ptsd

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Your Disability Is In Your Head

Trigger warnings: mental illness, SA

My disability, as I’ve been told by my parents during some of the hardest years of my life, is all in my head. The accumulated and compounded effects of strife in my life that eventually developed into a deep, dark depression- it’s not physically tangible, so how could it have been real?

I have a unique relationship with my disability. The one that I grapple with the most is one that is acquired, not inherited or born into. I have post-traumatic stress disorder, and I am not a war veteran. I am a sexual assault survivor. My disability was acquired through experiencing trauma and then experiencing the more deeply horrific experience of utter social isolation, lack of support, and lack of real mental health resources for someone of my age, specific trauma, and cultural background. I was diagnosed when I was 13, before I realized I have ADHD, depression, and GAD. Most of those are co-morbid.

My relationship with my disability was very much through the lens of the medical model- something is wrong with me, it is my problem to fix, and in the mean time, *some* institutions and people may be willing to accomodate my different needs despite the burden that it is (that I am), but ultimately the onus of responsibility for my disability, for my neurodivergence and its physiological consequences, is on me.

I realized much more recently that this may not be true. This semester, it was reiterated to me in the form of Tom Shakespeare’s reading about the social model of disability. // In our view, it is society which disables […] impaired people. Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments,
by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society. (p. 215)//

I don’t agree with every aspect of this reading, such as how mental disabilities are not acknowledged by the founders/ creaters of the social model. But I do resonate with this new way of thinking- that the structures we live within are not inclusive to all people that live within them. This leads some people to struggle much more than others to get through their days.

I only started truly believing recently that I deserve the accomodations I have. Not because I didn’t believe that I was disabled, but because I saw them as a privilege. But I see it differently now. Not everyone has to deal with what I deal with every day. That doesn’t make them better than me or more normal than me, but it means that their phenomenological experience of this world is not the same. Nobody gets to tell me that my disability isn’t valid when they have never walked in my shoes. Nobody gets to tell me to suck it up and find a way to make it through when I see how so many people are able to do with ease, the things that I struggle and toil to do.

Also, yes, my disability is all in my head, in a literal sense. But that doesn’t mean it’s not real.

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“it’s not for everybody”

Please do not read if Military Sexual Trauma is a trigger along with suicide.

I joined the Army in 2018 on a whim. I dropped out of college twice, worked in a warehouse, didn’t have many friends, and felt as if I were doing nothing with my life. I became obsessed with my weight to the point I was restricting food and went to the gym for 3+ hours a day or even twice a day. I craved being worthy in the eyes of society. On a Saturday night, I received a Facebook message “ever considered the army?” What better way to be worthy than to wear a uniform that carries the most meaning in America?

In two weeks, I was gone. At the age of 20, I was headed to Basic Training at Ft Jackson, SC. I had no idea my life would be altered so drastically.

Within my first 3 weeks in basic training, I began my first Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention (SHARP) case. After my report and when other females in training heard, I was outcasted for “ruining someone’s life.”

Little did I know, that was only the beginning.

In total throughout my 3 years in the military, I experienced sexual harassment from 10 DIFFERENT senior enlisted NCO’s. I experienced one extreme case of stalking that finalized the end of my military career. The harassment coming from your superiors in a place where you’re already alone is manipulating and ignites internal gaslighting. You begin to feel like an object, not a human being. Is this all I’m good for in the military? I excelled in my job…why am I not seen for that?

The stalking put me in constant fear. If I knew he had kidnapped someone, it would be easier to know what to expect. If he assaulted someone, it would also be easier to prepare myself, as I know his plan. I didn’t have an explanation, I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t have a single clue of what and why. I couldn’t brace for anything. I asked for help from my command and was accused of having a sexual relationship with him. I lost it after that.

I was sent home from my first and last deployment early with a diagnosis of PTSD from Military Sexual Trauma. I medically retired. For about a year after my separation, I couldn’t hold a job, I couldn’t function as an adult, I was on a high risk list at the VA, I had nightmares/night terrors every night, crippling social anxiety, I got in verbal altercations everywhere I went, I couldn’t drive without getting in to a road rage incident, I still lived in constant fear. In June of 2021, I received a call from someone in my old unit at 0700. She told me the man who stalked me took his own life after his possessions were seized by the Savannah Police Department for explicit images of children. When officers went to execute the arrest warrant, they found his body.

The amount of apologies I received was disgusting. If only someone had listened to my claims. I was easily dismissed for being a woman in the military. It was “typical” in the eyes of men, as if we were making it all up for attention. I was shamed for asking for help, I felt invalid and wished I just kept my mouth shut. I blamed myself, not the other people for what they did to ME but what I did to ME. Would I still be in the military if I had just shut up? If I behaved in the man’s world, would I still have a career? I don’t feel pride from joining the military like one should. I don’t like to talk in depth about it because it feels like I didn’t get all of the body I entered the military with back once I got out. It wasn’t my body in the military, it was everyone’s property and I had no control.

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A monstrous matryoshka

As I had read Susan Stryker’s article on trans rage and the comparison of Victor Frankenstein’s unfortunate monster, I found myself following each word closely. I had so rarely seen anyone talk so openly about the pains and sorrows that are hidden about transgender identity. The discussion in class presented an extremely important point on who is allowed to show and vocalize strong negative emotions like rage and pain. As a person of color, as a queer and transgender individual, my permission of showing these emotions has been quite small, but looking further inward I know that there are other reasons I am not one to show these emotions. For my last post I call upon Stryker’s voice of these negative emotions and a monstrous identity, but not for my transgender identity, but one I am coming to terms with existing within me. I open up the physical patchwork body of mine to see inwards, within the darkness I see a cage chained to the ground. Moving closer I can hear the rattling of anger, I peer inside the cage to see a gnarled and patched up figure, teeth unnaturally pointed and sharp objects partially embedded in its body. I instinctively know these objects were brandished weapons with the purpose of subduing and killing this figure, but they have failed. This figure was human once and I can’t help the sadness I feel seeing what has become of them.

“What happened to you?” I ask cautiously.

The pause feels deafening.

“I’d think you’d recognize us, not many come back from the war of trauma unscathed.”

It’s said that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but no one should be forced to be this strong to the point of being caged in fear.

As an echo to the original article, my comparison of monstrous identity in regards to trauma is not one to be used against all who have trauma. This is my sole reclamation of my past and should never be used against individuals who do not wish to do the same. This post will include raw calls to mental health happenings in response to traumatic experiences. Though there will be no details of happenings, there are insinuations of abuse on varying levels.

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“I’m okay”, “I’m tired”, “No worries!” and other lies I tell: An ode to my failing mental health

Image description: A vast, open ocean with mild waves, it's night and the sky is full of clouds, partially obscuring the full moon. (end ID).

2020 was a train wreck, a dumpster fire, the roller coaster we weren’t allowed to get off, and it doesn’t take much looking to realize everyone is fed up and burnout from the pandemic, over a year of condensed trauma (whether you or someone you knew got sick or not), incompetent people in power, social justice at the forefront of everywhere, up rooted and cancelled life plans, the world is a dart board with every inch covered in things that will decimate your ability to keep going. But 2021 seems to show that 2020 was just a prelude to what our everyday life will be like from here on out.

Content warning!! Candid mental health talk, sucide and suicidal ideation, and open talk about trauma responses (NO details will be given about the traumatic events).

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They Say I Have Her Eyes, Did I Also Inherit His Pain

CW: This post deals with trauma and the resulting mental repercussions and includes mentions of sexual assault and the holocaust.

 

Ever since I was a baby, people have compared me to my parents. When I was younger, my parents would often be told I resembled my father. As I grew older, the comments changed. I was now told I look almost exactly like my mother. I got my mother’s acute sense of smell and taste. It’s easy to point out the observable traits I inherited from my mother, but I may have gotten even more than that. According to recent scientific studies, my mental health may have been affected by my mother’s trauma. Continue reading →

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Now I’m an Amputee G*d D*mn You

Our class discussion from the other day has me thinking. How do we talk about the US’s responsibility in producing disabilities through wars abroad (both in our own veterans and in residents of the countries that serve as the battlegrounds) without implying that disabled people are undesirable or useless?

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