Day Twenty-nine: Night of Silence

"Cold are the people/Winter of life/We tremble in shadows/This cold endless night/Frozen in the snow lie roses, sleeping/Flowers that will echo the sunrise/Fire of hope is our only warmth/Weary, its flame will be dying soon." -- from Night of Silence by Daniel Kantor

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Thanksgiving has passed and for the first time in my life, I have not been with any extended family. Because of this, the preparation for Thanksgiving dinner has fallen completely to me. I have never done this before, but have manage to pull it off with a precooked ham, boxed stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, broccoli casserole, store bought rolls, and a homemade pumpkin pie. It takes a lot of planning and a fair amount of effort on the day of, but everything comes out really tasty and is well-received by everyone, even my sometimes unpredictably picky big girls. It is the first time in a long time that I've felt a bit more like myself. Even so, I find that the effort of cooking and baking drains me and I am much more irritable than I have any right to be. 

My weekly sessions with Pendragon continue each week and these days, instead of just one hour, we usually talk for at least an hour and a half, sometimes two hours depending on how long it takes me to actually start talking. I have struggled so much with this darkness for so long and have had so many periods where I have felt like I was drowning and that I no longer trust myself or my feelings or thoughts about anything. It is so hard to talk about all of this and there have been many times when I have gone to my weekly appointment that I have struggled to say more than a word or two and have sat in silence for minutes at a time too. Thankfully, Pendragon is particularly skilled at getting me to open up, even when things are at their darkest and I am drowning in thoughts of self-destruction and so much inner turmoil that I cannot even fathom how to start talking about it. Somehow, he always knows exactly what to say to draw me out of my silence. I sometimes think the Holy Spirit must be nudging him in those moments to help him help me find my voice.

Speaking of the Holy Spirit, one of the topics that we seem to return to amidst all of our talking in these sessions is my faith. Pendragon knows how important it has always been to me and how painful any practice of faith has become for me. It is the beginning of December and has been just five months since my five day stay at Pine View. Something about that experience stole any hope that I had away from me and shook my faith in a way that I never thought possible. I have talked ad nauseum with Pendragon about the exact moment when I could no longer feel God's presence with  me and the complete silence I feel from Him and we have discussed things to do that might help me feel closer to God or be positive ways to strengthen my faith again. I am still so angry with God for abandoning me in my darkest hour that I can barely stomach the things of faith that have always given me comfort -- prayer, scripture reading, spiritual reading of other kinds, worship, singing hymns and songs of praise to God, even being around other believers -- now make me want to run screaming into the night. 

I still participate in our family prayer time at night and I still go to choir practice and Mass where I receive the Holy Eucharist. I still seek the graces that come from the Sacrament of Reconciliation when I have need and I have been anointed by our pastor Father K and a number of other priests for healing. I have friends and family covering me in prayer and thanks to Chez's blog, multiple thousands of people (perhaps more) that I don't even know praying for me. Chez is, himself, praying for me daily along with his wife and family. My friend Rikert, who has known me since high school, is praying for me with his wife and the small group at his church. With all of these prayers storming heaven and these graces being poured into my life, I ought to be feeling the love and presence of God in a deeply powerful way, but I am not. I feel more alone than ever. I know cognitively that God is there, but there is such a huge disconnect that I cannot feel Him in any way and it appears that He has, despite everything that everyone says, abandoned me.

One of the most painful things is participating in choir at church and my duties as cantor a couple of times a month. I spend many a choir practice in almost total silence, only opening my mouth to sing  when I must and being so overwhelmed by despair at times that I retreat to the ladies' room down the hall to cry. A couple of weeks ago as we were practicing a song for Advent called "Night of Silence", I completely lost it in the middle of the rehearsal and ran out of the choir room with tears streaming down my face. Singing the Psalms as a cantor almost undoes me because so many of them speak of God's love, mercy and nearness to those who call upon Him or those who are faithful to Him. I continue on in it because I have made a commitment to it. Every time I get up before the congregation to proclaim the Psalms and lead them in the response, my voice quavers and on a number of occasions, I have barely made it through without bursting into tears in front of everyone. I sometimes question my sanity that I continue to put myself through this pain week after week when it just makes me so miserable.

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As for the rest of this madness, it is still plaguing me so much that even as we make plans to go north for Christmas, I wonder if I will still be around to celebrate it. I have been buying presents, making lists, readying clothes and suitcases for packing, going over the van to ensure a safe trip, checking and double checking with Gray about his vacation time being approved, making plans with Balinda about when we'll arrive and checking all the various dates on my calendar to make sure I don't miss anything crucial like a school Christmas party or appointment with Pendragon. It is a whirlwind and sometimes takes my mind off of things, but when I am alone or everything is quiet, the heaviness descends deeper and pulls me down into its embrace. It is in these moments that I feel powerless to do anything to help myself. Worse still, the nightmares have continued but now they are not the only thing that is causing me to relive that horrible time in the hospital.

Just the other day I had a rather stressful and particularly busy day. It was a day of trying to run some errands and the list was rather long. I managed to get most of it done, but my energy ran out before I was able to finish it all. GB and I came home in time for her to get a nap and after putting her down, I decided to sit down and go over my lists and calendar before laying down to rest myself for a bit. 

I settled myself in the rocking chair and whipped out my phone to check things. After sorting my lists, I went to get up and head upstairs to lay down and then it happened. Clang. Click. The sound of a TV turned up far too loud. And the long white hall stretched in front of me. There is a woman walking down the hall and she turns to me and says, "So, you feeling better now?" No. No. No. NO!!! My heart races and I can hardly breathe. I am back at Pine View. Oh God. Why? Why am I here? How did I get here? Oh God, help me! HELP ME!!!! And then I felt the soft carpet of our living room floor beneath my feet and the cushions of the rocking chair beneath my body. I looked around me, confused and disoriented. Where am I? What just happened? I sat panting, gasping for breath and my heart beating so fast that I was afraid it would burst out of my chest. My body was shaking all over and my face and neck were damp with tears. I sat for several minutes, rooted to the spot and as the minutes clicked by, the world began to right itself. My breathing eased, heart beat slowed, and I stopped trembling. I felt weak, but more grounded and if I wasn't exhausted before, that experience had done it. I finally stood up and made my way upstairs. As I laid down in the bed and put on my CPAP mask, a realisation dawned on me about what had just happened. I just had a flashback. I shivered as I pulled the covers over me and breathed in through my nose. 

To this day, I don't understand why that happened, but it was only the first one. Since that day, I have had several more flashbacks and it is almost always the same thing, standing in the doorway of my room at Pine View and hearing the door to the ward clang shut and click locked, seeing the hallway and the woman who irritated me with her questions, and then something in my real environment pulls me back to the present time and place. Many times, that has been Gray gently helping me find my way back to reality, but I have had several when he has been at work as well. After the first one, it is as though my already weakened, exhausted brain has become perforated so that when I am very tired, overstimulated, or emotional, the lines between the here and now and the past blur and I find myself transported back to that place and time, reliving it all over again. Since being very tired tends to trigger these flashbacks, I have had more than a few of them upon first laying down to go to sleep. 

Pendragon and I have talked about them briefly and he has mentioned a kind of treatment called EMDR that is helpful for these kinds of symptoms. I have heard of it before because Samantha mentioned it when I was in the partial hospitalisation program the first time four years ago, but I don't really know much about it except that it requires special training for the therapist and Pendragon hasn't been trained in it, so he would have to refer me to someone else. Because I don't know much about it, I decide to look it up. When I do, I find out that it is used primarily for people who have PTSD. PTSD? But I don't...a significantly traumatic experience, nightmares, avoidance of thinking or talking about the trauma, high levels of emotional arousal.....and flashbacks... 

So now, as if severe depression wasn't enough, it would appear that I have several of the symptoms of PTSD. I don't know if I qualify for a diagnosis, but so much of it seems to fit. This really is a horrible, horrible gift that keeps on giving and I wish it would stop.

Oh God, where are you in all of this? Where are you in my night of silence? My fire of hope has long since gone out and all that is left is are the weary embers of obedience. Their glow is kept alive by the prayers of others, but it is too weak to last forever. I can't take any more. Please God. I have nothing left. I am running on fumes physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Please don't make me suffer any more. I can't. I just can't.