Let’s start with the good: I got a new job!!!! I’ve had 3-4 high schools interested in me and this week I was a finalist at two of the high schools. One of them offered me the position and before I accepted, I asked if I could go on a tour of the building. They graciously agreed and the principal himself took me on a tour of the school. It was an incredible experience and I’m so happy to have accepted! So back to my roots: I’ll be a high school Spanish teacher again!
Now for the other stuff – I’m doing ok but I’m not. My therapist wants to see me on a weekly basis again, which is good honestly. I was doing every other week but this time of year is really hard for me. Like, a week from today is Daisy’s 3rd birthday. I’m tearing up just writing that.
I had a pretty severe panic attack last week. I was driving to work and passed a broken down amusement park and it brought me back to the weekend with Mat at the Wisconsin Dells. I was panicked, my heart was racing, my mind was numb, I was terrified for my life, I was fighting back tears, and I had to go into work through all of this.
Then, that week, I was texting a couple different men for business reasons. That is very triggering too. Mat used to threaten to kill my parents for texting men and those feelings come up still when I’m triggered.
I started working through these triggers with my therapist in our last session when she made me stop. She realized that weekend was bigger than we realized. So, we stopped EMDR and she had me go through that entire weekend. As I spoke about that weekend in the Wisconsin Dells, my therapist would put her head back and shake her head in disbelief. She kept telling me how crazy and unbelievable this was/is. And it’s true. I’m not kidding when I say that people, experts, who hear my story tell me it’s an absolute miracle that I’m alive today, that my story is genuinely one of the worst cases of abuse they’ve ever seen.
So, I went through one weekend of the abuse with my therapist. And after I went through each event, she counted up the traumatic incidents within that one weekend. 19, in case you were wondering. Yeah, 19 severely traumatic incidents in one weekend.
As I was describing the trauma, my body went into a state of reliving the fear, and it’s an intense fear. As I described what I had felt that weekend, my therapist put a name to what I had gone through: shock. My body was literally so terrified and panicked that my body began to shut down and go into shock during that weekend with Mat. So yeah, we have some things to work through.
We had a scare at the vet yesterday too. I took Joey to the vet for his annual check-up. He had to get several vaccines, and in my mind with all of my pets, I can’t keep it straight and forgot that Joey’s little body can’t tolerate that many vaccines at one time. So he vomited as we were about to leave. And they took him back to the exam room. And it was extremely triggering. I stood there imagining the worst case scenario that Joey was dying. And I began to picture life with him dying and the grief. It was horrible. Luckily Joey turned out to be fine (a blessing I am immensely, beyond words, grateful for) but I wasn’t. As I walked (carried) him back to my car, I started to cry. Because I couldn’t do it again. If anything happened to Rosie or Joey, I couldn’t do it again. And I mean that sincerely. I couldn’t go through that grief and loss again. I came close to killing myself last year because of the trauma and grief of losing Kirby and Daisy. I can’t go through that again. I wouldn’t be able to.
So, I’m going to start seeing my therapist once a week again. And that’s good.
I promise I’m doing ok. Things (trauma, grief, loss) are really hard right now and it will be through the summer. I accept that and embrace it, genuinely. I’m in an okay place and I’m getting the support I need to get through this difficult time of the anniversaries.
So here we are, with the good and the sad. I’ll get through it, this is all part of it.
I’m grateful to grieve and feel this tremendous loss because it is evidence of profound love. And I will gladly grieve because it is all love. Love, oh love. Our love. K+D, my loves. Forever, forever. Forever.
Sarah's Story 