Lynne's Story

Recent Posts

  • I learned from a very young age I was alone in the world

    Posted In

    I recall when I was 8 or 9, I had developed a pretty nasty case of pneumonia. At that point, my home life had gone up in flames as my dad had come out of the closet and my mom was in an ever losing battle with her pill addiction.

    I was lying on the sofa, extremely sick. My dad was on the computer gaming, largely ignoring me. My mom was completely zooted and talking nonsense. At one point she called me over to her and tried to get me to take what I am still pretty sure was just a Vicodin.

    She insisted it was “lung medicine” that would help me clear out the mucus in my lungs. I believe she genuinely wanted to help me and may have thought that she was holding a mucinex or similar, but she was so far gone she couldn’t keep her eyes open and kept dropping the pill she was trying to force me to take.

    I don’t remember if I took it.

  • Rejection Sensitivity & CPTSD

    Posted In

    As someone who struggles with ADHD, I also have a constant battle in my mind thanks to RSD – Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria.

    At the first sign of perceived “rejection” (which can range anywhere from my husband not being in the mood, to a boss giving me a one-word response) I immediately regress into an emotional flashback.

    I am unsure if the trigger that started the RSD episode also started the flashback, or if the feelings of helplessness & rejection that the RSD causes, in turn trigger the flashback.

    Either way, because of the hair-trigger attached to this condition, I find myself in emotional flashback several times daily.

    Last night, I tried to trace the flashback to its origin point – or, at least ONE of them – by trying to remember a time in childhood that I felt as rejected and unloved as I feel in the moment.

    Here is the memory that surfaced.

    I think I was about 7 years old, no more than 8. I had a long-standing battle with wetting the bed. Wetting the bed in an abusive household is almost never met with kindness. It’s just one more thing for the parents to have to deal with.

    I’d wet the bed the night before and tried to hide it by drying my nightgown with a hair dryer. It dried the cloth, sure. but the smell remained.

    When I went out to the living room, I sat on the sofa beside my father and went in for a hug, but instead was met with a 20-minute diatribe about how badly I stunk and how he couldn’t stand to be around me.

  • Flip Flops

    Posted In

    When I was around 10 years old, one summer, I was living with my father and his 2 lovers. I’d gone to a yard sale earlier in the day and bought a pair of flip flops that I adored for like 0.25.

    After that, my dad and one of his lovers took me to the mall for some errands. When we got out of the car, in the mall parking lot, is when they both noticed my new sandals.

    They seemed mortified, positively aghast. “You’re going into public! And now you look like that.” I remember my cheeks burning, and feeling absolutely overwhelmed with shame.

    I remember standing against a wall outside the bathrooms later, just feeling so incredibly uncomfortable in my body and clothes because of how heavily criticized I was.

    I threw the sandals away.

Designed with WordPress