hsphaven

“Imagine living with a scream inside you.

And the scream is yours.

And no one else hears it.

That is grief.

Imagine living with a scream inside you—a scream that is yours alone.

It’s loud, it’s piercing, and it reverberates through every part of your being.

And yet, no one else hears it.

Grief can make the world feel so distant.

You might be in the middle of a conversation,

but your mind is elsewhere, caught in that scream.

What does a silent scream even sound like?

What would it sound like if someone else could hear it?

Perhaps it isn’t really a scream but a feeling

with sound, one so raw, so painful, so excruciating

that there are no words to describe it,

so it becomes a sound, a noise, a vibration

that rages through our entire body, screaming,

The scream of grief.”

– Author unknown

I spent most of my day in bed lethargic. The lethargy was actually a welcome relief from the restlessness and agitation that rips apart my insides every day and especially every night. I got a text from my dad thanking me for the various adventures we’ve been on together. It sounded like he was expecting one of us to die soon.

“Dear Zoe,” he wrote. “Thankyou for all the “adventures” you have taken me on ! Thanks for Philip Island, and taking you down there – to run away from the wretched police, and the stupid psychiatrist at Chandler House. Taping my torch on the back of my car, so you could follow in your car … Thanks too for taking me to see Margaret’s place, and her “church”. Thanks for checking out Bendigo, with me, and meeting Dr Julia Bourke… Thanks for “Wet & Wild” … rafting down the Yarra at Warburton. Thanks for inviting me to that place past Sale, where you stayed (with the woman who couldn’t stop talking), where I almost lost her dog, on one of my long walks. Yep, … we have been on some great adventures together ”

I didn’t know if the stress of seeing me suffer for so long, which has led me to isolate, no longer speak and lash out at him, was driving him to suicide. I didn’t know if he senses I am slipping away and may not make it through another year, or even to the end of this year. But tears welled in my eyes when I read that text.

“Lol yes we have,” I replied. “Why are you writing all this?”

“Well… I just went for a walk in the falls, where you sometimes accompany me… but I dare not disturb you now!!!!” he wrote. “Actually, my friend Andrew told me to have- “faith” (our stories are not over…. Yet!!!)

“You can text me but yes no more bedroom invasions please,” I said.

“Ok… I promise,” he replied. “Thanks”

“Thanks,” I wrote back. “Nice day for the falls after the rain. Thanks for turning my car around too.”

“You are welcome,” he said. “And… yes…. The bush smells sweet after the rain.”

I was going to play badminton with my estranged sister, who I have not spoken to for over a year, this evening. When she arrived I was having a break down. I hadn’t eaten all day, was not dressed, and couldn’t find my white grunge hoodie with graffiti print. My dad asked me what I was looking for.

“My white jumper with the graffiti print on it,” I texted him.

He misread graffiti for giraffe. I started screaming and throwing things as I was so exasperated not being able to communicate. I have not spoken for over a month now, except when I screamed at my dad to fuck off when he woke me the other day. I read some interesting posts about this on a Complex PTSD forum today here, where people discuss a range of reasons for their mutism, such as becoming untrusting of others and withdrawing, the result of betrayal, “anger, fear, anxiety, hopelessness, self hatred, etc. or a combination of several factors”, and speaking taking away energy we already don’t have. 

“I am thinking that it’s a part of my healing where I’m finally gathering all of the energy I was giving out so freely before,” one person wrote. “I’m a retired people pleaser and having conversations (or just the thought of one) is exhausting because I seem to just let people steamroll me into anything. I feel like I have no control anymore and the other person is steering my ship. But I’m hoping that this time of solitude will help me prepare for more healthy conversations in the future when I’m ready. Trying not to see this as a bad thing and more as a quiet part of my life where I’m turning inward and getting to know who I am and what I want to do and think before I go back out into the world, or even just respond to a DM. In it to win it with hermit life.”

Losing things is the only constant in my life. And, having OCD, when I lose something I cannot let it go. I spent over three hours turning the house upside down looking for the hoodie. I threw piles of clothes off the chairs and onto the floor. I am a hoarder, and my house looks like a bomb site. I get so upset that I never have it in me to clean up. I found bags from hospital stays years ago that I have never unpacked. My heart sank when I found one containing a box of lego from when I was admitted to a private hospital a year ago under Revi’s care (as I wrote about recently, Revi has just died); I spent much of the admission in my room building Harry Potter lego sets. I paced up and down the house in a state of delirium as I continued looking for the hoodie. I stunk of sweat and wearing the same clothes for so long. I ravaged through the wardrobe, more finger nails breaking in the process and ripping at the clothes. My nails break every day now. According to Abigail Rasminsky at healthline, “nail health is closely associated with how well your body is functioning in other areas.” I damaged other belongings as I tossed them aside during my OCD rampage, which then became my new point of fixation. I shut myself in rooms at the other end of the house as I didn’t want my sister to see me like this. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to die. I wanted an ambulance to rescue me and take me to a place where I would be cared for, but I’m yet to find such a place. It is insulting when people say they’re “a little OCD” because they are very neat. Full blown OCD is a nightmare disorder which is incredibly distressing and can upheave a person’s life, stopping them from going to work or going about their day. It is so much more than being neat, or being a little perfectionistic. In fact some argue that hoarding is a form of OCD, and I would have to agree. I find it almost impossible to reason with or talk myself out of OCD. I kept telling myself  “you can buy another one of these hoodies online. It could be worse, you could have lost a handmade, one-of-a-kind piece, or something far more expensive”. Yet it still wasn’t enough to put an end to the desperate search. It probably sounds ridiculous but I get emotionally attached to my belongings, as though they are living beings. I remember fond times with the hoodie, such as when my disability worker Damien (who probably never wants to hear from me again) gave it to me when I was standing in a lake in the middle of winter. I suspect losing belongings is connected to all the other losses in my life.

I just finished watching Season 2, Episode 5 of Heartbreak High. The series features an autistic teenager called Quinni. Quinni becomes obsessed with finding out who “Bird Psycho” is. Her phone is then stolen. Her friends try to get her another phone exactly like her old phone, but she is inconsolable. Nothing can replace her old phone, and she is not at peace until she finds it. I feel the show represents autism very well, from the sensory issues to the social differences, obsessions and distress change causes us.

I finally managed to press a pause button to my OCD rampage. I told my sister that I was in no state to go to badminton today. My sister gave me a birthday present and I gave her a present too, which I barely managed to find amongst all the parcels and crap in my house. It took everything out of me to wrap it up today.

All my therapists are away, so I have no professional support right now (I wish mental health took a break like services do!). All I could think of was turn to Facebook.

“I cannot stand this level of dysfunction, chaos and suffering,” I posted to my wall. “Losing things is the only constant in my life. No one will help me. Hospitals won’t help me. If there was a pill I could take which would end my miserable existence straight away I would definitely take it. That would be the best Christmas gift of all. Anyone who wishes me a merry fucking Christmas can get fucked! You will be blocked instantly! FUCK CHRISTMAS. The truth is this is a horrible time for many many people, and for people like me it doesn’t end once this silly season is over. It goes on and on. Every day of every week of every month of every year.”

I resigned to buying two new hoodies online. I was upset that I couldn’t buy them from the exact same store I bought my old one from, but I found plenty more stores which stock them.

I am completely fucked now. My ears are fucked, probably from all the tension caused by extreme stress. I find my ears tend to be the first organ affected. I will probably need to take sedatives to sleep tonight.

Losing things has become such a huge issue in my life. I lose more and more things while I’m trying to find something. People tell me it’s just my ADD, but I really do think it’s part of an undiagnosed dissociative disorder as well. My last post contains a link to a video about DID. I like that the therapist mentions losing things as one of the symptoms of dissociation. Finding things you don’t remember buying is a classic symptom of DID, but less recognised is things going missing. It is the same thing: finding that you have done things that you do not recollect doing, whether that is buying a new item or moving existing items. A lot of people think that people fake DID. Dr Mike Lloyd puts these people and their malingering arguments in their place in his video. Why would someone fake having a dissociative disorder? You can lose your license because driving while dissociated can be very dangerous. I was lucky I didn’t have an accident the other day when I was having a panic attack and experiencing severe derealisation where I felt everything was a dream and I didn’t know if I was awake or asleep or what (Courtney on YouTube has done a great video about this). And, as a friend said, people with DID can easily be exploited. OCD and being intensely focused on something could also, arguably, be a form of dissociation, as this Psychology Today article mentions. You lose a lot of time during your hyperfixation. I heard one therapist in a documentary on YouTube comment that obsessions are really distractions from another issue which is deeply troubling us. They point to troubled feelings the mind is trying to block out.