Poorly Again - PTSD

This post is highly personal, and honest. Please think carefully before reading if you have your own PTSD and pain in your life, and particularly a history of sexual assualt. I won't be offended. 

I'm protecting someone. I don't know why. This person tried to take everything from me, my child, my job, my liberty. It happened a week ago. This person, a childminder in whom I placed my trust, made a serious allegation of child neglect. Child neglect is a crime, punishable with prison time. She said my child is dirty and smelly, that he is fed junk food, and that I dress him inappropriately for cold weather. She's either seriously deluded or.....I dunno, seriously deluded? She reported me to the social services safeguarding team. Fortunately Joseph has been in a placement for nearly 2 years and they totally backed me. I spoke to the social workers involved who immediately saw this allegation for what it was and proceeded no further. I have done so much safeguarding training and work that to be honest, initially I just saw this as another nuisance thing to deal with in my busy life.

But now, it's set in.

I am derailed. I thought I was doing ok. All my life I have protected people who have tried to hurt me. From the man who anally raped me at 5 years old, to the husband who married a virgin then raped her so severely she bled and was bruised. That was me. I never sought help because as a Christian (the type I was back then) had been conditioned that I had no right to say no to sex as a wife. So conditioned I was to hurt I just got on with it.

I just feel so tired. I am so sick of being attacked, of being made to feel inferior and no one can do that without my consent. I am not inferior. But I am broken.

My dear friend Daniel asked me the other day what the difference between a memory and a flashback is. Memories can be unpleasant, this is true, but memories can be, to an extent controlled. Flashbacks are involuntary memories. They are usually sensory too, physical sensations, smells, sounds, tastes, visions all come back in frightening reality. It's like being trapped inside a 3D telly until someone changes the channel.

PTSD can also make you make stupid connections. My beautiful friend Jennie lost her daughter this week. All week I had been feeling like the allegation of child neglect was the worst thing that could happen to a parent, and then I received Jennie's heart destroying news.

An allegation of child neglect is nothing. Nothing.

Nothing compares to finding your child no longer breathing, not rape, not child sexual assault and certainly not some misguided accusation of neglect.

I will get my brain back.