Surreal

I’m sitting in a local bookstore waiting to tell a dear family friend that I’m pretty sure her daughter has anorexia.  I don’t know if there is any way to describe how I’m feeling right now.  Let me start at the beginning…

A couple of weeks ago my husband commented that one of his crew people, my friend’s daughter, recently came back from college and looked incredibly thin.  Of course, living the life that we live we always tend to suspect ED.  But knowing that, we try to second guess ourselves from jumping to unwarranted conclusions.  So my husband observed this young woman for a couple of days.  We’re pretty intimately involved with ED so when my husband saw this young woman take a salad (no chicken no dressing) and a water for lunch his suspicions grew worse.  When he saw that said salad was later tossed away half eaten, well, 2 +2 = uh oh.  He related all this to me and I told him I would talk with her.

 

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I invited this young woman out for some coffee and had a little chat.  To say that I sent to the chat a bit apprehensive would not be inaccurate.  What if we were wrong and now we offended this girl?  What if we were right and she lied…I have to say, praise to my merciful God that neither of these scenarios played out that way.  She was very honest.  She’s also in a lot of trouble.  Of course I have no medical degree, so I can’t exactly diagnosis her, but at the very least she has some seriously eating disordered behavior and thoughts.  Knowing the medical criteria for anorexia, however, I strongly suspect she is anorexic.  She no longer has her period, has dropped 40+ pounds, consumes approximately 500 calories a day and fears her hair may be thinning.  I didn’t think to check for lanugo hair, but I did look for a messed up forefinger indicating purging (didn’t really see any indication and she says that she’s not).  And she is so so thin.

Two things have been haunting me since our meeting.  1) I know more than her mother does.  I hate that.  Its far too big a burden for someone else to carry without the parent knowing.  But the young woman asked if I would help her talk to her mom, so I needed to carry on for a couple of days.  And 2) I’m about to turn this family’s world upside down with the news that Eating Disorders have now invaded their lives.  I don’t want to be the one telling them that!  Moreover, I’m not a doctor!  What if I’m completely wrong and way off base?  What if I’m just paranoid because of what our family has been living with?  But I’m not.  At the very least, this beautiful girl has some seriously disordered thinking about food.  *sigh*

Update:  Well I talked with the mom.  The daughter went to the doctor and advised her that it would be okay to go back to college and for her to visit a nutrition.  I find that rather frightening.  The one positive thing is that the mom and I are still friends.  I guess that’s a selfish thing to consider huh?

Flashback to July: Let’s get this over with

I think I’ve drug my heels about finishing this long enough, wouldn’t you agree?  I have so many other things I wish to write about, but I feel as though I can’t go on to those things until I’ve put this one to bed.  Not really sure why.  Not entirely sure why this is so difficult to sit down and finish either.  Insights anyone?

It’s our final week down in Hershey.  We arrive on a Sunday, Vale chomping at the bit to get back to Nicki, me dreading the week.  In an effort to get him out of the house, I suggest we go out to dinner to this restaurant he’s been wanting to try since February.  The name of it is Houlihans, and although I don’t believe he actually wanted to eat at it, he wanted to go in it, so he was agreeable.  At least initially.

We arrive at Houlihans and it’s raining.  The parking lot is full, so we have to park in this parking garage type facility.  We step out of the van, and Vale starts.  At first it’s just simple kvetching, about how many cars are in the parking lot, how cold the rain is, etc.  When we actually get into the restaurant, I can visibly see him start to become unglued.  ”It’s too dark in here!  There are way too many people.  Why is it so warm in here??”

You ever have a moment in time where you look at your child and you’re unsure as to who that person is?  I was in this moment.  The space-time continuum had just shifted and I was in some type of alternate universe.  I started to look around to see if everyone was sporting goatees (vague Star Trek reference there).  He was antsy.  He was agitated.  He was very anxious.  He was completely eating disordered.  I asked Vale if he wanted to leave and he said no, so we were given a table.  Madness then ensued because they gave us the menu: it was huge and expansive.  He was consumed with anxiety over how in the world was he going to order, there were far too many choices.  At this point I sort of shifted into a survival mode, I suggested we leave.  Vale got even more upset, he was afraid it would draw attention to himself if we just walked out now, so I thought of something to do about the ordering.

A bright spot on the menu is that they had this whole list of entries that were smaller portions of their customer favorites, so that you could sample a couple of different items.  I suggested that Vale pick 2 or 3 of those, and he’d be ensured that the portions were at a manageable level.  But even those 20 or so choices proved to be far too many.  He did notice that someone had a french dip sandwich and thought it looked good, so I suggested that we split a sandwich and a salad.  Whatever he didn’t eat, we could always take home.  We had a tentatively help peace over that decision and we ordered.  Wouldn’t you know it that when they brought our food they would serve it on these over-sized rectangular trencher type plates??  I thought he was going to have a fit.  He did become a bit louder when he exclaimed something about the amount of food.  I quickly started reducing the number of plates and divvying up our food: one half of the sandwich for me, one for him.  One half of the salad for me, but no, I couldn’t put the entire half portion of salad on his plate.  There were also fries, but he couldn’t stand more than 3 or 4 on his plate.

The sandwich went down easily for Vale (and it was tasty ~ if you’re even in Hershey, PA try the french dip sandwiches at Houlihans).  I made a bold move and put the rest of his portion of salad on his plate, while it was somewhat cleared of food and he was okay with that.  He ate some of the salad and said he wanted to take the rest of it home.  Unfortunately the salad was the kind where they had pre-tossed it so I mentioned to him that if we took it home, it wouldn’t be very good the next day because it already had the dressing all over it.  He sort of loudly dropped his fork and looked me right in the eyes and said, “So you lied to me.”  I lied to him?  About the food?  Really?  I had the foresight to know that the salad was going to come like that and I purposefully lied so that he had to eat it?  I was dumbfounded at his accusation and I probably did some type of jaw dropping.  Now he was angry and it was all directed at me.  I don’t remember a whole lot about the rest of that night with the exception of that he did eat most of his salad, he wouldn’t touch a fry, and I was, apparently, the devil.

This last week at the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute was originally supposed to be a short one, only until Wednesday.  However, the week before, Vale had cut himself and coupled with the fact that his eating disorder is getting out of control, they decided to keep him the rest of the week.  Oh yes, I forgot to mention that little tid bit didn’t I?  Nicki was getting near to the end of her treatment, so the program she was in shortened her week by a day, then the next week by two etc, weaning her from the program.  So the previous week, Nicki had gone home on a Thursday and Vale was distraught, not knowing what to do with himself without her on Thursday evening.  If I remember correctly, I sent him to our room because he was being belligerent about something and so he used, can you believe this, the room *key* to cut himself.  Okay, it’s horrible enough when he used knives and box cutters to cut, but a key?  Can you imagine how painful that must have been?  Of course that event left me distraught and us needing to stay for the entire week.  Vale was completely oppositional Monday and Tuesday, combative, clearly not interested in his treatment and becoming worse by the minute.  His eating was getting worse, refusing to eat breakfast, escalated behaviors over dinner and I finally had had it.  We were leaving Wednesday, whether he liked it or not.

Tuesday evening I had him retire to the room early and we packed.  We took stuff down to the car and I happened to walk through the main eating area and found Nicki, another mother and her daughter sitting around the table talking close.  I walk toward the room and the other girl started frantically started making faces at Nicki to be quiet.  Obviously they were talking about me, and it wasn’t pleasant.  How in the world did I become the bad guy?  I wasn’t ‘in the world’ so to speak, around people who didn’t know about what was going on with him or what it’s like to have an eating disordered kid.  Why in the name of anything sacred weren’t these mothers on my side.  Now for her part, Nicki was a 16-year-old girl with a mad crush, I can understand why she was so unhappy with me keeping the two apart.  But these other mothers should have been standing shoulder to shoulder with me… I’m still baffled.  Fortunately, I’m not a parent who seeks popularity, I do what’s right for my family and I kept on packing.

Vale didn’t say goodbye to Nicki because I didn’t tell him we were definitely leaving until we were up in our room.  The next day I kept him busy up in the room until after 8:30 so he wouldn’t have time to see her then either.  In retrospect, I toss that around as to whether I should have done that or not.  But in the end I ask myself, what good would have come from him sharing a tearful goodbye with this girl?  I also wholeheartedly admit that part of me just wanted to cut this thing right off.  He was not happy with me and he pointedly asked me if I planned that on purpose, to which I replied honestly that I did.

During that last week, I made an appointment for Vale at the eating disorder specialist.  This time we didn’t see the doctor like we usually did, we saw his physician’s assistant and that was a godsend.  Vale had, surprise surprise, dropped weight.  Apparently Vale didn’t keep his cards too close to his chest while he was in with the PA, asking if Nicki was there, was she alright, could he see her etc.  Of course the PA couldn’t tell him squat but she could see where his entire thought was bent toward and she got rather tough with him.  In short she threatened him that if he didn’t start getting with the program she would take action.  And no, despite what he thinks, she would never put him in a partial program there, to be around the girls, he would go in a lock down.  She then walked him through what a program like that was like: they would tell him when to wake, when to sleep, where he could go, when he ate, what he ate, how much he ate, whether he could see or talk to his family or friends, what privileges he could have, when he could leave.  She didn’t paint a pretty picture at all.  Vale was rather shocked by the entire conversation, but I was delighted.  This PA was taking the bull by the horns, something the doctor never seemed to do, and I was so relieved.

I don’t remember the ride home quite well.  I don’t think it was pleasant.  In fact, I don’t think we spoke to each other the entire 2 hour trip.  I’d like to tell you that within a few days he was back to himself and we started progressing back toward recovery again, but that would be a lie.  He kept up his restrictive eating.  He was ignorant and unkind toward me and the entire family.  He moved like a ghost through the days thinking only on his ‘lost love’.  He contrived how he was going to see her, talk with her, be with her.  He vandalized a restaurant bathroom, carving her initials into the stall.  That was a delight, let me tell you, and I made him tell the manager and fork over $60 in reparation.  We went to see a nutritionist who concluded that this wasn’t the time for him to be working on his eating disorder, because it was blatantly obvious he had no interest in recovery.  The nutritionist spoke with the PA and both agreed that Vale had too much therapy types and he was learning how to work it all, they suggested that we pick one and work with them and then slowly add others as he got back on track.  I agreed with them, that things had shifted into madness and we pared things down to just his Biblical counselor.  I think the kicker was that of the entire summer, which included a week-long vacation right on the bay in Delaware, his fondest summer memories were of the time in Hershey, with Nicki.  I wanted to kick him when he said that.  The time that cost us the most, that was so ruinous, painful was his favorite moments of the summer.

Why was this so hard to write.  Is it because I question myself?  Was it really the right thing to take Vale down to Hershey?  Was I foolish?  Should I have ended it sooner?  In the short-term it caused us so much pain and was so damaging to Vale’s recovery.  But as I look back on it 7 months later and see Vale’s progress I wonder if it didn’t come in part because of this time in Crazyville.  Is it possible that he is more solid now because he knows we’ll do anything to help him, to listen to him?  If it isn’t, will you at least not tell me.  I need that one small bit to keep from despair about that whole thing.  Placate me, okay?

A Precious Gift

This evening was an evening I won’t forget.  It started like most evenings at our house, by washing up dishes and starting dinner.  While I was cooking, I was talking to Vale about my latest blog post.  I was telling him that there are so many questions I would like to ask him one day when he was ready, about his assaults, so that I could take the whole of the story in.  He asked me what I wanted to know, and so, I asked him about details.  What did he remember hearing?  or smelling?  What ritual may have been involved?  And for the first time ever, he was so candid and relaxed talking about it.  But what he told lays so heavily upon my heart.  Just for a bit of clarification, the details are lost 200 posts ago, my son was raped by two individuals.  One, Vale lived with and forced him to perform oral sex repeatedly.  This is the grandson of his former foster parents.  The second anally raped Vale.  Vale doesn’t recall who this person was, or his name.

He told me that he doesn’t recall particular sounds or smells but he does remember the tastes from the ejaculate.  I cannot begin to articulate how it feels to hear your son talk about an experience like that, especially when I particularly avoided asking about the sense of taste.  That should have never been part of his thinking, let alone his world, his memories.  A child should recall the taste of fresh strawberries, a favored ice cream flavor, hot dogs from the circus.  But never semen.  He said that he remembered an electric guitar, stuffed animals on the shelf and a game console.  These are what Vale’s offender used to ‘buy’ his silence.  I asked him if he felt that the adults in the home knew what was going on with the grandson.  He said he didn’t know about that, but he thinks that the grandson was offending the other children in the home.  Vale said, “we changed bedrooms a lot, I wasn’t the only one who slept in that room with him”.  I wonder how many other children were abused by that family member.  The family member that the foster parents denied even living there.  LIARS!

Vale then spoke briefly about his assault by the other older boy.  He calls that the chicken coop incident.  He told me he remembers little of this, except he broke the eggs that he was sent to gather, and he got in trouble for that.  Can you imagine that?  Being a small child, 6 or 7 years old, enduring a rape and being scolded for breaking eggs.

One of the saddest things that Vale said to me was that he still doesn’t think his being raped was that big of a deal.  He doesn’t think that it’s been a big impact on his life.  I asked him about his self-destructive behaviors: self harm, eating disorder, suicidal thoughts and he said that it was from having to move around a lot when he was a kid.  I mentioned to him that when we saw the doctor about his eating disorder the first thing Vale disclosed wasn’t that he had to move around a lot, he told about his sexual assaults.  I don’t desire that Vale be burdened with his sexual assault, to carry this every day in the forefront of his mind.  But I think that in order for Vale to fully heal, to look at the self-destructive mind-set that he has and see it for what it is, for him to live a full life, he has to admit to himself what a heinous crime had been committed and that it changed his life forever.  It will come, in his time, as his mind unfolds and accepts what it has contained in it.

I take everything he said and embrace it.  I take it like a snapshot, something I hold in front of my face.  I remember it all.  Where we were, what we were wearing, what we had for dinner.  It will never leave my memory.  I can’t expunge the memories from him.  I can’t undo the unmitigated evil that was perpetrated on his innocence.  But I can hold his story.  I can swallow it so it becomes part of me too.  It’s the least I can do.

Ordinary Day: Father’s Day

I have a couple of ‘series’ going, if you want to call them that.  I have the Fallout series, which I keep adding to, because more issues crop up all the time.  And I also am thankful to have the Guest Blogger series.  I hope that grows as well, I love having guest bloggers on!  I’ll admit that partly it lightens my blogging load, but mostly I like it for a two-fold reason: I get to be a venue for others to make their voices heard, and it validates our voice a little more.  I know none of you need convincing, but I feel with more people sharing a very similar story, it makes me feel like, “See!  I told you it’s a big problem!”

So the Ordinary Day series is just going to be posts where our family went through something typical without PTSD, SI or ED intruding.  I guess it will give you a snapshot into our regular lives.  Let me know what you think.

So, yesterday was Father’s Day.  My husband isn’t the type that likes a big fuss, so I tried to prepare the foods he liked and planned a simple activity in the afternoon.  Sunday is church day, so anything we did had to fit between the hours of 12:30-5:30 so that we can make morning and evening church.  Although my honey does enjoy a good steak, he really likes all those salad-y type dishes, so that’s what I made.  I’ll share with you a little about each dish, because I altered some stuff and it was really good!  Here’s the menu:

Turkey salad on homemade whole wheat bread: I roasted the turkey breast, cleaned the meat off, mixed it with celery, chives, chopped apple, mayo and onion salt/pepper.  I served it with sliced avocado and canned jellied cranberry sauce.  Not really a big fan of canned cranberry sauce, but it is good sliced on a turkey sandwich!

Broccoli salad: cut up broccoli florets, craisins, flaxseed, chopped sweet onion, bacon and pineapple

Greek style pasta salad: gluten-free pasta (Payne is gf), cubed cukes, halved cherry tomatoes, feta cheese, chopped sweet onion, green olives and minced cilantro.  I know cilantro isn’t necessarily a ‘greek’ herb but I love it.  I tossed it all with a bottled Greek salad dressing.

Tandycake: this is reminiscent of the Tasty Cake treat that you can buy.  You bake a yellow sponge cake then spread a good amount of peanut butter on top while the cake is still hot.  Let it all chill then spread melted semi sweet chocolate over top.  It’s a family favorite.  So easy, so yummy.  We also had some ice cream as a gluten-free option for Payne.

Homemade iced tea and pickles rounded out our menu which my husband declared two thumbs up!  Yay!

We then went to this river festival which we apparently arrived too late for, because no one was still there!  Not even the vendors! LOL  Oh well, we had a nice time walking along the banks of the river.  Someone left sidewalk chalk around the river walkways and the kids had a good time using that.  Dolorosa used her daddy’s name as an acrostic and wrote out character traits for him.  Grey drew boxes designed just for dads and their wives. Vale tried to draw a building of which Payne teasingly criticized.  He got her back by drawing a non-flattering picture of her and labeled it “My twin is a BatFace”.  Watching the two of them was too funny.

“That line is crooked!  What’s that supposed to be?? It’s pitiful” provoked Payne.

“Shut it Batface!” teased back Vale.
We ended up having some of the kids who are interested in photography take pictures of the same thing, but with their own composition and then they’ll edit it.  It will be neat to see how the photos come out.  I’m pretty sure my man had a good day.  It was kinda a bummer that we missed the River Festival activities, but my husband said it was a fun and relaxing afternoon.

Vale ate his lunch well, with no sneering or visible pickyness.  There wasn’t a hint of self harming anywhere.  Vale was pleasant and funny, making up his own little rock song of “BAT FACE!” to which his twin rolled her eyes.  Even Oldest Brother wasn’t difficult.  Hmmm, there was harmony.  What more could you ask for?

Wild Night

We had a wild night with Vale yesterday.  We had a situation break with him a few days ago.  I found out that he was back chatting up that girl (that he thinks is his girlfriend) that was sort of the impetus of this whole situation.  This same girl, who is a self-proclaimed emo  devotee and who is also a cutter, is the one who I was confronting him about when he first disclosed back in February.  I thought we had put this chapter behind us because having a girlfriend, especially one like this, is definitely counterproductive to recovery.  You see this girl, who is a schoolmate,  is only accessible to him online, virtually.  He could never meet her in real life, because we would never facilitate a meet up.  We have a house rule, no boyfriend/girlfriend stuff until you’re old enough and mature enough to actually plan a future with someone.  Otherwise, in our opinion, it perpetuates emotional prostitution.  That has always been the rule and Vale knows that.

Do you recall me saying that I have been feeling that there is something amiss in Vale, something off but I can’t put my finger on it?  Well this is what it was.  He was meeting up with her virtually several times a day, whenever he could sneak it in.  That is why he had been so closed off to me, to his twin, his family.  Blogging stopped, he hasn’t done any art whatsoever in over a month because all his energy and resources were poured into sneaking about, lying to us, so he could meet up with this girl.  I’m sure it’s needless to say that we were livid to find out all of this.  What is worse yet, when we press him to talk about this, why did he do this, what was he hoping to gain, we are met with resistance and hostility.  He has revealed nothing to us.  In fact, he has used his withdrawal and his secrets as weapons or threats.  Hinting that he has plans, but refusing to tell us what they are.  Vale and I ended up having a pretty big smack down with me having enough of his attitude and informing him of my leaving of the restaurant we were in, and he refusing to leave.

Since we found out about this newest problem with this girl, we have been trying to sit and talk with him about it, but he will have none of it.  Every time we bring it up he either clamps his mouth shut or gets nasty.  So last night after being especially belligerent, (snarking off to his father, banging his head) he was in our bedroom.  He just wanted to go to bed, but I wasn’t going to let him escape.  I told him he would stay there, in my room, until he talked to me.  This had to be worked out.  He tried to stare me down with a defiant face, but I put on my headphones and watched Scrubs on my Netbook until he was ready to talk.  Then he snapped.  He walked over to my husband’s dresser and started rooting around for something and pulled out a box cutter (his favorite cutting weapon of choice) but that didn’t satisfy him.  He then pulled out a razor blade and just looked at it.

Of course at this point I’m trying to stay one step ahead of him while remaining calm.  I said, “Vale, what are you looking for (even though I knew)?”  And he turned to look at me, and I realized he was totally out of it.  He looked .. crazy.  So I started to ask him about his intentions and I didn’t move.  I gambled that if I started after him he might flip and hurt himself.  So I cajoled him closer to me with, “may I see that, I won’t take it from you”.  When he was close enough I pulled his face down close to mine and asked him what was going on in his head, what was he hearing?  He was weeping profusely and holding his breath.  At one point I slapped him and yelled his name, which seemed to bring him around.  I asked him if he wanted to kill himself to which he replied, “I don’t know” and then I asked him if he wanted to cut which he said yes, and I asked him was the impulse to cut really strong and he said yes.  He was gripping the razor blade so firmly in his fist I was really concerned that he was hurting himself so I asked him if I could see the razor blade and hold it.  I put it on my knee so he could see it, I was concerned if I tried to ‘take it away’ we would get into a tussle.  I was just trying to keep everything as calm as possible.  He watched that blade on my knee intently.

I tried talking him down, trying to think of things that would get him more stable.  I ended up telling him to take off his shoes and lay down on the bed and I would cuddle him.  As he pulled me around him I remember thinking that I was his human straight jacket.  I hugged and kissed him and cuddled him, what more could I do?  He kept trying to stuff down crying which I don’t understand.  Why was he crying?  Was it because he scared himself?  Because he was beside himself?  Because he didn’t know what else to do?  And through the whole thing, he wouldn’t talk to me.  Eventually he wore himself out and fell asleep.

My husband, who is a gracious man, came to bed and saw that Vale was sprawled out across the majority of the bed and told me to leave him there and that he’d go sleep on the couch.

At about 1:30 Vale woke and was disoriented.  I was still awake in my chair watching him.  He told me that he wanted to stay in my bed for the night, because he was more comfortable there.  So went and got changed into his pajamas and brought back his pillow and laid off to one side.  After a while I laid down on mine and tried to sleep.  It seems that Vale is a very fitful sleeper, and trembles a lot in his sleep.  The only way I could describe it is a minor, short-lived seizure like trembling.  Is he having nightmares?  Is it something with the Prozac?  It’s definitely something to talk to the doctors about, it has to be impacting his sleep.

Wow, really long post… took me two days to write it too.

Source: fortheboysfromthismom.com

Wild Night

We had a wild night with Vale yesterday.  We had a situation break with him a few days ago.  I found out that he was back chatting up that girl (that he thinks is his girlfriend) that was sort of the impetus of this whole situation.  This same girl, who is a self-proclaimed emo  devotee and who is also a cutter, is the one who I was confronting him about when he first disclosed back in February.  I thought we had put this chapter behind us because having a girlfriend, especially one like this, is definitely counterproductive to recovery.  You see this girl, who is a schoolmate,  is only accessible to him online, virtually.  He could never meet her in real life, because we would never facilitate a meet up.  We have a house rule, no boyfriend/girlfriend stuff until you’re old enough and mature enough to actually plan a future with someone.  Otherwise, in our opinion, it perpetuates emotional prostitution.  That has always been the rule and Vale knows that.

Do you recall me saying that I have been feeling that there is something amiss in Vale, something off but I can’t put my finger on it?  Well this is what it was.  He was meeting up with her virtually several times a day, whenever he could sneak it in.  That is why he had been so closed off to me, to his twin, his family.  Blogging stopped, he hasn’t done any art whatsoever in over a month because all his energy and resources were poured into sneaking about, lying to us, so he could meet up with this girl.  I’m sure it’s needless to say that we were livid to find out all of this.  What is worse yet, when we press him to talk about this, why did he do this, what was he hoping to gain, we are met with resistance and hostility.  He has revealed nothing to us.  In fact, he has used his withdrawal and his secrets as weapons or threats.  Hinting that he has plans, but refusing to tell us what they are.  Vale and I ended up having a pretty big smack down with me having enough of his attitude and informing him of my leaving of the restaurant we were in, and he refusing to leave.

Since we found out about this newest problem with this girl, we have been trying to sit and talk with him about it, but he will have none of it.  Every time we bring it up he either clamps his mouth shut or gets nasty.  So last night after being especially belligerent, (snarking off to his father, banging his head) he was in our bedroom.  He just wanted to go to bed, but I wasn’t going to let him escape.  I told him he would stay there, in my room, until he talked to me.  This had to be worked out.  He tried to stare me down with a defiant face, but I put on my headphones and watched Scrubs on my Netbook until he was ready to talk.  Then he snapped.  He walked over to my husband’s dresser and started rooting around for something and pulled out a box cutter (his favorite cutting weapon of choice) but that didn’t satisfy him.  He then pulled out a razor blade and just looked at it.

Of course at this point I’m trying to stay one step ahead of him while remaining calm.  I said, “Vale, what are you looking for (even though I knew)?”  And he turned to look at me, and I realized he was totally out of it.  He looked .. crazy.  So I started to ask him about his intentions and I didn’t move.  I gambled that if I started after him he might flip and hurt himself.  So I cajoled him closer to me with, “may I see that, I won’t take it from you”.  When he was close enough I pulled his face down close to mine and asked him what was going on in his head, what was he hearing?  He was weeping profusely and holding his breath.  At one point I slapped him and yelled his name, which seemed to bring him around.  I asked him if he wanted to kill himself to which he replied, “I don’t know” and then I asked him if he wanted to cut which he said yes, and I asked him was the impulse to cut really strong and he said yes.  He was gripping the razor blade so firmly in his fist I was really concerned that he was hurting himself so I asked him if I could see the razor blade and hold it.  I put it on my knee so he could see it, I was concerned if I tried to ‘take it away’ we would get into a tussle.  I was just trying to keep everything as calm as possible.  He watched that blade on my knee intently.

I tried talking him down, trying to think of things that would get him more stable.  I ended up telling him to take off his shoes and lay down on the bed and I would cuddle him.  As he pulled me around him I remember thinking that I was his human straight jacket.  I hugged and kissed him and cuddled him, what more could I do?  He kept trying to stuff down crying which I don’t understand.  Why was he crying?  Was it because he scared himself?  Because he was beside himself?  Because he didn’t know what else to do?  And through the whole thing, he wouldn’t talk to me.  Eventually he wore himself out and fell asleep.

My husband, who is a gracious man, came to bed and saw that Vale was sprawled out across the majority of the bed and told me to leave him there and that he’d go sleep on the couch.

At about 1:30 Vale woke and was disoriented.  I was still awake in my chair watching him.  He told me that he wanted to stay in my bed for the night, because he was more comfortable there.  So went and got changed into his pajamas and brought back his pillow and laid off to one side.  After a while I laid down on mine and tried to sleep.  It seems that Vale is a very fitful sleeper, and trembles a lot in his sleep.  The only way I could describe it is a minor, short-lived seizure like trembling.  Is he having nightmares?  Is it something with the Prozac?  It’s definitely something to talk to the doctors about, it has to be impacting his sleep.

Wow, really long post… took me two days to write it too.

Guest Blogger: Amber Gideon

Again, so privileged to have another guest blogger.  I love her writing, and I think you will to!

When I went public about my sexual assault a very good friend of mine said something that I think will stick with me forever. He said, “I don’t see you as a victim. I see you. I see Amber.”It gave me pause because up until recently I think I’d been living my life as a victim. I would sometimes catch myself wondering about the person I could have been, the not-a-survivor-of-sexual-assault, writer, artist, woman I was supposed to be. I’d pine away for the future that was stolen from me with an act of violence. I thought people could see my scars and see the violence. I believed I was unlovable, a throw away, a pariah. When the pain gets bad, that’s where I would go. It’s a dangerous and narcissistic place to be. I never allowed myself to believe that my dreams and desires were still relevant and possible.Without dwelling too much I’d like to acknowledge the truth of it. Had I not been assaulted, odds are I would be fundamentally different. I wouldn’t drop my eyes in the company of men. I would take better care of myself. I wouldn’t feel like I’m walking around with a giant target on my back. And I wouldn’t be in survivor mode all the time, constantly on the lookout, waiting for the other shoe to drop.Most people probably never even give me a second glance. They see a dumpy, middle-aged woman,with a gray streak of hair and that’s it. They don’t think about hurting me. They have no idea I’ve fought for my life. They don’t see my scars. They don’t know I’m a survivor constantly living in survivor-mode. There is no giant, scarlet V sewn on my chest.That future I thought I could never have? I’m making it happen. I’m writing, I’m creating and I’m taking time for myself. I see value in who I am.Do I still struggle? Of course. Almost daily in fact. I have to work hard to remind myself that I am loved. I have to make myself get up each morning and do the work I want to do. I force myself to write and I don’t feel guilty about enjoying it. I have to teach myself that it’s okay to take care of myself. I can curl my hair and feel pretty. I can wear a tank top and not worry about being called a slut. I can be comfortable in my skin.My friend was right. His vision of me was a revelation. He held up a mirror and told me to look closer,to see past the scars. You know what? I liked what I saw. I saw a woman who loves her friends and family. I saw a person who enjoys a joke, who loves to travel, who likes cupcakes, and cheesy TV shows. I saw someone who deserves to pursue her dreams and goals. I saw a survivor. I saw me. I saw Amber.
Amber Gideon is a writer, blogger, designer and survivor. She has written professionally in the HR and technology field, and currently blogs at http://msannthropy.blogspot.com/ , and is currently writing a book about human trafficking. She is best known for her amazing cupcakes, her love of zombies, and her ability to Facebook, twitter and read a book all at the same time.

Feedback posted on one of our pages…

I don’t know how often the pages to the right on our blog are read, and since this is such a valuable resource for families, I didn’t want this to get lost in the shuffle.  Thank you so much for visiting our blog, we appreciate what you’re doing and hope we are helping in our own small way.

It is so hard to know what to say after reading something like this but I do understand how hard it must be for both you, your family and for Vale, I can believe how hard it was to find out that someone so close to you has been hurt in such an awful way and that they felt the only way to ease the pain is to continue to hurt themselves, I am a male survivor of childhood sexual abuse and during my teenage years I cut myself and harmed myself in many ways physically and mentally, I spent most of my teenage years in a dark depression where I felt so alone and like no one could ever understand me that self destruction felt like the only answer. But there is light at the end of the tunnel and it doesn’t have to hurt so much, with more and more sites on-line for survivors of abuse and resources available to them and their families the burden becomes so much lighter and easier to handle, Please tell your son he is not alone, and none of this was ever his fault. I admire you and your family for your strength and support for Vale and I know it is hard now but it will get better. I wish you all the very very best for your futures and if ever you need some advice, support or just to talk I invite you and your family to join our support group at www.betrayedboys.com we will do whatever we can to help you guys with anything you need.

What about the fallout

I want to write a series of posts on fallout.  To my surprise, so few people understand what lies in the aftermath of sexual abuse.  I guess they see it as one and done or something.  ”Boo hoo, have a little cry then back to life has normal” and I can’t think of an idea that is further from the truth.  It still hits me for a loop when we encounter something that is seemingly so innocuous, but due to fall out it becomes a problem.  Going to a restaurant, simple phrases people toss out, being at Chuck E Cheese for crying out loud!  These have all become somewhat of a situation due to the consequences of a traumatic event.

As always, I have other survivors and especially parents of survivors out there in mind when I write my blog entries.  No two circumstances are exactly alike, I realize that.  So there will never be anyone else who visits this blog and experiences all the same things as we do.  But when they read a post about something that seems so random yet impacts so hard perhaps they will feel like, “yeah!  Something like that happened to us too!”  Because outside of trauma real uh… normal.. um, .. regular… *darn*…non traumatized people (?) couldn’t relate.  We have our own weird little sub culture, I guess.  But we aren’t alone, are we.

Astounded

I was checking my tumblr today and saw that my blog has had over 406,000 hits!!  That, to me, is incredible, and has left a large smile on Vale’s face.  I think it aids in his healing to know so many people want to hear his story.  So if you’ve visited my page, if you’ve posted a note, if you’ve followed, reblogged (and yes, even you who made fun of my posts) or liked my posts, I thank you.  You’re helping my son get better.  My heart can not express the words of gratefulness for that.

Last Friday (the good part)

I didn’t get to post since Friday because the weekend went by pretty quickly.  Vale was able to go to his first equine therapy session and he *loved* it.  We are trying to put in place different therapies that didn’t require talking.  He does have Biblical therapy once every other week (because we have to pay out of pocket for it) which is more of a talking therapy, but besides that he has art therapy twice a week and equine therapy once a week.

From what I gather from Vale, he spent his time with two different horses in an enclosed arena making obstacles and then trying to encourage the horses to go through it.  He worked with two different equine therapists who helped design and build the obstacles and instructed Vale as to what to do.  I believe this all was a trust building exercise.  One of the horses is afraid of water, so they simulated water with a blue tarp and Vale had to encourage the horse to trust him to lead her through the ‘water’.

Whatever went on there left Vale in a terrific and hungry mood.  As we got into our car he said, ‘I’m hungry!’  That’s a first in a long time.  Vale just doesn’t get hungry any more.  We stopped for some fast food and he ate really well.  Kinda twisted when we rejoice over our son eating chicken nuggets, huh?  Shows you where we’re truly at!

But above all of that, Vale really had a ‘break through’ (listen to me borrowing pop psychology).  Vale admitted out loud that he hated himself and blamed himself for his past abuse.  I asked him if he could tell me just one thing that he thought he may have done wrong and he replied that he couldn’t remember telling his abusers, ‘no’.  Of course I reassured him (or tried to) that it didn’t matter.  He was a little boy, and no one has a right for any reason to do to him what they did.  I don’t know how much of my assurance sunk in, but I was so proud of him for being able to admit to himself (and out loud even!) that he blamed himself for the rape.  In the past, Vale would have a very nonchalant attitude about the abuse, like it really didn’t matter to him.  That apathetic attitude will keep him imprisoned.

Vale then went to a youth group meeting with our church and came home very excited about that as well.  He discovered there was someone in the church who is in the profession that he wishes to pursue.  He mentioned how much he enjoyed talking to another one of the adults from the church and even interacted with other young people.  Vale’s brother also reported that Vale had something to eat at the gathering which was great!  Vale also pulled out his communication color cards and laid light blue in my lap which means, “I feel great!”  That was the first time since we started using the cards that he has used that one.

Over all, it really was a terrific, progress making day for Vale.  What a relief!

Sarcasm

Vale just started 20 mg of Prozac today, which is double his previous dose.  He is now getting more of the medication in his system which may make him, at least in the short term, more suicidal. I’m absolutely terrified confident that he will be even more dangerous stable than before.  I’m worried sure that everything will go horribly wrong be just fine!  That black box warning that teens who take Prozac are at a higher risk of suicide when the dose increases may actually will never happen to Vale!  No!  As he starts to feel artificially better and have more medicinally fueled energy, he will use it for destructive and deadly constructive and useful purposes.  I will never rest easy tonight just thinking about it! =)

The way you lie..

On the first page of our story (placement)
The future seemed so bright  (adoption)
Then this thing turned out so evil  (disclosure)
I don’t know why i’m still surprised
Even angels have their wicked schemes
(And things have gone) to new extremes
Vale, you’ll always be my hero
Even though you’ve lost your mind

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn
Well that’s alright because I like the way it hurts
Just gonna stand there and hear me cry
Well that’s alright because I love the way you lie
I love the way you lie
I love the way you lie