Humble Beginnings Part 2

2007 would mark a turning point in my life. With my mother's passing, I began to feel the full force of my family's abusive behavior; I, however, for the first several years, would be drowning in grief and would hardly notice. My mother's passing would be the most challenging experience of my life and would follow me for the next seventeen years.

While Don would deceive me and leave me in February of 2008, after planning a wedding he had no intention of following through with, and only months after my mothers passing, I would fall into a pattern of self-destruction and promiscuity that would lead to several rapes, wrist slashing, and such extreme suicidal ideation that I had even begun to formulate a suicide plan. Knowing that if I died, it would have to look like an accident so I wouldn't potentially harm others, I would begin to reach out to Allen. A man I had met in 2002 while working for a paper delivery service.

Essentially, Allen would save my life. He would call me multiple times a day to check in, come over and help with daily tasks, and get me out of my apartment; every morning on the way to work, when I was most vulnerable, I would call him. He would talk to me all the way there and back. This would go on for several months until we would finally begin to date with the idea of keeping me safe from myself, and in August of 2009, we would get married.

Allen, who was 22 years older than me, would become a new, safe person and would allow me to begin to fully grieve and begin to let go of my mother. Our relationship would prove to be tumultuous. Yet, my behavior and emotions would be allowed to be expressed in a safe place for the first time. Having this safe space allowed me to navigate and attempt to find parts of myself that I had buried deep inside. While much of my grieving would begin, it wouldn't be until early 2010 that I would return to therapy and return to seeing Eliza.

Struggling past the darkest moments, I would begin to explore DBT for the second time and more in-depth than the first. My work with Eliza would continue for several years until her retirement. While DBT was helpful, I found that it was necessary to have the ability to pause before an unhealthy action to practice the skills in DBT, and I didn't have that ability. My impulsiveness and reactivity were so out of control that I lacked the capability of slowing down to see the triggers clearly.

While EMDR failed because of a lack of memory, DBT failed in that I could not control my reactions in real-time. Mindfulness teaches us to be in the moment, and those were skills I couldn't seem to master.

Eliza's retirement would leave a giant hole inside of me, and I would move to a new therapist who specialized in Borderline Personality Disorder, or BPD for short. Because BPD was the wrong diagnosis, Rose, who would take over for Eliza, really never stood a chance, and I would find myself having difficulty immersing myself in her strategies and therapeutic formula. I desperately needed to understand Mindfulness, and Rose was not trained as a mindfulness therapist. I was once again placed in DBT, only to feel utterly unsatisfied with the results, and again, I would leave therapy.

Allen and I would fight to have a family, only to find we couldn't without significant help, which would begin to drown him in a deep depression and set up our marriage for failure. In 2018, we would divorce. However, within those ten years, He and I would face demons and monsters that neither of us had been prepared for. I had been on Prozac for nearly 18 years at this point, and the apparent signs of just how much it didn't help were leaching into every crack of my life. I had significant memory loss and trouble concentrating and retaining information; I would explode into fits of rage that didn't make sense and, in turn, would create a toxic relationship with the only person who had my back. The inability to have children would eventually break us. After several suicide attempts and a physical illness that was believed to end in death, our marriage would end in divorce after ten years.

This is when I met Ben. Ben reminded me of Jason. He was kind but challenged my ways of thinking, and shortly after meeting him, we fell in love and started a family. My trauma, however, would continue to leech through the meds (Prozac) until it would reach a boiling point. , and I would begin to question if I truly needed them and If I genuinely had Borderline Personality Disorder.

In 2021, I would experience my first psychedelic experience with psilocybin. Ben would encourage me to explore mushrooms and use them as a catalyst to understand myself. Wanting the experience, I would embark on a journey that would leave a lasting impression on me for the rest of my life. I realized later that this experience was an introduction to their healing potential. I felt light, happy, and inspired. Nearly a year later, I would retake them, and in 2022, what I would experience would change everything I had ever known about the world and myself.

My second attempt using psilocybin would result in a dud, as would the third and fourth. It would take an epic dose to break the barriers my brain had made to protect itself because, you see, the next psychedelic experience I would have would explode and rip the carpet out from under me. I would spend the entire trip screaming and crying, "Why doesn't she love me?" and then they spoke to me. "Because she is narcissistic." I heard it clear as day, and while some may say that's nuts, there are several accounts where people have heard the mushrooms talk. I would take this message to mean my sister, who happened to be the topic of this experience, and my entire reality would fall out from under me.

Suddenly, my trauma had boiled to the surface, and I would fall into crisis. Ben, afraid I would commit suicide after a severe headbanging episode, would have me hospitalized for the third time. I would also begin to seek out psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, realizing the healing potential of the medicine and realizing it was my last shot at healing.

After hospitalization and the insistence from the family, I would agree to enter into my final DBT program while preparing for a new therapist with training in cutting-edge therapeutic modalities that would ultimately lead me to genuine and authentic healing for the first time.