Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story (17 page)

And I was the one who’d talked him into jumping into the marriage in the first place, when he’d been concerned that we were too young and were rushing.

And my divorce—getting divorced, period—showed that I made bad decisions, and hurt people, and was a failure.

And, OK, all the reasons people were saying I was a monster weren’t wrong. I absolutely agreed with their contention that I didn’t deserve to have PTSD. How
dare
I cry about my life, as a white person who lived in America and had a good job and hadn’t even been hurt, they demanded. I’d spent hours demanding the same of Meredith, and my friends, and myself. I had never come up with a satisfactory answer. And Meredith’s and Tana’s had sounded like cop-out bullshit.

And even though I hadn’t earned it, now I had a mental illness. Not because of genetics or hormones, but because of some little outside events, and as far as that was concerned, nobody thought I was more weak and disgusting than I did.

Also, when I was in grad school, I worked for a literary festival, and one time, on the last day, a patron gave me one or two twenties (I forget) for some merchandise after we’d closed out all our receipts, and I pocketed it.

And one time, in the course of my fifteen-year sexual history, I fucked around with a married guy.

And by one time, I mean several times.

And by one married guy, I mean two.

When I was in junior high, on a couple of occasions I made up elaborate stories and told them to my friends as though they were truth, even crying at the sad parts. About this same time, there was a girl who’d been newly integrated into my friend group, and I don’t remember if I found her boring or annoying, but I convinced my best friend that we should dump her, and we did. She was so heartbroken that her older sister came and yelled at us at recess the next day.

And the semester after the semester that Hurricane Katrina had ruined, when school was back in session, I had one student in my freshman composition class who kept failing to turn in his assignments. “But I live in a FEMA trailer with my entire family,” he would say when I wouldn’t take his paper because it was weeks late. “It is so hard,” he pleaded with me. But I refused to grade it.

Life is hard, I told him. Lots of people have to figure out how to write their papers in bad environments.

And now, if the spin were accurate, I had upset a rape survivor who’d already been through a lifetime’s worth of too much—and I couldn’t know how upset she was, or if the people saying she was upset had even told her what the essay said and didn’t say, since she couldn’t read English any better than I could Creole, and since no one would let me talk to her or, as far as I could tell, even ask her if she wanted to talk to me.

Marc had refused to give me her contact info. He said he wasn’t allowed. I thought about flying to Haiti. I would continue to consider it for years. It hadn’t been my intent to ignore her wishes, much less to exploit her for personal glory, which was why I hadn’t written even 1 percent of the memories or material I had. I thought I’d not talked about her story but for the intersection where she was unavoidably one of the biggest parts of mine. But now I couldn’t tell if I had traumatized her anyway. Had I retraumatized her? The article in which she was briefly quoted said that she was angry, and that was the writer’s word, not hers. When I had written the offending piece, I had considered that moment when we were in the same place a story that belonged to me, too, because the rest of my existence had hinged on it. If the moral and ethical breach in writing it was not a gray area and was in fact as clear and evil as some people were saying, it could only have happened because I was too sick and disgusting to understand that. Even if they were wrong, the possibility remained that I had angered a person I had fervidly wanted not to.

In any case, when I said
No
, I wanted people to respect that without qualification and no questions asked. And I had failed to do that for her. I hadn’t been able to figure out a way to disconnect us, a way both to own my trauma and do that for her. It would remain my strongest and most convincing point of self-disgust for a very long time.

There were those examples. There were other examples. Anyway, I could point to a general, nagging certainty, from deep within my bowels, that I was vile. I didn’t think it was because that’s what people with PTSD think. I was sure it was because I was right. I was nowhere near emotionally lucid enough to see those processes clearly, and it would take many months for me to be able to recognize and name them. In the meantime, I just knew I was incapable of any kind of peace. My shame was real and physical, and the pervasive fear I’d kicked after my first assignment in Haiti was back with a vengeance.

Having returned to San Francisco from Ohio, landing this time in the worst shape yet, I shook, always internally, and often visibly to outsiders. My stomach felt like it was full of stimulants, agitated and edgy like I’d throw up anytime I opened my mouth. I slept with the help of chemicals, and still woke up in the middle of the night panicked, sick, jolts of bad electricity passing through me, doubling me over, nerves sparking like my skin would catch fire. I arranged shifts with my friends to come babysit me. When I left the house, if I wasn’t a numbed-out zombie, I sometimes started crying when I was talking to people, like a maniac, and if I didn’t, even people who weren’t very intuitive could tell I was on the verge of crying at any time.

“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of you,” a massage therapist whom Alex had recommended said at the beginning of our appointment, as the articles continued piling up. “And not in the good way.”

There was a tiny flickering inside me, a flinching pilot light that said that my intentions were good and important; that my truth was valid. I found it impossible not to feel attacked. And sorry for myself. My sorrow extended far beyond my own suffering: Sorrow for Alex’s dad. Sorrow for anyone who’d been traumatized and now heard trauma called narcissistic or weak because of me. I was worried that all I’d succeeded in doing was making them feel worse about themselves.

As it turned out, the concern between me and other traumatized people was mutual.

Dear Ms. McClelland,

I’m writing because your piece really resonated with me. I have never been in the kind of extreme situations your work involves you in, but I was physically abused by my father from the time I was two until I was nineteen. He was a guerilla fighter in Africa while still in his teens so no doubt he played out his own trauma in this way; not that I forgive him. My family copes by pretending it didn’t happen and also by implying that I am either malicious or nuts—or both—whenever I referred to it. Not surprisingly I stopped trying to get them to admit to it. I went away to college and pretty much didn’t go back.

Flash forward to me thirty-three years old, married and working at a church, trussed up on a dentist’s chair
on stage
in a bondage club, taking a beating from the house dominatrix. I did this for about a year—never really engaging in the BDSM community and never taking any sexual pleasure in it. I just felt compelled to do it. After a year I stopped going and seven years later I still feel no need to go back.

As to why I did it, I needed to take a beating and know that I was totally in control of it. At any time I could have used the safe word and gotten out of what was happening. It’s not the same thing that you did, but I think it came out of the same impulse. My husband (now ex-husband) and my friends thought that I was sick and sleazy, but really I was trying to get better. I don’t claim that it cured my PTSD, but while I was doing it, it definitely seemed to help, and until my husband left me and then I had a relationship with a sociopath (yeah—I know how to pick ’em) I felt a lot stronger and less traumatized by the violence in my childhood. I don’t think the same thing would help me now, but it helped me then.

I hope you don’t end up feeling sorry that you published this piece, because I was really glad to read it.

Best wishes,

Paula

Hi Mac,

I developed a submissive sexuality after being raped at thirteen. I’ve spent a lot of time in therapists’ office trying to figure out exactly why, but you put it perfectly.

While I enjoy the simple sensation of pain as well as being dominated, what’s most important is the pushing of boundaries, knowing that I can handle the violence I’ve asked for. I feel relieved, loose, sane afterwards. It’s really the only stress relief technique I know. The best kind of therapy.

I am also active in feminist communities, where it’s often difficult to discuss incorporating violence into sex without being criticized for perpetuating patriarchy and violence; I fear for what comments will come your way. It’s even worse outside of those communities, where people think you’re really fucked up and damaged (which we may be, but it’s none of their business anyway).

But know that there are many of us who support you in writing this. We totally get it.

Sincerely,

Emma

For days—and weeks—and, ultimately, years—many dozens of e-mails poured into my in-box from strangers who told me their stories. Many of them were wishing me well and telling me to keep my head up, because they knew from experience that sex-and-trauma disclosures were not well received. And many of them, to be sure, wrote about having, or wanting to have, certain kinds of sex after being traumatized. And feeling awful about it.

Dear Ms. McClelland,

I had to find a way to tell you that you are not alone. I was raped when I was 21, and immediately afterward I found myself having risky, dangerous, violent sex. Except I didn’t have the good sense that you did, and this was mostly with complete strangers. I’m so lucky that I survived that time period, because I could have easily been killed or hurt. I swore off this behavior when I was well enough to return to school, but I’m now 24 and I still have rape nightmares, flashbacks, daymares and think a lot about rape. I always thought I was a terrible person to have some kind of urge to be raped again. I feel dead inside because I walk dangerous streets alone at night, and when people tell me something is not safe, I feel like it doesn’t matter anymore because the worst has already been done. In some way I feel protected because I think nothing can really touch me anymore. I became a serious self-injurer, bulimic and attempted suicide, and I told myself that no one could hurt me because I wasn’t scared of pain or death.

Now I am 24 and I have recently come out of residential treatment for my problems and diagnosed with PTSD. I am making a lot of progress in my recovery but I still find it hard to talk about my attraction to violent sex. I feel so ashamed and like I am truly a worthless “slut.” So when I read your article I was amazed at your courage to talk about it, to the whole world. I would’ve written a comment in reply but I didn’t want to know what other people had commented, because I was afraid of the worst. But I wanted to tell you that you did an amazing thing in writing that piece. I don’t know what I am going to do about my own stuff, but I feel better knowing that a few people are coming out and talking about what I have always thought was a dark and terrible secret. You made me feel less like a terrible person, and a little more human and deserving of compassion.

Thank you,

Nicole

Hello Mac,

I feel so stupid writing this … I just happened across an article of your experiences with PTSD and I just started crying my eyes out.

I have life-long PTSD … I’ve known it for years, and I’ve been in various kinds of treatment, but I still have to live my everyday life, and thirty-one of my thirty-six years have been spent in an extremely high state of hyper-arousal. I’ve heard combat veterans, and now you, describe my daily life since childhood, the crying and the neck-snapping tension and the “odd” fantasies … and while talk therapy has helped many of my symptoms, I’ve always run into trouble specifically with anything like sexual healing.

I have no trusted friends that could possibly overpower me (I’m 6’1” and 280 lbs and all of my friends are women) … I’ve more or less given up hope of exploring what I feel I need to safely feel to heal (hopelessness, inability to do anything) … most of my therapists over the years, especially psychiatrists and medical doctors, have actually told me I’m abnormal for even thinking those thoughts … it’s so good to read someone getting some healing out of choosing to try something that seems counterintuitive but also totally logical, and that there’s a therapist not making light of it.

I think my current therapist would be so supportive, but I have never been able to bring anything like this up in session. I will try and do so.

I’m sorry you ever needed that or felt what I feel every day. It’s so exhausting.

Thank you, again,

Michael

I was amazed that I was getting these e-mails, and that I wasn’t getting hate mail. I was also amazed that these people who were legitimate victims didn’t think that I had no right to traumatization. There was one e-mail that I wished all the people writing those sex-related e-mails could read. It was from a sex therapist in San Francisco, Dimitry Yakoushkin. His practice, which had a long wait list, specialized in erotic transference—no nudity or kissing between patient and practitioner, but plenty of intimate touching and role-play. He said one former, one potential, and two current clients had brought the essay to him. He and his colleagues, Celeste and Danielle, MA, MSW, PhD, treated men and women for all sorts of sexual concerns—dissociating during sex, asexuality, hypersexuality, not being able to climax, not being able to look sex partners in the eye. Invariably, he said, as clients worked toward the root of their issue—sometimes for years before finding or facing it—trauma came up. He simultaneously broke and warmed my heart when he told me he had a client who was formerly abused, seventy-six years old, and determined to have her first orgasm before she died. (After a year of working together, she was getting very close.) Anyway, the most frequent activity his female clients discovered they wanted or needed was safe exploration of fantasies—which more often than not included rough sexual role-play and/or rape scenarios. People came from multiple states, and countries, to work with them.