Lost or Stolen

May I please put up a poster? It reads lost or stolen; everything inside. Everything I’ve seen or known, all my friends, my favorite things.

I’m looking for myself, do you know me, who I was and how I’ve been? I’ve heard I haven’t been well. I’ve had conflicting reports of my visage and personality. Could all be true, or maybe none? My body's there but no spark of life.

Light floods in illuminating all I can see, but I still feel like I’m stuck in my dream. Someone looming just overhead but I’m unable to rouse and run. I swear I’m screaming in my head, all the while never shifting.

Exactly like the line of dolls turned round on the shelf, with empty eyes and empty porcelain self, staring deadly at the painted wood. A hollow sound when you tap outside, the slightest nudge sending me crashing, and shattering to the ground. Lying broken in a thousand irreplaceable pieces. Swept up and hidden under other trash so no one sees.

K.B. Silver

Survivors of trauma can go years running on autopilot until finally, something forces them to face that trauma. For me it has taken many instances, peeling back many layers, to find and acknowledge the pain and degree of destruction that these experiences have wrought in my life. I have had to create a new life removed from that pain, and those missing memories for so long, it is as if that entire part of my life was lost, or stolen from me. When it is all of my formative years and the memories that should form the basis for my personality, it has always felt like I am just the mask and nothing underneath.

As I have described in some other pieces and will continue to share, I have made breakthroughs in regard to memory recovery. The last six months or so have been like a torrent, more than a trickle.

After grasping and being able to hold tight to the memories of my mother taking me to doctor after doctor throughout my life, getting diagnosis after diagnosis, which for some unknown reason included hiding from me the Autism diagnosis I know I received from at least two different doctors. then as threads are want to do, it started to unravel. This is why I write them down, so I can see the shape they formed.

I just spent an entire shower ugly crying, trying to piece things together. The autism was there my whole life, what started abruptly was the psychiatric medication. When we moved to Florida, I entered constant sensory overload. It was Hot or cold, with No in-between. There was air conditioning running everywhere all the time. Not wanting to go outside was not an option, PE was outside! My family went to the beach on an almost weekly basis. The smell alone made me vomit every time but really it was the sun exposure I’m sure. Yes, I vomited every time we went to the beach. In fact, I vomited every day we were there, for over 5 years. I had rolling migraines for months that ended for a few days and then immediately started again. The very first week we moved there I contracted red tide poisoning they couldn’t identify for months, and I have had chronic bronchitis ever since. That was when my suddenly increased and progressive neurological symptoms started, neuropathy, tremors, and releasing/ dropping things from my hands.

Now tell me, how many months could you endure of this before being diagnosed with depression, I made it like six months maybe, then, because the depression meds made me violently ill, didn’t work, and I kept having “outbursts” I was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. Those meds made me suicidal and didn’t work, so they tried medication after medication, after medication. treatment which of course followed me across the country to California. Some made me suicidal, some turned me into a zombie, trapping me frozen in my steps, needing to be guided downstairs, or not getting up off the couch to go to school, something I once loved. The worst of them destroyed my inhibition, leaving me trapped in my own mind, going for a ride and doing things I am filled with shame and regret even thinking about right now. My parents subsequently kicked me out of their home for “losing control.” I was hospitalized twice, where the doctors ignored my stated health information, that past trials of these medications were terribly detrimental to my life's course. They haphazardly gave me medications that had already been shown to hurt my brain. Why? I have no idea because patients are idiots I guess.

They threatened me with ECT, what’s that? Electro Convulsive Therapy, thought that was a thing of the past? It isn’t, why were they going to use it, and how did they phrase it? “If you don’t quit acting up, you are going to get the only treatment we have left for patients like you there aren’t any pills left for.” That’s right because Valium didn’t work, and I told them it wouldn’t work, they threatened me with a personality-destroying treatment the populace likes to comfort themselves by saying that is just a thing of the past, something from Nurse Ratched. Once I finally got out of my 9-day hospital stay, thank god my great aunt’s phone number was in the phone book, because they took away my phone, and laptop, but wouldn’t let me leave until I had a “verifiable safe place” to go. If I hadn’t gotten a hold of her, who knows how long I would have been stuck inside, even though I voluntarily checked in. I had found a doctor to listen to what I am saying, only my mother was always there to translate it since I am in such a bad state, and of course, with insurance changes, I don’t even have that doctor anymore. My doctor for 18 years.

I have just been reeling from the realization that all of the things I have ever been diagnosed with my mother was there with me in the exam room, she spoke for me, because I was assaulted by a doctor as a child and had a lot of anxiety around doctors' visits. Or you know, because I am autistic, and not only has she always known, it has always been obvious, so even once I became an adult the doctors always just go along with it. I haven’t had to explain that story, well since I just got my new doctor last week, and I have seen other doctors, just not gotten a new PCP. Most of the time she was suggesting possible problems to me and the doctor. I am not saying that means all of my doctors were so suggestible that I don’t have anything wrong with me except for autism. I am just kind of questioning my health history at this point. I feel like I need to go into a doctor's office clean and tell them my symptoms, and start all over again. I guess I have my chance, and right at the perfect time. When I thought I had come so far, that is terrifying. But when the possibility I have been overmedicated, and the fact that the more medications I have replaced with vitamins and supplements, I have felt better and better, and been physically more able again has been true. So thinking of it logically, that may not be so crazy. I am not the kind of person to stop taking my medications, It is in fact how I ended up in some of those situations. I was telling my doctor the medications were having a bad effect, but when they didn’t do anything, I just kept taking them. Granted I am not sure what other choice I had, I feel trapped right now, and I am terrified my medications may be wrong for me, but I can’t stop taking them, possibly ever for fear of the worse effect if I always did need them. I am terrified thinking how many un-diagnosed autistic teens and adults have had ECT administered. The lies of a mother infesting your mind, body, and soul, THAT is a generational curse.