October wins, but by less of a margin

The screaming woke me up. It took several moments for me to determine the screaming was coming from inside my head. It happens. It is part of my trauma. It is part of a flashback. It gets worse, like everything else in October.

I have always loved the Fall. I have a fond memory of raking the leaves into a giant pile in my side yard. My dog, Conan, and I would then run and jump into them. We did this over and over until the leaves were spread flat and I needed to rake them up again. Then, I’d run and jump as high as my legs would let me so I could face plant into the wonderful mix of red, orange, and brown.

The pile of leaves was so large I could dig right under them and no one would know I was there. Conan did, but he never told anyone else. Sometimes, he would come in and we’d take a nap in the crisp air of an Autumn afternoon.

I try to hold onto memories like these, especially in October. So many bouts of abuse come rushing forward, fighting for dominance this time of year, especially the Day After Labor Day. That’s the last time my cousin raped me. The day is traumatic enough, but it also marks the beginning of an uptick in flashback. I don’t sleep much until around Thanksgiving.

I get unwell every October. I have since 1984. The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me then, so they sent me to Westchester Medical Center, about 75 minutes from my hometown. That’s where I had an abortion. That’s where the vomiting stopped. That’s where I spoke to police with accusatory tones. That’s where I learned the look of accusatory eyes. That’s where I was treated horribly during my gynecological exam. That’s where I got extra trauma and added to the PTSD I didn’t know I had.

But October, yeah, it comes in gently. Then, the memories kick themselves up a notch, each vying for attention. There’s the punching and kicking of air. There’s the nausea and vomiting. There’s the replay of the Day After Labor Day, sometimes on a continuous loop. There’s the tinnitus, so loud it feels like my ears are going to burst. There’s the screaming. There’s the fact that when I walk out my door or communicate with anyone that I must “act normal.”

This year marks the first year I haven’t relied on my nausea medication to get through the days and nights. I’m getting more nights with sleep, but this is a continual work in progress. I sleep a few hours a night. Sometimes, not at all. It’s still more than I slept last year. I celebrate the 3-4 hour stretches.

I have a database a friend wrote for me to keep track of my sleep. My therapist and I have been able to notice little changes and I’ve made small shifts to hopefully sleep more. With PTSD, I will only ever be able to mitigate the circumstances and lessen the effects. The flashbacks will likely never go away. The database allows me to pick up “when this thing happens, it’s usually X time before the flashback.” It isn’t perfect, but it helps.

The screaming is still relentless. It is the end of any day, regardless of whether it’s 7pm or 7am. It renders me nonfunctional. It always has, but I’ve made progress and one day, it won’t affect me at all.

For the next little while, therapy is twice a week. On Mondays, I do EMDR, which is hard to explain how life-changing it has been without writing a thousands words on what it is and how it works first.

I process and work on maintaining the things I’ve progressed in on Fridays. This will likely only be through November, though I’ve allowed my therapist to determine this end point this year. I do EMDR throughout the year, but doing it now has seen some immediate changes and insights.

The easiest to see is my nausea medication is still in the bottle. My goal is not needing it anymore. Sleep is a little more frequent, but not where it should be. The tinnitus is extra loud, particularly after a flashback. The flashback of the Day After Labor Day is clearer and more vivid, but this is part of how EMDR works. It absolutely sucks to go through it, but it has to be done to work through it. Some of that memory is already processed.

Eating is still a struggle. There are so many mitigating factors it is difficult to precisely determine whether it’s a food allergy causing me not to eat, a flashback, or a general lack of energy from everything else. I suspect this will continue to be an issue for a long time.

Writing has faltered as well. I wrote enough podcast episodes and poems on my Substack to get me through the middle of November. I had a particularly good summer with writing poetry. I wasn’t able to get ahead here. October was still just too much.

It used to bother me more because I felt an obligation to write a post several days a week and I couldn’t meet that goal. I reduced it to once a week and had to accept that, sometimes, it isn’t possible. I am still learning to be okay with it, especially when I look at the long list of things I want to write and the stories I want to share.

This year, October won again. It was by a much smaller margin than ever before. This time, I had EMDR on my side. This time, I accepted my limits when I reached them. I write when I can, even though it’s not as often as I want it to be. This time, I believe “it’s okay to only do one thing a day.”

Today, this was my one thing.

Thanks to everyone who has stuck by me all these years and for always coming back to read another story in this thing called Irene’s life.