I realize I have been absent much in the big scheme of the blogging world and, I apologize. I am now a full time student!! Yep. I've got a lot on my plate. However, that being said; I wanted to share a paper I wrote for my English 101 class. It got a good review from my instructor. It's time to share some intense and real feelings from me.
Death is not the end, it's another beginning. But what happens if your work isn't done in this life? I explore that and more in this paper that's self reflective and more along the lines of a memoir. I hope you find help, hope, and love in this.
When my life flashed before my eyes, and the realization of the damage that could be done by leaving, was the moment I acknowledged the impact I had yet to leave on the world. I didn’t decide to be raped, but I chose to be a survivor. I didn’t choose the medications to control my PTSD, but by taking them my life would forever be altered.
Surviving rape left me with flashbacks, nightmares, depression, anxiety, insomnia, and a fear that just wouldn’t leave. I knew I needed help to alleviate some of these things I had been overwhelmed with so I could cope and get through therapy. My daughters needed their mother, so I sought out professional help in a psychiatrist, thinking they would be able to help me manage my problems with medication.
Day after day following my trauma, I would stand at my kitchen sink, preparing to swallow a handful of caplets and pills prescribed just to keep me alive, able to deal with the aftermath. Each caplet, strangely enticing, with the hope of relief within its shiny exterior. The tablets, coated to go down smoothly, put me at ease with my fears until the next handful was due. Twenty one different tablets and caplets a day I would drink down in one gulp. I trusted that what I was ingesting was in my best interest and would help me, eventually. But relief never came with the daily doses of medications. Doctor after doctor. Prescription after prescription. No relief was in sight.
My therapist I saw once or twice a week would sit and visit with me. She was watchful of the way I was feeling, how my medicines made me feel, and offered me hope for my future. Wendy had reviewed my medications at every visit and under a gut feeling of “something just isn’t right”; she went to her laptop and researched my medications, their interactions, and side effects. Her fingers rapidly tapping the keys, digging for answers, when all of a sudden, she stopped typing and her posture changed. I could feel the energy change in the room. It was thick and worrisome.
It’s funny that she would be the one to recognize symptoms of a slow and silent killer. Wendy wasn’t a psychiatrist, but simply the best therapist ever. What she was about to tell me would scared me. “Amy, you need to find a different doctor. You are showing signs of Serotonin Syndrome and I’m afraid with what I am reading here, you’re close to being in a dire situation fast.” Finding out you shouldn’t have lived seven days, much less seven months on what you were prescribed to try to keep you alive was frightening. The loads of pills I was instructed to take should have killed me on two separate occasions within one year. I was “thisclose” to checking out of this life. Two different prescriptions, when taken at the same time on a regular dose are lethal, and I had been prescribed a double of each. I sat there, thinking to myself “How in the world can this be possible? How could someone prescribe such things to offer help but really leave you to die?”
I was pacing internally. My logic screaming over and over in my head. I was furious that someone could practice medicine and do such a thing. “Was this in retaliation for me being ‘foolish’ to trust a co-worker who would rape me?” I thought. “The first psychiatrist to treat me said it was my fault. MY FAULT!” I screamed inside. The hot tears rolled down my face, smearing my mascara, the only proof I had that showed I remotely cared what I looked like anymore. So, following Wendy’s advice, I sought out a new professional to evaluate my medications.
Within two days I was in the new psychiatrist’s office, telling him my lists of medications. Wringing my hands with anxious anticipation, I sat patiently for him to respond. He turned to his computer, typed a few things, clicked here and there. Then, he sat quietly for a few moments. I broke the silence, “If I died, there wouldn’t be any explanation?” I prodded the psychiatrist for answers.
“Correct,” the doctor said coolly. Sitting quietly in thought, trying not to freak out on this man, and wrap my mind around death, I began to tremble.
He continued, “We are going to have to detox you. The levels you are on will not be easy to bring you down from. You have the option of being put in a medically induced coma to come off of all of them, or wean off of them one at a time at home.”
I sat there and shook my head, planted my head in my hands and thought about my three little girls. Their father worked in Oregon, three hours away and couldn’t help with the girls if I had to enter a hospital. “So I guess I go one at a time. It’s my only option,” I muttered.
“Let’s start with Cymbalta first. Go ahead and half the dose starting tomorrow. Stay at half a dose for one week, then next week remove the other,” said the doctor. I raised a brow, as if my face were saying sarcastically, “Right, like this is going to work.” Little did I know I was spot on.
The detox was excruciating. Tremors, sweats, convulsions, and vomiting happened the first day, the second day wasn’t as horrific, but the days passing were still torture. I was sure I had been sentenced to hell. Openly sobbing and weeping for relief, I had wished I could die than endure another moment of detox. I could do no more than lay curled up in bed with a tear soaked pillow and my comforting blanket from my best friend, Judy. I spent several days miserable and tortured. “Surely this can’t be the way to live, I swear I’m dying! What about dying in your sleep peacefully?” The cycle would continue for 6 weeks to remove four more medications from my system.
Once was enough for me to endure such a terrible circumstance. But it didn’t stop at just once. The second doctor, again, caused Serotonin Syndrome. Knowing the upcoming process and suffering I would face, pits of despair and anguish washed over me- absolute hopelessness for my health and my future. Yet again, I went through detox to get me off of the lethal medications. It was as excruciating and difficult as the first time. Surely dying would be easier than suffering this all over again. My depression buried me in a cloud of worthlessness. Until one day, my worth was made apparent to me.
I was having an anxious and sleepless night. I couldn’t rest or lay still as my brain was flooded with busy thoughts, and I was in dire need of rest. I had been prescribed medicines to help with the anxiety and to help me sleep as needed. They had always sat unused on my shelf, but tonight I was desperate for slumber. So, I picked up the bottle, read the instructions and shook out two into my hand. “Such tiny little green tablets,” I thought to myself. “Please God, let this allow me rest.” I popped them into my mouth, washed it down with a big gulp of water and returned to my bed.
As I slipped into a state of relaxation, I could feel my body getting stiff in the fetal position I had fallen into. My kneecaps felt locked and rigid. The blanket tucked up around my face rubbed against my nose with each shallow breath. Each breath getting farther and farther apart. My logical mind felt like it was slipping out of my skull, being pulled away like a tide would pull on the beach waters to return.
It was then I woke up, staring into the face of my grandmother who had died four and a half years earlier. The joy I felt to see her again radiated light bright beams from my soul. I sat on my bed while she stood in front of me, adoring her beauty and feeling her love consume me with great warmth. How I missed her! She spoke to me, though not as we speak to one another. Her thoughts could be heard inside my mind as clear as ever. “Amy, I’m here for you. I came for you. Please come with me and let me show you some things.” She stretched out her hand and pulled me off of my bed and away from my body that now lay motionless.
I never would have expected to die from wanting to sleep, but I passed a mortal life of breath, hunger, and pain for moments of ease, love, weightlessness. What I didn’t expect was the gravity of my choice if I wanted to leave this life, and this is exactly what she came to show me.
She led me over to my computer that was open. I leaned in to see the screen and what I saw would change my worthless feelings in an instant. It was Facebook, with post after post from those who had felt my impact, who loved me, who would miss me. The heartache I read over and over in each post caused a moment of reflection and sadness. Gently my grandmother began to tug me away from my computer and told me to follow her down the hall into my living room.
Ten chairs sat filled with family and friends. Each of my children taking a chair, their father, my aunt and uncle, my best friends Judy and Alicia, and my therapist, Wendy filled the others. I looked around the room and could hear the questions in their minds, see the tears each person would shed mourning me, and felt their deep loss. “Who’s going to take care of me? Why is my mommy gone? Why did she leave me?” were the helpless thoughts I heard over and over from my children. The thoughts of everyone else were flooding over one other but I could feel into the depths of my present being their absolute pain and loss. I squeezed my grandmother’s hand harder, feeling the peace that came with her returning grip.
“Amy,” she spoke to me, “it’s not your time to go yet. You still have a great work to do here, but you can choose to go with me if you like.” I reflected on the things that I had been shown and the feelings that pierced me to my core. The peace, the freedom I felt being with her and leaving the tormented human body behind were so alluring.
“No more medications or doctors. No more suffering and pain…” I said to her, breaking mid-sentence “but please… take me back.” She nodded as if to say she understood my heart and led me by my hand again, down my much shorter hallway now and into my bedroom. I held her hand, tightly, feeling each knuckle and the last bit of warmth I would want to cherish, while fearing the loss of her all over again. I sat down in my bed, on top of my lifeless body, taking all of her in for one last time until it would really be my time to go.
“Grandma, I love you. Not a day passes I don’t miss you. Please stay close. I’m scared…” I pleaded with her. My grandmother then laid me down into my body, softly kissed my forehead, and said “I love you, now wake up Amy. Wake up.” The stiffness was leaving my body and I felt that heaviness again. My eyes started to flutter and adjust to the surroundings that lay before me. She was gone, and I was alone. I searched my bed for my phone that had the sleep monitor running. It was flat-lined for four hours. This was not typical as my sleep is interrupted and has more peaks and valleys than the Rockies. It would be the only proof of what happened in what felt like ten minutes, and yet, who’s going to believe a phone application that registers sleep patterns? But I knew with my whole being what happened. I couldn’t deny it.
The exhaustion that came over me following my experience had laid me up in bed for the entire day, but granted me the time to sit and evaluate what I really wanted in life. Pondering on what just happened and what work I had left to do, it was then I decided I had to find joy and a purpose in this life. Things that had once held me back before seemed so minimal and inconsequential now.
I always knew I wanted to help people with their eating, thinking, and physical fitness habits. I just wanted the papers to prove I could do what I really wanted to do professionally. The following day I registered for classes in Nutritional Sciences at Central Arizona College, all to be completed online. Such a sense of accomplishment and joy came over me.
It was then that I wanted to share my life experiences of failure and success with others, to inspire them to be great and find peace in their lives, so I set up a challenge group. I was inviting people to change their lives with me, for thirty days. Their challenge? To complete thirty miles in thirty days, every day to post some positive driving comment or quote to fuel them, and to be accountable for what they ate. The success they are finding with me has been some of the most rewarding work I have ever been involved in.
Is it the choices you make that define you? Perhaps it’s the choices of others or things out of your control that shape or mold you? My life experiences are a tale of both. Others may impact your life negatively, but it’s what you do with it that ultimately determines your joy and outcome. I have the ability to share with others, joy in spite of heartache, failure, abuse, and sickness. I pave the way for others now to live a full life. I wanted people to be simply inspired to live a better life. And this is precisely what I have named my business. “Be Simply Inspired.”
