Empty Home Flashbacks

This is going to be poorly written and full of unpleasant things. Feel free to not read it if that sounds like a bad time to you. I’m gonna write it anyway, in the hope I can eventually sleep, and perhaps be useful tomorrow. And I’m gonna send it because it feels a little like support just to imagine that I can talking about my life without hurting people. Even if it’s the third time today.

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I had a really hard time when I finally got to my lodgings today. I did okay while I was traveling but moments after I got inside I was terrified of being alone. And that was just the first thing I could name while all the feels were going. I recovered a bit by familiarizing myself with the building, but I soon felt out-of-control about my entire life, hugely isolated, hopeless, worthless, trapped, reminded of 11 kinds of trauma, exhausted, etc.

I still don’t know what’s going on with M. It’s so low information that it’s a matter of how I manage the anxiety it induces, not whether or not it’s happening. In some ways that’s always the case with you, and I’m teaching myself to be okay with just having tacos, but it’s hard to take when things complicated like they are today. Plus the short and context-less texts from your mother — I’ve basically never talked to her and don’t know what’s happening, it’s so hard to guess what she means. She also isn’t talking about any of the things I think are important anyway, or if she is I can’t tell — the only coherent thing I got out of her is that her mother might stay here with me, and that there aren’t any school meetings until you’re out. But nothing about you, where you are, what’s happening, how to reach you, etc.

I feel sort of dumb for not being in better control. That’s not rational because the whole reason I came here was to be able to collect first-hand information and assert control — something I will endeavor in earnest to accomplish tomorrow. But that doesn’t stop me from feeling like I should have done more already. Intellectually I’ve satisfied myself that there aren’t any major improvements I could have made in the last 24 hours, but that doesn’t change my guilt.

It’s also easy for me to turn that guilt and lack of information into a belief that I shouldn’t bother you. That even though I might be able to help things would be better if you didn’t notice my hand in it. That you don’t want to talk to or see me — that I should try to be the invisible prep and cleanup crew. I should have figured out how to get in touch with you yesterday. I’m sorry I didn’t. But I also shouldn’t let that one-day regret snowball into a failure of our relationship.

Eggsy has been very useful. They at least let me know where you are and how I might see you. Even checked in on me getting to town late at night. They made a very touching offer just as this flashback started, but at the time it only heightened my fears that I was interfering. And the general topic made me think about your restricted comms and visitation, which triggered my fear of being trapped. I imagine your current version of trapped is moderately tolerable and has a fairly clear end point — not the locked in a closet/tied to a post/no idea when it will end/etc. kind I’m afraid of — but it’s hard for me to take any amount of detention at all. Even to think about it. Too many bad memories. Too much PTSD.

There are obvious parallels to my life in undergrad, which was a whole bundle of terrible that I rarely remember cognitively but sure do feel when I hit the right flashback. Panic about the scholarship that was my only hope of ever escaping. My unmanaged mental health. The way things were finally potentially better once I left the abuse, but I had no idea how to make better happen. How I left everyone who had provided any support to me* and had no idea how to ever get more, or even that I needed or could have more.

Today was hard — as I started to notice in the real The Screed — in its similarity to all the times I drove or rode all day toward someplace where I maybe had job or classes lined up (or maybe where I was just going to try to hang out until I had someplace to live again) but nothing else in my life and no plans ever add anything. Where I left a familiar situation and just pretended like it didn’t hurt, or that it was the sort of hurt I just had to silently put up with to be a real human. My current belief that I will someday have to run away again, maybe more than once, and that it will hurt more than ever this time** because I have let myself like things. When I got here I was panicked about my job — not in terms of doing it, but it being the only thing that connected me to the world, and me not even liking it very much.

Or not having any food or transportation when I finally get someplace. Arriving late, or on a holiday, or just in the middle of nowhere. Having maybe someplace to sleep inside but nothing else and no way to get it. I’m not without transportation here — I try very hard to never be without transportation. But my flights were delayed and the train wasn’t running by the time I arrived, and all the restaurants in the airport were closed, and I didn’t get to my lodging until about 2 AM local time, so it’s feels a lot like being trapped someplace with no food and no plans, just like I remember.

And the smell of this old house. It makes me think of times when I thought I might be abandoned as a child — when I was left to stay for a few weeks with (over the years, several different) someone I didn’t know well and who lived in the middle of nowhere in an old house. About the way I thought that might be a rescue when it started, but of course the people I stayed with were as crazy as Mother, so after a few weeks it was just another version of my same terrible life, except with new rules I didn’t know or understand.

Plus I spent all day being disengaged to deal with the stresses of travel, so when I finally got to a private place I just fell apart. I don’t know that starting my flashbacks at the airport would have been better, but it probably would have got me to bed sooner.

But I think maybe I can sleep now. I really ought to because time zones dictate that I’m technically up super late even though I have only been awake for 17 hours and got up at a normal workday time.

ZiB

*Father literally said “that part of your life is over” when I came back to visit my high school friends for the first time, and ridiculed me for even keeping in touch. I was pretty convinced that I had already demanded too much support or connection when I was young and that I could never expect any more for the rest of my life. At least not unless I paid someone to fake it. God damn.

**It super does, FYI. Not that I’m actually running away today, but the feels are close enough to let me see it. I should be happy that I’m no longer prepared to just ghost my entire life. When I’m more calm maybe I will be — I certainly was once I finally noticed that I wouldn’t be okay being homeless anymore, and this is a very similar feeling. But right now it feels like a terrible mistake I made by ever getting attached to anything.