let him go. He shoved me backwards and I fell onto a chair behind me. My kids were home, and they heard the banging noise. My son yelled at my partner from the floor below, and that was it. My mama bear kicked in. All the other times, my kids had not been present. They'd heard us fight with words, but never anything physical. Even when he tried to strangle me, it happened out of sight, and without sound. That day, I was done with being pushed around.

I got up and I punched him. A right cross. He turned away and wrapped his hands around his head, while we were fighting. He removed his hands, I struck. He put them up. I waited. He dropped them, I struck. He went to the floor and curled up in a ball. I told him to get the fuck out of my house. I followed him to the stairs to be sure he was going. I had a clear shot to kick him, but I had calmed down enough to let him go.

Maybe I should, but I don't feel sorry for standing up for myself that day. In my opinion, he had it coming. When he crossed the line by injuring me in earshot of my kids, that was it for me letting his physical aggression go unanswered.

He'd sprained my thumb when he pushed me down. I went to work at the gym the following morning and my boss wrapped it for me so I could work. I did my MuayThai lessons with one hand until it healed. When my friends asked, I told them who did it. I stopped keeping secrets for him that day. We were still together for almost a year after that, but it was dwindling, and we saw each other less and less often. And he never laid hands on me again.

The problem with abuse, is that it doesn't end when it's over.