166 Days: My Journey Through The Darkness (22 page)

That moment was my turning point. I somehow found a way to make it through the rest of my clinic, but I honestly had to admit I was not there at all. I went through the motions, half-listening to what my patients were telling me, I couldn’t stop seeing the blue folder in my head. I walked over to Mental Health Clinic later that day, because I couldn’t pull myself out of the funk. I was so embarrassed to be seen, but I called my friend, Tera, a psychologist, who agreed I absolutely needed to be evaluated and would squeeze me in.

I was concerned about sitting in the waiting room; I couldn’t bear running into one of my patients. “Tera, can you meet me at the back door?” I begged.

“Of course,” she answered knowingly. As we sat in her office together I began to cry as I discussed what had happened earlier in the day. She had me fill out a questionnaire rating the severity of my symptoms. As she read through it she looked up and smiled and said, “Well, this is good Jenn. By the looks of it, it seems your symptoms are sub-clinical”.

Great!
I thought… and then we started talking. The more she asked, the more hesitant I became to discuss it. She began to dig into things I did not want to feel and I began to show clearly how upsetting it was.

She looked at me and said, “Jenn, you have really minimized your symptoms on paper, which is not surprising, but you are suffering much more than you admit, and my initial assessment of you is that you have chronic PTSD.”

Hearing that was like getting hit in the gut.

“I have
what
? Are you kidding me? That can’t be true Tera; it’s nothing,” I pleaded.
I am a provider
, I thought,
I don’t get diagnosed with things like this, I help treat people with this, now you’re saying that I have it
? She went on to explain the treatment course and what it consisted of. I would require exposure therapy, which would force me to face myself and all the feelings I had tucked away into a pretty little box in the very back of my closet of emotions, the feelings I wanted to forget about. I knew I had to make a decision right then and there. I could give up, let this new reality I was living in consume me and swallow the last bit of who I used to be, or I could begin my recovery, no matter how painful it may be. After much deliberation with myself, I chose recovery.

The tasking my poor new commander told me about was declined and I was deemed mentally unfit to return to Afghanistan in my current state. The treatment required me to meet with Tera every week, which was emotionally exhausting. I admitted finally to Greg what was going on, but still could not find a way to tell him my thoughts. He continued to give his support in the best ways he knew how, but still didn’t understand what it all meant.

Fridays were my meetings with Tera and I would dread them every Thursday night. Greg would try to laugh with me the way we used to, but he would find me quiet and disconnected, especially on Thursdays, not knowing why or how to help. The therapy caused me to feel down the majority of the time, even angry for no particular reason. This was terribly uncomfortable for me; these feelings were so unfamiliar, because I’d been such a happy person before. I felt I was truly lost in a world of darkness that I couldn’t pull myself out of, and every time I met with Tera she found a way to make that emotion surface and forced me to
feel
it.

She would ask me about certain instances, which I was able to talk about without issue because I had trained myself to do so in my lectures; but then she would dig, and ask me to describe things. She would ask me to talk about the details; the painful, horrible details that I never wanted to face again, down to how the air smelled. She took me back through all of it. I hated every minute of it. She kept making me remind myself who I had become. I was a person who felt hate and rage and I was so sad. I felt a sense of helplessness, certain I would never find my former self again.

Overwhelmed with such negativity I found myself going home and picking fights with Greg for no reason other than I wanted to fight. At work I would try to keep my office as stress-free as possible, with dimmed lights, and soft music, but it never failed. Someone was always coming in and complaining about things in their life or at the clinic and it sucked away any serenity and positivity I had gained and fed my negativity within.

I was about six months into my treatment, when I went to a conference in Atlanta over Memorial Day weekend. Greg, Ayla and Griffen spent the weekend with me but had to leave on Monday because Greg had to go back to work the following day. It was my first time away from Ayla and I was consumed with sadness the day they left. My sadness turned to anger with myself which then turned into disgust. I was up all night pacing and crying and screaming into my pillow because I was so angry with who I had become and how my world was forever changed.

My daughter would never know who her mother was before. She had to deal with this pathetic shell of who I used to be. After several hours of beating myself up mentally, I turned the light on in the bathroom and I looked in the mirror. My hair was all over the place, mascara streaming down my face, my eyes swollen and red from crying. I looked as ugly as I felt inside. I will never forget what I did next. I looked at myself, banged my head against the mirror and said out loud, “I fucking
hate
you” to the woman staring back at me, and I meant it from the depths of my soul. In that moment I felt as low as I’d ever felt in my life. I honestly could have cared less about what happened to me, and for the first time, I truly not only disliked myself; I loathed myself. I called Greg the next day and tried to explain to him what happened. It really shook me. I had never felt as bad as I did that night and didn’t know what to do next.

He brushed it off and said, “Don’t worry. It’s ok. You’ll be fine. No big deal.” This had become his reaction to most of my emotional outcries during my therapy. I knew he meant well, but his misunderstanding and minimizing what I was going through, made me feel even worse about myself.
If Greg doesn’t think this is a big deal, why do I?

When I returned from the conference I told Tera what happened and admitted I was really struggling. I denied feeling suicidal, despite my complete distain for myself, or homicidal (of course, the first questions every healthcare provider thinks to ask), but I didn’t trust myself. I felt helpless. I agreed to see my primary care doctor, who prescribed me an anti-anxiety medication and an antidepressant.

I couldn’t believe I had reached this point. I never thought I would ever be someone who would require those medications and here I was. As I held the antidepressant medication in my hand, I couldn’t bring myself to take it. I held it for literally hours pacing the house trying to rationalize how I didn’t need it. I thought of the many reassuring conversations I had previously with my own patients, struggling with the same stigma that I was.

I recalled my own words, “There is no shame in taking a medication for depression or anxiety if it is needed. It’s just like needing to take something to help control high blood pressure or cholesterol.”

It made so much sense to me from the outside looking in, but now it wasn’t that easy. As I struggled with my personal medication dilemma I thought of Ayla, Griffen, and Greg. I couldn’t keep going the way I was heading, especially after my breakdown. Finally, I submitted, and took the pill. I stayed on the medication for about six months and I do think it eventually helped, but not before I hit the lowest of the lows. My therapy continued to increase in intensity, and it showed. Eventually, Greg and I agreed he needed to come to a session with me and I was so nervous for him to see the vulnerable side of me. How would he react seeing me cry over the memories? He had told me time and time again how it wasn’t a big deal. Now he would see how big I was making it. I just knew he was going to be so disappointed and ashamed of my weakness because I couldn’t handle it by myself.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. The appointment went surprisingly well, and all of my fears of him thinking I was weak or that my emotions were unjustified began to slowly fade away. He demonstrated no judgment, no disappointment. Instead he showed love and support and sorrow for his wife who clearly was hurting so much. He began to understand what I was going through and learned how to deal with it more effectively. I was able to explain how much damage his minimizing of everything was doing to me. He learned to key in on my emotions at home and when he saw me react to my triggers - the news, or a movie, or a sound - instead of watching me struggle and quickly turn off my emotion, as I’d done so frequently in the past, he insisted I face it. I would start to shut down, and he would pull me aside, sit me down at our kitchen table and hold my hands.

“Talk to me, Jenn. What are you feeling? Why? Tell me everything that this reminds you of,” he would ask. I would try to dance around it as I always had, but he wised up to that and wouldn’t let me.

“Tell me every detail, Jenn. It’s okay. I am here,” he said. His acceptance began to pull me through it.

I still had a long way to go. I will never forget the turning point. I went to my session one day and I was clearly upset and exhausted from everything we had been through. I sat in the chair with my legs crossed and she noticed that I was pumping my leg very intentionally, yet I didn’t realize it.

“What’s that about?” she pointed to my leg.

“What?” I looked down and saw my leg. I didn’t have an answer. I was so filled with all of the negative emotions I was being forced to face that they had consumed me.

Tera looked at me and said, “Jenn, you will get through this.”

I looked at her and through my tears I said, “I really don’t know if I will.”

“I can see you’re really in the eye of the storm, just hang in there with me.”

“Uh-huh,” I replied. I couldn’t even look her in the eye. I didn’t believe there was anything else I could do. I felt defeated. I went home that day and Greg and I got into an argument for something so insignificant I can’t even recall it. But, I
needed
to be angry, so I provoked him to fight with me.

He had Ayla in his arms, and as we argued, my voice got louder and so did his. Ayla began to cry in fear as she watched her mother lose control. I found myself filled with rage and I picked up her bottle and threw it as hard as I could against the wall causing milk to go everywhere and stormed out of the house screaming at him as I got into my car. I drove and drove and eventually parked in a place on base where I was out of the view of anyone who may have driven by. I turned the car off and screamed at the top of my lungs, “WHY? WHY GOD?
WHY
?” over and over again. I screamed and I hit my steering wheel as hard as I could. I needed to know why God let these things happen in this world. Why did innocent people hurt and suffer and die in the ways that I was exposed to? What was the purpose in this? Why did I have to witness it? Why did God let my innocence die with them? Why was I no longer that bubbly, optimistic, lighthearted and trusting person I was before I went to that place? Where was that fire inside of me? I used to laugh, I used to make a difference, I used to
care
. I was none of those things anymore.

Who was I? I hated. I had never felt true hatred before in my life and now I was living with it every day. I was filled with
anger
and
rage
and
negativity
. I screamed and screamed and screamed and cried and cried until I was physically exhausted. I looked down at my clock; thirty minutes had passed. I turned the car on and drove to the beach. I walked down the boardwalk and saw there was a wedding about to start just a few short yards away from me as I walked down to the shore. I sat in the sand with my toes in the water and listened to the waves crashing against the shoreline. I watched the happy couple celebrate their love with their friends and families, and it reminded me of my own wedding day.

I smiled as I reminisced on the best day of my life. Everything was perfect. It was such a celebration of the love and the friendship I had with my Gerg. My Gerg…the beautiful man that I just picked a fight with and hurt for no reason. I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my chin on my knees as I sat in silence. My tears were all dried out from the car, but I felt the lump in my throat forming as I thought of Greg. I had neglected to realize how much my pain was hurting him.

So many people stand together and take those vows, just as the couple on the beach was doing, just as Greg and I did, yet less than half of them actually stay together. I knew in that moment I had to pull through this not only for myself, but for my husband, and for our family. I looked out to the water and thought of my childhood. In my early years we lived in California and almost every day my mother took my sister and me to the beach to play in the water and explore. That was the very beginning of my life and here I sat, a mother myself, desperately searching for hope and purpose.

I closed my eyes and I felt the breeze in my hair and the water on my toes. I ran my fingers through the sand and when I opened my eyes I looked at the beautiful turquoise water in front of me and in that moment, I regained hope. For the first time in almost a year of therapy I realized I would get through it. I didn’t doubt; I knew. I accepted on that day I was not the same person as I was before I left, but I was still
me
, and I could pull through this.

From that day on the beach forward, I began to appreciate the road to recovery. I made a decision that it was time I readdress the journal. I found the strength to sit down and put it into a document as I’d intended so long ago. After several months, it was complete and ready to read. Greg was the first person I asked to read it. I was so nervous again. I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t strong enough to deal with the situations I’d faced; and once he read it, he would have so much more of the details I was not able to share otherwise.

Tera agreed it was the absolute right thing to do, so I gave it to him. He read it in several days, and admitted he couldn’t put it down. Each time he got to a difficult experience, instead of being ashamed of me as I had feared, he held me… so tightly… and he cried with me. Sometimes, he even sobbed. He had
no
idea the extent of what had happened and he was so touched I was able to finally share it with him. When he finished it, he didn’t tell me I should have done anything differently. Instead he told me he was proud of me, and proud to be my husband. Having him read it and see his heartfelt reaction did more for me than I could’ve imagined. It gave me the strength to move on, and it became the beginning the next chapter in my life.