The breaking open

I didn't know it at the time. At the time it was a pebble hitting the water, clean like a bullet through glass. No huge shock. No time standing still. The shock would come in dribs and drabs over the years. The bullet landed in 2015. 

My sister, Josie, took her life on 8th May 2015. It was her last act of control, defiance, arranged around adaptations to her trauma that gave her more hooks than most. It was her husbands birthday. He has to live with this every year until he dies. It is not his fault. She, like me and my eldest sister, were raised in a chaotic and abusive household. Josie's adaptation was to have no needs. To put everyone else in front of her. This means she was liked. It also meant she was invisible. After cancer in her 20's took away her plan to heal, having her own family she could love and care for, the spiral downwards began. 

My first experience with "mental health" was a referral from my GP who suggested counselling. This was in 2015, and forward looking at the time. I remember having 6 sessions with "Hazel". She walked me to the door over those sessions. She took me to the door opening, opened the door and then my sessions were up. I was confused, left bereft and looking back, didn't understand what had happened. 

The panic attacks started in 2017. Heart palpitations so heavy that my chest would visibly move. The pain, the shock that my sisters death caused, had initially been absorbed into my nervous system and contained in numbness for 12 months. Then the shock made itself known. I remember lying in a bed in San Jose, California, wondering if I'd wake in the morning. It was a visceral experience. 

Later in 2017 my father died. We had a very difficult relationship. He was absent, but when he was present it created an environment of pure threat. Anything out of line at all would be judged, punished. Emotionally and physically. He threatened use of a belt often. He terrorised his family. His children. When he died, I broke open. Looking back it was pure grief for something that would never be. I cried hard, often for hours. This would continue on a regular basis, for years. 

Between 2017 and 2019 I was in and out of hospital often. Once the cognitive ability is overwhelmed beyond its capability, the body manifests suffering and pain in the only ways it can, though itself. I had numerous tests for bowl and stomach disorders. I visited A&E a few times with what I thought were heart attacks, luckily they weren't. I had MRI scans on my heart because of palpitations, something I'd suffered with since my 20's but brushed under the carpet. 

Cognitive overload has to exist in order to break open. The very mindset that created what looked like a good career, a happy family and relationships that were managed rather than enjoyed, was also the mindset that created the adaptations required to exist carrying so much pain for a lifetime. Once that mind could not think its way out of the trauma that was being layered on, piece by piece, the body took over. The body makes you notice. It provides markers that are pathologised and medicated away. I refused to medicate them away. 

I carried the breaking open from 2015 to 2025. By the latter date my nervous system was pushing energy through my system in ways that can only be described as feeling like being plugged into the universe. Universal grief, suffering, feeling it all. Flows of blue and white energy flooding my body. I was being instructed by my body to stop and focus on healing, or pay the price for ignoring the message. When I had a nosebleed that lasted for 45 mins on the last day of my last contract and my blood pressure readings hit 220/120, I was instructed to attend A&E by my GP. It was time to listen. It was March 2025. I listened.