You Can’t Unfuck the Thanksgiving Turkey

I took 60 hours of psych in UG then another 12 in grad school. My degrees are in history; I just took way too much psych. I find it fascinating and relatable. I like understanding why I’m doing what I do. Being as I have the issues of major depressive disorder and complex PTSD, sometimes my thoughts and actions don’t fully make rational sense to me either. I need to rationalize so I can correct when necessary.

I’m not crazy, I’m traumatized. That’s been my mantra recently. It’s not me; it is trauma response, and that is what I work so hard on controlling so I don’t have irrational panic. So I don’t go through a functional freeze, and if I do, I can rationally look at it and say to myself, “It’s not you; this is how you react based on trauma, and we need to recondition this response.” That’s the basis of psych: the idea that we can change the way our mind perceives and reacts. I am in some form of conscious thought at any given moment of the day trying to therapize myself.

I just made up the word therapize.

I remember a story from one of my psych classes about Freud. Freud is one of the first to say that fathers raping their daughters was directly related to psychiatric issues in the daughters. Cure: stop fucking your daughters.

Now, the French were aghast at this. How dare he say they are doing something wrong by raping their daughters? Freud was discharged from polite French society. So, Freud changed it up and said that yes, fucking your daughter will result in psychiatric issues in the daughters; however, it’s the daughter’s fault for not being able to handle it.

I will say I don’t think I have that on really good authority, and as a historian myself, I wouldn’t put whole credibility to that being precisely what happened, but it did happen.

We blame the person who has been victimized and not the person who caused the harm. Why can’t I get out of bed? It’s me. It has to be me. No one is holding me down or telling me I can’t get out of bed. But I just kind of can’t. Why? Well, we have been through the discussion recently about functional freeze as a trauma response. Who traumatized me? Well, that would be {D} at this point. So should I blame myself, or should I blame the conscious actions of the man that resulted in my functional freeze?

Clearly, I am the only one who can fix it. Blaming someone else gets you nowhere. You can stand in blame forever; it’s not going to change anything, though.

I’ve been screaming. I’ve been screaming for almost 2 full years. I am still in that night. I am still saying no and begging for it to stop. I am still begging for help from those who continue to stand and gawk but fail to act. I’m written off because I’m crazy.

I’m not crazy. I’m traumatized.

I continue searching for the accountability to be there. For punishment. For neutralization of the perceived threat in my mind that is always hanging in the air like old cigarette smoke. For someone just to recognize he hurt me and protect me. Just anyone at all. Protect me, please. I’m begging because he is still hurting me.

You think I want him here on my website? You think I want to be scared when I get random text messages from random numbers that it might be him there to fuck with my head? You think I want to stay in this fight for fun? For some kind of vengeance? No.

I fight because I am still in that night. The pain hasn’t ended yet. I don’t have it yet. I’m still screaming.

I can’t even really begin to make significant progress in my recovery until that night ends. I don’t know what is going to end it, but the perceived threat remains.

I remember talking to the police. I was saying I was scared because I didn’t know where he was. Like knowing where he was would have made it safer. He knew where I was and could come kill me at will. So why the fuck would it matter where he was? It’s the perceived threat in my mind. And that threat is still active.

Perhaps the worst part was the relief I felt when they told me he was being arrested. I felt okay for a second or two. Like it was over. Then it just wasn’t over, and I don’t know when it will ever be over for me.

One of my favorite sayings is “you can’t unfuck the Thanksgiving turkey.” Like, whatever it is has happened, and there is nothing you can do to go back and change it. The past is static. So if I can’t unfuck the Thanksgiving turkey, what do I do now?

Maybe the only thing I can do is keep trying to move forward in the smallest ways possible, even if I’m still carrying the weight of that night. I can’t change what happened, but I can work toward changing what comes next. And on the days when that feels impossible, maybe it’s enough just to remind myself: I’m not crazy. I’m traumatized. And I’m still here.